Posted in Evolution at 10:37 pm by nemo
Having discussed Kant, and eastern spirituality, here’s another twist:
I notice that the current issue of What is Enlightenment? magazine, with a discussion between Ken Wilbur and Andrew Cohen, is backtracking/hedging on their postmodern theme. They have changed the pitch to a curious combination of ‘modern/postmodern’ with Wilbur pulling a sly rabbit out of a hat using the thematic of the ‘myth of the given’ (if you don’t want to mention Kant, that’s a nice way to slip him in, most indirectly).
It is nice to know they are reading my material on New Ages (and Kant, no doubt), and getting worried!
This article also asks a question: why are all these gurus unable to understand history? It is a significant issue for the quixotic hope they might provide some leadership in a new era of spirituality.
Enlightened or not, they have miscalculated.
It is about time all these gurus dropped the postmodern strategy, as it slips into catastrophe. It is not going to work, and the only beneficiaries will be the fundamentalists, who will certainly turn on the New Agers with a vengeance.
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Posted in Evolution at 6:23 pm by nemo
From Science for the People
So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Evolution at 6:21 pm by nemo
To laugh or to cry? Make your choice
The ridiculous pseudo-scientific exercise by an Orthodox rabbi
By Shmuel-Pairont de la Meyraque
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/laugh.cfm
This is a review of an anti-science essay by Rabbi Dovid Kornreich, posted on a religious website. The reviewer shows the absurdity of Kornreich’s anti-science arguments, all of which are borrowed wholesale from the Christian creationist literature and have been thoroughly debunked before.
published: Jul 29, 2006
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Posted in Philosophy, The Eonic Effect at 6:19 pm by nemo
To further elaborate on the previous post in reply to Luke Rondinaro’s query on the use of Kant and Schopenhauer:
This refers to the study of the ‘eonic effect’ and ‘eonic model’, not the general history of philosophy, which claims to have passed beyond Kant.
In general Kant seems unpopular these days, as one philosophic fad follows another, each claiming to undermine the foundations of the previous cycle.
Again in relation to the study of the eonic effect, the question arises, from what point of view do we speak of five thousand years of history, and what methodology do we use that can encompass the full diversity?
Note how crippled the current Darwinian phase of knowledge is: it can’t handle something like Buddhism/Hinduism. It can’t handle, in fact, any of the world’s religions. It can’t even handle modern philosophy! It purports to have explained the totality of ethics as an epiphenomenon of natural selection. Free will, evidently, is another adaptive process by natural selection.
Now take all of this and try to evaluate the last five thousand years of history! You will strike out and be left with an account that apparently sees nothing but complete superstition until the time of Newton (although Newton must be factored out, due to his ’superstitions’) followed by the rise of successive sciences, with Darwin completing the great edifice of historical/evolutionary knowledge…
So Kant was the last great philosopher with a complete set of marbles. He has a scientific, ethical, and aesthetic methodology, and a framework question on history that is useful for organizing a study of historical evolution.
But there is more: as we proceed to consider the ‘eonic periodization’ of world history we find that the ‘non-random pattern’ involved includes the emergence of philosophy in its scope, and that, mirabile dictu, Kant appears at the point of the Great Divide, a spectacular effect deserving of close study.
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Posted in Evolution at 5:22 pm by nemo
Book reviews of three new Darwin books.
Darwin’s obsession with natural selection was not a matter of intellectual honesty, but the guarantee that ‘my theory’ as Darwin put it would ensure his originality and fame. Without natural selection he would have been little more than an evolution publicist.
So much for the integrity of the man. We have paid the price ever since, with true believers like Michael Shermer finessing this deceptions in the name of skepticism.
As Quammen so ably documents, Darwin clearly understood the challenge that natural selection posed to the conventional Victorian Christian faith that sustained his friends and family. No one was more reluctant to espouse it publicly or more distressed by its implications. Indeed, it steadily undermined his own belief in God, drove a wedge in his marriage and nearly broke his health. He brooded privately over his findings for 21 years before making them public.
Yet he finally embraced his brainchild, impelled by an unflinching intellectual honesty, the weight of the evidence and the imperative of an undeniable idea. “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection,” Darwin wrote, “than in the course which the wind blows.”
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Posted in Evolution at 9:00 pm by nemo
‘…don’t get no respect…
A common refrain from ID folks is that they are not treated respectfully by scientists. One reason for that lack of respect is the fact that there is no respect coming the other way. Countless scientists toil in obscurity to unravel the evoution of one particular set of complex molecular machines. The sheer hard work and brain power leading up to this article is remarkable.
The philosopher Kant, prior to producing his refutation of the design argument, noted that compared to the other attempts to prove the existence of god, the argument by design deserved our respect. Whether the IDM deserves that respect, however, is another question. As to scientists toiling away in their labs–great, but fobbing off an inadequate theory of evolution has certainly destroyed the respect of a great many in science.
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