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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
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posted by John Farrell at 7:18 AM
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
Housecleaning
Blogger is requiring all ftp-based blogs to port over to their new platform before May 1, so the medialog here will change addresses soon. I'll post the new address and feed (to my three and a half regular readers) asap.
posted by John Farrell at 1:48 PM
2 comments
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
John Wilkins takes Larry Moran and PZ Myers to the woodshed.
I wrote: �As an accommodationist, I think that whether or not science and religion should be treated as compatible, in fact they are, or as compatible as any potentially competing set of beliefs may be, such as the belief that science is the only way to gain justifiable beliefs, which is not, itself, scientifically justifiable.� Larry read this thus:
I argue that if you adopt science as a valid way of gathering knowledge then most everything about religion fails the tests of science. Those who claim to be scientists and still believe that there�s a God who answers prayers are expressing two contradictory positions. You can�t claim to be thinking like a scientist while holding on to beliefs that have been refuted by science. Only I didn�t say that religion is a way of knowing. It may be, if it is true, but I have no dog in that hunt, and I don�t need to. I said that this was about ways to gain justifiable beliefs. PZ Myers, who I also claim as a friend and will be flying to meet when he finishes the Atheism Lovefest in Melbourne (no, I�m not miffed I wasn�t invited to speak, why do you ask?), makes the same mistake � he tries, as Chris Schoen discusses, to show that his love for his wife is a scientific inference. I think there�s a clear is-ought fallacy here; trial and error may explain why Paul and his Trophy Wife[tm] found each other compatible, but the justifiable belief that he loves her is not the result of anything like a scientific inference. It�s what linguistic philosophers call a �performative�: he loves her in virtue of expressing the love. How he got there is beside the point.
A belief can be justifiable in a number of ways � in Wittgensteinian terms, a belief is justified when it satisfies the criteria for that sort of belief among a language community, who have a self-contained set of rules. Chess players have beliefs about what it is wrong to do (you can�t punch the other player, for instance) that are not in any sense scientific. Religious beliefs may be of that kind; that�s for those who care to argue. I don�t need to say they must have ways of knowing, merely that they have beliefs that satisfy some criteria, and we can then talk about those criteria. Deep down, it isn't theology the militants really have a problem with. It's philosophy.
posted by John Farrell at 10:00 AM
3 comments
Friday, March 05, 2010
Nice interview with Teresa Nielsen Hayden and John Scalzi on managing an online community.
posted by John Farrell at 11:10 AM
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Mead drubs the Times for its poor coverage of Climategate:
Admit mistakes? Open up their data? Change the way the work? You mean there was something wrong with the way climate science was operating last year? Is the Times telling us that the climate scientists�on the basis of whose work the whole world is debating complex and far-reaching changes in its economic structure and political governance�were using slipshod and careless procedures that need to be fixed?
Gosh, one has to ask, if these terrible things were going on for such a long time, why didn�t the New York Times notice this earlier on? Why didn�t the New York Times break this important story back when it was news, rather than lamely sweeping up at the end of the parade? Could it be that a climate of politically-correct group-think inhibited the editors and reporters at the country�s newspaper of record from recognizing a one of the major stories of the decade? Could the environmental writers at the Times be just a teensy bit too close to their sources? Labels: climate, science
posted by John Farrell at 10:00 AM
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Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Ever get stuck in the bookstore info counter behind someone like this?
Customer: I need to get that book about cookies. It's something about cookies.
Clerk: Cookies. Okay. (types into the computer) umm... there are quite a few books about cookies here.
Customer: Well it was on TV the other day. My wife saw it on TV.
Clerk: Um. Okay. There are really a lot of books about cookies. Can you tell me anything else about it?
Customer: It's something about making money and cookies. I don't know. She was going on about it at dinner but I wasn't really listening to her.
At this point, I realize which book they are looking for and turn to the clerk.
Me: I think the book you want is called The Smart Cookie�s Guide to Investing
Him: YEAH. THAT'S IT.
Clerk: Thank you.
Me: Your wife is a lucky woman. Labels: books
posted by John Farrell at 11:38 AM
1 comments
Friday, February 26, 2010
At last it's official. I'll be going to Cambridge University in the UK in June and July:
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 25 � Ten prominent journalists from the United States, the United Kingdom, and China have been selected for the sixth annual Templeton�Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion. Inaugurated in 2004, the fellowships include a program of research and scholarship at the University of Cambridge in England. The 2010 fellows were announced today by the New York office of the Templeton�Cambridge Fellowships, which are funded by the John Templeton Foundation of West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.
�The fellowships provide top journalists worldwide with an opportunity to engage in a rigorous and wide-ranging examination of the field of science and religion,� says Templeton�Cambridge Fellowships Co-director Fraser Watts, Reader in Theology and Science, University of Cambridge. �With the deeper understanding that they gain through the fellowship program, these journalists will be better able to promote a more informed public discussion of science and religion.�
The Templeton�Cambridge Journalism fellows named today are:
Qanta Ahmed, Contributor, Huffington Post, and Broadcast Commentator
John Farrell, Freelance Journalist
Zeeya Merali, Freelance Journalist and Documentary Producer
Chris Mooney, Science Journalist and Reporter
Lisa Mullins, Chief Anchor and Senior Producer, BBC�s The World
Jane Qiu, Correspondent, Nature
Francis X. Rocca, Vatican Correspondent, Religion News Service
Carlin Romano, Critic-at-large, Chronicle of Higher Education
Ron Rosenbaum, Cultural Columnist, Slate
Peter Scoblic, Executive Editor, The New Republic Boy, do I have my reading list cut out for me!
posted by John Farrell at 10:52 AM
5 comments
James Corum: One wonders how much longer the Obama Administration can get by without experienced diplomats.
Despite the acclaim that America�s mainstream media has heaped on Hillary Clinton over the years, her foreign policy background and experience before becoming Secretary of State was to accompany her husband on foreign trips and preside over �first wives� dinners for the spouses of visiting heads of state. One learns a lot about protocol and ceremonies � but this is no preparation for the real work of making policy. Clinton has no experience or education in foreign policy. She speaks no foreign languages and has never lived abroad. She lacks the intellectual temperament to be a foreign policy leader. Like Obama, she has long surrounded herself with sycophants.
posted by John Farrell at 8:31 AM
0 comments
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Nice interview of astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter on his work in the 1990s revealing how the universe's expansion rate is accelerating.
If he were still alive, Fr. Georges Lemaitre would have been thrilled at this discovery.
(Not that he would have stuck his tongue out at Einstein or Fred Hoyle or anything...)Labels: astronomy, science
posted by John Farrell at 1:07 PM
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