History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
RG mail
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/07/capitalism-sarah-palin-style
Capitalism, Sarah Palin-style
By Naomi Klein – July 29th, 2009
[Adapted from a speech on May 2, 2009 at The Progressive’s 100th
anniversary conference and originally printed in The Progressive magazine,
August 2009 issue]
Stream and Sequence: The ‘Axial’ Transitions
The question of religion and the Axial Age is entirely complex and the reason this blog is so hostile to Karen Armstrong is that she clearly, with dishonest intent, attempted to smear over that complexity, erase or ignore the evidence of planetary action in some kind of ‘higher power’ and throw everything into a sausage machine called the ‘Axial ethos’ when in fact the Axial Age shows an immense diversity, almost the whole point of the Axial period.
Just at the point that an insight into the Axial phenomenon was becoming public knowledge Armstrong consciously or unconsciously kicked up dust on the question to reconfuse everything.
Steve Fuller on Karen Armstrong
Steve Fuller reviews Armstrong’s The Case For God (which appears to be out in UK).
I haven’t read Armstrong’s book, but let me guess: it is the same crap recycled that we have critiqued here a dozen times: the crypto-postmodern attack on the Enlightenment, the crypto-second-axial-age crap about restoring religion in an age of scientism, etc, etc,….
I sent Fuller a pdf of World History And The Eonic Effect, btw, (and never even got a reply) a book that resolves the many confusions that Armstrong has created in her disorderly romp through religion, the Axial Age, and the nature of modernity. It is a book far more deserving of review. My point: why on earth is Fuller fixated on ID, now Armstrong, and the rest of it? The study of the eonic effect outdoes Armstrong’s pathetic idiocy five times over. I mention it, because her book on the Axial Age came out suspiciously in the wake of the first edition of WHEE and succeeded in neutralizing the whole idea with a totally false set of interpretations of religion, and the Axial Age. She doesn’t deserve the rubric of religious expert.
So I must conclude that Fuller is another idiot, something I have long suspected.
Both Eagleton and Fuller have suffered postmodern brain damage, a terminal condition that results in the kind of retrograde religion mania that we see in Fuller’s defense of ID.
To Mr. Fuller, I reiterate: WHEE can clarify many of the issues of religion currently being obscured by all parties on the subject, from Wright to Armstrong.
Check it out.
He won’t, of course, so I mention it just for record.
If everyone is so interested in religion, check out Buddhism.
You can renounce samsara, embrace a vow of poverty, and few other virtues, and go one up on the Dalai lama: meditate ten hours a day instead of merely two.
Whatever you do, don’t read Armstrong on Buddhism, for your own sake, PULEEZE.
The discussion today of man’s early evolution is a reminder of the fact that ancient homo sapiens reached a kind of plateau and has remained roughly the same every since, and that inclues us in our present cultural condition, with our incomprehension and confusion over simple things, like the definition of ‘magic’.
Thus, in any case, the relationship of history and evolution as depicted in World History and The Eonic Effect is not intuitive at first sight, because we differentiate evolution and history with an imagined boundary. But in fact the two overlap:
History And Evolution
Historical research has greatly expanded our knowledge of world history, and the result is an unexpected discovery: that of a process of universal history in the action of a mysterious dynamic generating a non-random pattern. We call this the eonic effect. Further, the scale of this process is such that we can only call it ‘evolution’. Thus, for the first time we can detect the unmistakable evidence of non-random evolution, and this in world history itself. This leaves us with the question, What is evolution? And this forces another, long overdue, What is the relationship between history and evolution? This could be recast as the paradoxical question, When did evolution stop and history begin?
A moment’s reflection will tell us that no instantaneous passage between the two is plausible and that our terms have been left ragged. We must, by this logic, be able to detect a Transition between evolution and history. Can we find evidence to match this deduction? Indeed, we can, our non-random pattern, the eonic effect. In fact we can say more: if we apply that same logic to our Transition we should expect it to take the form of a series of transitions in an alternation between evolution and history, as if overlayed, the one emerging from the other. The eonic effect shows just this property of transitions in a series. Have we reached the end of the Great Transition? If not, then our evolution still constitutes our present and future. We should ask who man is, with such wisdom as would constitute achievement of the title, homo sapiens.
