With baseless and clueless assurity,
The fool ventures into futurity
From Jr. High kewlitude,
To senescent droolitude
Without stopping once in maturity
Sunday, April 30, 2017
To A Troll
You wouldn't get the point if you sat on a tack. I was making a point while messing with your mind. Such as it is. At least I succeeded in messing with your mind.
Update: Oh, well, I'm not like Holmes, I'm not afraid of filling up an imaginary attic in my skull, I don't believe the mind is material, I figure it's got unlimited capacity because of that.
What's your excuse for trolling on empty?
Update: Oh, well, I'm not like Holmes, I'm not afraid of filling up an imaginary attic in my skull, I don't believe the mind is material, I figure it's got unlimited capacity because of that.
What's your excuse for trolling on empty?
Trivia In The Time of Armageddon
I am sent a little piece of information that the National Science Foundation commissioned a survey in which they claim to have found that a quarter of American adults don't know that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Which, on looking, I find out is a rather old story as the survey was published three years ago.
I don't know why it was sent to me an hour ago. Maybe they think I'm going to deny the Copernican system. But it made me think of two things, the first is a quote from A Study in Scarlet, which I was thinking of using to preface the piece about Charles Darwin's inability to understand why there could be a purpose for the basic laws of physics working on the moon because he couldn't see it.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
Which is even more interesting in the context of the line in the novel.
His [Holmes'] ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
“To forget it!”
“ You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
“But the Solar System!” I protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
I was on the point of asking him what that work might be, but something in his manner showed me that the question would be an unwelcome one. I pondered over our short conversation, however, and endeavoured to draw my deductions from it. He said that he would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his object. Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such as would be useful to him. I enumerated in my own mind all the various points upon which he had shown me that he was exceptionally well-informed. I even took a pencil and jotted them down. I could not help smiling at the document when I had completed it. It ran in this way—
You see, Sherlock Holmes had a materialistic model of the mind, or rather, brain, that gave him an excuse to have just that kind of an excuse for maintaining ignorance. Which is a basic problem of the materialist model of the mind, at least Holmes still believed that there was a mind in there. It's tempting to think that American adults who maintain his same ignorance have the same reason but I think the real one is American TV is about selling stuff and keeping Americans stupid enough to manipulate.
But it also made me remember a passage from the Swarthmore lecture given by one of the last century's greatest astro-physicists, Arthur Stanley Eddington who maintained that modern physics makes the question all a matter of point of view.
If the kind of controversy which so often springs up between modernism and traditionalism in religion were applied to more commonplace affairs of life we might see some strange results. Would it be altogether unfair to imagine something liked the following series of letters in our correspondence columns? It arises, let us say, from a passage in an obituary notice which mentions that the deceased had loved to watch the sunsets from his peaceful country home.
A. writes deploring that in this progressive age few of the younger generation ever notice a sunset; perhaps this is due to the pernicious influence of the teaching of Copernicus who maintains that the sun is really stationary. This rouses
B to reply that nowadays every reasonable person accepts Copernicus’s doctrine.
C is positive that he has many times seen the sun set, and Copernicus must be wrong.
D calls for a restatement of belief, so that we may know just how much modern science has left of the sunset, and appreciated the remnant without disloyalty to truth.
E (perhaps significantly my own initial) in a misguided effort for peace points out that on the most modern scientific theory there is no absolute distinction between the heavens revolving around the earth and the earth revolving under the heavens; both parties are (relatively) right.
F regards this as a most dangerous sophistry, which insinuates that there is no essential difference between truth and untruth.
G thinks that we ought now to admit frankly that the revolution of the heavens is a myth; nevertheless such myths have still a practical teaching for us in the present day.
H produces an obscure passage in the Almagest, which he interprets as showing that the philosophy of the ancients was not really opposed to the Copernican view.
And so it goes on. And the simple reader feels himself in an age of disquiet, insecurity and dissension, all because it is forgotten that what the deceased man looked out for each evening was an experience and not a creed.
Now, I certainly wouldn't be arrogant enough to think I was in a better position than Eddington, "E" to come to a scientific conclusion on that, Perhaps you could say that 1/4 of American adults take a different position due to the current classical model of physics than 3/4 of them but that both are correct. Dr. Watson would not have known that, the story being published in the 1880s. Should we know that today? Is someone who doesn't know that ignorant? I don't know. If the man who Einstein said had written the best explanation of his theory of relativity in any language is not to be believed about current physics, in which relativity has not been overturned, why is the National Science Foundation behind the times?
Though, again, I think American TV is the most likely explanation. I would exempt the schools from blame because they are not what we've given the most influence in informing children about the world.
It is kind of ironic that they'd hold up the Copernican system as the one, real, right way to think of these things as it held the sun was the center of the universe, or at least that' what they seem to have believed for a good part of the time it was official science.
I don't know why it was sent to me an hour ago. Maybe they think I'm going to deny the Copernican system. But it made me think of two things, the first is a quote from A Study in Scarlet, which I was thinking of using to preface the piece about Charles Darwin's inability to understand why there could be a purpose for the basic laws of physics working on the moon because he couldn't see it.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
Which is even more interesting in the context of the line in the novel.
His [Holmes'] ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
“To forget it!”
“ You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
“But the Solar System!” I protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
I was on the point of asking him what that work might be, but something in his manner showed me that the question would be an unwelcome one. I pondered over our short conversation, however, and endeavoured to draw my deductions from it. He said that he would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his object. Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such as would be useful to him. I enumerated in my own mind all the various points upon which he had shown me that he was exceptionally well-informed. I even took a pencil and jotted them down. I could not help smiling at the document when I had completed it. It ran in this way—
You see, Sherlock Holmes had a materialistic model of the mind, or rather, brain, that gave him an excuse to have just that kind of an excuse for maintaining ignorance. Which is a basic problem of the materialist model of the mind, at least Holmes still believed that there was a mind in there. It's tempting to think that American adults who maintain his same ignorance have the same reason but I think the real one is American TV is about selling stuff and keeping Americans stupid enough to manipulate.
But it also made me remember a passage from the Swarthmore lecture given by one of the last century's greatest astro-physicists, Arthur Stanley Eddington who maintained that modern physics makes the question all a matter of point of view.
If the kind of controversy which so often springs up between modernism and traditionalism in religion were applied to more commonplace affairs of life we might see some strange results. Would it be altogether unfair to imagine something liked the following series of letters in our correspondence columns? It arises, let us say, from a passage in an obituary notice which mentions that the deceased had loved to watch the sunsets from his peaceful country home.
A. writes deploring that in this progressive age few of the younger generation ever notice a sunset; perhaps this is due to the pernicious influence of the teaching of Copernicus who maintains that the sun is really stationary. This rouses
B to reply that nowadays every reasonable person accepts Copernicus’s doctrine.
C is positive that he has many times seen the sun set, and Copernicus must be wrong.
D calls for a restatement of belief, so that we may know just how much modern science has left of the sunset, and appreciated the remnant without disloyalty to truth.
E (perhaps significantly my own initial) in a misguided effort for peace points out that on the most modern scientific theory there is no absolute distinction between the heavens revolving around the earth and the earth revolving under the heavens; both parties are (relatively) right.
F regards this as a most dangerous sophistry, which insinuates that there is no essential difference between truth and untruth.
G thinks that we ought now to admit frankly that the revolution of the heavens is a myth; nevertheless such myths have still a practical teaching for us in the present day.
H produces an obscure passage in the Almagest, which he interprets as showing that the philosophy of the ancients was not really opposed to the Copernican view.
And so it goes on. And the simple reader feels himself in an age of disquiet, insecurity and dissension, all because it is forgotten that what the deceased man looked out for each evening was an experience and not a creed.
Now, I certainly wouldn't be arrogant enough to think I was in a better position than Eddington, "E" to come to a scientific conclusion on that, Perhaps you could say that 1/4 of American adults take a different position due to the current classical model of physics than 3/4 of them but that both are correct. Dr. Watson would not have known that, the story being published in the 1880s. Should we know that today? Is someone who doesn't know that ignorant? I don't know. If the man who Einstein said had written the best explanation of his theory of relativity in any language is not to be believed about current physics, in which relativity has not been overturned, why is the National Science Foundation behind the times?
