04.30.08
Posted in Evolution at 7:28 pm by nemo
Berlinski: The Scientific Embrace of Atheism
Why shouldn’t the scientific community find atheism so attractive a doctrine? It is only sensible for scientists to suggest aggressively that no power exceeds their own.
It is entirely apt to point out that many of the early modern, indeed, nineteenth century, scientists were not atheists. And it is entirely right for that and other reasons to challenge the recent attempts to ‘atheize science’.
On the other hand there is nothing particulary wrong with atheist science, save only that the immediate temptation arises (and arose with Darwin) to suggest that the findings of science/evolution not only justify but logically legitimate atheism.
At the point it is worth reviewing the history of emergent secularism in the version of the philosopher Kant whose ‘critiques of reason’ began with an implicit warning of just this kind of outcome. His critique was not solely of rationalist metaphysics, but of the ‘empiricism’ of the scientists. It seems like overshoot and undershoot. Metaphysics detected in the high end is replaced with metaphysics undetected on the low end. And the stance of scientism is indeed on of a concealed metaphysics, yielding finally one of its notable instances: atheism itself, taken as a science, to disguise its metaphysical character. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in 1848+ at 6:36 pm by nemo
China’s powerful weakness
Beijing’s reach isn’t big enough to stop local governments from abusing the rights of ordinary citizens.
What? Is Fukuyama going to exempt China from the end of history?
His analysis seems suspicious, another neoliberal sleight of hand. China needs democracy, period.
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Posted in The Axial Age, The Eonic Effect at 6:27 pm by nemo
Modernism and the ‘lure of heresy’
Peter Gay’s authoritative and lively history of the modernists captures their personalities and heretical approach. But it fails to place them in their profound historical context.
by Tim Black Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Booknotes at 5:57 pm by nemo
Evidence and Evolution
The Logic Behind the Science
Elliott Sober
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Hardback (ISBN-13: 9780521871884)
Also available in Paperback
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Posted in Science & Religion at 3:02 pm by nemo
How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?
by Peter McKnight
Reposted from: Dawkins site
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=8a47c504-1b56-4492-805d-90f427e20422
Author of The God Delusion in person is a lot more open-minded than his critics would have you believe.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Science & Religion at 3:01 pm by nemo
Bill Good Interviews Richard Dawkins
CKNW Vancouver
For more information go to: http://www.cknw.com/
Date: Monday, April 28, 2008 at 09:00 AM
The Bill Good Show CKNW News Talk Radio AM980
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Posted in Evolution at 2:58 pm by nemo
Reconstructing Oetzi’s, The Neolithic Man Family Tree with 454 Sequencing Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Tibet at 2:52 pm by nemo
Tibet Sign Costs Climber Everest Trek
Va. Man Finds Politics Don’t Play on World’s Highest Peak
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Tibet at 2:50 pm by nemo
WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – The White House on Wednesday expressed concern about a Chinese court’s jailing of 30 people for their roles in Tibet’s deadly riots, which triggered anti-China protests across the globe ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Tibet at 2:48 pm by nemo
Activists: China persecuting Buddhist monks in Tibet
By TINI TRAN – 3 hours ago
BEIJING (AP) — China has stepped up persecution of Buddhist monks with mass detentions, Tibet activists said Wednesday, as China prepares to take the Olympic torch to the top of Mount Everest.
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Posted in Tibet at 2:45 pm by nemo
Olympic run
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:40 pm by nemo
Distant Echoes of Vietnam
The Day I Lost My Innocence
By WILLIAM P. O’CONNOR
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:38 pm by nemo
New study shows why the brain drains so much of the body’s energy
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-the-brain-need-s
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:38 pm by nemo
Humans alone practice religion because they’re the only creatures to
have evolved imagination.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13782-religion-a-figment-of-human-imagination.html
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:37 pm by nemo
SciftP
White House undermines EPA on cancer risks, GAO says
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:35 pm by nemo
The RAND Corporation: America’s University of Imperialism
By Chalmers Johnson, Tomdispatch.com. Posted April 30, 2008.
For decades these self-professed saviors of the Western world helped precipitate U.S. foreign policy disasters like the Vietnam War.
