Self-consciousness
The criticism of religion by secularists leaves them open to the question I just got over at The Gurdjieff Con.
There is a lot to say on that, but the best answer has to come from within each person. I wouln’t answer the question, on the grounds that it would lead to the pretense of spiritual guruhood of some kind, but in fact my answer is designed around secularism, and is a critique of the failure of many so-called secularists to understand what that is.
But in a nutshell the issue is one of human consciousness, as self-consciousness. This issue is universal, at the core of all religions (before being covered up), and the real core what should be the essence of secularism as much as religion. The monotheistic religions have perhaps produced a false obsession with ‘god’, which is a metaphysical cosmological wild goose chase, when the real issue is the ‘god within’ (god forbid it should be called that), human consciousness, transformed as self-consciousness.
Primordial soup theories challenged
More Doubts About Primordial Soup
You were probably taught in high school biology class that life arose from a primordial soup–the twentieth century’s rendition of Darwin’s “warm little pond.” Most textbooks show pictorial-type drawings of the early earth as a dynamic environment, full of activity. Sunlight is beaming through the clouds with its all important energy-bearing ultra violet rays; rain is pouring down as lightning strikes bring more needed energy to the surface; volcanic activity creates hot spots with yet more energy and a few stray comets might be seen bringing their organic chemicals to seed the life-giving processes. The evolution machine is revving up its engines. Another figure might have illustrated an experimental arrangement mimicking those early-earth conditions. A primordial soup of various organic compounds brewed as sparks were set off in a gaseous mixture above steaming water. There’s only one problem: it doesn’t work.
Bees recognize human faces
Bees Recognize Human Faces Using Feature Configuration
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2010) — Going about their day-to-day business, bees have no need to be able to recognise human faces. Yet in 2005, when Adrian Dyer from Monash University trained the fascinating insects to associate pictures of human faces with tasty sugar snacks, they seemed to be able to do just that. But Martin Giurfa from the Université de Toulouse, France, suspected that that the bees weren’t learning to recognise people.
Fighting the wrong battle
Evolution: Fighting the Wrong Battle
Posted: 08 Feb 2010 09:26 AM PST
The debate over evolution is often portrayed as the battle between science and religion, or faith vs. reason. This clever ploy paints evolutionists as warriors for logic and sanity whose sole opponent is blind belief in a higher power. No one could doubt evolution for any other reason, evolutionists insinuate or flat-out proclaim. But the real battle for evolution, the one its proponents studiously avoid, is the evidence itself. Anytime someone points out a flaw in the evidence for evolution, diehard evolutionists respond with a non-answer—usually an angry personal attack on the person pointing out the flaw. This is an evasion tactic, and one evolutionists have practiced for quite some time. To take the heat off the evidence, and the need to defend evolutionary theories, evolutionists simply avoid the discussion altogether.
They are fighting the wrong battle—on purpose.
Fake paradigm shift in action
Evolution – the Extended Synthesis
Edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller
We already commented on this today: this is apparently the book promised by the Altenberg 16 conference (almost two years ago!) and, while it looks interesting, I have very little faith that these so-called dissenters from Darwinism are going to really do anything more than jawbone a compliant (and intimidated) public into just enough verbiage to make it look like something has changed.
What a disappointment, after covering this story for two years. I should note that the effort to do so has shown me a few things, among them the priestly snobbery of the scientific assholes who think it their right and duty to enforce reductionist scientism on humanity. I fear the Altenberg 16 are in the same class (try communicating with such people, almost impossible. You must be part of the in-group to even exchange an email with such types. That’s a sign they are afraid of dissenters, and of the wish to talk remotely to a public made to submit)
Don’t let it happen that another ‘Paradigm’ gets enforced on the subject of evolution (and that certainly includes the Intelligent Design junk )
Call the bluff of these ’scientists’: they have no real understanding of what evolution is, let alone how it works.
The reason for my frustration is the realization that those trained in science and part of the science establishment will never be able to break out of their mindset.
Consider the issue of the fact/value distinction. All the king’s horses and all the king’s scientists are unable to produce a theory of evolution that does justice to this distinction. So we will get another false set of mechanical explanations which fail to grapple with the deep mystery of evolution and the way that it generates the immensity field of life.
Further, none of the real problems with the evolution discourse will reach public discourse, issues such as Social Darwinism, ideology and theory, economic propaganda disguised as evolution, etc, etc,…
I always point to the eonic effect as a snapshot of what the real problem is and what is required for a true theory of evolution, beyond the primitive junk that passes for evolutionary theory.
Check it out: it is not another theory, but a look at the endresult of evolution turning into human history. It shows us what a real theory must do, and that is beyond the capacity of current science.
And, as noted, science now in motion can’t address the simplest task, the fact/value distinction. That this prevents any theory at all is quite forgotten.
Don’t fall for the science snowjob on evolution. This pack of wannabes holds a weak deuce behind the science bluff. Evolution is a complex mystery, and not even properly observed.
