09.29.06
Posted in New Age, Science & Religion at 9:52 pm by nemo
Will the Dawkins atheist gang et al. get wiped out? I watch them with some trepidation. Modern science has produced a new kind of idiot, with Michael Shermer as their pope, skeptics all the way to sitting duck’s ville.
I do not refer to the ninety percent of Buddhists and Sufis who are piously harmless and good cover for the fascist manipulations of the hidden operators conspiring to destroy modern freedom, sufistic occult thugs who prey on spiritual children on the fringes of civil society, ….
I would admire the attacks on religion by the Dennett/Dawkins picnickers if they had any remote conception of the religious worlds they think Darwin has rendered dispensable. Such fatal naivete…
Know your enemy (enemies).
Permalink
09.25.06
Posted in Evolution at 7:22 pm by nemo
What Is Horganism?
But great harm has also been done in the name of faith, whether in a religion or in pseudo-scientific ideologies such as Marxism, Social Darwinism, eugenics or psychopharmacology.
You forgot one, Horgan: Darwinism itself.
—————————
The Final Frontier
Horgan on ‘End of
Science ten years later
Ten years after the publication of The End of Science, John Horgan says the limits of scientific inquiry are more visible than ever.
By John Horgan
DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 10 | October 2006
Permalink
Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy, Evolution at 7:12 pm by nemo
Don’t be fooled. ID is a smokescreen. The forces of social control want you to be a Darwin true believer as the indirect justification of the easily denounced but disguised and pervasive Social Darwinism. Mr. Dawkins, you are an unwitting ideologist for this.
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 6:59 pm by nemo
Quote from frontpage at richarddawkins.net:
“It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that if Darwinism was really a theory of chance, it could not work.”
Richard Dawkins
This is the strange thing about Dawkins. He knows the theory of Darwin is wrong and has to perform a sleight-of-hand to stay in the game.
It is crushingly obvious that Darwinism is really a theory of chance.
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 6:26 pm by nemo
The inability to observe speciation is especially dangerous in the case of human origins because it puts premium on natural selection mixed with behavioral ideologies. We can’t just wait til the evidence comes in. The Darwin claims need to be debunked on the spot. A look at the eonic effect and the relation to the Great Explosion might help to renounce theoreis of human origins. It is probable that we will never quite know. Cutting down the phony theories is the first requirement.
A key problem with the argument over Darwinian evolution (evolution by natural selection acting on random mutations) is that so few actual examples of speciation (new species forming) have ever been observed that we really have no way of knowing for sure whether Darwin had the right idea.
Permalink
Posted in Science & Religion at 6:15 pm by nemo
This article does a head on with monotheism—and doesn’t produce phoney Darwinian foundations for that. OK. One God Stuff sounds Spinozistic, however.
Enough With the ‘One God’ Stuff
By James Foley, AlterNet. Posted September 23, 2006.
In the world today, one ancient religious ideology, monotheism, stands out as especially dangerous, repressive and loony.
Permalink
Posted in Booknotes, Evolution at 6:01 pm by nemo
Nymag recommendation
The God Delusion
By Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, $27
When will atheists have their Bill O’Reilly? In his latest jeremiad, evolutionary pioneer Dawkins nominates himself for the role. Knowing his audience, he spends much of his time attacking agnostics (and his personal critics). But while calling religious parents “child abusers†may grab headlines, it will do little to advance the debate. Fortunately, Dawkins salvages his polemic with a surprisingly elegant and gracious conclusion, depicting science as exactly the kind of glorious expansion of our perceptions that we once thought only God could provide.
WAIT FOR THE PAPERBACK
Permalink
Posted in Evolution, Science & Religion at 5:52 pm by nemo
All this NCSE jargon about science and evolution. Does science own ‘evolution’? No, and in fact, current science is clearly as unable to produce a theory of evolution and the ID folks are incompetent at debuking it.
The current frenzy over monotheism (cf. Dawkins and Sam Harris) forgets that Darwinism has actually succeeded in creating some worse. Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in Evolution, you've got mail at 5:32 pm by nemo
And email from hucklebird (the views expressed are his, but relevant to this blog)
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
09.24.06
Posted in General at 4:31 pm by nemo
From Rad-Green
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in New Age, Philosophy, Science & Religion, The Eonic Effect at 4:23 pm by nemo
Perhaps I was unfair to Dawkins, accusing him of playing to the Darwin groupie market: Telic thoughts cites evidence he did a ‘damn the torpedoes’ with his recent book with respect to the American market.
Will religion die a natural death? I rather doubt it!
Certainly not if Darwinism is made the substitute. Religion will revive so fast just in proportion as Darwinism gets stronger. Mark my words.