Though, again, I think American TV is the most likely explanation. I would exempt the schools from blame because they are not what we've given the most influence in informing children about the world.
It is kind of ironic that they'd hold up the Copernican system as the one, real, right way to think of these things as it held the sun was the center of the universe, or at least that' what they seem to have believed for a good part of the time it was official science.
The Copernican Planisphere, illustrated in 1661 by Andreas Cellarius. I believe that's supposed to be Fr. Copernicus on the lower right. Notice the zodiac circles the sun, too.
But, like the great Holmes, I'm not as worked up as those who are worked up over this are. What the hell difference does it make? I'm a lot more worried about Americans being sold lies denying climate change and the role that fossil fuel plays in that than in them being fuzzy about what the Earth goes around. That's TV induced ignorance sold through oil and other extraction industries, sold by American TV for profit, even influencing the stinking New York Times who recently hired an op-ed scribbler who is selling that really dangerous lie that even more Americans believe as the friggin' world boils and burns around them. There's no way human ignorance is going to move the sun or the Earth though it could well end life on Earth. I'll bet a lot of them could tell you who was on Seinfeld or some other idiotic TV show.
Update: That detail of the four of Jupiter's moons Galileo found is kind of cute.
Update: That detail of the four of Jupiter's moons Galileo found is kind of cute.
Not The White House Correspondents' Dinner, Pt. 2: Roast of Jeff Zucker
I absolutely hate Jeff Zucker and CNN. People talk about FOX but it was the original 24-7 filler of empty air time that led the way into the sewer. Thanks to Zucker, it's diving for the bottom in a competition with FOX that already inhabits it. Only there are still people naive enough to think CNN is better than that. It isn't.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
And Still More Hate
First. Update 2: Is that what he said? Doesn't bother me. I'd rather risk the occasional extravagant gesture and fail than be voluntarily shackled to mediocrity. Nothing ventured, all the same. That's his method.
-------
"Nobody cares about your old radio shows."
Well, some people seem to want to try them. And someone does care about them, me. I'd post them if 2 other people listened to them. I might post them if no one did.
Update: It's not him. He's too stupid to write the rest of it. I'm being trolled by some pseudo-skeptics or other. Who knows, they use sock puppets too.
-------
"Nobody cares about your old radio shows."
Well, some people seem to want to try them. And someone does care about them, me. I'd post them if 2 other people listened to them. I might post them if no one did.
Update: It's not him. He's too stupid to write the rest of it. I'm being trolled by some pseudo-skeptics or other. Who knows, they use sock puppets too.
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Some Plays from Theater Five
This is from a series of radio dramas from the ABC network of all places, an attempt in the 1960s to revive the form on commercial radio in the United States. Never heard of it at the time, No idea why. What I've heard of the series, it was was surprisingly good, amazing what you can do with 20 minutes. I can't confirm the name of the writer for Jazz Festival, I think the credit said Fieldon Pellington, Odds on the Tower was written by Richard Mackracken the recording of The Late Matthew Dillard cut out before the credits were given. I'd really like to be able to give credits but I can't find a text of them online.
You can see from the links that there were a lot of them made.
Even More Answers To Even More Hate Mail
Don't give me that bull shit. CSICOP, now called CSI to try to get it past the sTARBABY SCANDAL is a gang of atheist thugs, their influence on journalism and science has been mostly that of an intellectual protection racket, the fee they collected is promoting their ideological thuggery. You can say the same thing about the James Randi "Educational" Foundation, Michael Shermer and all the other pseudo-skeptical rackets out there. It has succeeded with the cowards of journalism and to a great extent within science journalism and science. It has been a total flop with the general public who are far more interested in its Index of Prohibited Topics since its founding than they were before.
I used to think the bad state that the public understanding of science is in had little to do with CSICOP, now I think it probably has more to do with that than I once did.
CSICOP and the rest of the atheist-ideological agitation have no interest in the truth, no more than neo-Confederate revisionists or Hollywood are. It's a sleazy racket.
I wish there was some way to know which of you guys are doing this so I could know which of your heroes to target. But I've got no problem with targeting them all, even the media saints like Sagan.
* Which showed that its founders and even some of the scientists were able to be every thing from totally ignorant of science - Paul Kurtz, James Randi - to practicing basic scientific incompetence - George Abel, Marvin Zelen - to duplicity and cover up - virtually all of the rest of the CSICOP "council" and "fellows" and other big wigs involved in it, especially the allegedly sainted Martin Gardner and Carl Sagan and the professional "skeptic" and now retired psych prof. Ray Hyman.
Update: If you're not going to bother to read the things linked to that support my claim, you're going to continue to not know what you're talking about. The incompetence and fraud were blatant, the cover up as well, even Richard Kammann, then a current "Fellow" of CSICOP, as willing as he was to bend over backward to look for innocent motives was, through the continued cover up and lies, forced to face the fact that the whole thing was a scandal and he resigned from the cult.
Still getting no response from the 4 stony faces on CSICOP's Mt. Rushmore [ Gardner, Hyman, Randi and Kendrick Frazier], I submitted a completely new paper fully documenting all the scientific errors with sources and omitting all charges of a cover-up by Council. Called "Statistical Numerology in the Skeptics' Response to the Mars Effect," and strictly limited to a small circle of addresses, this paper finally got some results.
George Abell produced 71 pages of explanations and apologies, accepting "Numerology" with two minor disclaimers (both wrong). Ray Hyman concurred on the errors but saw them as ordinary slip-ups in the process of science. Many scientists, he argued, try to publish nonsense but are blocked by a strong system of peer reviews and editorial control. Of course, there were no such controls for The Humanist or The Skeptical Inquirer, especially since Paul Kurtz had ultimate control on both. Ken Frazier agreed that a shorter and softer version of "Numerology" could be published in The Skeptical Inquirer but emphasized that nobody was interested in this dull old topic.
My faith in the goodness of CSICOP now flowering, I set to work on a readable third version of the paper. With Hyman's case for ordinary human errors humming in my head, I hit upon the subjective validation scenario for some of the errors (see Part 1) and even convinced myself that the whole cover-up was merely selective perception by Rawlins. The happy ending was in full sight.
The glow didn't last long. Frazier cabled that the editorial board was split and to shorten it severely. Meanwhile, my innocence theory was cracking under the strain to cover all the errors, and I sensed that no version I could write would be acceptable. Strong letters from Martin Gardner and Philip Klass now defined the situation as "resolved" by the Abell and Hyman letters. I was now exhausted and feeling the pressure to pronounce the benediction.
A reply to Hyman from parapsychologist R.A. McConnell said, "Nonsense. What we are talking about is elementary statistics--Abell and Zelen's specialty--and a third professor who is enhancing his status by lending his name in a field in which he presumably has no competence whatsoever. Of course, I'll buy your claim of no conscious dishonesty. [I suspect in the context, he said I'll NOT buy your claim.] Neither was it a chance occurrence. Unexamined dishonesty is rampant in this world. I don't see how you can excuse scientists' publicly trading upon their professional reputations when they are not willing to exert self-discipline." I tried to ignore McConnell, but that phrase "unexamined dishonesty" kept haunting me. The happy ending was slipping from my grasp.
There is one thing that Richard Kammann claimed that I totally reject, his claim that Paul Kurtz, the atheist god(less)father of neo-atheism was innocent of fraud due to his total, absolute ignorance of statistics - a defense that James Randi and Phil Klass also took. There is no way to have an informed opinion on the topics they declared forbidden without having a sophisticated knowledge of statistics, they have to be held responsible for dealing ideologically with controlled scientific research out of a basis of total ignorance of what the findings of that science were. That is intellectual dishonesty of the worst kind, perhaps topped only by those who do know bending things every which way to try to make the carefully done science disappear out of ideological motives. Which would account for virtually all of the rest of the CSICOP gangsters.
I used to think the bad state that the public understanding of science is in had little to do with CSICOP, now I think it probably has more to do with that than I once did.
CSICOP and the rest of the atheist-ideological agitation have no interest in the truth, no more than neo-Confederate revisionists or Hollywood are. It's a sleazy racket.
I wish there was some way to know which of you guys are doing this so I could know which of your heroes to target. But I've got no problem with targeting them all, even the media saints like Sagan.
