06.30.06
Weird!
Two Philosophies of Mathematical Weirdness Read the rest of this entry »
Reinventing the Enlightenment?
As readers of World History and The Eonic Effect will realize, reinventing the Enlightenment is easier said than done (See the section, Towards a New Enlightenment, in Chapter Four). Read the rest of this entry »
Secularism and demography
Jack Miles on Dennett. The threat of fundamentalist demography is not much of a defense of religion. Let’s face it: the erosion of secularism by resurgent religion would be a world historical catastrophe.
The problem with Dennett’s critique is the failure to understand religion. But I fear monotheists don’t understand religion any better.
Fertility rates in the relatively secular blue states are 12 percent lower than in the relatively religious red states, according to Philip Longman in the March/April issue of Foreign Policy. In Europe, a similar correlation holds. As Longman writes: “Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? For whatever reason, people answering affirmatively . . . are far more likely to live alone, or in childless, cohabitating unions, than those who answer negatively.” For the most secular cultures in the world, Longman predicts a temporary drop in absolute population as secular liberals die out and a concomitant cultural transformation as, “by a process similar to survival of the fittest,” they are demographically replaced by religious conservatives.
A reproductive differential of this sort, of course, does not prove the truth of the patriarchal religion that Longman sees positively correlated with it, and Daniel C. Dennett would be the first to point this out. But the sense of siege that haunts the eminent philosopher’s “Breaking the Spell” may owe something to a background anxiety that though his side, the skeptical side, may have the best arguments, it is dying out anyway.
The spell of Dennett’s title is the spell of religion, which “must be broken and broken now.” The first hundred pages of his book are titled “Opening Pandora’s Box,” and he casts himself, rather amazingly, as Pandora in person. Ready or not, here she comes: “Those who are religious and believe religion to be the best hope of humankind cannot reasonably expect those of us who are skeptical to refrain from expressing our doubts. . . . They claim the moral high ground; maybe they deserve it and maybe they don’t. Let’s find out.”
MRI and lie detection
MRI tests offer glimpse at brains behind the lies
Two companies plan to market the first lie-detecting devices that use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and say the new tests can spot liars with 90% accuracy.
06.29.06
Critical thinking
Nearly everyone is in favor of critical thinking. This is evidence that the term is in danger of becoming meaningless. Skeptics should spearhead the effort to clarify what critical thinking is-and what it is not. The stakes are high.
Current skeptics seem to have forgotten the Kantian roots of one of the great branches of the tradition of critical thinking. The deteriorated versions current in the age of positivism/Darwinism couldn’t reach first gear in Kantian mode. As ‘critical thinking’ it is completely pseudo and routinely gives its adherents bum steers and gets them into endless difficulties, witness the Darwin debate, the theism/atheism dialectic, etc, etc,…
Obama on secularists
Barack Obama addresses the question of religion and politics. Read the rest of this entry »
Secondary Addiction
Talk.reason takes on Coulter, on evolution. Tackling Coulter wouldn’t be much of problem for Talk.reason, but unfortunately even a slapdash tour of secondary sources puts the likes of Coulter one step ahead of the ‘paradigmatically deprived’ Darwinians.
One third of Ann Coulter’s latest bestseller, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” is devoted to raking “Darwiniac cultists” over the coals for promoting what she is certain is the false science of evolution. Unfortunately her roasting process was hampered by the fact that she forgot to get her fire lit first. Compulsively addicted to secondary sources, Coulter fails to comprehend even those, and exhibits consistent laziness when it comes to checking whether her meagre tinder could ever ignite. In the first part of a series that will examine all the antievolutionary assertions in her book, James Downard explores how Coulter fumbles issues relating to Michael Behe’s Irreducible Complexity claims.
published: Jun 29, 2006
Cornell ID course blog
Welcome to the website for BioEE 467, Evolution and Design: Is there purpose in nature? a course being offered in Cornell’s six-week summer session.
06.28.06
Belief/nonbelief
It is important to understand that belief in neither evolution or creation is necessary to the actual study of science itself. One can understand the human body and become a first class surgeon regardless of whether he or she believes the human body is the result of the chance forces of nature or of a Supreme Designer.
ID in universities
CREATIONISM is finding its way into university lecture halls, raising concerns with some academics that the biblical story of creation will be given equal weight to Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Compulsory lectures in intelligent design and creationism are going to be included in second-year courses for zoology and genetics undergraduates at Leeds University, The Times Higher Education Supplement (June 23) reveals.But there’s a twist: lecturers will present the controversial theories as being incompatible with scientific evidence. “It is essential they (students) understand the historical context and the flaws in the arguments these groups put forward,” says Michael McPherson, of Leeds University.
Evolution denial and slavery?