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:33 pm by nemo
From R-G
Raising Climate Fears
by Elisabeth Rosenthal
At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon
emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s
major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant
here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:30 pm by nemo
_______________________________
UPDATE FROM THE
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
http://electronicIntifada.net
__________ Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:29 pm by nemo
From R-G
Wealthy nations fuelling unrest
Susan Walsh and Wilhelmina Pelegrina
Citizen Special
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=2771fe97-7c21-4dad-81ad-97633ac0f019&sponsor=
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:26 pm by nemo
From R-G
Times April 29, 2008
Ex-prosecutor tells of push by Pentagon on detainees
By William Glaberson
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba The former chief prosecutor here took the witness
stand on Monday on behalf of a detainee and testified that top
Pentagon officials had pressured him in deciding which cases to
prosecute and what evidence to use. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:25 pm by nemo
From R-G
We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:23 pm by nemo
From R-G
Wildlife group complained years before ducks got stuck in Alta. oilsands
waste
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 | 11:48 AM MT CBC News
A wildlife group says it predicted problems years before hundreds of
migrating ducks were found dead and dying this week in a pond of toxic
residue at a Syncrude oilsands plant in northern Alberta.
Read the rest of this entry »
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04.29.08
Posted in Evolution at 3:22 pm by nemo
John Derbyshire at National Review can’t take Expelled: Can I expell Expelled?.
Derbyshire is going off the deep end on this. ID may bug Darwinists but it can’t be the epitome of evil. It seems doubtful to me, you know. Kant noted that the design argument deserved our respect–before he exposed its difficulties.
If Darwinists can’t get their act together, then religion just defaults backward to its primordial way of thinking.
And I am not a supporter of ID and find it as confusingly misleading as–well, as Darwinism.
As to being a ‘blood libel’ against science, I fear this usage does not compute, and I think victims of the Holocaust should take due note of the consideration of Darwin (yes, Darwin) and Darwinism’s complicity in Social Darwinist outcomes.
As to Derbyshire’s hallelujah about science and (western??) civilization, best to cut the grease a little.
I like science too, but with Darwinism the reputation of science is going critical because for all its vaunted prowess it cannot grasp the problem here.
Let the record show that muddled religionists were drawn into this dialectic to point out the problem science is having here and from which it can’t extricate itself.
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Posted in Science & Religion at 2:38 pm by nemo
For all Dawkins‘s claims of being open-minded, he ends up coming across as a smug ideologue — devoted to the civil religion of “scientism,” the faith that science will eventually answer all questions and the only truths are those that can be verified in a laboratory. One of the big rhetorical mistakes he makes is to focus almost exclusively on the bad aspects of religion, creating a caricature of it. If Dawkins wanted a real dialogue, he would compare the best of religion with the best of science, or maybe the worst with the worst.
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:29 pm by nemo
From R-G
Ha’aretz April 25, 2008
Another kiss of death
By M.J. Rosenberg
For American Jews like me, for whom Israel is central in their lives,
this week’s story about an alleged spy who worked for Israel in the
U.S. two decades ago is another kiss of death. That is because more
ugly headlines about Israel – worst of all about an American spying
for it – only contribute to the indifference to the Jewish state that
seems to be growing every day. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Tibet at 2:27 pm by nemo
From Australia
AS THE faintly absurd Olympic torch relay looks likely to fall off the lead-up agenda for future Games, China’s inability to conduct itself appropriately as a major world power has been starkly exposed. The error is less in the knee-jerk reactions to the most recent events in Tibet, but in the policy foundations and power plays that underlie them.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Tibet at 2:23 pm by nemo
Everest torch silence breeds frustration
EVEREST BASE CAMP (Reuters) – Sub-zero temperatures and altitude sickness were bad enough, but a lack of information about just when a special Olympic flame would start up Mount Everest made journalists doubly miserable at Base Camp on Tuesday.
More than 24 hours after arriving at the foot of the world’s highest mountain, 10 foreign and 19 Chinese journalists had no clearer idea of when the assault on the summit from Tibet would begin, if it had not already.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Tibet at 2:20 pm by nemo
Anger over Dalai Lama film
5:00AM Wednesday April 30, 2008
By Lincoln Tan
A Chinese documentary series aimed at promoting China to New Zealanders has been slammed as “irresponsible” and “worthless communist propaganda” by pro-Tibet groups.
Read the rest of this entry »
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