I’ve just listened to the full audio of the debate …

Comment on Dr. Jason Rosenhouse “Among the Creationists” by wesley kime.

I’ve just listened to the full audio of the debate (as per click in the lead piece to this thread). As talk shows often are, this one was occasioned by the books the debaters had recently written (“Among the Creationists” and “Turtles All The Way Down” respectively).

Although Sean’s antagonist and fellow author is a mathematician, his book’s focus isn’t the mathematics of evolution but the culture of creationists, about which he indulges delicate chuckles and delicate cordiality.

To my delight, Sean, known for his no nonsense science mode, picked up, delicately, the whimsy, starting with the title, “Among The…” noting that it is reminiscent of all those “Among The Apes” books, and then, having opened with delicate humor, expressed serious puzzlement that a mathematician’s book, even if focused on culture, didn’t grapple much with the mathematics of evo, while announcing (surprise!) that the debate really isn’t subject to mathematics anyway, and dismissing ID’s mathematics as unworthy of notice. (I would have run away with that irony-clad semi-syllogism.)

My critique of the broadcast isn’t from the scientific (certainly not mathematical) perspective but the cultural (I identify with Rosenhouse on that: ): 1. Both seemed of about the same age, at their primes. 2. Rosenhouse’s voice is more musical than Sean’s, at least as Sean’s came through on the transcontinental satellite phone connection to New York, while Rosenhouse’s seemed tinged with a hint of happy hubris, ironic from a mathematician if characteristic of an Evoean, and Sean’s sounded more the mathematician, ironic from a haranguing creationist. Role reversal, revealing.

Having thus given him a sort of talent audition and pronounced him a worthy didactician, with which I would suppose Rosenhouse concurs, I’d like to see Sean segue on to a more public venue, like talk shows, like PBS and why not Bill O’Reilly?

wesley kime Also Commented

Dr. Jason Rosenhouse “Among the Creationists”
“Maybe Oprah.” Good shot, pard.


Dr. Jason Rosenhouse “Among the Creationists”
@Gene Fortner: Indeed the greatest scientists in history have been the ones (singular, individual) who broke from consensus, whereupon the greatest MASS (critical mass) of scientists agglutinated upon him to be the new consensus and peer review.


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