07.31.07
Still another reminder re: The Ternate Letter
Wallace and Darwin, sanitized, now read:
The Ternate Letter
Evolution on Trial
I note that Mr. Whitehouse has a book on evolution: Evolution on Trial (Paperback)
by Bill Whitehouse (Author)
Will check it out (eventually)
Shaykh, Shaykh, shaykh and bake
Sillykitty(thanks) sends me this link (he is in constant paranoid fear of ’sufi hyena’ gold, the ’shaykh’ according to Whitehouse) from Sufi Amanesis, with remarks about E.J. Gold
the google blog search turns up interesting tidbits sometimes. check out
‘authenticity of sufi shaykhs’ re: e.j. gold
http://anab-whitehouse.blogspot.com/2007/07/authenticity.html
Since Mr. Whitehouse has never met Mr. Gold, and has little information, we can take his remarks as courteous verbiage. Read the rest of this entry »
Anthony Blake link and a software discussion
Doberry comment. Since Dogberry is getting stymied by the comments straightjacket I will quote the comment in a top line post:
Dogberry said,
July 31, 2007 at 5:00 am ·
Some interesting reflections on Gurdjieff, Bennett, Shah, Lessing, higher powers, dangers of ’seeking’, authoritarian teachers, dialogue, by Tony Blake, here:
http://www.anthonyblake.co.uk/Meetings.html
Tony Blake link
The blog format is not really suitable for exploring themes in depth, as comments only surface if you, Nemo, bump them back to the top by creating a new post. And Comment text doesn’t appear in searches. I’ve mentioned Ikbal Ali-Shah twice, but try searching for it.
Thanks for the interesting link, and I recall reading a book by Blake, in the eighties, but I forget the title, it had a lot of interesting historical material. Read the rest of this entry »
Comment on Bhakti yoga
James on Bhakti yoga.
And it is remarkable to see that resurface in the modern New Age movement, with multiple gurus plying a disguised bhakti yoga in their ashramic combinations, even Rajneesh. In all fairness, the multitudes of spiritual seekers themselves tend to foment their own entrapment in this, and it is a good business for celebrity gurus to exploit bhakti for their own dominance.
Gasper and Arnhart nip and tuck, cozy
Phil Gasper’s Article in the INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW .
Larry Arnhart takes on Phil Gasper’s article in the International Socialist Review.
It is hard to say which wins first prize for stubborn idiocy, but since the socialist and the classical liberal troglodyte both agree about Darwin I guess it hardly matters. Read the rest of this entry »
From the Bulletin online
Such hyperrational plans are at the root of our problem in the nuclear age. Since the invention of the atomic bomb, we have surrendered control of nuclear policy to elites whose schooling in game theory and operations research has often superseded common sense and human wisdom. As interesting as it might be to ask what rational actors would do in the event of nuclear attack, human beings are not rational actors. If they were, we wouldn’t have thousands of nuclear weapons in the world today.
Sociobiology isn’t science
Think Again: Sociobiology isn’t science and
Evo-News link
Read the rest of this entry »
Double contradiction
Panda’s Thumb comments of Korthof review
…If natural law and chance can in fact explain the evolution of life after the instance of ‘creation’, then ID has made itself irrelevant…
This is a good criticism, but the problem is that natural law and chance can’t foot the bill either. This double contradiction resembles the antinomy structure of Kant’s dialectic.
The double contradiction can only be resolved by considering a time-less component to evolutionary theories,whatever that might be.
Korthof shows how Behe’s book does little to explain ‘Intelligent Design’, leaving it once again scientifically vacuous.
More recently I listened to Behe talk about intelligent design, suggesting that the design instance could very well be moved to the moment of ‘creation’. Such a self defeating move was in fact predicted by such visionaries as Wesley Elsberry and others. If natural law and chance can in fact explain the evolution of life after the instance of ‘creation’, then ID has made itself irrelevant and yet ID also argues that there are ‘edges’ which evolution cannot explain and which would require some intervention. However at the same time it also suggests that such interventions may not be needed but then there are no edges left to evolution.
This fascinating self contradiction is what lies at the foundation as to why Intelligent Design has remained scientifically vacuous.
Korthof reviews Behe
Either Design or Common Descent
Michael Behe (2007) The Edge of Evolution. The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, Free Press.
Review by Gert Korthof, 22 July 2007
Common Descent is based on genetic continuity in the history of life on earth. Design, according to Michael Behe, is based on genetic discontinuities in the Tree of Life. Therefore, Design and Common Descent are not compatible. Make your choice: it is either Design or Common Descent. Contrary to Behe, both cannot be true.
Prisoners of the prisoner’s dilemma
In Games, an Insight Into the Rules of Evolution
The most confusing thing about Neo-Darwinism is the appearance of apparent rigor in pop gen and now evolutionary dynamics. Read the rest of this entry »
Phil Gasper and the idiot pseudo-left
ISR Issue 54, July–August 2007
——————————————————————————–
CRITICAL THINKING
Darwin’s dangerous ideas
Why evolutionary biology creates a problem for the Right
By PHIL GASPER
Phil Gasper should know better, and I am SURE he does know better, but can’t avoid the party line here of the so-called left on Darwinism.