* Which showed that its founders and even some of the scientists were able to be every thing from totally ignorant of science - Paul Kurtz, James Randi - to practicing basic scientific incompetence - George Abel, Marvin Zelen - to duplicity and cover up - virtually all of the rest of the CSICOP "council" and "fellows" and other big wigs involved in it, especially the allegedly sainted Martin Gardner and Carl Sagan and the professional "skeptic" and now retired psych prof. Ray Hyman.
Update: If you're not going to bother to read the things linked to that support my claim, you're going to continue to not know what you're talking about. The incompetence and fraud were blatant, the cover up as well, even Richard Kammann, then a current "Fellow" of CSICOP, as willing as he was to bend over backward to look for innocent motives was, through the continued cover up and lies, forced to face the fact that the whole thing was a scandal and he resigned from the cult.
Still getting no response from the 4 stony faces on CSICOP's Mt. Rushmore [ Gardner, Hyman, Randi and Kendrick Frazier], I submitted a completely new paper fully documenting all the scientific errors with sources and omitting all charges of a cover-up by Council. Called "Statistical Numerology in the Skeptics' Response to the Mars Effect," and strictly limited to a small circle of addresses, this paper finally got some results.
George Abell produced 71 pages of explanations and apologies, accepting "Numerology" with two minor disclaimers (both wrong). Ray Hyman concurred on the errors but saw them as ordinary slip-ups in the process of science. Many scientists, he argued, try to publish nonsense but are blocked by a strong system of peer reviews and editorial control. Of course, there were no such controls for The Humanist or The Skeptical Inquirer, especially since Paul Kurtz had ultimate control on both. Ken Frazier agreed that a shorter and softer version of "Numerology" could be published in The Skeptical Inquirer but emphasized that nobody was interested in this dull old topic.
My faith in the goodness of CSICOP now flowering, I set to work on a readable third version of the paper. With Hyman's case for ordinary human errors humming in my head, I hit upon the subjective validation scenario for some of the errors (see Part 1) and even convinced myself that the whole cover-up was merely selective perception by Rawlins. The happy ending was in full sight.
The glow didn't last long. Frazier cabled that the editorial board was split and to shorten it severely. Meanwhile, my innocence theory was cracking under the strain to cover all the errors, and I sensed that no version I could write would be acceptable. Strong letters from Martin Gardner and Philip Klass now defined the situation as "resolved" by the Abell and Hyman letters. I was now exhausted and feeling the pressure to pronounce the benediction.
A reply to Hyman from parapsychologist R.A. McConnell said, "Nonsense. What we are talking about is elementary statistics--Abell and Zelen's specialty--and a third professor who is enhancing his status by lending his name in a field in which he presumably has no competence whatsoever. Of course, I'll buy your claim of no conscious dishonesty. [I suspect in the context, he said I'll NOT buy your claim.] Neither was it a chance occurrence. Unexamined dishonesty is rampant in this world. I don't see how you can excuse scientists' publicly trading upon their professional reputations when they are not willing to exert self-discipline." I tried to ignore McConnell, but that phrase "unexamined dishonesty" kept haunting me. The happy ending was slipping from my grasp.
There is one thing that Richard Kammann claimed that I totally reject, his claim that Paul Kurtz, the atheist god(less)father of neo-atheism was innocent of fraud due to his total, absolute ignorance of statistics - a defense that James Randi and Phil Klass also took. There is no way to have an informed opinion on the topics they declared forbidden without having a sophisticated knowledge of statistics, they have to be held responsible for dealing ideologically with controlled scientific research out of a basis of total ignorance of what the findings of that science were. That is intellectual dishonesty of the worst kind, perhaps topped only by those who do know bending things every which way to try to make the carefully done science disappear out of ideological motives. Which would account for virtually all of the rest of the CSICOP gangsters.
Hate Mail - OK, Let's Take The Gloves Off
I will confess that I'm as guilty as anyone in doing it but there is really no such entity as "science". Science is a social phenomenon which consists of what the world body of scientists - for the purpose of discussion, those people, the overwhelming majority of them men, who publish what is called science in reviewed journals - say is science at any given time.
Science has no independent existence as an entity that does anything, it is an ill-defined, purported consensus of what those scientists say it is at any given time. And that's a load of nonsense, too. Because there is no one consensus, there isn't even general accord, there is constant disagreement over everything from small details to entire theories or even schools of science, which rise to prominence and fall, eventually much of what was even taken as a consensus point of view as being even absolute knowledge will be overturned as it was found to be inadequate and not infrequently just wrong. And that's not only true of the imprecise things like nutrition or molecular genetics, it's true of physics which, may, sometimes come to general consensus about some things given a very strong experimental demonstration, has many areas under contention. My observation would lead me to the conclusion that it is in those very areas most often driven by materialist-atheist ideology in physics that have both the most contention and a large body of speculation presented as science which, unsurprisingly, gets shoved into that boneyard of discontinued science I mentioned. Why that stuff is held to be "harder" science than psychology which is probably the thing called science which has contributed the largest number of corpses to that mountain, I don't know.
Before you fly off the handle and whine about my observation that your substitute god, Science, doesn't produce uniform or even durable knowledge, that's allegedly one of its great virtues, that, eventually, almost everything held as "science" will be challenged and its explanatory inadequacies will catch up with it and it will be overturned or succeeded by newer science. Said virtue includes most of what I've said above and will say below as a part of that supposed quest for ever newer understanding. One of sciences' biggest problems is that there is a shocking amount of pretty crappy stuff that gets published as science and taught and promoted by scientists as science, some of which even scientists acknowledge is crap - generally in other fields without any professional stake in what they will criticize. The role that professional interests, sects, cartels, etc. play in it is both obvious and, pretty much, a prohibited area of thought.
What is rejected by "science" is sometimes better science than what is accepted. Dr. Radin and his colleagues who have produced experimental results showing things such as presentiment of stimulus or a reaction to the experience of another person who they can not see, hear, or be in contact with is certainly far better controlled experiments, far more rigorously controlled against any pollution of the process and far better analyzed than almost anything you'll hear or read reported as psychology, sociology, anthropology, nutrition science, neuroscience, etc. But it violates the 18th-19th century notion of materialist-atheist ideology and CSI(COP) and such entities as Susan Gerbic's, PZ Myers' and Jerry Coynes' - science help us, even James Randi and Penn Jillette's flying monkey squads might go after anyone who looks at them objectively. That shows that "science" is hardly driven by method and review, it's as much a humanly mitigated activity as any other and as liable to ideological and other pressures that will constitute what "science says" as politics.
Don't feel too bad, we talk about "religion" as if it's a thing you can say something definite about too, when that's as dishonest a ubiquitous practice, as well. That "religion" everyone is always slamming or lauding is an imaginary construct, too. It does have the virtue that your materailist-atheist ideology doesn't, it doesn't so often pollute science. Atheism pervades large parts of it.
When it works for the good, science is just great and swell, it often doesn't, such as the well-paid science done on behalf of the oil, gas, coal and other extraction industries, much of other industry, the arms industry, the military. Anyone who can ignore that enormous part of the professional activities of science are engaged in doing evil for profit is in complete denial as to its character as a phenomenon. Steve Weinberg and his fans, for example. Even many of the otherwise innocent maintain that illusion out of their own interest. I've got lots of friends and family members who work in science, though most of them as teachers and not publishing scientists. I considered going into biology and was encouraged to by my teachers. My mother had a degree in Biology. I've got nothing against science that I don't also have against much of politics, journalism, the media, literature, the arts and religion. I don't treat any of those as a god substitute, either. Why should I treat science that way? Demanding that I hold up and genuflect to science, science as an all-knowing god doesn't seem to be very consistent with your materialist-atheist, nothing sacred claims. Perhaps those aren't what you claim them to be, either.
Update: If Paul Kurtz was and James Randi is entirely ignorant, that guy is a total moron. What he says is of no importance and those he says it to are idiots. I don't care what he says to them because they are a hermetically sealed bottle, a terrarium of folly in the shape of a ship of fools. I wish I could paint, I'd paint that and call it "Pseudo-Skepticism". Or "Atheist-materialism", which is the same thing.