Actually Dawkins is a kind of New Ager (I kid you not), a fanatic doing garbage disposal on the religions of the previous world era so that the ‘wheel of dharma’ (not just Buddhist) can roll again.
The solution lies in a better understanding of modernity, and a dash of Hegel might help here, not his philosophy, but his assertions about religion and philosophy, and his claim that German classical philosophy was the completion of the Protestant Reformation. The point is that ‘faith and religion’ can yield to philosophy in a secular age. The point is lost since the meaning of the term philosophy has changed, its aura is different. But the point is that everyone has to upgrade their ‘cosmic conceptions’ module, hopefully starting with some Kantian castor oil.
Since this is an issue of the eonic effect (cf. section on New Ages in WH&EE), I have cited that category.
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 4:13 pm by nemo
The critique of the proofs for the existence of God is well-taken but Dawkins pulls a fast one with his attempt to distinguish chance and natural selection. This strategy merely shows he is worried. To say that natural selection is non-random has enabled the horde of Talk.origins idiots in the Dawkins cult to throw sand in the face (momentarily) of critics of Darwinian foundations in random evolution.
With his usual rational skills he sets about dissecting the arguments for the existence of a God. He takes on all comers: Aquinas’s five “proofs”, Pascal’s wager (meant as a joke, surely), even Stephen Unwin’s probability of God, whose use of Bayes’ theorem to demonstrate the probability of God Dawkins scathingly dismisses as “quite agreeably funny”. He puts in its place the believers’ misunderstanding of Darwinism. No, it does not mean that we are all here by chance, but by a scientifically demonstrable process of natural selection.
Permalink
Posted in In the News at 3:58 pm by nemo
Bin Laden dead?
France probes Bin Laden death claim
By Europe correspondent Rafael Epstein and wires
France’s Defence Ministry says it cannot confirm leaked reports Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden died of typhoid last month.
Permalink
09.23.06
Posted in History, The Eonic Effect, you've got mail at 7:53 pm by nemo
Directionality in history: asked for a reply on the question of directionality, with reference to an email at H-World listserve. Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in Science & Religion, The Axial Age at 4:38 pm by nemo
Karen Armstrong’s apologia for Islamic violence: I doubt that Armstrong is involved in an apologia. As the evidence of her book on the Axial Age shows she is simply so confused by the effort to find an ‘Axial’ common denominator that she can’t sort out the literature on Islam. It is not exactly standard, in any case, to spiel out rightwing diatribes on Islam, even if we grant the importance of the recent new literature in the field, Ibn Warraq being on place to start.
Permalink
09.15.06
Posted in New Age, Philosophy at 10:48 pm by nemo
One respondent keeps wondering where I am coming from, with the streak of New Age issues that appear in this blog. Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
09.12.06
Posted in In the News at 5:45 pm by nemo
Shermer has a point: how could an idiot like Bush bring off a 9/11 conspiracy? Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
09.07.06
Posted in Evolution at 4:46 pm by nemo
I find it baffling that anyone could write a book as bad as Karen Armstrong’s on the Axial Age. This book is completely cockeyed, unreasonably so.
This revealing note about on an intercultural panel suddenly suggests the obvious reason. Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 4:31 pm by nemo
~~ Andrewcohen.org ~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Friend,
Recently we’ve been keeping you up to date with how Andrew Cohen’s
teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment has been developing through
his work with his students.
We’re pleased to let you know that we’ve just launched a new
feature page–The Birth of Evolutionary Enlightenment–where you
can find out how this vision of a higher collective consciousness
first emerged among Andrew’s students five years ago, and explore
how it has developed in the years since.
o Find out about the “birth of evolutionary enlightenment”
through first-hand accounts and a dialogue between Andrew Cohen
and Ken Wilber
o Explore the historical and philosophical context for evolutionary
spirituality through the writings of Sri Aurobindo, Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin, Beatrice Bruteau, and more…
o Learn more about the challenges encountered on this spiritual path
o Engage with the most recent expressions of this higher consciousness
through student writings, videos, and more…
Visit The Birth of Evolutionary Enlightenment feature page:
~ http://www.andrewcohen.org/birth/default.asp?ecp=AC-090706
Enjoy!
With warm regards,
The Andrewcohen.org team
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 4:28 pm by nemo
Scientists angered by telephone telepathy study
A furious row broke out today at Britain’s premier science forum over the decision to allow believers in the paranormal to promote their views without challenge from the mainstream.
The row was triggered by the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s decision to showcase highly controversial research purporting to demonstrate telepathy and life after death.
Critics including Lord Winston and Sir Walter Bodmer, both past presidents of the BA, expressed particular alarm that three speakers who think paranormal phenomena are real were allowed to hold a press conference without challenge from sceptics. Some said telepathy has already been found wanting in experiments, and has no place at a scientific meeting.
