11.30.06
Skeptics and the CFI
This new thinktank, The Center For Inquiry is apparently the brainchild of Paul Kurtz from Skeptical Inquiry. Read the rest of this entry »
Keynes on Newton
He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.
The last? Who says he was the last. Only in the current environment dominated by scientism does that seem true.
Darwin’s doubts and delay
Darwin’s reluctance to publish is hardly so mysterious. It only seems so because people believe Darwin got it right. Darwin wasn’t so sure! When Wallace threatened to upstage him, he sensed his last chance for priority disappearing. This is not so distinguished. Darwin’s reluctance based on the idea of a challenge to ‘man’s godliness’ is mostly Darwinist rhetoric. That is not the issue, which is simply the real nature of man, whose potential, as Wallace realized, can’t be explained by natural selection. Read the rest of this entry »
Darfur
alternet@democracyinaction.org
The atrocities in Darfur have been going on for far too long and the violence continues to escalate. As a global community, we have a moral responsibility to do what we can to stop the brutality and help protect the millions of displaced people in the region. Please join AlterNet and the Save Darfur Coalition in signing a petition urging President Bush and UN Secretary-General Annan to take the steps necessary to protect the people of Darfur.
Don Hazen
Executive Editor, AlterNet
We’re innocent
Creationism and evolution. Many scientists and science organizations have objected to what they perceive to be support within the Administration for “teaching the controversy” between evolution and intelligent design or creationism, noting that there is no scientific controversy because evolution is backed by extensive evidence and research. Marburger stressed that the debate has not affected his office.
“No one is putting pressure on me or suggesting that creationism should be a part of science education—that’s ridiculous,” he said. “I’ve never heard this discussed in any—in any–of the meetings or forums or private discussions…that I’ve ever had with anybody in the White House [or federal agencies].”
Eliminate altruism to give NS a free hand?
A Darwinian Just-So story.
The absurdity of Darwinian accounts here can be seen from the ambiguity: if natural selection produces altruism, then why not eliminate altruism, so that natural selection can operate with interference to produce—? altruism.
Note how incoherence enters into the explanation. Check out the Oedipus effect at the history-and-evolution website.
Fanatics in the classroom
Fanatics in the classroom: Peter Hitches complains of the treatment of ID. He is right about the attempt by ID people to point to the limits of natural selection, but I think that the ID argument goes a bridge too far beyond that and ends up making a mistake similar to that made by Darwinists. Read the rest of this entry »
Woodward and rhetoric of Darwinism
Woodward book. Woodward wants to critique Darwinian rhetoric, yet in his previous Doubts about Darwin he seems to disingenuously analyze/promote the rhetoric of the ID movement as it comes into being.
Our popular podcast (20,000 subscribers in just the past six months) today features Casey Luskin interviewing Dr. Thomas Woodward. They discuss his new book, Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design, which analyzes the rhetoric used by Darwinists in their critiques of intelligent design. Woodward documents how Darwinists often use ad hominem attacks and promote “fantasy themes” about the supposed “theocracy” of intelligent design to avoid discussing the scientific issues.
Freud and the will to power
Freud’s Will to Power: I think Freud’s case needs to be understood in terms of the influence of Nietzsche, after all the term ‘will to power’ indicates this. Read the rest of this entry »
Wikipedia entry battles
Uncommon Descent complains of the entry/revision battles at Wikipedia Read the rest of this entry »
11.29.06
Center for Inquiry: new thinktank
DECLARATION IN DEFENSE OF SCIENCE AND SECULARISM: new thinktank from the Skeptical Inquirer people.
I would support this in a minute save that the formulation is crippled from the beginning. This ’science’ is uncomfortably close to scientism, is stuck with the fallacies of Darwinism, and, as is typical with the skeptics, is totally oblivious to the questions of occultism. These initiatives, as with Darwinism, simply provoke the opposition they wish to combat.
