History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
Inequality, ‘Silver Spoon’ Effect Found In Ancient Societies
ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2009) — The so-called “silver spoon” effect — in which wealth is passed down from one generation to another — is well established in some of the world’s most ancient economies, according to an international study coordinated by a UC Davis anthropologist.
The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English
John McWhorter
In depicting the emergence of the world’s languages as a curse of gibberish, the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel makes us moderns smile. Yet, considering the headache that 6,000 languages can induce in real life, the story makes a certain sense.
Peter & Rosemary Grant—Natural Selection, Speciation, and Darwin’s Finches
How do we explain the diversity of species in the world? The core process is speciation, a splitting of a lineage into two divergent lines that at the end, cannot interbreed. What do we know about speciation in Darwin’s finches?
They evolved from a common ancestor in 2-3 million years into 14 different species, filling different ecological niches in the Galapagos, largely free of human interference. Showed us photos of four different species with very different beaks.
Maybe Darwin’s finches aren’t really examples of speciation?
The concept is somehow bungled by Darwinists: we cannot say that if we call the differentiation of Darwin’s finches speciation that speciation is then the same in all cases. Clearly in human evolution speciation is something much more complex, and still unknown.
Why is thought, being a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter? It is our arrogance, it is our admiration of ourselves…
— Charles Darwin, age 29, in his notebook
UD rightly scratches its head at this statement from Darwin. But he lived in the age of the coming of Positivism, and some of the more idiotic brands of materialism were, or just had, coming/come into being.
Having criticized this view, it is also true that ‘thought’ is a mystery to man as man, and no religious perspective has ever quite explained it either.
We should consider the ‘buddhist’ (or yogic) injunction to still our thoughts: while this cannot explain the nature of thought it does suggest that it status is ambiguously between the mechanical and the conscious (in case that helps).
by Chris Mooney – The Intersection
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/10/29/why-dawkins-gets-asked-about-his-atheism/
The Cost To the Planet of Fearing Science
by Jeff Glor – CBSNews.com
from dawkins site
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/28/blogs/authortalk/entry5442779.shtml
Nobel Laureate says God is ”Cruel, Spiteful, Vengeful, Jealous and Unbearable.”
by Mario de Queiroz – IPS
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48951
by Austin Dacey – The Washington Post
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/10/the_secularist_case_against_atheism_30.html
from dakwins site Read the rest of this entry »
Special Investigation – 20th Century Killers
NonStampCollector – YouTube
from dawkins site
On Bread Molds and Breakthroughs
Among bread molds, Neurospora is a virtual citadel.
Neurospora crassa is a species of bread mold that is so averse to variation that whenever a large segment of DNA gets duplicated-a critical step in genetic evolution-it bombards the copy with what are known as “point mutations” that effectively turn the genetic code into nonsense.
To be sure, the process works. Neurospora has relentlessly protected itself from variation. But hundreds of millions of years have gone by, and Neurospora is still, after all, only a bread mold. As biologist Olivia Judson delicately puts it, “Its use of mutations to defend its genome from variation may have inadvertently blocked off some evolutionary paths.”
Paradise Lost: The Religious Life of Charles Darwin
By Ravonne Green, Valdosta State Univ. Lib., GA — Library Journal,01/08/2008
Paradise Lost: The Religious Life of Charles Darwin. color. 49 min. David A. Wollert, Blank Slate Studios, 582 Carter Hill Rd., Piney Flats, TN 37686; 423-276-0704; david@blankslatestudios.com. 2007. $89; public performance $149. REL
Writer/director Wollert here reflects on Charles Darwin’s complex personality and his digression from his earlier years as an orthodox theist to his latter years as an agnostic. Darwin’s journal entries from the Beagle voyage affirmed his Christian orthodox views in a God that exists and is actively involved in His creation. Darwin wrote, “I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible.” But Darwin’s faith was deeply shaken when his ten-year-old daughter, Annie, died suddenly. He could not reconcile human suffering and catastrophic events with the God of the New Testament. He wrote about the inability of the human mind to comprehend God and was considered by many to be an atheist. However, he wrote, “I think that generally…but not always, that an agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.” Even though Darwin had difficulty understanding God, he paradoxically continued to support Christian causes such as shelters for alcoholics and missionary and evangelistic efforts of his day. There have been few people who have had a greater influence on the fields of science, theology, sociology, and philosophy than Charles Darwin. This DVD is exceptionally well done and would be an asset to any library collection.
