Petras on Morris in the Times
RG mail
The New York Times: Making Nuclear Extermination Respectable
James Petras
July 2008
On July 18, 2008 The New York Times published an article by
Israeli-Jewish historian, Professor Benny Morris, advocating an
Israeli nuclear-genocidal attack on Iran with the likelihood of
killing 70 million Iranians 12 times the number of Jewish victims in
the Nazi holocaust: Read the rest of this entry »
Myers’ review of Ken Miller
The creationist controversy
PZ Myers
BOOK REVIEWED
-Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul
by Kenneth R. Miller
Viking: 2008. 256 pp. $25.95
Myers’ review doesn’t square with the facts and is the usual nonsense from the Darwin establishment. Exactly why the fundamentalists are stronger in America, and critical of evolution, remains to be explained, no doubt, but the arrogant assumption here that the science orgs have the ultimate truth on evolution suggests they got the enemy they deserve. Our educational institutions are producing Darwin bigots like Myers whose dogmatism is generating its own countermovement. Parents are sick of the way the schools are indoctrinating their children with Darwin propaganda. The solution is not creationism or intelligent design, but the gesture of simple scientific honesty: ‘we don’t know’. Science still doesn’t have an adequate theory of evolution, and the pretense otherwise gets, and deserves, its own opposition.
Myers is the new type of academic ‘adolescent’ Darwinist who uses loudmouthing, insults, and ad hominem denigration instead of ‘reason’ to intimidate their opponents, especially those in the academic sphere who might proceed with some intelligent review of Darwinism.
The public is under no obligation to accept either this kind of stupidity in the name of science, or the flawed and ideological theory of natural selection that passes for the final answer to all questions on reality by the current generation of scientists with their brain in a box. It is unfortunate, but not surprising that a cultural underground is in revolt against this regime.
Devil in Dover: Alternet on Darwin debate
Despite Overwhelming Evidence, Creationists Cling to Unreality
By Nathan Schneider, AlterNet. Posted July 31, 2008.
Battling creationists will not fix science education. Teaching science will.
An interesting article at Alternet, ironic after yesterday’s post, and here is a comment I left at the article:
Why is the liberal blogosphere filled with Darwin dummies?
Posted by: nemonemini on Jul 31, 2008 6:28 AMWhile holding no brief for creationists, the fact remains that the Dover trial was a triumph of Darwin propaganda against the bungling of the creationists. Let us grant the questions of church and state and the inevitability of the ruling on constitutional grounds. But the fact remains that Darwinism is flawed and violent pseudo-theory serving the ideology of powerful establishments and the parents of many children are sick of it being promoted as ’science’, especially in the legal system. The judge at the trial did a lot of playing to the gallery and in the commotion a simple point was lost: a team of quibling lawyers such as we saw could just as well expose the flaws in Darwinian selectionist theory, twice before breakfast, but instead were given the chance to throw the whole weight of ridicule onto the creationists. We deserve to have ‘Darwin on Trial’ and didn’t get it.
The liberal blogosphere has been brainwashed here and a little of investigative journalism might help on this issue, to expose the falseness of the Darwinian paradigm domination. Forget the creationists for a moment, and set the house of science in order.
Comment from author of the article:
Nathan Schneider said,
July 31, 2008 at 8:52 am ·
You might be interested in an article of mine, a review of Lauri Lebo’s “The Devil in Dover,” which is an excellent book about the Dover “monkey” trial. The review appeared in today’s edition of AlterNet. I’m always eager for feedback, so I’d love to hear from you about the piece. And if you choose to mention my article on Darwiniana please let me know so I can take a look.
On AlterNet:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/93188/despite_overwhelming_evidence%2C_creationists_cling_to_unreality/?page=entireSome reflections on the article on my blog, The Row Boat:
http://www.therowboat.com/2008/07/can-creationism-go-on-forever/
Stan Salthe essay on natural selection and complexity
Obama and Tibet
US presidential hopeful Obama says backs “people of Tibet”5 hours ago
DHARAMSHALA, India (AFP) — US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has sent a letter to the Dalai Lama backing the rights of the “people of Tibet,” a spokesman for the exiled Buddhist spiritual leader said.