Update 2: Is that what he said? Doesn't bother me. I'd rather risk the occasional extravagant gesture and fail than be voluntarily shackled to mediocrity. Nothing ventured, all the same. That's his method.
Science has no independent existence as an entity that does anything, it is an ill-defined, purported consensus of what those scientists say it is at any given time. And that's a load of nonsense, too. Because there is no one consensus, there isn't even general accord, there is constant disagreement over everything from small details to entire theories or even schools of science, which rise to prominence and fall, eventually much of what was even taken as a consensus point of view as being even absolute knowledge will be overturned as it was found to be inadequate and not infrequently just wrong. And that's not only true of the imprecise things like nutrition or molecular genetics, it's true of physics which, may, sometimes come to general consensus about some things given a very strong experimental demonstration, has many areas under contention. My observation would lead me to the conclusion that it is in those very areas most often driven by materialist-atheist ideology in physics that have both the most contention and a large body of speculation presented as science which, unsurprisingly, gets shoved into that boneyard of discontinued science I mentioned. Why that stuff is held to be "harder" science than psychology which is probably the thing called science which has contributed the largest number of corpses to that mountain, I don't know.
Before you fly off the handle and whine about my observation that your substitute god, Science, doesn't produce uniform or even durable knowledge, that's allegedly one of its great virtues, that, eventually, almost everything held as "science" will be challenged and its explanatory inadequacies will catch up with it and it will be overturned or succeeded by newer science. Said virtue includes most of what I've said above and will say below as a part of that supposed quest for ever newer understanding. One of sciences' biggest problems is that there is a shocking amount of pretty crappy stuff that gets published as science and taught and promoted by scientists as science, some of which even scientists acknowledge is crap - generally in other fields without any professional stake in what they will criticize. The role that professional interests, sects, cartels, etc. play in it is both obvious and, pretty much, a prohibited area of thought.
What is rejected by "science" is sometimes better science than what is accepted. Dr. Radin and his colleagues who have produced experimental results showing things such as presentiment of stimulus or a reaction to the experience of another person who they can not see, hear, or be in contact with is certainly far better controlled experiments, far more rigorously controlled against any pollution of the process and far better analyzed than almost anything you'll hear or read reported as psychology, sociology, anthropology, nutrition science, neuroscience, etc. But it violates the 18th-19th century notion of materialist-atheist ideology and CSI(COP) and such entities as Susan Gerbic's, PZ Myers' and Jerry Coynes' - science help us, even James Randi and Penn Jillette's flying monkey squads might go after anyone who looks at them objectively. That shows that "science" is hardly driven by method and review, it's as much a humanly mitigated activity as any other and as liable to ideological and other pressures that will constitute what "science says" as politics.
Don't feel too bad, we talk about "religion" as if it's a thing you can say something definite about too, when that's as dishonest a ubiquitous practice, as well. That "religion" everyone is always slamming or lauding is an imaginary construct, too. It does have the virtue that your materailist-atheist ideology doesn't, it doesn't so often pollute science. Atheism pervades large parts of it.
When it works for the good, science is just great and swell, it often doesn't, such as the well-paid science done on behalf of the oil, gas, coal and other extraction industries, much of other industry, the arms industry, the military. Anyone who can ignore that enormous part of the professional activities of science are engaged in doing evil for profit is in complete denial as to its character as a phenomenon. Steve Weinberg and his fans, for example. Even many of the otherwise innocent maintain that illusion out of their own interest. I've got lots of friends and family members who work in science, though most of them as teachers and not publishing scientists. I considered going into biology and was encouraged to by my teachers. My mother had a degree in Biology. I've got nothing against science that I don't also have against much of politics, journalism, the media, literature, the arts and religion. I don't treat any of those as a god substitute, either. Why should I treat science that way? Demanding that I hold up and genuflect to science, science as an all-knowing god doesn't seem to be very consistent with your materialist-atheist, nothing sacred claims. Perhaps those aren't what you claim them to be, either.
Update: If Paul Kurtz was and James Randi is entirely ignorant, that guy is a total moron. What he says is of no importance and those he says it to are idiots. I don't care what he says to them because they are a hermetically sealed bottle, a terrarium of folly in the shape of a ship of fools. I wish I could paint, I'd paint that and call it "Pseudo-Skepticism". Or "Atheist-materialism", which is the same thing.
Update 2: Is that what he said? Doesn't bother me. I'd rather risk the occasional extravagant gesture and fail than be voluntarily shackled to mediocrity. Nothing ventured, all the same. That's his method.
Friday, April 28, 2017
Hate Mail
Ha! God In The Gaps! I've Caught You! That's a paraphrase of a much more vulgar statement that means the same thing. Only I didn't make an argument for "the existence of God" I made an argument against something else.
First, while there are religious people who do make "God of the gaps" arguments, no informed or sophisticated religious people of my experience do. I don't believe I ever have. It is a generally unknown fact that the person who is on record as the first person arguing against the folly of "God of the gaps" was an evangelical preacher, Henry Drummond. Though, in looking online, right now, I believe some are claiming it as a formal logical fallacy. I'm not sure it has generally been accepted as one, though online atheists love to invent new "logical fallacies" all the time.
Second, as a matter of fact, though the term is, to my knowledge, not used, I was arguing against something very similar, the atheist insertion of materialism into gaps in knowledge, believing, that by asserting that some as yet unknown material explanation - generally asserting that unknown, perhaps nonexistent explanation to be "scientific" - fills in gaps in knowledge.
Darwin's imaginary unconscious creatures on the moon, Carl Sagan's invention of atheist extraterrestrials, the Just-so stories of evolutionary psychology, atheist cosmologists bi-jillions of imaginary universes, an infinity of previous incarnations of our one and only universe*, myriads of psychological-physiological entities, imaginary social constructs, the imaginary structures in our brain which cause our consciousness, all of which are not in evidence..... and most of all, an ultimate material explanation of everything including our consciousness are the equivalent of a virtual pan(a)theon of gods that are constantly invented to shove materialist-atheism into gaps of knowledge. The phenomenon has been going on since the dawn of science, gaining force as atheists claimed ownership of science, that it is remarkable that its existence hasn't been named before now. Some sciences consist of little else. The usual name of "promissory notes of materialism" is good but it doesn't go far enough in identifying what they are doing when they do it. They are making atheism in the gaps or, if you prefer, materialism in the gaps arguments against the existence of God. And that has been the actual motive of a shocking amount of what gets called science for a long, long time. I believe it probably accounts for a large percentage of once current but now discontinued and seldom discussed science. Some of it with quite horrific consequences.
* I don't remember who it was who pointed out the folly of that effort because an infinite God might well have been believed to have created an infinity of universes or an infinity of incarnations of our, one universe. If one is good (as Genesis says) why wouldn't an infinity of them not be infinitely good? None of which is a. knowledge, or b. science.
First, while there are religious people who do make "God of the gaps" arguments, no informed or sophisticated religious people of my experience do. I don't believe I ever have. It is a generally unknown fact that the person who is on record as the first person arguing against the folly of "God of the gaps" was an evangelical preacher, Henry Drummond. Though, in looking online, right now, I believe some are claiming it as a formal logical fallacy. I'm not sure it has generally been accepted as one, though online atheists love to invent new "logical fallacies" all the time.
Second, as a matter of fact, though the term is, to my knowledge, not used, I was arguing against something very similar, the atheist insertion of materialism into gaps in knowledge, believing, that by asserting that some as yet unknown material explanation - generally asserting that unknown, perhaps nonexistent explanation to be "scientific" - fills in gaps in knowledge.
Darwin's imaginary unconscious creatures on the moon, Carl Sagan's invention of atheist extraterrestrials, the Just-so stories of evolutionary psychology, atheist cosmologists bi-jillions of imaginary universes, an infinity of previous incarnations of our one and only universe*, myriads of psychological-physiological entities, imaginary social constructs, the imaginary structures in our brain which cause our consciousness, all of which are not in evidence..... and most of all, an ultimate material explanation of everything including our consciousness are the equivalent of a virtual pan(a)theon of gods that are constantly invented to shove materialist-atheism into gaps of knowledge. The phenomenon has been going on since the dawn of science, gaining force as atheists claimed ownership of science, that it is remarkable that its existence hasn't been named before now. Some sciences consist of little else. The usual name of "promissory notes of materialism" is good but it doesn't go far enough in identifying what they are doing when they do it. They are making atheism in the gaps or, if you prefer, materialism in the gaps arguments against the existence of God. And that has been the actual motive of a shocking amount of what gets called science for a long, long time. I believe it probably accounts for a large percentage of once current but now discontinued and seldom discussed science. Some of it with quite horrific consequences.