Exclusive: Ray Comfort Defends His Creationist Edition of ‘On the Origin of Species’
October 29, 2009 06:30 PM ET | Dan Gilgoff | Permanent Link | Print
When I blogged recently about a new, pro-creationism edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species—complete with a rebuttal to the theory of evolution—the responses poured in. “I’m a little concerned,” the communications director for the National Center for Science Education wrote me in an E-mail, “that some stuff—such as Ray Comfort’s version of On the Origin of Species—gets coverage but no critical commentary.”
On the third day, someone made up God
by Rhys Howell Issue 907
54% of people want creationism taught in schools. This isn’t science. It is fiction.
A survey taken by polling company Ipsos Mori revealed on Monday that 54% of British adults think that Intelligent Design and creationism should be taught alongside evolution as science in school.
Firstly, there is no such thing as “Intelligent Design”. It is just creationism, except that you don’t say it was God. In 1987 a US court case Edwards v Aguilard ruled that creationism was unconstitutional to teach as science because it religion. So the creationists came up with the idea of Intelligent Design, and tried to shoehorn that into public school systems as well. In another court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in 2005, ruled that Intelligent Design was unconstitutional and just a “re-branding of creationism.”
Scientists Discover Influenza’s Achilles Heel: Antioxidants
ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2009) — As the nation copes with a shortage of vaccines for H1N1 influenza, a team of Alabama researchers have raised hopes that they have found an Achilles’ heel for all strains of the flu — antioxidants.
‘Moonlighting’ Molecules Discovered; Researchers Uncover New Kink In Gene Control
ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2009) — Since the completion of the human genome sequence, a question has baffled researchers studying gene control: How is it that humans, being far more complex than the lowly yeast, do not proportionally contain in our genome significantly more gene-control proteins?
Considering an Alternative Fuel for Nuclear Energy
Fermilab
A superconducting radio frequency cavity like the one above can be used to build an accelerator, which can then turn thorium into nuclear fuel.
Published: October 19, 2009
PARIS — For decades, scientists have dreamed about turning thorium — an element that is less radioactive and produces less nuclear waste than uranium — into an alternative fuel for nuclear energy. Recent technological developments may be bringing the dream closer to reality.
Published on Thursday, October 29, 2009 by BU Today (Massachussetts)
The Return of Howard Zinn, and Company
A packed house hears a left-wing critique of Obama
Published on Friday, October 30, 2009 by The Huffington Post
We Can’t Reform Health Care Without Reforming Foodby Bob Cesca
If and when health care reform finally passes, we will have successfully ameliorated only half of the crisis. The treatment half. The next step has to be focused upon doing something about the poisoned filth we’ve collectively nicknamed “food.” Without any real changes in how our food is produced, the health care system will continue to bloat and fall apart. Not unlike the insides of an average American body.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091116/suny
Empire Falls: The Revolutions of 1989
By Ronald Grigor Suny
Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire
by Victor Sebestyen
There Is No Freedom Without Bread!: 1989 and the Civil War That
Brought Down Communism
by Constantine Pleshakov
Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment
by Stephen Kotkin, with a contribution by Jan T. Gross
The end of the story was gruesome–a spray of bullets and a
splattering of blood on a wall in central Romania. On Christmas
Day 1989, after a hastily arranged trial before a kangaroo court,
the deposed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife,
Elena, were executed by a firing squad. The assembled soldiers,
eager to eliminate the despised dictator, were ordered not to aim
higher than his chest. The faces of the condemned had to be
recognizable after the fact. The country had to see that the
communist era was over.
RG mail
Scott Ritter’s Columns
McChrystal Doesn’t Get It—Does Obama?
By Scott Ritter
There is a curious phenomenon taking place in the American media at the moment: the lionization of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan. Although he has taken a few lumps for playing politics with the White House, McChrystal has generally been sold to the American public as a “Zen warrior,” a counterinsurgency genius who, if simply left to his own devices, will be able to radically transform the ongoing debacle that is Afghanistan into a noble victory that will rank as one of the greatest political and military triumphs of modern history. McChrystal’s resume and persona (a former commander of America’s special operations forces, a tireless athlete and a scholar) have been breathlessly celebrated in several interviews and articles. Reporters depict him as an ascetic soldier who spouts words of wisdom to rival Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad.
Glenn Beck’s Bizarre Outburst Against Meatless Mondays and Vegetarians
By Kerry Trueman, AlterNet. Posted October 28, 2009.
Cheap gas and cheap chuck remain American birthrights to loopy libertarians like Beck.