Citizens of the World
Citizens of the World
by Robert C. Koehler
What a surprising burst of hope I felt, looking at the photo in the newspaper the next day: Barack Obama stands before 200,000 Berliners and addresses them as a “fellow citizen of the world.”
It may be premature, but I’m announcing it anyway: We’ve repealed the Bush Doctrine. There’s no turning back.
Hope has the staying power of fireworks, of course. Oooh, ahhh, and it’s over. But, “This mesh of private vision and historical change is mysterious,” writes Deepak Chopra. Obama is a politician with mostly short-term calculations to make, including how to align himself with the economic interests of oil and war and project enough reckless militarism to claim a share of the fear vote.
But the surge of history his campaign summons contradicts all that. At last America and the world — and in some ways the election may mean more to those beyond our borders than to those complacently, smugly, fearfully within them — have a candidate who is awake, not dead, to the vision and passionate global desire for . . . peace. And by this term I do not mean the false, hellish “peace” wrested violently, and temporarily, by one part of the world from another.
A Global Election
‘It’s a Global Election’
by Amy Goodman
TALLINN, Estonia - When I arrived in Estonia last week — a former Soviet republic that lies just south of Finland — everyone had an opinion on Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin. The headline of the British Daily Telegraph we picked up in Finland blared “New Walls Must Not Divide Us,” with half-page photos of the American presidential candidate silhouetted against a sea of 200,000 people.
EI update
_______________________________
UPDATE FROM THE
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
http://electronicIntifada.net
__________________________ Read the rest of this entry »
Spencer
gnxp
How a libertarian individualist was recast as a social Darwinist
http://reason.com/news/show/127794.html
Work and play
gnxp
Experiments show that threats and rewards tend to destroy inner
drives. Paychecks and pink slips might be powerful reasons to get out
of bed each day, but they turn out to be surprisingly ineffective –
and even counterproductive — in getting people to perform best.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/27/AR2008072701440.html
Schizophrenia triggers
gnxp
Genome deletions raise chances of developing mental illness.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080730/full/news.2008.994.html
Sleep, age and memory
gnxp
Scientists may have uncovered why some people naturally lose their
ability to make new memories as they get older.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7528875.stm
Media Hyping Viagra for Women
sciftp mail
http://www.alternet.org/story/93226/
Media Hyping Viagra for Women for Drug Company Greed
Drugmaker Pfizer is claiming a new use for Viagra, which would conveniently treat the side effects of one of its other drugs.
By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet
Posted on July 31, 2008
When headlines from 500 news sources screamed Women Need Viagra Too! on the basis of a new JAMA study this month, it looked like more Viagra huckstering as usual.
Devil in Dover
sciftp mail
http://www.alternet.org/story/93188/
Despite Overwhelming Evidence, Creationists Cling to Unreality
By Nathan Schneider, AlterNet
Posted on July 31, 2008
The great Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin once wrote — or, rather, sighed — that “creationism is an American institution.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Myers in trouble again
Salon mail
What’s wrong with science as religion
Piercing a Communion wafer with a nail and throwing it in the garbage, as one crusading biologist recently did, does science no favors.
Tar sands PR
RG mail
Stepping up efforts to win over critics
Lobby Group
Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post Published: Thursday, July 31, 2008
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=690881
CALGARY - Faced with an unflattering image as a global environmental
disaster area, the oil sands sector is stepping up its offensive to
counteract critics.
Castro still a force
RG mail
Fidel Castro still a force, two years out of power
JEFF FRANKS
Reuter
July 30, 2008 at 11:09 AM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080730.wcastro0730/BNStory/International/home
HAVANA — The era of Fidel Castro appeared to be ending July 30, 2006,
when the ailing leader handed over power to his brother Raul Castro.
But two years later, he remains a force to be reckoned with in Cuba
and to some degree on the international scene.
