It’s tempting to see the accommodationist vs.Gnu atheist debate as a debate about two questions. One is about of principles: if science and religion do conflict, would we have to tell the truth about that? The other is about priorities: is it more important to get evolution taught in public schools, or more important to [...]
Category Archives: biology
Most US Protestants belong to creationist denominations
Posted by Chris Hallquist on May 11, 2010
2 comments
Jerry Coyne criticizes a study that makes a big deal of the fact that 63% of believers in the U.S. belong to religious organizations that are officially pro-evolution. Coyne rightly points out that even in pro-evolution denominations, lots of believers in the pews have creationist sympathies. He only briefly mentions, however, the fact that “This [...]
Massimo Pigliucci is a childish, raging, foaming at the mouth fundamentalist with a cavalier attitude toward the substance, rationality and coherence of his arguments
Posted by Chris Hallquist on April 16, 2010
9 comments
Yesterday, Massimo Pigliucci wrote a post titled “PZ Myers is a witless wanker who peddles pablum.” Pigliucci says he didn’t really mean it, but was just imitating PZ’s overblown rhetoric to make the point that it’s a bad thing. My title is an imitation of Massimo’s approach to post-titling, since he uses all the words [...]
On hating evo psych
Posted by Chris Hallquist on April 8, 2010
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A criticism of evolutionary psychology that literally centers on insulting the opposition’s mating fitness and social status? Now that’s irony. –A comment on BoingBoing Also: the people in the comments who say feminism isn’t monolithic are absolutely right. Some definitions make you as “they have a word for that?” while in other contexts feminism seems [...]
Report on the Hitchens-D’Souza debate
Posted by Chris Hallquist on April 8, 2010
8 comments
Overall, I’m very happy to have attended the debate. The amount of real interaction between Hitchens and D’Souza was far less than I was hoping for, in part due to the format of the debate. Still, Hitchens made for a very good representative of atheism, and actually I was pleasantly surprised by the approach he [...]