History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
http://www.alternet.org/story/153883/don%27t_let_occupy_be_occupied%3A_6_ways_to_fight_the_creep_to_institutionalize_/
Don’t Let Occupy Be Occupied: 6 Ways to Fight the Creep to Institutionalize
Crucial movements of the past with clear and radical demands suffered a diminished voice when traditional organizational standards took hold. Hopefully not Occupy.
The term is the title of Roy Davies’ book (see the sidebar for links), but the more general meaning of the term suggests that there is an active effort to impose Darwinism on culture, despite the behind the scenes awareness of the problems with the theory.
The debunking of Darwinism, like the 9/11 conspiracy theories so depicted yesterday, have reached the point of no return: you can’t really expect people to accept the official brand/version without deception. Well, not quite, yet. The problem is that people are usually in total confusion, will accept anything on the basis of science authority, and don’t sense anomalies.
But the reality remains that the massive dissent against the Paradigm, albeit too much on the right, and its action in the schools, has created a situation where the official science version requires dissembling by its proponents. That’s a fatal stage, and a sign that the pretense of propaganda can’t be maintained.
Darwinists have made the issue simple, such is their oversimplified stance.
Huxley’s Contradiction And Evolution #1 and #2
The problem with Darwinism is very simple, and Huxley stumbled on it: the science to be science must reject the fact/value dichotomy. But any real theory of evolution must embrace it.
Theoretical Self-Defense
The standard view of evolution is so intimidating for most secularists that they fail to see how transparent the problems are.
Were Explosives the Source of the Seismic Signals Emitted from New York on September 11, 2001?
The comparison to jabberwocky is inevitableCategory: Academics • Bad science • Kooks
Lots of people have been sending me this paper by Erik Andrulis, and most of you have done so with eyebrows raised, pointing out that it’s bizarre and unbelievable; some of you wrote asking whether it was believable, at which point my eyebrows went up. Come on people: when you see one grand cosmic explanation that is summarized with cartoons, which the author claims explains everything from the behavior of subatomic particles to the formation of the moon, shouldn’t you immediately sense crankery?
January 28, 2012
Feud … Richard Dawkins would rather spend money
on secular education than the temple proposed by Alain de Botton.
Photo: AFP/em>
PLANS to build a £1 million ($1.47 million) ''temple
for atheists'' among the international banks and medieval church spires
of London have sparked a clash between two of Britain's most prominent
non-believers.
The philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is
proposing to build a 46-metre tower to celebrate a ''new atheism'' as an
antidote to what he describes as Richard Dawkins's ''aggressive'' and
''destructive'' approach to non-belief.
Rather than attack religion, Mr de Botton said he
wants to borrow the idea of awe-inspiring buildings that give people a
better sense of perspective on life.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/dawkins-spurns-the-tenets-of-de-bottons-temple-for-atheists-20120127-1qlk3.html#ixzz1kgSbFdAw
Inside the heresy filesInterrogation. Surveillance. Ethnic profiling. Censorship. The words come from 21st-century headlines, but they have an ancient pedigree. Cullen Murphy on how the Inquisition ignited the modern police state
Artist's interpretation of the
190-million-year-old nests, eggs, hatchlings and adults of the
prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus in Golden Gate Highlands National
Park, South Africa.
Clutches of eggs and tiny dinosaur
footprints found at a recently unearthed excavation site reveal that
dinosaurs may have remained at their nesting site for long enough after
hatching to double in size. At 190 million years old, this Massospondylus (a
genus of prosauropod dinosaur) “nursery” is the oldest dinosaur nesting site
ever discovered.
An excavation at a site in South
Africa has unearthed the 190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site of the
prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus-revealing significant clues about the
evolution of complex reproductive behaviour in early dinosaurs. The newly
unearthed dinosaur nesting ground predates previously known nesting sites by
100 million years, according to study authors.
A new study led by U of T Mississauga
paleontologist Robert Reisz, with co-author David Evans of the Royal Ontario
Museum and a group of international researchers, describes clutches of eggs,
many with embryos, as well as tiny dinosaur footprints, providing the oldest
known evidence that the hatchlings remained at the nesting site long enough
to at least double in size.