07.30.08
Evolution that is non-genetic
More from the comment thread on Climbing Mt. Improbable: http://darwiniana.com/2008/07/24/more-on-mt-improbable/#comment-142556
Here is my reply:
nemo said,
July 30, 2008 at 9:24 pm ·
I don’t propose ’still another theory’. What I do is to look at history, and detect a form of evolution there, and then create a barrier against misappropriation of history by stupid science. I demonstrate a series of empirical issues that must be explained and I do this without proposing another theory. Quite the contrary, I bring in the issue of Kantian distinctions between phenomenon/noumenon to suggest that the process of real evolution is partially veiled from us beyond our representations.
This form of evolution has nothing to do with genetics, and therefore you statements about genetics are irrelevant. (and of course still of great interest).
The real evolution of man, at least, is something that Darwinists can’t conceive of in their current fixations.
The reason I find these discussions tiresome is that nothing Darwinists say is trustworthy, I must fact-check everything said, and that creates a backlog.
Meanwhile I have an independent ‘general exception’ to false generalizations,, the eonic effect.
I can ’see’ how evolution happens, in one instance, and it shows the existence of a ‘macro’ issue that Darwinists don’t evens suspect. How that would apply to other stages of evolution is not clear, exactly, but it is obvious suddenly that biologists are falling into a trap of equating the whole of evolution with one limited part, the other part being hard to observe.
This trap is very insidious, because it is hard to say how this macro factor would manifest in deep time. All I can say is that armed with a perception of the eonic effect I can say that selectionism is a delusion. Something is wrong somewhere.
Here is the book link since we are at it:
Darwin the first Social Darwinist
Spencer was no Social Darwinian, picks up on the Reason mag article cited here a few days ago.
I am all for taking a second look at Spencer, but he is not completely innocent. A third look would be appropriate. The point is not that he was a social darwinist, but that, along with Darwin, he stumbled into the confusion (really perpetrated by others) of biological and cultural evolution, a confusion still latent in the Darwinist paradigm.
Nor is Darwin exhonerated. In fact, he is the first Social Darwinist. It is no use denying this fact. Behind his classical liberalism lies an essentially conservative viewpoint with Malthusian overtones in the generation of his youth onward, with its debates over, say, the Reform Bill, etc… The bio by Desmond and Moore will set the matter straight.
It is impossible to exhonerate Darwin if we recall the truly horrific subtitle of his book. No use saying he was a sweet man. The damage proceeded apace from the word go.
Beyond that, Social Darwinism emerges from the theory of natural selection. You cannot escape Social Darwinism if you believe such a theory in the way that Darwin and then later Darwinists did.
Why is the liberal blogosphere filled with Darwin dummies?
Starting with Alternet, a site I enjoy visiting.
Christopher Hitchens Attacked by Creationists Over Salamanders
Creationists can be a nuisance, but the best defense is to get it straight, and Darwinists, here Hitchens and P.Z. Myers don’t get it straight.
The question of these salamanders is complex and design argument don’t help, I admit, but this case doesn’t constitute a refutation. You can’t fight pseudo-science with bad science concealed behind Myers-style ranting.
But more generally, while I have no objection to Alternet posting something from Myers for flavoring, I suspect something else, and I think this liberal online journal should be wary of adopting Myers as a mascot spokesmen for the loudmouthed Darwin gang.
Alternet routinely gets investigative reporters to expose hype, but in the case of evolution, they let a figure such as Myers be their mouthpiece (at least by tacit indirection, as I suspect).
Darwinism is NOT a liberal perspective, and the liberal blogosphere after a generation of neo-liberalism ought to be exposing the social darwinism that is implicit in that, a fact disguised by the fantasy liberalism of figures such as Myers.
It would take good investigative journalists less than a week to expose the Darwin fraud. So why don’t they do it, without getting confused by the red herring of conservative creationists being Darwin critics.
Either the left is going to expose Darwinian ideology, or the Bible Belt is going to do it.
The answer here of course is that, for some strange reason, leftists are terrified of appearing to be critics of Darwinism. They will get lambasted by the dog packs led by people like Myers.
That’s cowardice. And I suspect Alternet is caught up in that intimidation to the degree they let a sophmoric obsessive like Myers be their evolution spokesman.