Human evolution a gaian process?
Today’s post on Gaia and evolution cited Michael Ruse (at the link given), but that discussion derailed completely, due to the confusion over the meaning of Gaia: the idea of the planet as some kind of ‘organism’ is meaningless and produces an understandable rejection of the whole idea.
Since we also cited J. G. Bennett today it is significant to recall several posts here on his more comprehensive distinction of ‘being, function, will’.
Along with his distinction of planet (earth) and biosphere, two different entities.
The point is that the combination of ‘being, will, and function’ are infinite and complex and the results might not be an ‘organism’.
It is a lost cause to pursue all this, but it is important to be wary of the use of the term ‘Gaia’ since it is taken by some to imply that the planet earth is an ‘organism’ and idea that is a bit hard to deal with!
gnxp
Why did we humans evolve such big brains? Two new studies suggest it is no fluke that a big boom in brain size coincided with the onset of an ice age
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327194.000-did-an-ice-age-boost-human-brain-size.html
sciftp
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraq-dust30-2009jul30,0,815336.story?track=rss
Iraq in throes of environmental catastrophe, experts say
Now-frequent dust storms are just one sign of the man-made damage that has taken the country from Middle East breadbasket to dust bowl, they say.
Man, evolution, and magic
We have cited today Robert Wright’s naive, if not arrogant, attempt to dismiss shamanism. Not so fast, I would say.
As it happens we are proceeding at a critical examination of the thinker J.G. Bennett at The Gurdjieff Con. Bennett’s The Dramatic Universe contains an amusing passage on the origins of magic.
As a fairly extreme New Age critic of Darwinism, Bennett’s view of human evolution would strike most as science fiction at this point, and I am not endorsing those views: they are a unique and exotic brand of the ‘intelligent design’ arugment, only this time the ‘designer’ is a ‘demiurgic world power’ who manifests in relation to human evolution to guide that. Pretty exotic stuff, but the point for me (I am after all trying to rescue some New Agers from the snares of this and other characters) is that, as Bennett amusingly notes, why on earth would anyone make up the idea of magic, if it was false? Now, in fact, some might do so, and we can, by reviewing the history here easily detect the parts that are made up and the parts that might ring true.
Bennett’s point is that we see magic in decline, shamanism in decline, and can make no sense of it. Most of all almost noone has ever seen a ‘magician’, thus making it seem plausible that the whole thing is imaginary.
With Bennett, it is caveat lector. But then the same is true of Darwin dummies, who are uniquely ignorant in their boobhood.
All authorities agree that magic was the earliest cultural agent in human life: but no one can explain how magic started. It is simply ridiculous to suggest that the thought of claiming magical powers popped into the mind of some gifted Neanderthal youngster. One must make a determined effort to visualize the situation. Hunters are notoriously superstitious: why not Neanderthal hunters? Why should they not have had, spontaneously, notions of sympathetic magic and only later have looked among themselves for a suitable operator to perform the rites. Again, this is obvious nonsense. It is totally impossible to picture the origin of magic except through some deliberate action of a man who knew what he was doing and why.
Wright’s article is a bit pompous, to say the least. And completely unscientific.
The fact is that we know almost nothing about the origins of shamanism, and the current versions of it are no indication. The traditions outstanding that we find in, say, Eskimo culture are also not likely to be any good indication. The traditions of the original shamanism undoubtedly declined severely, and have lost their connection to their sources, whatever those were.
What is Mr. Wright presuming to say??
1. He thinks ‘magic’ is always bogus and that shamanism is thus bogus (uh oh, scientism crap out)
2. (unlikely) He thinks ‘magic’ is sometimes real, and that the records of it demonstrate at most, and at best, a vague memory of the reality now forgotten…
There are a number of variant hypotheses here. But the key issue is: is magic always bogus??? Clearly not, and anyone raised in scientism is going to crap out completely here.
World History and the Eonic Effect has an extensive set of critiques of New Age confusion, New Ages is the start page, continue with the subsequence continuations.
Do Shamans Have More Sex?New Age spirituality is no more pure than old-time religion.