The idea of an Extended Synthesis suggests the establishment is going to substitute FACTOR X for natural selection (self-organization is one candidate), and call that a paradigm shift. It is just a change of terminology, in the same way that ‘intelligent design’ is a change of terminology. Note how you can often simply substitute the terms into the same paragraphs. Self-organization, intelligent design, to replace natural selection in the bullshitters routines called evolutionary theory.
Such a statement is a little unfair. After all, self-organization is a valid idea attempting to move beyond random chance to provide a ‘force of evolution’. So we can remain open here even as we stand back entirely suspicious, since the real fundamentals are always being extracted out of explanation in the name of science.
Anyway, this book will be worth reading. But let’s not let another con job get put over on us.
Darwinism was a con job, please. That’s all it was.
Genetic variant linked to aging
Scientists Identify First Genetic Variant Linked to Biological Aging in Humans
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2010) — Scientists announced they have identified for the first time definitive variants associated with biological ageing in humans.
The smart-stupid cadre of Darwin thugs/ideologists
Mysterious Drumbeat: just observing evolution over a short range is an immense project. Darwinism is based on not looking at the actual situations of evolution.
The idea of an ‘extended synthesis’ is going to be POISON II, as Darwinism was POISON I, unless scientists stand back and renounce cheap theoretical ambitions based on reductionism.
The real complexity of evolution, albeit here the historical/human brand, is an order of magnitude more complex than the smart-stupid cadre of scientists, ambitious to control culture with a religion of science, can ever hope to grasp.
We need to operate defensively so that these science thugs are effectively disarmed from fake theories used as ideology.
Please, not an ‘extended synthesis’…we need a break
This book sounds interesting, but with all due respect we don’t need an extended synthesis. The whole idea smacks of a tricky compromise to make the establishment look good even as they try to fix their disastrous legacy.
The Altenberg 16 will surely be the same set of schmucks we have seen in abundance defending Darwinism.
Altenberg 16 book?
The Altenberg 16 is a book by Suzan Mazur.
The book cited here may be the promised book re: the conference of the Altenberg 16:
Enezio E. de Almeida Filho said,
February 8, 2010 at 6:06 am ·
MIT will publish it in 2010:http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12173
from the link source:
Evolution – the Extended Synthesis
Edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. MüllerIn the six decades since the publication of Julian Huxley’s Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, spectacular empirical advances in the biological sciences have been accompanied by equally significant developments within the core theoretical framework of the discipline. As a result, evolutionary theory today includes concepts and even entire new fields that were not part of the foundational structure of the Modern Synthesis. In this volume, sixteen leading evolutionary biologists and philosophers of science survey the conceptual changes that have emerged since Huxley’s landmark publication, not only in such traditional domains of evolutionary biology as quantitative genetics and paleontology but also in such new fields of research as genomics and EvoDevo.
Most of the contributors to Evolution—The Extended Synthesis accept many of the tenets of the classical framework but want to relax some of its assumptions and introduce significant conceptual augmentations of the basic Modern Synthesis structure—just as the architects of the Modern Synthesis themselves expanded and modulated previous versions of Darwinism. This continuing revision of a theoretical edifice the foundations of which were laid in the middle of the nineteenth century—the reexamination of old ideas, proposals of new ones, and the synthesis of the most suitable—shows us how science works, and how scientists have painstakingly built a solid set of explanations for what Darwin called the “grandeur” of life.
Contributors: John Beatty, Werner Callebaut, Jeremy Draghi, Chrisantha Fernando, Sergey Gavrilets, John C. Gerhart, Eva Jablonka, David Jablonski, Marc W. Kirschner, Marion J. Lamb, Alan C. Love, Gerd B. Müller, Stuart A. Newman, John Odling-Smee, Massimo Pigliucci, Michael Purugganan, Eörs Szathmáry, Günter P. Wagner, David Sloan Wilson, Gregory A. Wray
About the Editors
Massimo Pigliucci is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York.
Gerd B. Müller is Professor of Theoretical Biology at the University of Vienna and Chairman of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research. He is a coeditor of Origination of Organismal Form (MIT Press, 2003) and Modeling Biology (MIT Press, 2007).
Blind watchmaker still a designer!
Blind Watchmaker?
Clive Hayden
I wonder if Richard Dawkins actually knows any watchmaker. No actual horologist would take his notion of the Blind Watchmaker seriously in accounting for complexity, even as an analogy.
A blind watchmaker is still a potential designer of no mean capacity!
A conversation…
A conversation with Richard Dawkins
Roger Bingham – thesciencenetwork
from dawkins site
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/the-science-studio/richard-dawkins-1
Evolution on the march
Evolution on the march
New DNA findings show that human genetic mutations are more recent, more rapid than once thought.
By Faye Flam
Conventional wisdom holds that if you could bring back someone from 40,000 years ago, he or she would blend perfectly well with today’s population.
After all, the fossils show that our ancestors were “anatomically modern” by 100,000 years ago, and by 40,000 B.C., they were creating complex tools and art.
It was easy to assume our species hadn’t evolved much since then.
Now molecular biology is overturning that assumption.