How about a paradigm shift at Alternet, and some decent reporting on the evolution issue?
How about it? Before the end of the current century.
You can’t fail on such a vital issue and be a liberal rag. That simple.
If you can’t hack it, you fired. OK you guys at Alternet (and the rest of the liberal blogosphere)?
Literary Darwinism, the verdict, ‘crap’
UD’s O’Leary takes on Literary Darwinism: crap
The question of evolution and literature from a sociobiological angle is a useless fad, and bad science. But I recommend the study of the eonic effect, which brings together the idea of ‘evolution’, specially defined, and the emergence of art in world history, and there we can see that the correlation of art and evolutionary emergentism is actually quite exact, and something totally unexpected.
Since the article makes a point about the Iliad, consider the place and timing of Greek poetic phases in terms, first, of the Axial Age, then of the eonic effect.
Get the book! And get started.
Darwinists are pretty far off here. Not pretty! VERY far off.
Most popular posts for July
http://darwiniana.com/2006/01/31/confusion-over-axial-age/
http://darwiniana.com/2008/07/26/frank-on-right-wing-con-men/
http://darwiniana.com/2006/10/23/marilynne-robinson-on-dawkins/
http://darwiniana.com/2008/03/15/john-gray-atheist-delusion/
http://darwiniana.com/2005/12/23/darwins-baleful-influence/
http://www.darwiniana.com/2008/07/18/the-hunt-for-black-gold
http://darwiniana.com/2007/12/07/slavoj-zizek-and-hegelian-brain-damage/
http://darwiniana.com/2006/07/09/gurdjieff-comment-a-reply/
http://darwiniana.com/2008/07/01/evolution-a-muslim-perspective/
Note the surprising interest in the issue of the Axial Age. The post listed surpassed this month the frequent top post, Marilynne Robinson’s essay.
Below these in the list begin the vast number of Darwinism-posts which are the bread-and-butter mainstays of the blog with averages under a thousand reads a month.
Zizek on Tibet, a correction?
Daniel Miller: Slavoj Žižek’s newest book may cause readers to conclude that the superstar philosopher has misplaced his marbles.
In early June the Slovenian philosopher, self-proclaimed Stalinist and academic superstar Slavoj Žižek was roundly upbraided in the letters pages of the London Review of Books for the second time in a year. Last November, the provocation was his 1,700-word article declaiming the futility of nonviolent resistance and proclaiming the virtues of ruthless militarism. This time, it was a 1,200-word letter attacking Orientalist fantasies surrounding Tibet and defending the virtues of China’s civilizing mission there. Each occasion was a farce in three acts. In the first the audience was treated to a dive into unfamiliar waters. The second was dominated by Žižek suddenly finding himself out of his depth. And in the culminating third, we all took off our hats to the bathos of a man being carried away on his back, like a turtle with its legs waving in the air.
“I base my claim that Tibet before 1949 was an oppressive and corrupted feudal society,” Žižek would eventually say, “on by far the best and most extensive study of the Tibetan legal system, Rebecca Redwood French’s The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet (1995).” Yet “I am afraid that Professor Slavoj Žižek has misunderstood my book entirely,” Rebecca Redwood French would later tell me via e-mail. “I do not and have not ever represented Tibet pre-1949 as an oppressive and corrupted feudal society. On the contrary, I think that China’s current occupation of Tibet is colonial, oppressive and completely illegal under any national or international legal system.”
Bogus Darwinian views of language evolution
Language evolution topic at Scienceblogs
The question of language evolution has been totally distorted by Darwinian thinking, which assumes that it knows everything and rotely applies basic Darwinism to explain what is still a great mystery, as Noam Chomsky certainly indicated many years ago.
Darwinism simply strikes out on language evolution, and in any case can’t yet explain the phenomenon on its own terms.
It should be noted that the study of the eonic effect gives us a series of hints, because it shows the strong correlation of certain linguistic (poetic) phenomena with the eonic series, leaving us stunned by the complexity and subtlety of evolutionary emergence.
We are not required to be bullied by this ‘empty rhetoric’ about language evolution. Darwinists need to admit what they don’t know yet.