Creationism: another casualty of Innumeracy

Some of us who sincerely treasure the scientific fact and scientific theory of evolution have brought on some of our own problems with our choice of nomenclature. For instance, sometimes “random mutations” gets uncoupled from natural selection, leading some to believe that it is the randomness of the process that is the be-all and end-all of evolution. Consider also Francis Crick’s description of the associations of amino acids with their three base codons as a "frozen accident." Creationists, ignoring these (legitimate) scientific and scientific/poetic usages, have jumped all over the terms such as "random" and "accident" to characterize scientific evolutionary theory in the following warped way: "All life forms just suddenly spring into existence as accidents." Though I am aware that sophisticated creationists would embellish this attack, this characterization is certainly the straw man put forth by most of the people out there who tremble at the thought that human beings are (gad!) animals. It recently occurred to me that, perhaps, creationists’ willingness to assume that evolutionists are claiming that complex life forms "just happen" might be another symptom of "innumeracy." It might be that they don't understand how incredibly rare it is that biological "accidents" survive and reproduce. In his bestseller, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (1988), John Paulos introduced the term “innumeracy” to refer to "an inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance." Paulos bemoaned that innumeracy "plagues far too many otherwise knowledgeable citizens."

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Violence in Iraq is systematically being under-reported

Think Progress contrasts Laura Bush's recent argument that the media are failing to report all of the good things that are happening to this excerpt from the Iraq Study Group: In addition, there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter…

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No Intelligent Designer needed for the economy

You’ll never find anyone who writes more clearly about mathematics than John Paulos.  Exhibit A is Innumeracy:  Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1990).  Paulos doesn’t limit his inquiries and writings to pure mathematics, however.  Mathematics permeates numerous social issues, and Paulos is happy to jump into the fray whereever that is…

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Understanding the world through a column of statistics

Bill Moyers wrote that "it has been said that the mark of a truly educated person is to be deeply moved by statistics." To the extent that this is true, go hither and understand the world through the statistics presented by "Worldometers."  Lots of thought-provoking statistics kept up to the…

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Mission accomplished by political hack/video hacker

Why is the White House afraid to show Bush's 2003 aircraft carrier "Mission Accomplished speech" in its full glory?  Why has the video available on the White House site been so obviously hacked? Maybe the answer is best shown through statistics:                  At Mission Accomplished    Since Mission Accomplished U.S. Troops wounded          542                            21,077…

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