New Wrinkle In Ancient Ocean Chemistry
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2009) — Scientists widely accept that around 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere underwent a dramatic change when oxygen levels rose sharply. Called the “Great Oxidation Event” (GOE), the oxygen spike marks an important milestone in Earth’s history, the transformation from an oxygen-poor atmosphere to an oxygen-rich one paving the way for complex life to develop on the planet.
I have been attempting a critique of J.G. Bennett’s The Dramatic Universe, gave up, and proceeded to the endgame/last chapter, for a citation of his views on modernity. Bennett on modernity
Most will find this perspective a bit weird, but it is of interest because Bennett unwittingly contradicted the New Age anti-modernism of so many gurus and New Agers.
Please note, from the text of Intelligent Design, by W. Dembski, the extreme ‘postmodern’ anti-modernism of the ID movement.
One of the notably comical aspects of Bennett’s thinking here is that he is one of the few writers, if not the only one (beside Hegel perhaps) who uses a design argument to explain the rise of modernity. I think that should be source of hilarity for anyone dealing with the reactionary nonsense of the current ID cult.
Bennett’s thinking is such a strange combination of nonsense and insight that his work is finally a hopeless case, but often of interest in some of its details.
Global Warming Cycles Threaten Endangered Primate Species
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2009) — Two Penn State University researchers have carried out one of the first-ever analyses of the effects of global warming on endangered primates.
Stem Cells Changed Into Precursors For Sperm, Eggs
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2009) — Human embryonic stem cells derived from excess IVF embryos may help scientists unlock the mysteries of infertility for other couples struggling to conceive
Islam’s Darwin problem
In the Muslim world, creationism is on the rise
Americans familiar with the long and bitter battle over the teaching of evolution in our schools likely have a set of images of what creationism looks like: from the Scopes trial, and its dramatization in “Inherit the Wind,” to more recent battles over textbooks on school boards in Kansas and Georgia and in federal court in Pennsylvania. The doctrine of creationism, and its less explicitly religious cousin intelligent design, are extensively developed counter-narratives of the origin of life on Earth, fed by Christian concerns and shaped by Christian beliefs. In its more extreme forms, creationist thought is guided by a faith in the inerrancy of the language of the Book of Genesis, so that some creationists see in the fossil record evidence that Noah must have herded dinosaurs onto his ark along with the rest of creation.
The question of Islam and Darwinism is no doubt a frustrating one for scientists, but do have anyone to blame but themselves? The unreasonable limitations of Darwinian reductionism have beent he object of critique since the nineteenth century by many intelligent Muslims and Sufis with, originally, no axe to grind on secularism (that long lost moment).
Scientists should consider that they are incapable because of their Darwinian fundamentalism to account for, or even discuss the issue of ethics. The obstinate refusal, or inability, of scientists to deal with such a simple reality makes discussion hopeless. Small wonder that religions have taken over the evolution question to their own consideration.
International Poll on Evolution Confuses British Darwinists
The failure of the public to buy into the Darwinian paradigm represents a moment of some potential, or did, until the predatory propaganda tactics of the ID/Discovery group confused the issue for everyone. A great opportunity to get beyond Darwinism has been lost, as the rightwing religious conservatives muddy the waters with their own deception, equal and opposite to Darwin propaganda.
The separation of evolution and history doesn’t add up: we tend to think that evolution has come to a stop and history started, with man’s freedom to create history generated by natural selection.
A whole series of fallacies in that statement.
In search of history
North Carolina Sea Levels Rising Three Times Faster Than In Previous 500 Years, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2009) — An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years.
Comment on Reductionist Darwinism vs Schopenhauer
Stephen P. Smith said,
October 27, 2009 at 4:12 pm ·
There is a retreat into our own private ontological cocoon to seek a calm vantage point and place to ponder. There must be such a safe place to go if we are going to make sense of our world, and the thoughts that are entertained make up what is called philosophy. Note being able to find a safe retreat is to subject one`s self to a perpetual strife, and leads to a puppet-like entrapment that is controlled by a dominant voice that knows no peace.However, the ontological state of retreat can make no claims of knowing the world that is left behind. And so within philosophy we find a renewed call to venture into epistemology. Then the self finds itself leaving the cocoon behind in a metamorphous, and an effort is made to confront the tension that knows no peace; the self enters into empiricism and the mind returns to science. This temporary state continues until the time when the self is called to make sense of the world again.
Ontology cannot be separated from epistemology. Likewise, philosophy cannot be separated from science. Self-evidence is stark, but neither philosophy or science can get beyond their precondition that marks the barrier of self. At best a doorway is discovered, and through this doorway a better vantage point can be found and a better view of self seen.
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