It is hard to believe that he will end up actually losing an argument to Larry Arnhart.
Read the rest of this entry »
Behe on arms races
Far and away the most extensive relevant data we have on the subject of evolution’s effects on competing organisms is that accumulated on interactions between humans and our parasites. As with the example of malaria, the data show trench warfare, with acts of desperate destruction, not arms races, with mutual improvements. The thrust and parry of human-malaria evolution did not build anything–it only destroyed things. Jettisoning G6PD wrecks, it does not construct. Throwing away band 3 protein does likewise…The arms race metaphor itself is misconceived…Real arms races are run by highly intelligent, bespectacled engineers in glass offices thoughtfully designing shiny weapons on modern computers. But there’s no thinking in the mud and cold of nature’s trenches…In its real war with malaria, the human genome has only diminished.
07.30.07
ID, theism, and Buddhism
James comments on “ID gang worried about Buddhism”.
Buddhism is unique in the degree to which it has maintained a consistent tradition, but those days may be passing. With Hinduism, the history of the influence of theism on its doctrines is a somber one. Perhaps that influence is only on the surface, or in the minds of non-Indian intellectuals (if you can worship Shiva in a multitude of Hindu temples it hardly seems to run very deep), but it is there, and quite insidious. For example, the Yoga Sutras in one version came out under the title How To Know God, but as one Indian scholar points out (See the material on The Quest For The Historical Gita at history-and-evolution.com) the god reference in the sutras is a later interpolation!
I don’t speak here either as a theist, atheist, or agnostic. I try to stay ‘fluid’ beyond these categories, which devolves to a kind of ‘de facto’ atheism, i.e. the term ‘god’ has been hijacked by multiple religious bandits and is effectively unusable, leaving one simply struck dumb.
I don’t wish to devalue Chopra but it seems that the blend of theism and Indian religion produces a kind of inscrutable pantheistic ‘feeling god’ mixed with tidbits of yogic lore and spaced out quantum mechanics.
The instincts of the Darwinists are in a way understandable given this set of historical facts (which never makes it into the history books) because it shows how the steady pressure of obsessive theists (over not just decades, but centuries) can slowly but surely erode traditions by creating false hybrids.
The Dawkins cult
The Out Campaign
by Richard Dawkins
In the dark days of 1940, the pre-Vichy French government was warned by its generals “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” After the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill growled his response: “Some chicken; some neck!” Today, the bestselling books of ‘The New Atheism’ are disparaged, by those who desperately wish to downplay their impact, as “Only preaching to the choir.”
That’s a pretty dubious analogy, and a cheap shot to compare you philosophic foes with Nazis.
But, OK, don’t underestimate the rise of the New Atheism. To me, the problem is that the concoction might actually succeed because of its superficiality, even as it drives away a whole spectrum of ‘non-theists’ who don’t care to be railroaded into this house of cards based on Dawkins’ dishonest Darwin deceptions, and the rest of the biological/reductionist pablum that is made to prop up this curious new ‘cult’.
Recognizing life
If we encountered alien life, would we recognize it? I don’t mean large, ambulatory, tentacle-snapping organisms with eyeballs on the ends of stalks. Those are always obvious. I’m talking about the low-key, chilled-out microscopic life-forms that might be lurking below the surface of Mars, or beneath the crust of one of Jupiter’s jumbo moons, or in some such exotic, slightly scuzzy planetary environment where you’d definitely never find a Starbucks.
What are we looking for, exactly, when we search for alien life? What is life?
Sea level
From Rad-Green
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19526141.600-huge-sea-level-rises-are-coming–unless-we-act-now.html
or http://tinyurl.com/yq922u (NewScientist)
Special Report Earth
Huge sea level rises are coming - unless we act now
Read the rest of this entry »
Darwin thugs muscle in on moral philosophy
Primates and Philosophers
How Morality Evolved
by Frans de Waal, Robert Wright, Christine M. Korsgaard, Philip Kitcher, Peter Singer
Princeton University Press, 2006
Review by Viorel Zaicu, Ph.D. on Jul 24th 2007
Volume: 11, Number: 30
Current Darwinian science has no real explanation for morality, or any real data on how it evolved.
The one great clue, the Axial Age, has been suppressed from public awareness, or neutered by hatchet ladies like Karen Armstrong.
Don’t succumb to the ’scientism/Darwinism’ snowjob on morality. Read the rest of this entry »
Liberal duped by Darwinism
A self-quote from Ross Douthat: The Right’s “Science” Problem
Liberals will indeed profit in the short run from the perception that Darwin critics are fundamentalists, but in the end the job of critiquing Social Darwinism/Classical Liberalism is a liberal duty, one being shirked by the concession to Darwin propaganda and the loudmouthing of pseudo-liberals like Dawkins or Pharyngula. Read the rest of this entry »