January 26, 2012 by Staff
NASA’s Earth-observing satellite,
Suomi NPP, captured this “Blue Marble” image of Earth on January 24, 2012
using the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite. As you can see, the HD
photo is a vast improvement over the photo taken on December 7, 1972.
A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth
taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched
Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of
swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite
was renamed ‘Suomi NPP’ on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E.
Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.
Suomi NPP is NASA’s next
Earth-observing research satellite. It is the first of a new generation of
satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.
Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments
on board. The biggest and most important instrument is The Visible/Infrared
Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS.
Do atheists need a temple?The philosopher and writer Alain de Botton wants to build a £1m temple in the city of London to celebrate life on earth. Do you think atheists need their own temple?
The (new) need a one-way ticket to the Zen Slammer.
Dear Friends of NCSE,
Bills, bills, bills. Indiana’s creation science bill passes through
committee; Leslie Brunetta argues that antievolution bills are bad for
your health; opposition to Indiana’s creationist bill comes from a
variety of perspectives; the St. Louis Beacon sheds further light on
Missouri’s “intelligent design” bill; and a new bill in Oklahoma
attacks both evolution and climate science. And a reminder that Darwin
Day is on its way.
Read the rest of this entry »
With respect to a regression of multiverses or designers, two things:
First, in a real world, some series can be infinite regresses, but others are not. The whole natural numbers are an infinite “progress” to n+1. But the regress is to 1. Below that, there are no whole natural numbers. And it couldn’t be otherwise, if numbers have meaning, in the sense of a coherent relationship to something else.Of course, multiverse thinking is – among other things – a war on the idea of meaning. It originated in the need to explain away the evidence for fine tuning of our own universe, a topic to which multiversers return obsessively. There is lots of evidence for fine-tuning, almost none for the multiverse. But no matter. Once multiversers are explaining away evidence wholesale, they are happily at war with meaning.
Second, a regress to a point doesn’t necessarily mean that nothing lies beyond that point. It can mean that the series takes its meaning or existence from a governing series. For example, if a cabinet maker is making a lingerie chest, we can ask many questions like “Who designed the pattern,” “who supplied the wood,” “who manufactured the finish.” But we stop short at “Who designed the cabinet maker?”
It’s a reasonable question, but it doesn’t belong in this series. For that matter, we could ask “Who designed the wood?,” and the answer would be the same: It doesn’t belong in this series.
A multiverser can doubtless imagine universes in which any relationship between these entities may prevail (wood designs cabinet maker, etc.), but the rest of us need guides, channels, order, and discipline in our thinking, if we are going to learn anything about the world we live in. That includes understanding when a regress must naturally end.
By MEREDITH WADMAN – NATURE.COM – NEWSBLOG
Added: Wednesday, 25 January 2012 at 11:15 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644728-obama-boosts-science-in-state-of-the-union-address
US President Barack Obama’s 65-minute State of the Union address last night (24 January) touched on themes and issues that were expected, calling for measures to revitalize the economy and urging that the very wealthy pay higher tax rates — a minimum of 30% for those with more than $1 million in income.
But it also included multiple references to subjects near to scientists’ hearts. Here is a sampling of points in the speech that touched on science, medical research, education, energy and the environment. (For greater detail on the policy proposals mentioned in Obama’s speech, see here.) Bear in mind that many of the president’s proposals would need action by a Congress that is seriously divided on partisan lines.
- Obama urged lawmakers not to “gut” US investments in basic research, arguing among other things that “the discoveries taking place in our federally-financed labs and universities could lead to new treatments that kill cancer cells but leave healthy ones untouched” and create lightweight vests that protect police and soldiers from “any bullet.”
- Calling on Congress to “stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs,” the president argued that a path to citizenship should be created for foreign students who come here to study subjects like business, science and engineering. “Send me a law that gives them the chance to earn their citizenship. I will sign it right away.”
- Obama took aim at rising tuition costs in colleges and universities, threatening to withdraw some federal support if the institutions don’t keep their tuition hikes in control. “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down,” he said.
