Unbelievable Indeed

Faith as Pseudoscience...

Last week Justin Brierly hosted on his radio program (and podcast) Unbelievable a much anticipated episode addressing Young Earth Creationism versus its more sensible alternatives.  Does the Rock and Fossil Record Point to Noah's Flood or Evolution? ought to be finished science, but biblicists clinging to long supplanted theories of geologic catastrophism hold out hope and continue throw around a lot of sciency chaff to impress the faithful.

Young Earther and Intelligent Design proponent (?) Andy Macintosh's commitment to his conclusions marks his efforts as pseudoscience - choosing facts to fit beliefs.  His primary tool appears to be an "argument from incredulity" - a PhD chemist can't imagine a complex idea from outside his discipline so therefore it couldn't happen.  For example, he apparently regards bird feathers as both irreducibly complex and obviously unrelated to reptile scales.  If Professor Macintosh had studied the literature with an open mind (or spent 30 seconds entering the Google search terms: evo devo scales feathers fur) he'd understand that the study of evolutionary development has long offered credible postulates for the expression variously of scales, feathers, and fur over time.  The most accessible paper served up may be Which Came First, the Feather or the Bird? American Scientific, March 2003.  

Professor Macintosh's opponent in the discussion was Cambridge paleontologist Robert Asher, who did his best to defend a more scientific view of biological origins and development.  It was a tough and testy slog.

On a much more rewarding note, I just listened to Krista Tippett's uncut interview with David Montgomery (author of The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood) for the 1 August 2013 On Being episode titled Reading the Rocks: Flood Stories and Deep Time.  Haven't listened to the produced podcast, but the raw dialogue is sometimes more fun.  Tippett's is the other religious podcast I enjoy regularly (I listen to Bill Craig's Reasonable Faith podcast too, but primarily because it irritates me so).

UPDATE: Ouch! The follow on episode was much worse and horribly sad. The mountain of flawed thought processes required to resolve Professor McIntosh's cognitive dissonance must be an extremely heavy burden. Ironically, his fideist biblicism is a greater threat to Christianity than any angry atheist. And to think he was once a scientist. Poor fellow. It's quite sad actually, but do let's keep this man away from the science classroom!

Artist's impression of the world's most ancient bird species, Aurornis xui, from http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/29/early-bird-dawn-archaeopteryx-aurornis-xui

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

From the front of the queue to the "read it" shelf...

I finished Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth last evening.  I bumped it to the top of my "to read" list after the shabby treatment Aslan received on Fox.

There is little in Zealot not already covered by White, Frederiksen, or even Ehrman, but Aslan has a very engaging story telling style so the The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth feels more accessible.  

UPDATE: The plot thins...

Who You Calling a Zealot?

Who writes Lauren Green's copy anyway?

I was planning to read Reza Aslan's latest book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, eventually, but after the simple-minded, shabby, and shallow treatment he received at the hands of Fox newsreader Lauren Green (watch it and be gob-smacked) I just had to go buy the book and bump it to the head of my queue.  Hell, I might just buy a copy of his earlier work, No god but God (Updated Edition): The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, just to make my share of the backlash complete.

The Stars My Destination

Gully Foyle, victim, madman, criminal, savior...

I've been catching up on classic SF novels from the golden age.  Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, which was more aptly titled Tiger, Tiger when first published in 1955, was a Sunday's reading very well spent.  The story of a marooned spacer who seeks bloody vengeance after being left adrift in a derelict space vessel, starts simple and gets more intricate.  The desperate protagonist, Gully Foyle, is no hero when we meet him, descends into foul criminal violence, grows in complexity as the plot unfolds, and eventually lays claim to his humanity.  I have not read Bester before but will again.  The Stars My Destination is a real page turner, so one hopes his Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man is even better.  We'll have to see.

Fire In The Lake

France Fitzgerald's Pulitzer Prize winning history delivers...

One day in the late 1970s, while attending the University of North Dakota, I was told by a older student who had spent his youth and his innocence as an American GI "busting his hump" across South Vietnam, that this was the best book ever written about America's involvement in Southeast Asia. Here I am, some 40 years later, much older than he was then, finally learning the truth of his sage advice. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam remains thoughtful, incisive, and passionate while maintaining a sense of detached credibility.  Frances Fitzgerald wrote Fire in the Lake in a series of layers, each building upon those that precede and underlie it, Vietnamese, French, American. Her writing is dense with detail, yet skillfully fluid.  I won't pretend its 590 pages flew by, but each one was as important for its content as it was enjoyable for its craft.  Much of what I thought I knew about American involvement in Vietnam at the time, and in the decades since, was woefully incomplete until.  I regret waiting so long to read this fine history of one the most formative issues of my generation.