12.31.06
Dennett counts the numbers
Not Yet The Majority But No Longer Silent
by Daniel C. Dennett
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Making religion illegal?
Since Richard Dawkins withdrew his support for a petition to make religious upbringing illegal, many are now trying to make it look as if the petition was so out of tune with the rest of Dawkins’ writings that only those with an irrational hatred of him could believe that he had truly endorsed it.
Galactic Darwinism
Do Galaxies Follow Darwinian Evolution?
Science Daily — Using VIMOS on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, a team of French and Italian astronomers have shown the strong influence the environment exerts on the way galaxies form and evolve. The scientists have for the first time charted remote parts of the Universe, showing that the distribution of galaxies has considerably evolved with time, depending on the galaxies’ immediate surroundings. This surprising discovery poses new challenges for theories of the formation and evolution of galaxies.
The ‘nature versus nurture’ debate is a hot topic in human psychology. But astronomers too face similar conundrums, in particular when trying to solve a problem that goes to the very heart of cosmological theories: are the galaxies we see today simply the product of the primordial conditions in which they formed, or did experiences in the past change the path of their evolution?
Dinosaur and humans living together–now!
Adam, Eve and T-Rex.
Creationists are a puzzle, stuck in their illusory world, but not so much so as Darwinists, who with all the benefits of science have managed to become stuck in another illusory world. Perhaps we are being protected from both by having two dinosaurs battle each other.
NOBLE, Okla. — Thomas Sharp holds science degrees from Purdue University and the University of Oklahoma but believes dinosaurs and humans once walked the Earth together and the world is somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old.
The office of the Creation Truth Foundation, founded by Sharp in 1989 and based in a Main Street storefront in Noble, is decorated with fossils and framed Bible verses. Sharp sees no contradiction between the two. A prehistoric petrified shell is showcased next to a plaque in the front room that reads “Trust in the Lord with all your heart…”
“If we reject the book of Genesis, then where do we pick up after that?” Sharp said. “If you want to believe in the legitimacy of God, then you have to start from the beginning.”
Social darwinist ‘clash of civilizations’
The global clash of emotions.
The concept of a clash of civilzations was a false one, a Social Darwinist ideology designed to create the conflicts wanted by some elites.
Thirteen years ago, Samuel Huntington argued that a “clash of civilizations” was about to dominate world politics. Events since then have proved Huntington’s vision more right than wrong. It would be more correct, however, to speak of a “clash of emotions.” The Western world displays a culture of fear, the Arab and Muslim worlds are trapped in a culture of humiliation, and much of Asia displays a culture of hope.
Ghosts in the machine
Ghosts in the Machine
by Deborah Blum
From richarddawkins.net
For a challenge to this type ‘ghosts schopenhauer’ into the search box for this blog
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Are we alone?
Waiting for Corot
Will a new space mission find evidence of life elsewhere? Either way, it poses conundrums for science and religion alike.
The French-led Corot space mission is to find Earth-like planets around other stars. I doubt whether the PR team managing the press interest influenced the launch date. But the new year is the perfect time to spark interest in the second biggest question in modern cosmology: are we alone? (The biggest question being why we are here.)
It is a huge question since so much would change, in religion and science, were the answer to be settled: yes or no. So, first: imagine Corot does find another planet and, moreover, one that also shows itself to be sustaining life. There is life out there! How would this challenge religious belief?
Tower of Babel
It would be of interest if we could get past the obvious problems in the Darwinian account. a single original language?
A look at the transformation of language in the pattern of the eonic effect should be a warning that current thinking is simply off the wall.
the proliferation of languages is an accident: a single original language morphed into 6,000 when different groups of people emerged. I hope that dying languages can be recorded and described. I hope that many persist as hobbies, taught in schools and given space in the press, as Irish, Welsh, and Hawaiian have.
However, the prospect we are taught to dread — that one day all the world’s people will speak one language — is one I would welcome. Surely easier communication, while no cure-all, would be a good thing worldwide. There’s a reason the Tower of Babel story is one of havoc rather than creation.