* I don't remember who it was who pointed out the folly of that effort because an infinite God might well have been believed to have created an infinity of universes or an infinity of incarnations of our, one universe. If one is good (as Genesis says) why wouldn't an infinity of them not be infinitely good? None of which is a. knowledge, or b. science.
A Contrast From Isaiah 55 - I Think This Is It With The Letter To William Graham For Now
Having read a lot of what Charles Darwin wrote in his life, reading lots of what his closest colleagues, his sons, one of his grandsons have said about him and his theory, having studied the effect of his theory in human history, it struck me last night that that letter he wrote to William Graham on July 3, 1881 condenses so much that is wrong with both his theory as a real force in human culture and the materialism that came to use Darwin as its chief icon.
Darwin's purpose is, explicitly twofold, first his desire to fight off any idea that science could be taken as a clue that there might be purpose in the universe, then to whine that Graham had slighted his theory.
He, himself identified his chief point on which he disagreed with what Graham said in his book, "The Creed of Science"
The chief one is that the existence of so-called natural laws implies purpose. I cannot see this.
In doing that, Darwin pretty much declares himself to be on the side of his materialist-atheist colleagues. The reason that the idea of purpose is anathema to materialists - who are almost uniformly atheists - is that purpose would imply God, not just any old nature, pagan god, but God the Creator. That has certainly been the chief ideological use of the claim often heard in the naive declaration that "science proves there isn't any purpose in the universe" or from those merely seeming to be more informed, "science proves there is no need of a God".
Well, science is incapable of doing either, Any scientist who makes that claim for science shows that they have a naive understanding of science because even a successful description of a physical phenomenon or a successful prediction of an effect doesn't touch the question as to why it is like that, though it may manage a partial explanation of how it is like that.
If, as I will point out again, there is not a single particle in the material universe that physics has understood comprehensively and exhaustively, there is certainly no force or, for that matter, a "physical law" that science has understood comprehensively and exhaustively. There are certainly aspects of those which are as unreachable as an electron and, something which always comes as news to many, including many scientists, when we talk about "physical law" we are talking about a humanly made explanation of phenomena. If you want a good example, one of the most brilliant of all recent physicists, Richard Feynman, repeatedly noted that no one really understood one of the most successful of all scientific endeavors, quantum theory.
You would think that atheists would understand at least that much, that it was human beings who came up with what was human understanding of these matters and transmitted them to other human beings who haven't always agreed to what they mean. You would think that Darwin, whose own law would prove so much a matter of controversy and dispute, even among those who believed in it during his life time, even from his co-inventor of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, would have grasped that much of it.
As for his examples debunking the possibility of believing that there might be purpose in nature, those are naive in the extreme.
... yet taking the laws as we now know them, and look at the moon, where the law of gravitation – and no doubt of the conservation of energy – of the atomic theory, &c. &c. hold good, and I cannot see that there is then necessarily any purpose. Would there be purpose if the lowest organisms alone destitute of consciousness existed in the moon?
His example of gravitation and conservation of energy and the atomic theory on the moon and his claim that they have no purpose there merely shows he is confusing the localized interests of human beings who are observing all of that, including a very naive naturalist at Down, Beckenham, Kent for a comprehensive view. He just can't see why, since it's no use to him, there couldn't be some other purpose that doesn't directly concern him and his interests. Considering the developing science he was a part of would, in the coming decades, come to understand that for even many terrestrial species the moon and its phases would have an enormous importance in their successful reproduction, his example was naive in the extreme. I won't go into his assumption that the "lowest organisms" of the moon, which existed merely in his own, self-interested, biased imagination would be "destitute of consciousness". You would have thought that the renowned naturalist and scientist, Darwin, of all people, would have understood that you can reliably make no such assumptions about species you hadn't actually observed, Though his theory was based on exactly an exception from the requirement of actual observation and analysis of actual examples in nature. His ideological descendants, those foremost self-declared champions of empirical knowledge and scientific method would go whole hog on that, perhaps from his example.
But, as all atheists who do battle on this issue, he discounts the most obvious problem for their declaration that there is no purpose in the universe, God its creator could have purposes that have not been revealed to people, not even the most extravagantly adulated scientists of our species, but which we might not be able to grasp, totally or even in part. After all, we don't, and, currently, science holds that we can't know everything about even one, single, electron in some of its most banal aspects. That there might be things we can't know is something that the author of Isaiah had thought of.
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.
It is certainly not a proof of purpose in the universe but it is a good reminder that there is no reason to believe that if there is a purpose in such a thing as gravitation and conservation of energy and "the atomic theory" operating on the moon or here or at the edge of the universe (whatever that means) that we very well might not grasp it. It could be too subtle or too big to wrap our limited understanding around.
Perhaps that insight into that came to the author of Isaiah through a lens of humility that is, also, anathema to atheist-materialists. That scientists, especially, it seems to me, British scientists, at Darwin's time, the foremost beneficiaries of the British empire and the horrible British caste system might be arrogant enough to believe they had full and ultimate knowledge is increasingly unsurprising to me. That Americans and others who benefited from inequality could be as arrogant is no more of a surprise.
Darwin's statement made right after that, expressing his conviction that the universe is the way it is NOT by chance only shows just how naive he was.
But I have had no practice in abstract reasoning and I may be all astray. Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance.
He couldn't quite understand that without purpose in the universe, without the universe being the product of intention, the only default position that it was as it is due to chance. Today's materialists in cosmology have understood that problem and have turned probability onto a creator god by inventing quadrillions of unknown, unknowable, universes as talismans to fend off a God they fear is implied in our one, known universe having an absolute beginning.
I have followed a bit of the many attempts to get past the crisis in atheism caused by the currently believed absolute beginning of the universe. I've read them either inventing many universes or claiming that our one universe has bounced through an infinite number of incarnations throughout an infinite past and have been amazed and amused at the intellectual contortions that rival any Cirque de Soleil show. I am not certain but I believe the attempt to extend the universe through a series of previous lives in the infinite past has been criticized on what it would do to the Second Law of Thermodynamics which would seem to require that the whole thing should have wound down into total chaos in the infinite past, but my knowledge of that argument is limited. Though I don't believe the atheists have answered it, yet.
My original reason for looking up this letter was in answer to an atheist who claimed that no one believed our minds were really just caused by the chemistry and physics found in our heads, by chance. After noting that Darwin's closest continental colleague, Ernst Haeckel had said just that in a book Darwin had endorsed as the highest of science without reservation, I noted that Darwin had expressed his fears at the implication of that, the demotion of human minds and the complete product of those minds, himself. In that I noted that Darwin showed considerably more sophistication than the contemporary atheists who would claim that "no one believes that" even as exactly that claim pretty much rules current neuroscience and its allied field, it is the whole basis of socio-biology and evolutionary psychology and all of the many, similar schools of behavioral and social science which have been consigned to the large boneyard of discontinued science. The mixture of atheist-materialist ideology into science has proved to be anything but a reliable means of generating durable and reliable knowledge. Though it has certainly proven to be a fecund source of temporarily believed and at times dangerously applied belief that the claims of such scientists are reliable knowledge.
Which leads to the second paragraph in which Darwin breezily twists history to his liking and then uses natural selection to assign biological value to "so-called Caucasians" valued as "higher" and "Turks and "an endless number of the lower races" valued as "lower" and eagerly anticipated the day when the "higher" would exterminate the "lower" in absolutely explicit terms. Which would, even in Darwin's days, certainly have been the greatest series of mass murders in all of human history. See my last two day's posts for details. Which leads me to contrast that with the verse in Isaiah right before the one I quoted above.
Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.
I think anyone who would not see which world view, which view of reality is more likely to lead to mass murder on an epic scale and which carries far less potential for that and which may, especially in the widest context of the Law, the Prophets and the Gospels, impede mass murder is probably either not very bright or they are completely dishonest.