Trying to connect ‘evolution denial’ with the history of slavery seems off the mark. This thinking assumes that all criticism of Darwinism is religious in origin.
06.27.06
Descent/ascent of man
The built in contradiction in Darwinian thinking about man sometimes appears in bold contrast: Descent of Man:
Most species disappear, and it seems most unlikely that Homo sapiens will be an exception. What, I often wonder, will be our undoing? Will it be our capacity for war and violence, our puny bodies, our inability to resist new infections or our vanity?
On long reflection, I have decided that our evolutionary weaknesses, the flaws that will destroy us, are selfishness and lack of imagination. They go together.
Which is it? We evolve via natural selection/selfishness, or we don’t?
Coulter’s class warfare
My question is where should I put Ann Coulter in my treasure chest of political figures?
It used to be called class warfare. Coulter’s version, in our ‘What’s the matter with Kansas’ world, is undisguised yet not transparent to a generation stunned into by neo-liberal (sic!) brainwashing.
A trillion for Iraq
A stunning estimate of Iraq war cost.
Forget those early estimates about the cost of our failed war in Iraq; the final tally is likely to be over $1 trillion.
Art and Evolution
Darwinists are so conditioned to their basic assumptions that they fail to really how silly they sound on issues Darwin’s theory simply can’t handle: The Art of Evolution.
Anyone familiar with the ‘eonic model’ at the history-and-evolution site will be familiar with the relationship of art and evolution, a bit more complex than the Darwinian version!
One problem with being a dominant paradigm is that you lose your sense of reality and start producing ersatz answers to all possible questions, with no sense of the incongruity there.
A fascinating article by Simon Caterson in Australia’s The Age newspaper proposes to answer a deceptively simple question:
Can Darwinism explain the birth and extinction of art movements, or the enduring appeal of Jane Austen?
The answer, according to members of a movement called Aesthetic Darwinism, seems to be yes:
Does creating art improve your chances of getting laid? It may seem a crude way to account for thousands of years of human aesthetic achievement in all its apparent richness and variety, but that is the biological bottom line according to a growing academic movement that is trying to apply Darwinian principles to the study of art and literature.
A leading advocate of this approach is New Zealand-based philosopher Denis Dutton, who argued in a recent article that the arts “echo the sexual display that accompanies Darwinian selection”. As with everything else humans do, it all comes back to the ruthless competition to ensure the successful transmission of our genes. Whether we are conscious of it or not, say the followers of Darwin, art is essentially the creative means to a biological end.
06.26.06
Technocracy or science?
LETTER TO MEMBERS OF CONGRESS RE: INTELLIGENT THOUGHT. This letter invokes the technocracy theme: the Darwin debate is harming America’s scientific standing, etc…
Two things: 1. Science is not an American monopoly, but a universal subject
2. Most scientists are so confused on the subject of evolution that this in itself is harmful to Science’s scientific standing. Read the rest of this entry »
Einstein’s Spinoza
It is a little bit misleading to make claims for Einstein’s ‘theism’ if his language is really code language for views closer to Spinoza.
Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. “He believed he was doing God’s work,” James Gleick wrote in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation — understanding the workings of the universe — as an attempt to understand the mind of God.
Postdarwinism & Postdesign
Two thirds of doctors skeptical of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
This is reported by Discovery institute. I should hope that at least two thirds would also be skeptical of design claims.
And transtion to Postdarwinism ought, also, to be a transition to Postdesign. Read the rest of this entry »
06.25.06
DMR: 5.1 A New Age Begins
Descent of Man Revisited: on the home stretch. Sections 4.3-.4.5 are already online.
Ethical brain?
This is a book I want to read, but…
We are all still crypto-Cartesians, can research on the ethical brain still hold out hope of the Great Breakthrough? I have been kept waiting on this one.
Read the rest of this entry »
Step one for ID research…
I have two suggestions:
1. Every ID researcher needs a crash course in Biblical Criticism. Nothing in the Bible is of any use at this point. If you take it as the ‘word of God’ it will throw your intuitions off-track….
2. Deprogram Dembski from the Christian cult. The main culprit in getting ID off on the wrong foot is confused, if you read Intelligent Design, about faith, miracles, modernity, and is clearly taking Old Testament history as a working context.
No research is possible, I fear, for Christians of faith. There will always be a suspicion the ‘design’ they assume in the Bible is prior evidence for seeing design in some other context.
Maybe ID research should be farmed out to non-Christians.
Weinberg on god
I think that Westen religious culture has so totally exhausted/confused/exploited ‘god talk’ that much that passes for ‘atheism’ is simply an attempt to clear one’s registers. Weinberg tries hard to play dodgem but the obsessive persistence of ‘god idiocy’ gets him into a corner.
I think the fad for using the term ‘god’ by physicists has a suspicious resemblance to a market strategy in authors.