Just a couple of weeks ago Claude Lévi-Strauss—the father of modern cultural anthropology, not the blue jeans guy—died in Paris. There will be no memorial concert or film (well, maybe in France), which is too bad because I consider his contributions to the world more significant than the moonwalk or “Thriller.” I have had an [...]
Who would have known that a brief rant on mass-production would get such an enthusiastic response, and not just on Concrete Academic? Yesterdays article turned out not at all what the editors here expected, and we’re currently in negotiation with Jeff Starr to drop his renaissance-man inclinations and oeuvre and write full time on furniture.
Why [...]
To enjoy all music equally, to listen to a Jazz piece after a U2 song on your “shuffle”-set digital music player, is nonsense. It’s like deciding to pledge your undying love to a woman because, after all, you are a people person. “Hey, you’re ‘people,’ so why not?” Listening to music can’t be like flipping [...]
There are two ways to appraise James McGrath’s The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context, a treatise on the theology proper of Judaism and primitive Christianity: its scholarship and its writing. Writing a popular work brings special challenges not faced when writing only to the academy, and McGrath struggles to write [...]
I want to discuss the scientific status of Intelligent Design, but please note the specificity of my purpose. This is not about whether or not it should be taught in public school, or academic discrimination, or the origin of bacterial flagella. And when I say “Intelligent Design,” or ID, I don’t mean the Discovery Institute, [...]
“That’s an interesting theory, but do you have any proof?” But what’s a theory, and what is proof? Does a lot of proof turn a theory into a fact? Do lots of facts prove a theory? Can you theorize facts into proofs? Before wading into some deeper waters tomorrow, I want to do some ground [...]
Numbers don’t lie, we’re told, but they lie all the time. Ok, in and of themselves they may be innocent, but numbers are open to such variegated interpretation that they shouldn’t be completely trusted. I’m somewhat suspicious of the widely reported article in Reproductive Health, a peer-reviewed medical journal, last month. What the press reported, [...]
Philosopher of science Michael Ruse is quoted on the cover of Alister McGrath’s The Dawkins Delusion as saying that Richard Dawkins’ eponymous book made him “embarrassed to be an atheist.” I was reminded of this when I heard of a more recent book ‘answering’ the current secular movement, The Last Superstition, where Dawkins is again [...]
Karen Armstrong has a new book out, A Case for God. No, I haven’t read the book. But I’m going to critique it anyway, justified by the fact that I’m familiar with her thinking, I heard her interviewed about it on NPR, and I read an excerpt of it. But that doesn’t really matter. I’ve [...]