Yet it is also a huge program of atheists in the modern world to assign all evil to the way of thinking which says that mass murder is not good while lying as they laud the one which has, repeatedly, from the beginning, asserted that mass murder is healthy for the human species, or at least the survivors taken to be superior.
You should consider that for Darwin, living an easy, wealthy, upper caste life in Britain, surrounded by all comforts and elegencies, nursing his many illnesses. praised as one of the foremost figures in human civilization, he was a really bloodthirsty advocate of "struggle for existence," that is deadly violence. Genocidal violence, since in his theory, entire populations of people needed to die for there to be "progress". In his letter, as in others, he classifies those who he anticipates carrying out the mass murders of those he deems inferior as being more "civilised" than those they murder. Talk about a twisted system of valuation. It is no great shock that Nietzsche took his inspiration from Darwin. And Nietzsche was not the last or nearly the most influential of those whose thinking was influenced by Darwin's science.
I could go on and on about the many inconsistencies in Darwin. Consider how he turns "civilisation" into a sword he turns every which way depending on how he wants to use it. He often attributes a purported biological crisis in the human population to "civilisation" because it allows those he deems unfit to live and have children. This is the "crisis" which, for him and his colleagues, leads to eugenics and enthusiam for the murders of those deemed "inferior". But, then he claims that those with the highest level of "civilisation" are superior to the "savages" who, in his previous, argument that "civilisation" was dysgenic, kill off their "unfit" and so "those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health". But then he claims they are, never the less. destined to be exterminated by their "more civilised" "superiors". I can only think that this double-speak went unremarked on because he was mostly presenting it to people with his same economic and class interests. His double-speak doesn't end there.
My favorite example of that is though he decried the fact that those he deemed weak in body and mind would have children and so, according to Darwin, propagate their defects, he was a constantly ill hypochondriac (one of the current theories is he was lacto-intolerant) who, for all of his demonstrated and frequent complaints about his health, which in others he would have called biological unfitness, he had many children, many of whom, in his name were stalwarts in the British eugenics movement. None of them, so far as I can see, ever saw the discrepancy between Charles Darwin's claims, his life (especially his hypochondria) and his ideological claims.
So much, contained in that two-paragraph letter. When you read it in a wider context of Darwin's work and life, the position of his theory of natural selection in history and in the wider history of materialist-atheist ideology in the real world.
Darwin's purpose is, explicitly twofold, first his desire to fight off any idea that science could be taken as a clue that there might be purpose in the universe, then to whine that Graham had slighted his theory.
He, himself identified his chief point on which he disagreed with what Graham said in his book, "The Creed of Science"
The chief one is that the existence of so-called natural laws implies purpose. I cannot see this.
In doing that, Darwin pretty much declares himself to be on the side of his materialist-atheist colleagues. The reason that the idea of purpose is anathema to materialists - who are almost uniformly atheists - is that purpose would imply God, not just any old nature, pagan god, but God the Creator. That has certainly been the chief ideological use of the claim often heard in the naive declaration that "science proves there isn't any purpose in the universe" or from those merely seeming to be more informed, "science proves there is no need of a God".
Well, science is incapable of doing either, Any scientist who makes that claim for science shows that they have a naive understanding of science because even a successful description of a physical phenomenon or a successful prediction of an effect doesn't touch the question as to why it is like that, though it may manage a partial explanation of how it is like that.
If, as I will point out again, there is not a single particle in the material universe that physics has understood comprehensively and exhaustively, there is certainly no force or, for that matter, a "physical law" that science has understood comprehensively and exhaustively. There are certainly aspects of those which are as unreachable as an electron and, something which always comes as news to many, including many scientists, when we talk about "physical law" we are talking about a humanly made explanation of phenomena. If you want a good example, one of the most brilliant of all recent physicists, Richard Feynman, repeatedly noted that no one really understood one of the most successful of all scientific endeavors, quantum theory.
You would think that atheists would understand at least that much, that it was human beings who came up with what was human understanding of these matters and transmitted them to other human beings who haven't always agreed to what they mean. You would think that Darwin, whose own law would prove so much a matter of controversy and dispute, even among those who believed in it during his life time, even from his co-inventor of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, would have grasped that much of it.
As for his examples debunking the possibility of believing that there might be purpose in nature, those are naive in the extreme.
... yet taking the laws as we now know them, and look at the moon, where the law of gravitation – and no doubt of the conservation of energy – of the atomic theory, &c. &c. hold good, and I cannot see that there is then necessarily any purpose. Would there be purpose if the lowest organisms alone destitute of consciousness existed in the moon?
His example of gravitation and conservation of energy and the atomic theory on the moon and his claim that they have no purpose there merely shows he is confusing the localized interests of human beings who are observing all of that, including a very naive naturalist at Down, Beckenham, Kent for a comprehensive view. He just can't see why, since it's no use to him, there couldn't be some other purpose that doesn't directly concern him and his interests. Considering the developing science he was a part of would, in the coming decades, come to understand that for even many terrestrial species the moon and its phases would have an enormous importance in their successful reproduction, his example was naive in the extreme. I won't go into his assumption that the "lowest organisms" of the moon, which existed merely in his own, self-interested, biased imagination would be "destitute of consciousness". You would have thought that the renowned naturalist and scientist, Darwin, of all people, would have understood that you can reliably make no such assumptions about species you hadn't actually observed, Though his theory was based on exactly an exception from the requirement of actual observation and analysis of actual examples in nature. His ideological descendants, those foremost self-declared champions of empirical knowledge and scientific method would go whole hog on that, perhaps from his example.
But, as all atheists who do battle on this issue, he discounts the most obvious problem for their declaration that there is no purpose in the universe, God its creator could have purposes that have not been revealed to people, not even the most extravagantly adulated scientists of our species, but which we might not be able to grasp, totally or even in part. After all, we don't, and, currently, science holds that we can't know everything about even one, single, electron in some of its most banal aspects. That there might be things we can't know is something that the author of Isaiah had thought of.
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.
It is certainly not a proof of purpose in the universe but it is a good reminder that there is no reason to believe that if there is a purpose in such a thing as gravitation and conservation of energy and "the atomic theory" operating on the moon or here or at the edge of the universe (whatever that means) that we very well might not grasp it. It could be too subtle or too big to wrap our limited understanding around.
Perhaps that insight into that came to the author of Isaiah through a lens of humility that is, also, anathema to atheist-materialists. That scientists, especially, it seems to me, British scientists, at Darwin's time, the foremost beneficiaries of the British empire and the horrible British caste system might be arrogant enough to believe they had full and ultimate knowledge is increasingly unsurprising to me. That Americans and others who benefited from inequality could be as arrogant is no more of a surprise.
Darwin's statement made right after that, expressing his conviction that the universe is the way it is NOT by chance only shows just how naive he was.
But I have had no practice in abstract reasoning and I may be all astray. Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance.
He couldn't quite understand that without purpose in the universe, without the universe being the product of intention, the only default position that it was as it is due to chance. Today's materialists in cosmology have understood that problem and have turned probability onto a creator god by inventing quadrillions of unknown, unknowable, universes as talismans to fend off a God they fear is implied in our one, known universe having an absolute beginning.
I have followed a bit of the many attempts to get past the crisis in atheism caused by the currently believed absolute beginning of the universe. I've read them either inventing many universes or claiming that our one universe has bounced through an infinite number of incarnations throughout an infinite past and have been amazed and amused at the intellectual contortions that rival any Cirque de Soleil show. I am not certain but I believe the attempt to extend the universe through a series of previous lives in the infinite past has been criticized on what it would do to the Second Law of Thermodynamics which would seem to require that the whole thing should have wound down into total chaos in the infinite past, but my knowledge of that argument is limited. Though I don't believe the atheists have answered it, yet.
My original reason for looking up this letter was in answer to an atheist who claimed that no one believed our minds were really just caused by the chemistry and physics found in our heads, by chance. After noting that Darwin's closest continental colleague, Ernst Haeckel had said just that in a book Darwin had endorsed as the highest of science without reservation, I noted that Darwin had expressed his fears at the implication of that, the demotion of human minds and the complete product of those minds, himself. In that I noted that Darwin showed considerably more sophistication than the contemporary atheists who would claim that "no one believes that" even as exactly that claim pretty much rules current neuroscience and its allied field, it is the whole basis of socio-biology and evolutionary psychology and all of the many, similar schools of behavioral and social science which have been consigned to the large boneyard of discontinued science. The mixture of atheist-materialist ideology into science has proved to be anything but a reliable means of generating durable and reliable knowledge. Though it has certainly proven to be a fecund source of temporarily believed and at times dangerously applied belief that the claims of such scientists are reliable knowledge.