Oh yes, that genius Alfred Wallace
Charles Darwin was a genius (I think)
Darwin, once he got the point from plagiarizing Wallace, started filling in the blanks for a lot of easy secondary deductions.
NS and/vs evo-devo
Oh, no. Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini have written a book and opinion piece in which they try to claim that natural selection is a dying concept, and what do they use to justify that outrageous claim? Evo devo!
I am delighted!
I must be getting through to someone. I have said for years that Darwinists concealed the counterevidence to Darwinian NS in the evo-devo findings. Perhaps Fodor and PP’s book will set the record straight.
Discovery licks its chops at WDGW
The ID group will no doubt pilfer this critique and make it their own, blended with ID confusions.
Earlier evolution of complex cells
Did Bacteria Developed Into More Complex Cells Much Earlier in Evolution Than Thought?
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2010) — Monash University biochemists have found a critical piece in the evolutionary puzzle that explains how life on Earth evolved millions of centuries ago.
Bioactive Nanomaterial promotes growth
Growing Cartilage: Bioactive Nanomaterial Promotes Growth of New Cartilage
Earth’s orbit and climate change
How Well Do Scientists Understand How Changes in Earth’s Orbit Affect Long-Term Natural Climate Trends?
ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2010) — The notion that scientists understand how changes in Earth’s orbit affect climate well enough for estimating long-term natural climate trends that underlie any anthropogenic climate change is challenged by findings just published.
Globalization
Published on Monday, February 8, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Globalization Is Killing The Globe: Return to Local Economies
by Thom Hartmann
Globalization is killing Europe, just as it’s already wiped out much of the American middle class.
Spain and Greece are facing immediate crises that many other European nations see on the near horizon: aging boomer workers are retiring with healthy benefit packages, but the younger workers who are paying for those benefits aren’t making anything close to the income (or, therefore, paying the taxes) that their parents did.
Globalists/corporatists/conservative “free market” and “flat earth” advocates say this is a great opportunity to cut benefits for the old folks (and for the young folks in the future), thus bringing the countries budgets back into balance, and this story is the main corporate media storyline.
But it overlooks the real issue (and the real solution): how globalization is killing these nations’ economies and what can be done about it.
The Terror-Industrial Complex
Published on Monday, February 8, 2010 by TruthDig.com
The Terror-Industrial Complex
by Chris Hedges
The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security does not come from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.
Betting on dead ducks
This Trend is Not Your Friend
Wall Street’s Killer Instinct Spells Death Knell for Jobs
By PAM MARTENS
I think it’s time to take Wall Street literally: they’ve made it abundantly clear they have an insatiable appetite for killing things: the housing market, the financial system, the economy, reform legislation, the next generation’s future.
Wall Street is so steeped in destruction that the symbols of death are everywhere. Wall Street calls the big newspaper ads they take out to herald the launch of their market offerings a “tombstone.” (To understand how appropriate that is, consider the billions in bond and stock offerings they raise for Big Tobacco.) What does Wall Street call the completion of a buy or sell order: an “execution.” (Think of how many derivative trades they “executed” for the now crippled, life support patients Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG; or the off balance sheet vehicles they created for Enron, WorldCom, and dozens of now bankrupt companies.)
Wall Street calls an order to complete a trade without any reduction in quantity a “fill or kill.” This could just as reasonably be called a “fill or cancel” order but it’s so much more fun for the thundering herd to race around a trading floor screaming “kill it, kill it!”
What is the benefit to Wall Street in killing things or bringing the share price of companies to near worthless? Tails they win; heads you lose. Wall Street can and does make enormous profits on bets that share prices will decline (shorting), that companies will disappear (credit default swaps), that the economy will crater (interest rate swaps). And there’s a slogan on Wall Street: the trend is your friend. When it’s clear the bull is lying in the center of the ring (think Lehman’s death and the Merrill Lynch shotgun wedding on September 15, 2008), Wall Street moves its bets to the downside.
No one has their jive aligned with their agenda any better than Citigroup’s traders. When they set out to inflict pain on the European bond market in 2004, they labeled the trade “Dr. Evil.” Citi also created a structured finance vehicle that greased the skids for the collapse of Italian dairy giant Parmalat, dubbed Buconero, Italian for “Black Hole.”
Until a President comes along with a genuine will to deal with the truly rapacious nature of Wall Street, these destructive forces will continue.
The End of Labor Law Reform for Another Generation?
CounterPunch,Weekend Edition
January 29 – 31, 2010
The Night They Drove Old EFCA Down
By STEVE EARLY
Scott Brown’s defeat of Martha Coakley in the race to fill Ted Kennedy’s
Senate seat has been greeted as a “game changer” for Barack Obama and his
political backers. This GOP victory has deprived Democrats of their
“filibuster-proof” super-majority in the Senate, making Obama’s health care
plan—at least, in its current form–the most high-profile casualty of
Coakley’s loss.
But, for trade unionists already disappointed with Obama, the collateral
damage is far worse. Now, the White House staffers and Congressional leaders
who’ve been re-assuring them that labor law reform was next on Obama’s
agenda don’t even have 60 votes to prevent Republican filibustering of the
Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)–in any form.