12.29.06
Survival of the wisest
Chopra on survival of the wisest, part 2
To say that our future survival depends on wisdom can sound vague and vaporous–isn’t every politician promising a new vision for tomorrow without meaning anything? But there’s a serious point here. The state of the planet today is a direct result of human vision. The way we pursue happiness–by exploiting natural resources, ignoring environmental degradation, and largely giving up on overpopulation–represents our current stage of evolution.
Board game on ID/evolution
Ex-atheist and Ex-evolutionist Design Board Game
BELLFLOWER, CA (ANS) — “Intelligent Design versus Evolution” is a new board game that was designed by actor Kirk Cameron and best-selling author Ray Comfort, to help fight against the what they maintain is the brainwashing of an entire generation.
Cameron said, “We are very excited about this game because it presents both sides of the creation evolution argument, and in doing so, shows that the contemporary theory of evolution is perhaps the greatest hoax of modern times.”
Jacoby’s Freethinkers
Jacoby’s Freethinkers. It is an excellent book, but the attempt to define secularism in terms of god beliefs, or the lack of them, fails to grasp the complexity of the Enlightenment, or the place of Protestantism in modernity.
Before there was The God Delusion and Letter to a Christian Nation, there was another excellent book on atheism: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Susan Jacoby. I can’t recommend that book highly enough: it takes a purely historical perspective on American religiosity, and shows that it is a fairly recent aberration. I consider it superior to the more recent works by Dawkins and Harris; I wonder why it is so rarely acknowledged in the current interest in freethought?
Genomic complexities
UD discusses Nachman’s U paradox
To evolve the population, one needs to add new mutations and either fix some mutations and remove (purify away) others. Haldane’s dilemma deals with the difficulty of fixation. Nachman U-Paradox problem deals with the difficulty of purification. Even if the mutation were neutral, Nachman’s paper still poses the problem of how to purify away neutral mutations such that the genomes between each member of the species remains relatively similar (humans are about 99.5% similar to each other).
Venter CD on ocean life
Cracking the Ocean Code DVD, link from UD
Join genome pioneer Dr. J. Craig Venter as he scours the world’s oceans for new life forms and genetic secrets that could help solve the planet’s most urgent energy and climate challenges. From Nova Scotia to the Galapagos islands to Antarctica, Dr. Venter embarks on a mission to map the DNA of every microscopic organism in the ocean. Along the way, he discovers new species and new methods of tackling weather anomalies, ocean pollutants and even global warming.
12.28.06
Chimp/human genes
Human-Chimp Gene Gap Widens from Tally of Duplicate Genes
There’s a bigger genetic jump between humans and chimps than previously believed
Maybe there is something here that has nothing to do with genes. Can this thought dawn on Darwinists?
A lot more genes may separate humans from their chimp relatives than earlier studies let on. Researchers studying changes in the number of copies of genes in the two species found that their mix of genes is only 94 percent identical. The 6 percent difference is considerably larger than the commonly cited figure of 1.5 percent.
If that’s the case…
If science ever stops rebelling against authority, Freeman Dyson insists in The Scientist as Rebel, it won’t deserve to be pursued by our brightest children … (scitech daily)
In that case, science is in trouble. It has totally eliminated rebels on the subject of evolution.
(A)theists must deal with problem of good
Atheists Must Deal With the ‘Problem of Good’. Correct.
But religious monotheists must also deal with the problem. The Old Testament Mt. Sinai myth doesn’t do the job. Read the rest of this entry »
No, Armstrong, the afterlife isn’t a red herring
Historian and former nun Karen Armstrong says the afterlife is a “red herring,” hating religion is a pathology and that many Westerners cling to infantile ideas of God.
Salon interviews Armstrong. This has been a bad year for Axial Age studies: Armstrong got a hold of the question, and turned it into an idiotic sausage version.
Armstrong’s can’t seem to find any coherence in her position, which seems to be secular one moment, ‘touchy feely’ ‘freelance monotheist’ the next.
One of the descendant texts of the Axial Age was the Tibetan book of the dead. Is this a red herring too?