Which leads to the second paragraph in which Darwin breezily twists history to his liking and then uses natural selection to assign biological value to "so-called Caucasians" valued as "higher" and "Turks and "an endless number of the lower races" valued as "lower" and eagerly anticipated the day when the "higher" would exterminate the "lower" in absolutely explicit terms. Which would, even in Darwin's days, certainly have been the greatest series of mass murders in all of human history. See my last two day's posts for details. Which leads me to contrast that with the verse in Isaiah right before the one I quoted above.
Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.
I think anyone who would not see which world view, which view of reality is more likely to lead to mass murder on an epic scale and which carries far less potential for that and which may, especially in the widest context of the Law, the Prophets and the Gospels, impede mass murder is probably either not very bright or they are completely dishonest.
Yet it is also a huge program of atheists in the modern world to assign all evil to the way of thinking which says that mass murder is not good while lying as they laud the one which has, repeatedly, from the beginning, asserted that mass murder is healthy for the human species, or at least the survivors taken to be superior.
You should consider that for Darwin, living an easy, wealthy, upper caste life in Britain, surrounded by all comforts and elegencies, nursing his many illnesses. praised as one of the foremost figures in human civilization, he was a really bloodthirsty advocate of "struggle for existence," that is deadly violence. Genocidal violence, since in his theory, entire populations of people needed to die for there to be "progress". In his letter, as in others, he classifies those who he anticipates carrying out the mass murders of those he deems inferior as being more "civilised" than those they murder. Talk about a twisted system of valuation. It is no great shock that Nietzsche took his inspiration from Darwin. And Nietzsche was not the last or nearly the most influential of those whose thinking was influenced by Darwin's science.
I could go on and on about the many inconsistencies in Darwin. Consider how he turns "civilisation" into a sword he turns every which way depending on how he wants to use it. He often attributes a purported biological crisis in the human population to "civilisation" because it allows those he deems unfit to live and have children. This is the "crisis" which, for him and his colleagues, leads to eugenics and enthusiam for the murders of those deemed "inferior". But, then he claims that those with the highest level of "civilisation" are superior to the "savages" who, in his previous, argument that "civilisation" was dysgenic, kill off their "unfit" and so "those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health". But then he claims they are, never the less. destined to be exterminated by their "more civilised" "superiors". I can only think that this double-speak went unremarked on because he was mostly presenting it to people with his same economic and class interests. His double-speak doesn't end there.
My favorite example of that is though he decried the fact that those he deemed weak in body and mind would have children and so, according to Darwin, propagate their defects, he was a constantly ill hypochondriac (one of the current theories is he was lacto-intolerant) who, for all of his demonstrated and frequent complaints about his health, which in others he would have called biological unfitness, he had many children, many of whom, in his name were stalwarts in the British eugenics movement. None of them, so far as I can see, ever saw the discrepancy between Charles Darwin's claims, his life (especially his hypochondria) and his ideological claims.
So much, contained in that two-paragraph letter. When you read it in a wider context of Darwin's work and life, the position of his theory of natural selection in history and in the wider history of materialist-atheist ideology in the real world.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Marco De Biasi-Improvvisazioni Parte I
I believe it's the composer playing his own piece but I don't know.
I've been investigating the composers who have placed or win in the composers competitions of the Boston Guitar Festival. I'm floored by the talent and the extensions of technique and the quality of the music. If it weren't way too late for me I'd start getting to work, besides, I sprained a finger this morning.
Here's another piece by another of those who have shown up in the list but playing another of his compositions.
Nejc Kuhar - Black Hole
Update:
I take that back, just noticed this piece did win a prize in an earlier year
Materialism As "The Most Common Disease In America And The Western World"
I am not the only person who has come to the conclusion that materialism is one of the greatest dangers to liberalism and, also, life on Earth. In the talk by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel I posted last week he specifically identified materialism as a disease, "the most common disease in American and the Western world". And, in line with my contention that materialism, especially thinking of people in mechanical terms, has the most real of consequences in a clear violation of the liberal foundations of equal rights, equality and the moral obligation to observe and respect those rights. His speech was given in 1968 at what we hoped at the time was the height of the Vietnam War, unfortunately, Nixon would take office after his henchmen scuttled the peace talks in Paris and expand the war.
Given my recent experience with people misreading what was put down in print, I was reluctant to transcribe Rabbi Heschel's marvelous speaking full of the most wonderful and meaningful inflection which makes the irony of the words obvious (the audience, able to see his marvelously expressive face and gestures reacted to that, audibly) I would encourage anyone who wants to get the deeper meaning of what he said to listen to him. My transcript starts at about 14:55 but it's in the context of a conference about the Vietnam War held at the Ambassador Hotel - if you don't listen to his description of the luxury of the accommodation and banquet at which these scholar and dignitaries discussed the bombing, napalm attacks, massive casualties of that war as it was going on, you will miss a lot of the fuller meaning of what I had time to transcribe. Here is the video from a couple of minutes before so you can hear that.
Note, please, the irony Rabbi Heschel conveyed in his inflection. I can't adequately transcribe that. I've used quotes so people won't claim to believe he was saying what the distinguished political scientist is quoted as saying.
…. One of the speakers, a very distinguished scholar, a political scientist for a very famous university here in California made an answer to a question from the floor. The question was this gentleman is very optimistic … he was optimistic about the war in Vietnam,
“ You know we have done marvious things in Vietnam, you have no idea, you're totally uninformed. The only bad people in America are the journalists, Amerian press people in Vietnam who write letters to the press in America saying we that we suffer casualities, etc. [unintelligble] we are doing exceedingly well and we are going to – you know – we are going to solve the problem of communism, right? No question about it.”
So one lady, apparently she is “uninformed and very primitive,” she raised a question, “What about the numerous civilians who are being killed in Vietnam?”… what a silly question to ask. And he answered scientifically he answered, “You are mistaken, you don't realize that the number of people, the national population increase in South Vietnam is larger than the number of people killed.”
Now I would cry, and I did, in hearing that. But this is an indication of a disease, my friends. The disease I would like to diagnose, if I were to give you the diagnosis, simply, we think of man in mechanical terms. We don't think of men in human terms. And I say this is the most common disease in America and the Western world. Therefore, I should suggest that war is a marvelous thing that it will solve all the problems it's a biological necessity. It may not be a human necessity – understand me – what does it mean to be human? Why don't we ask yourself that question?
A very distinguished general in South Vietnam, I believe - or was it a, not a general, someone else, a captain, I don't know [laughter] – after destroying one of the may villages that have been destroyed by our civilization (in) South Vietnam – some primitive people, don't you know - he said “We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” [laughter from the audience] You've heard this, it's now a laughing matter. What is dangerous about that statement is it has a perfect logic. Right, yes, we saved it. That village there'll be no more shelter for Viet Cong. It's a marvelous achievement it's good for America. We destroyed the village in order to save it. So now you hear from certain people who say we have to destroy American system in order to save it to meet some act of what some Pentagon man said of Vietnam. Right? So don't blame the wild students at Columbia for saying we have to destroy the system in order to save it, they just repeat what the military man said in Vietnam. All right
America's war in Vietnam would certainly fit in with a Darwinian scheme of analysis in which 'civilised" people were attacking "some primitive people" as Rabbi Heschel noted, ironically, in passing.
Once your ear has been opened to hearing that kind of thinking, thinking about people as objects, as machines, in terms of quantitative analysis, you can hear it all over, both on the right and the left. I hear it all the time in the various statements from the Trump regime, from ICE, from lefty blogs and magazines. It is all the same disease of thinking of people in mechanical terms and treating them as objects to whom we owe no moral obligations.