Read the rest of this entry »
Old Testament and evolution
“I argue that instead of being afraid of Darwinian evolution, it can really be a great gift to theology,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in Virginia. “Religious people should never be afraid of facing the truth. And if it requires some deepening of our perspective, then let it be deepened.”
Indeed.
A study of the eonic effect and the Axial Age will show the evolutionary significance of the Old Testament.
history-and-evolution.com
Onion on Kansas
Kansas Outlaws Practice Of Evolution
“Barn swallows that develop lighter, more streamlined builds to enable faster migration, for example, could live out the rest of their brief lives in prison,” said Indiana University chemist and pro-intelligent-design author Robert Hellenbaum, who helped compose the language of the law. “And butterflies who mimic the wing patterns and colors of other butterflies for an adaptive advantage, well, their days of flaunting God’s will are over.”
Human beings may be the species most deeply affected by the new legislation. Those whose cytochrome-c molecules vary less than 2 percent from those of chimpanzees will be in direct violation of the law.
Under particular scrutiny are single-cell microorganisms, with thousands of field labs being installed across the state to ensure that these self-replicating molecules, notorious for mutation, do not do so in a fashion benefitting their long-term survival.
Anti-evolutionists such as Hellenbaum have long accused microorganisms of popularizing “an otherwise obscure, agonizingly slow, and hard-to-understand” biological process. “These repeat offenders are at the root of the problem,” Hellenbaum said. “We have the fossil records to prove it.”
Enlightenment under threat–from scientism
Do You believe?. Ditto for Darwinists, do you believe (in Darwinism)?
The enlightenment was under threat at the time of its occurrence, and the result was a broader conception lost to the scientism primitives who seized the throne.
Now the enlightenment is under threat from bad science.
Says Dawkins: “The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America. I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organised ignorance.”
Four scientists to debate
Four scholars to debate. Why do Darwinists debate only ID people? If they opened the discussion to much broader critiques, especially those by Darwinists, their failed tactics would turn into something more effective.
Design by deity or Darwin? Nature or nurture? Maybe we’re born with it, maybe it’s evolution.
Four scholars will discuss evolution and intelligent design at the 11th annual Religion and the Humanities Conference at UVSC on Friday.
“The media portrayal of the issue has not done justice to the real theoretical issues at stake in the debate,” said Brian Birch, director of Religious Studies at UVSC and conference sponsor. “We hope that the audience walks away with a deeper sense how science and religion relate.”
11.28.06
The Big Sufi Secret
To follow the previous recent posts on ’sufism’ use this link.
Search string on ’sufism’ posts Read the rest of this entry »
Edelman on consciousness
Realizing that consciousness is not a “thing,” is a critical concept for understanding Edelman’s theory. Consciousness is not physically located anywhere in the brain or in the universe for that matter. It is also not a function of the brain. The brain does not function to generate consciousness; instead consciousness functions to increase and manipulate the brain’s store of useful information. In Edelman’s words, “consciousness is entailed by reentrant (brain) activity.” You will have to read the book and use your dictionary to fully comprehend Edelman’s brilliant but simple definition of consciousness.
Whale and human brains
Humpback Whales Have Brain Cells Also Found In Humans
Cetaceans, the group of marine mammals that includes whales and dolphins, have demonstrated remarkable auditory and communicative abilities, as well as complex social behaviors. A new study published online November 27, 2006 in The Anatomical Record, the official journal of the American Association of Anatomists, compared a humpback whale brain with brains from several other cetacean species and found the presence of a certain type of neuron cell that is also found in humans. This suggests that certain cetaceans and hominids may have evolved side by side.
Although the biology of the humpback whale is well understood, there have been virtually no studies published on its brain composition, leaving an open question as to how brain structure may relate to the extensive behavioral and social abilities of this mammal. Although brain to body mass ratio, a rough measure of intelligence, is lower for baleen whales such as the humpback compared to toothed whales such as dolphins, the structure and large brain size of baleen whales suggests that they too have a complex and elaborate evolutionary history.
Do Darwinists respond to evidence?
New Knowledge: Will the Theory Change?: the record is clear. It won’t change.