By Robert Wright
Posted Wednesday, July 29, 2009, at 1:59 PM ET
Wouldn’t it be great to be back in hunter-gatherer days? Back before the human spiritual quest had been corrupted by the “relentless onslaught of Western scientific materialism” and “dogmatic male-dominated religion”? Back when there were shamans—spiritual leaders—who could plug us into “the realm of the magical,” show us “the reality behind apparent reality,” and thus lead us to understand “how the universe really works”?
The quotes come from Leo Rutherford, a leading advocate of neo-shamanism, which is a subset of neo-paganism, which is a subset of New Age spirituality. But the basic idea—that there was a golden age of spiritual purity which we fallen moderns need to recover—goes beyond New Age circles. You see traces of it even in such serious scholars as Karen Armstrong, who wrote in A History of God that early Abrahamic religion had created a gulf “between humanity and the divine, rupturing the holistic vision of paganism.”
As the author of the just-published book The Evolution of God, about the history of religion, I’m primed to do some debunking. But before I start, I want to stress two points: 1) I think it’s great for people to find spiritual peace and sound moral orientation wherever they can, including neo-paganism; 2) I don’t doubt that back before Western monotheism took shape there were earnest seekers of a “holistic vision” who selflessly sought to share that vision.
When it comes to debunking New Age religion, I think few can compete with ‘me’ (nemo at Darwiniana!), so it is not in the name of some agenda that I find Wright’s attempt to debunk ‘New Age religion’ a little bit naive, not to say ridiculous.
The question of shamanism is very complex, but it is not the same as the issue of New Age ‘religion’.
The psychic archaeology of the shaman is simply unknown to us.
The roots of the ‘New Age’ movement are much clearer, and go back to the Axial Age, and before.
To take a pot shot at shamanism in the name of debunking New Age religion is a bit outrageous.
We are talking about the immense complexities of Hinduism/Buddhism/Sufism, and much else.
Wright, most probably, has zero knowledge of these traditions but wishes to insinuate instead, on the way to his great secular vision.
Trash. Why do these hypester journalists get so much press, and those with some knowledge here nothing at all?
Let’s issue a challenge: screw up the courage to mention, that’s it, just mention, the tradition of ‘enlightenment’ in, say, Buddhism.
Note how these propagandists almost dare not do that little bit: it raises difficult questions they certainly can’t answer!!!
The evidence for a global process of evolution (Gaia, as in last post) is almost overwhelming, especially looking at the Axia Age, which scientists are suppressing from public awareness (small wonder): Mysterious Drumbeat
Gaia in the Light of Modern Science
Matt Manley for the Chronicle
Enlarge Photo Matt Manley for the Chronicle
By Michael Ruse
Ruse’s discussion is totally off the mark, as is that of Lovelock, for that matter.
Looking at the eonic effect we can see that human evolution is probably a ‘Gaian global process’.
A Gaian Matrix: The Need For A Global Model
As long as Ruse is stuck on Darwin he is talking hot air.
Edward Slingerland begins What Science Offers the Humanities
with the statement that ‘it is something of a commonplace these days that the humanities are facing a crisis’ (p. 1). As the remainder of the book makes clear, Slingerland agrees with that view: ‘Enrollments in the humanities are down, funding levels from external agencies have fallen, and the work of humanists themselves has become increasingly insular and unrelated to the normal canons of intelligibility’ (p. 2). Students motivated by love of art, literature or language are put off the academic study of these fields by militant theoretical indoctrination; humanities academics are locked into self-perpetuating games of linguistic theorization that have no engagement with the real world; the humanities have shut themselves away both from the world of everyday life and the realm of other disciplines of human knowledge, above all the natural sciences. Why is this, and what is to be done?
As the summary above suggests, the opening sections of the book might seem to give the impression that postmodernism is the destructive force to blame for the decline of the humanities. Postmodernism, though, is for Slingerland a symptom of the disease rather than the disease itself. The ailment afflicting the humanities is dualism, the conviction that there are minds and there are bodies – which leads to the conviction that the world of human meaning is separate from the world of existing reality, and must be approached in a different way and studied using different tools. It is this conviction that has led to the humanities turning their backs on the one way forward for their disciplines that would lead them out of their current morass of meaninglessness and irrelevance: an acceptance of the unity of human knowledge, which would mean a union with the natural sciences.