Given my recent experience with people misreading what was put down in print, I was reluctant to transcribe Rabbi Heschel's marvelous speaking full of the most wonderful and meaningful inflection which makes the irony of the words obvious (the audience, able to see his marvelously expressive face and gestures reacted to that, audibly) I would encourage anyone who wants to get the deeper meaning of what he said to listen to him. My transcript starts at about 14:55 but it's in the context of a conference about the Vietnam War held at the Ambassador Hotel - if you don't listen to his description of the luxury of the accommodation and banquet at which these scholar and dignitaries discussed the bombing, napalm attacks, massive casualties of that war as it was going on, you will miss a lot of the fuller meaning of what I had time to transcribe. Here is the video from a couple of minutes before so you can hear that.
Note, please, the irony Rabbi Heschel conveyed in his inflection. I can't adequately transcribe that. I've used quotes so people won't claim to believe he was saying what the distinguished political scientist is quoted as saying.
…. One of the speakers, a very distinguished scholar, a political scientist for a very famous university here in California made an answer to a question from the floor. The question was this gentleman is very optimistic … he was optimistic about the war in Vietnam,
“ You know we have done marvious things in Vietnam, you have no idea, you're totally uninformed. The only bad people in America are the journalists, Amerian press people in Vietnam who write letters to the press in America saying we that we suffer casualities, etc. [unintelligble] we are doing exceedingly well and we are going to – you know – we are going to solve the problem of communism, right? No question about it.”
So one lady, apparently she is “uninformed and very primitive,” she raised a question, “What about the numerous civilians who are being killed in Vietnam?”… what a silly question to ask. And he answered scientifically he answered, “You are mistaken, you don't realize that the number of people, the national population increase in South Vietnam is larger than the number of people killed.”
Now I would cry, and I did, in hearing that. But this is an indication of a disease, my friends. The disease I would like to diagnose, if I were to give you the diagnosis, simply, we think of man in mechanical terms. We don't think of men in human terms. And I say this is the most common disease in America and the Western world. Therefore, I should suggest that war is a marvelous thing that it will solve all the problems it's a biological necessity. It may not be a human necessity – understand me – what does it mean to be human? Why don't we ask yourself that question?
A very distinguished general in South Vietnam, I believe - or was it a, not a general, someone else, a captain, I don't know [laughter] – after destroying one of the may villages that have been destroyed by our civilization (in) South Vietnam – some primitive people, don't you know - he said “We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” [laughter from the audience] You've heard this, it's now a laughing matter. What is dangerous about that statement is it has a perfect logic. Right, yes, we saved it. That village there'll be no more shelter for Viet Cong. It's a marvelous achievement it's good for America. We destroyed the village in order to save it. So now you hear from certain people who say we have to destroy American system in order to save it to meet some act of what some Pentagon man said of Vietnam. Right? So don't blame the wild students at Columbia for saying we have to destroy the system in order to save it, they just repeat what the military man said in Vietnam. All right
America's war in Vietnam would certainly fit in with a Darwinian scheme of analysis in which 'civilised" people were attacking "some primitive people" as Rabbi Heschel noted, ironically, in passing.
Once your ear has been opened to hearing that kind of thinking, thinking about people as objects, as machines, in terms of quantitative analysis, you can hear it all over, both on the right and the left. I hear it all the time in the various statements from the Trump regime, from ICE, from lefty blogs and magazines. It is all the same disease of thinking of people in mechanical terms and treating them as objects to whom we owe no moral obligations.
Quantum Turks
Let me put it this way, in order for those two sentences (see my earlier post this morning) to mean what you claim, that they don't eagerly anticipate the extermination of "the Turks", especially in the context of the rest of the text and within the work of Darwin, after, "The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence," "the Turkish" would have to both not exist and exist in the future, they would have to both be alive and dead at the same time.
Now that I've pointed that out I expect the Darwin industry to start claiming that in addition to all else attributed to Charles Darwin, he also anticipated the quantum mechanics of Erwin Schrödinger.
Do you guys ever, ever listen to what you're claiming?
Now that I've pointed that out I expect the Darwin industry to start claiming that in addition to all else attributed to Charles Darwin, he also anticipated the quantum mechanics of Erwin Schrödinger.
Do you guys ever, ever listen to what you're claiming?
I Misrepresented Nothing
You claim "you have misrepresented what Darwin and others have said" without specifying what it was I am supposed to have misrepresented and how I misrepresented him. I often get that from people who, if they will discuss their accusation, generally turn out to have never read anything he or "others" have said. It is one of the foremost dodges of the St. Darwin Industry which, as I noted, is an ongoing effort. There is even a buttress to that effort trying to turn the overtly proto-Nazi writings of Ernst Haeckel, claiming they mean what they so obviously don't. One of its foremost figures of the unlikely canonization cause of Ernst Haeckel was represented at that link I gave.
Considering one of your intellectual persuasion tried to claim to me that when Darwin, as an example of his scientific theory of natural selection that "The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence." "the struggle for existence" would, in the fullness of time, result in the deaths of the losers in that "struggle for existence". You can't even make it not mean that he anticipated that "the Turkish" would be exterminated by "so-called Caucasians". That is confirmed in the very next sentence that Darwin wrote as part of his argument that his natural selection had a major role in furthering civilization, "Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world." There is no other meaning those phrases and words could have except that Darwin thought that genocide in which "superior" "so-called Caucasians" would slaughter "an endless number of the lower races" and that the results would be salubrious for the survivors. There is no other way to read that, it is an argument he made before, in one of his major scientific publications, The Descent of Man and in other letters, such as the one he sent to the birth-control advocate, G. A. Gaskell (I did a post presenting their entire correspondence, look it up in my archive). When one of the most lavishly lauded scientists in history makes what he purports is a scientific argument anyone reading what he said, purported to have the reliability of science, is justified as believing he meant exactly what he said.. That is especially true when he has said the same or very similar things, as science, in books published as science and in other writings over a number of years.
By the way, though I haven't done the research to confirm it, I suspect he said "so-called Caucasian" because he favored an African origin for the place humans first arose over a conflicting, even more overtly racist, scientific theory then current that humans arose in Asia. I haven't done the research to confirm that so I didn't mention it in my post BECAUSE I TRY TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT BEING ABLE TO SUPPORT MY INTERPRETATION OF WHAT SCIENTISTS CLAIM AS SCIENCE.
You people always dismiss these inconvenient facts with the kind of breezy dismissal that you expressed, you never, ever address the relevant texts in the context of the entire work of the authors. That is probably because you so seldom have ever read them, relying on the cherry-picked, quote-mined misrepresentation of them by the St. Darwin cult.
Considering one of your intellectual persuasion tried to claim to me that when Darwin, as an example of his scientific theory of natural selection that "The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence." "the struggle for existence" would, in the fullness of time, result in the deaths of the losers in that "struggle for existence". You can't even make it not mean that he anticipated that "the Turkish" would be exterminated by "so-called Caucasians". That is confirmed in the very next sentence that Darwin wrote as part of his argument that his natural selection had a major role in furthering civilization, "Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world." There is no other meaning those phrases and words could have except that Darwin thought that genocide in which "superior" "so-called Caucasians" would slaughter "an endless number of the lower races" and that the results would be salubrious for the survivors. There is no other way to read that, it is an argument he made before, in one of his major scientific publications, The Descent of Man and in other letters, such as the one he sent to the birth-control advocate, G. A. Gaskell (I did a post presenting their entire correspondence, look it up in my archive). When one of the most lavishly lauded scientists in history makes what he purports is a scientific argument anyone reading what he said, purported to have the reliability of science, is justified as believing he meant exactly what he said.. That is especially true when he has said the same or very similar things, as science, in books published as science and in other writings over a number of years.
By the way, though I haven't done the research to confirm it, I suspect he said "so-called Caucasian" because he favored an African origin for the place humans first arose over a conflicting, even more overtly racist, scientific theory then current that humans arose in Asia. I haven't done the research to confirm that so I didn't mention it in my post BECAUSE I TRY TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT BEING ABLE TO SUPPORT MY INTERPRETATION OF WHAT SCIENTISTS CLAIM AS SCIENCE.
You people always dismiss these inconvenient facts with the kind of breezy dismissal that you expressed, you never, ever address the relevant texts in the context of the entire work of the authors. That is probably because you so seldom have ever read them, relying on the cherry-picked, quote-mined misrepresentation of them by the St. Darwin cult.
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