Other scientists said that while discussion of the subject was acceptable, the panel’s lack of balance was like inviting creationists to address the prestigious meeting without an opposing view from evolutionary biologists. Several members of the BA said that they would raise the matter with its ruling council.
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 4:24 pm by nemo
Science and Frankenstein.
Scientists have produced a view of man so far from reality that I would think the absurdity of the Frankenstein myth has actually been vindicated. Scientists perceive this as anti-science, or the ‘war on science’, which is a way to blockade perception into a narrow grove.
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 1:41 pm by nemo
We can be grateful for Frederick Crews critique, courageous for its time, of Freudianism, but he seems to have missed a similar opportunitty with Darwin, taking on the much safer ID issue.
This, then, is a collection about epistemology, and one that should be read by anyone still harbouring the delusion that Freud was an important thinker, that psychoanalysis is an important cure, that intelligent design is a credible alternative to Darwinism, or that religion and science can coexist happily.
Permalink
09.06.06
Posted in Evolution, The Axial Age, The Eonic Effect at 3:07 pm by nemo
Current secular thought a la talk.reason/talk.origins, i.e. in the Darwinian wing, has completely flubbed the study of world history, and that includes the enigmatic history of the Old Testament. Behind the mythological worldview, and I will even grant the problematic in the OT’s theistic historicism, lies the dramatic evidence of an Axial Age phenomenon, which is a part of the greater question of the eonic effect.
I invite talk.reason to consider this data of the eonic effect, and the Old Testament in that context.
http://history-and-evolution.com
Orthodox Judaism: does it have a case?
By Alexander Eterman
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/case.cfm
This essay offers a detailed argument supporting the thesis that the empirical foundations of Judaism (and, of course, of other religions adopting these foundations) are not only incorrect, but are absolutely detached from reality. Moreover, a comprehensive analysis of Orthodox Jewish empiricism leads to the inevitable conclusion that it is practically meaningless – and that renders attempts to appeal to specific details, which have become popular in today’s apologetic circles, irrelevant. The Orthodox view of physical world, of ancient history (including the history of culture and Jewish history proper), can only be studied as a mythological worldview, one that is not detached from ideology, far from unbiased, and most importantly, one that has a poignant anti-scientific view of the world. As for the old quasi-scientific debate with Jewish apologetics, the author believes that it is being conducted incorrectly from the standpoint of methodology. The Orthodox picture of the world must be clearly regarded as the classical, easily recognizable no-case scenario. The sum and substance of apologetic arguments is nothing but a bag of manipulative tricks that do not merit a detailed scholarly discussion.
published: Sep 06, 2006
Permalink
09.05.06
Posted in Booknotes at 8:48 pm by nemo
Reading: The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Hard to put down.
For obvious reasons I would be reluctant to pass judgment on the question of the future of string theory.
But I am struck by the fact that brilliant specialists in advanced physics are confused on the subject of evolution. Smoling gives a good account of unification, and its successes and blind alleys.
Let me note that there has been no unification, extending the sense of the term, between physics and biology. That’s the attraction, a false one, of Darwin’s natural selection: it puts biology into the realm of ‘universal laws’. But it is really a blind alley.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 5:09 pm by nemo
Ruse’s second book this year on evolution is a cop out. There were hints Ruse, as an emeritus outsider, might summon up the nerve to do something novel to illuminate the Darwin debate in its hopeless confusion, but this useless book simply regurgitates the whole spiel.
Some kind of leadership is needed to stem the chaos being created by the ID movement. That can’t be done by simply chanting the Darwin cliches. Ruse has lost an opportunity.
In his delightful Darwinism and Its Discontents, Michael Ruse seeks to set the record straight. He has brought his almost unparalleled grasp of all things Darwinian to bear on the state of evolutionary thinking and the persisting appeal of Darwin Unadulterated. Less an aggressive bulldog and more a friendly cocker-spaniel, Ruse is the kind of champion that most innovators would want; Darwin would have loved him for his rigour, balance, wit, good judgment and sheer companionability.
Ruse wears his learning lightly, but not lite-ly. He offers a reassuring and firm hand through the tangled thickets of Darwinian debate. He gives “prolific” a special meaning; a new book by Ruse on Darwin seems almost an annual event, and I occasionally wonder if “Michael Ruse” is a an individual scholar or a team of researchers. Indeed, one of Ruse’s slightly irritating habits is to refer to his own work a little too freely and frequently on some disputed issues.
Permalink
Posted in Evolution at 4:57 pm by nemo
NYRB review
H. Allen Orr, Talking Genes
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade
Orr’s critical review never touches the main difficulty: Darwinists cannot explain the sudden appearance of modern man, and certainly don’t have the proof that this was driven by natural selection.
Permalink