Wednesday Religion: Morals in a Time of Secularism By – - ABC RADIO NATIONAL (AUSTRALIA)
Added: Thursday, 26 January 2012 at 9:50 AM
http://richarddawkins.net/audio/644735-wednesday-religion-morals-in-a-time-of-secularism
We live in a secular state, a fact that is often celebrated. However, what does this mean for the issue of morality? Does our state have a moral compass? It is not an easy issue to address, and is one that has exercised the minds of moral philosophers throughout the ages.
Waleed Aly discussed the morality of secularism with Scott Stephens, editor of the ABC’s Religion and Ethics website.
[Update 1/26pm] more videos – Richard Dawkins at the Jaipur Literature Festival By ABBAS RAZA – 3 QUARKS DAILY & NIRMUKTA
Updated: Thursday, 26 January 2012 at 9:19 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/644736-update-1-26pm-more-videos-richard-dawkins-at-the-jaipur-literature-festival
GOP embraces social Darwinism
By Carl Koch | The religious right rails against Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory that species evolve because only the fittest survive. Many Republicans favor the Genesis creation story. Nevertheless, members of the religious right embrace laissez-faire, anything-goes capitalism rooted in Darwin.
Industrialist Andrew Carnegie summarized social Darwinism this way: “The law of competition, be it benign or not, is here. And while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.”
However, laissez-faire capitalism brutalized workers who slaved under hazardous working conditions with no workers compensation or health coverage for 12 to 16 hours a day, used child labor and led to the formation of unions.
In 1912, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt declared: “We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business, the prosperity of the business man is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers, we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.”
A century later, Republicans need to listen to Teddy Roosevelt and work with President Barack Obama to recommit to the Golden Rule — realigning itself with biblical morality, not social Darwinism.
Read more: http://lacrossetribune.com/news/opinion/carl-koch-gop-embraces-social-darwinism/article_269a080c-47a1-11e1-9892-001871e3ce6c.html#ixzz1kg9TAFdr
|
Obama Channels Occupy Wall Street U.S. News & World Report (blog) Occupy Wall Street may be gone from Zuccotti Park, but it is not forgotten on Capitol Hill. You can draw a straight line from the Occupy Wall Street movement to President's Obama State of the Union address Tuesday night. President Obama threw the … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
'Occupy Wall Street' Creators Raise The Stakes, Gun For G8 And NATO Forbes From the people who brought us Occupy Wall Street comes a new target, the entire G8 nation states and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, aka NATO. Both the G8 Summit and NATO Summit will take place in Chicago in May, and the Occupy … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
|
Conservatives: Occupy Wall Street Shows How We Can't Get Our Message Out Over … Wizbang (blog) The gauzy puffery that the Old Media slathers upon the Occupy Wall Street movement has helped keep most Americans in the dark about how nasty, how violent, how outrageous, and even how incredibly lacking in integrity this movement is. See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
|
The Defensor: Occupy Wall Street Recap my.hsj.org Occupy Wall Street is a protest organized by Adbusters, a Canadian magazine, whose main goal is to stop corporate greed and raise awareness about the 1% who are the wealthiest people in America. On September 17, 2011, people gathered in front of the … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
New South Street Seaport Museum Reopens With Occupy Wall Street Show Gothamist Some Occupy Wall Street activists were invited to a gallery preview, and had mixed feelings; one protester told City & State, "It's interesting and in some ways very bizarre to see the events of the fall so quickly transformed into an art gallery event … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
Why does Occupy Wall St. support Big Abortion? Lifesite by Ben Johnson January 26, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – It seems the definition of an Occupy Wall Street protester is someone who believes every businessman will lie, cheat, skirt health and safety regulations, mislead public officials, and harm or even … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
|
Occupy DC's plight with Park Service inspires a Jellystone comparison Washington Post (blog) (AP) Columnist Robert McCartney is the latest to draw musical inspiration from the local branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Following his latest column on DC's occupiers, He suggests new lyrics for the theme song of one of his childhood heroes: … See all stories on this topic » |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A YEAR AFTER the uprising that overthrew Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak,
Cairo’s Tahrir Square has become an international symbol of human revolt. In the
revolutionary imagination, Tahrir is now a mythical site, much like the
battlefields of Massachusetts, the barricades of the Paris Commune, and the
Gda?sk Shipyard. The “Republic of Tahrir”—as the journalist Ashraf Khalil calls
it in this first-person account—is now synonymous with a politics of
spontaneity, youthfulness, and optimism.