This review makes unbelievable reading. Scientism is killing off the humanties, and these folks think science can help!
RG mail
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6255
Foreign Policy in Focus July 13, 2009
Robert McNamara’s Second Vietnam
Walden Bello
The stylized view of Robert McNamara, who passed away a few days ago, is that after serving as the chief engineer of the disastrous US war in Vietnam, he went on, in 1968, to serve as president of the World Bank, seeking to salve his troubled conscience by delivering development assistance to poor countries. The reality is, as usual, more complex.
DEVELOPMENT FROM ABOVE? As president of the Bank, the world’s premier channel for multilateral aid, McNamara did quadruple the institution’s lending portfolio to $12 billion. The key beneficiaries, however, were authoritarian dictatorships. Indeed, the rise to hegemony of authoritarian regimes in the developing world cannot be separated from the massive funding that the World Bank under McNamara provided them. By the late seventies, five of the top seven recipients of World Bank aid were military, presidential-military, or military-controlled regimes: Indonesia, Brazil, South Korea, Turkey, and the Philippines.
RG mail
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22146
Disarm Israel
A Utopia or a Vision for Peace By Ilan Pappe
Billy Connolly on Catholicism and Sarah Palin
TroisVitesse – YouTube
from Dawkins site
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH40zaUxTTE&feature=channel_page
Billy Connolly interviewed by his wife Dr Pamela Connolly for More4′s ‘Shrink Rap’, 10pm 13/12/08
from Dawkins site
RDF TV – Vestigial Organs: The Wings of the Flightless Cormorant – Galapagos Vignette #1
Richard Dawkins, Josh Timonen
Microbe Evolution Gets a Push
By Robert F. Service
Improved DNA sequencing technology is making reading genomes faster and cheaper every day. But modifying genes in microbes and other organisms still requires slow and painstaking effort. Now, researchers report that they’ve come up with a new way to modify the genomes of billions of microbes simultaneously and then finger the ones with the most interesting changes. Because the technique will likely work with most types of genomes, it could turbocharge efforts to engineer microbes to produce everything from novel therapeutic drugs to vast quantities of biofuels.
Adult Brain Can Change Within Seconds
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2009) — The human brain can adapt to changing demands even in adulthood, but MIT neuroscientists have now found evidence of it changing with unsuspected speed. Their findings suggest that the brain has a network of silent connections that underlie its plasticity.
Discovery Of Elephants’ Oldest Known Relative
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2009) — Emmanuel Gheerbrant, paleontologist at the Paris Museum (1), discovered one of the oldest modern ungulates related to the elephant order.
Study Catches Two Bird Populations As They Split Into Separate Species
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2009) — A new study finds that a change in a single gene has sent two closely related bird populations on their way to becoming two distinct species. The study, published in the August issue of the American Naturalist, is one of only a few to investigate the specific genetic changes that drive two populations toward speciation.
Bizarre Walking Bat Has Ancient Heritage
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2009) — A bizarre New Zealand bat that is as much at home walking four-legged on the ground as winging through the air had an Australian ancestor 20 million years ago with the same rare ability, a new study has found.
Jellyfish And Other Small Sea Creatures Linked To Large-scale Ocean Mixing
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2009) — Using a combination of theoretical modeling, energy calculations, and field observations, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have for the first time described a mechanism that explains how some of the ocean’s tiniest swimming animals can have a huge impact on large-scale ocean mixing.
Published on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Pentagon Propaganda Gets a Pass
by Diane Farsetta
Is there a difference between covert propaganda and secretive campaigns to shape public opinion on controversial issues? The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) apparently thinks that there is.
Published on Thursday, July 30, 2009 by The Times Online/UK
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair to Be Star Witness as Iraq Inquiry Launched
Published on Thursday, July 30, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Are Liberal Netroots Groups Helping Obama Fail?
by Jeff Cohen
Global Poll Finds 73% Want Higher Priority for Climate Change
Britons among the most enthusiastic about action to stop global warming, while Americans among least willing to put environment first, according to global public opinion poll
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