Yet for those who have long dreamed for the birth of liberal societies in the
world’s least free region, the Tahrir moment has also been a source of anguish.
For years, we rejected the choice between preserving the secular Arab
autocracies and unleashing long suppressed Islamist power. The young Arab
democrat, we insisted, will transcend this false antithesis. Let a century of
Arab authoritarianism wither away and genuine civil societies bloom in its
place, we argued, and Islamism will soon join Nasserism and Ba’athism in the
Arab world’s ideological dustbin. We marveled at the sight of pharaoh’s fall.
Since the collapse of the Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Qaddafi regimes, however, events
on the ground have tested these hypotheses—and they have not fared well. Each
week brings news of another Islamist triumph in newly liberated North African
states. In Libya, the revolutionary government’s first act was not to proclaim
gender equity (or individual rights) but to affirm a man’s right to take
multiple wives. In Tunisia, the young democrats’ cries for popular dignity have
now been supplanted by Islamist expressions of hatred toward Jews and the Jewish
state. “Kill the Jews—it is our duty!” a large crowd chanted during the recent
visit to Tunis of Ismail Haniya, Hamas’s prime minister in Gaza.
Since it is the Arab world’s cultural engine, Egypt’s illiberal
post-revolutionary turn—including overwhelming Islamist electoral triumphs,
popular demands for breaking Sadat’s peace, and violence against Copts—has been
most disconcerting of all. Now that much of the enthusiasm surrounding Tahrir
has dissipated, there is an opportunity to account for the disappointments of
the Egyptian revolution and the wider Arab awakening. We might even consider how
some of Tahrir’s liberal potential might still be recovered. Khalil’s own
ideological commitments notwithstanding, Liberation Square is a useful guide to
this rethinking process.
The Occupy Effect
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL | It's too early to tell how Occupy Wall
Street will impact the 2012 election, but one thing seems pretty clear: it's
changed the national conversation.
FBI Wants New App to Wiretap the Internet >
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/26-3
Adbusters Issues New Call to Action: Occupy Chicago for G8/NATO Summit
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/26
Unions Vow to Fight as 'Right to Work' Nears Passage in Ind.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/26-0
Egyptian Youth Vow to Sit-In Until Military Rulers Relinquish Power
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/26-1
George Lakey: How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26-3/a>
Laura Flanders: Not A Peep About President's Praise for War
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26-4
Robert Scheer: Obama’s Faux Populism Sounds Like Bill Clinton
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26
Brian Moench: Physicians in Congress Committing Malpractice on Millions
hhttp://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26-1
Freedom to Marry Pushes for Marriage in Maine
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/01/26-4/a>
Conservation and American Indian Groups: Navy Training Blasts Marine Mammals
With Harmful Sonar
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/01/26-5
Adbusters Calls for 50,000 Protesters to Meet at Chicago’s G8
Adbusters, the group credited with inspiring the Occupy Wall Street movement, has once again put out a call for tens of thousands of protesters to flock to Chicago in early May and “set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month,” according to the official statement.
And this time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights. We’ll go there with our heads held high and assemble for a month-long people’s summit … we’ll march and chant and sing and shout and exercise our right to tell our elected representatives what we want … the constitution will be our guide.
And when the G8 and NATO meet behind closed doors on May 19, we’ll be ready with our demands: a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading … a binding climate change accord … a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals … an all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East … whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out.
Adbusters warns if G8 and NATO leaders ignore Occupy’s demands, protesters will respond with flashmobs, and actions to shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters, and cities across the globe.
Read the rest of this entry »
![[field_image_caption-raw]](http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imagecache/news_thumbnail/article_images/adbusters_occupychicago_s_0-sm.jpg)
