History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
gnxp
Turns out, there’s no magic in that traditional number eight when figuring out how many hours of shut-eye you need
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/12/28/the_magic_eight_hours_of_shut_eye_doesnt_work_for_everyone/
gnxp
Minute organs hidden deep within the ear appear to directly alter blood flow to the brain, scientists have revealed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8268336.stm
mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bond221209.html
by Patrick Bond
In Copenhagen, the world’s richest leaders continued their fiery fossil fuel
party last Friday night, ignoring requests of global village neighbors to
please chill out.
gnxp
A Times science writer argues that religion is a machine for manufacturing social solidarity
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/books/review/Shulevitz-t.html
gnxp
H. Allen Orr: Robert Wright is not afraid to think big thoughts. In The Evolution of God, he both surveys the history of religion over the last several thousand years and, more important, offers a new theory to explain why this history unfolded as it did. According to Wright’s theory, although religion may seem otherworldly—a realm of revelation and spirituality—its history has, like that of much else, been driven by mundane “facts on the ground.” As he further emphasizes, the ways in which religion responds to the world make sense. Like organisms, he argues, religions respond adaptively to the world. Does his theory succeed?
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23537
gnxp
The FDA has promised to reassess the safety of BPA — a widely used plastic additive that can act like estrogen in the body. Currently, the agency’s position is that BPA exposure is too low to cause health effects, but some major studies of the chemical’s safety are just beginning
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121539021
The Climate Lobby from Soup to Nuts
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/28-1
RG mail
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/1228/James-Hoggan-talks-about-global-warming
James Hoggan, coauthor of ‘Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming,’ talks about what he calls the PR campaign to discredit global warming.
RG mail
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23472
The Green Zone
December 27, 2009
By Kim Scipes
The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of the Military
By Barry Sanders
AK Press, 2009
As a US military veteran-USMC, 1969-73, who turned around while on active
duty-I have been incredibly frustrated at the impotence of the anti-war
movement in the United States to stop the wars in particularly Iraq,
Afghanistan and, increasingly, Pakistan. I am, obviously, not alone. Many
other people-veterans, as well as many more civilians-also share this
frustration.
RG mail
by Brian Czech
The Encyclopedia of Earth (February 19 2007)
The phrase “steady state economy” originated from ecological economics,
most notably the work of Herman Daly, but its roots are in classical
economics, most notably the “stationary state” as touted by John Stuart
Mill. The steady state economy is often discussed in the context of
economic growth and the impacts of economic growth on ecological
integrity, environmental protection, and economic sustainability.
Therefore, use of the phrase “steady state economy” requires a clear
definition of economic growth.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Steady_state_economy
Do Human Rights Require Religious Beliefs?
What difference would it make if we accepted what Bernard Williams has called “Nietzsche’s thought”–”there is, not only no God, but no metaphysical order of any kind”?
One consequence, Nietzsche suggested, is that we could no longer believe that human beings were created by God in His Image and thus endowed with equal dignity. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: “The masses blink and say: ‘We are all equal.–Man is but man, before God–we are all equal.’ Before God! But now this God has died.” The modern morality of human equality is secularized Christian morality that cannot be continued after the death of God.
It seems that Darwinists are condemned to be Nietzsche suckers, unable to extricate themselves from the multiple fallacies that animate his thinking.
Nietzsche is so extreme that he wishes to decree a universe that guarantees his atheism, but that tactic backfires (and it evident in the New Atheists_).
If we examine the eonic effect we can see that without any theism or atheism (both tend to be sterile thought orphans) we can find an ‘idea for a universal history’ that demonstrates the evolutionary emergence of liberalism (and rights philosophies) in a non-random fashion. This powerful evidence simply can’t enter the narrow psyches of those brainwashed by Nietzsche’s oversimplifications, and second-rate travesty of Schopenhauer (thence Kant, with his powerful concepts of liberal rights)
Stream and Sequence: The ‘Axial’ Transitions
Robert Wright’s junk theory misses almost the whole issue of religion and its evolution in world history. The refusal to acknowledge the data of the Axial Age makes the whole genre pseudo-science, the manufacture of technocratic mythology, just as surely as the manufacture of religious myths distorted the evolutionary emergence of religious formations.
The obsessive clinging to natural selection and evo-psych (and game theory) is pseudo-science in motion.
Volume 57, Number 1 · January 14, 2010
Can Science Explain Religion?
By H. Allen Orr
The Evolution of God
by Robert Wright
Little, Brown, 567 pp., $25.99
1.
Robert Wright is not afraid to think big thoughts. Wright, who contributes regularly to a host of magazines including Slate and Time and who edits the Web site Bloggingheads.tv, has written several intellectually ambitious books. In TheMoral Animal (1997), for example, he considered the young (and controversial) science of evolutionary psychology. And in Nonzero (2001), he offered a heady tour of human history and argued that ideas from the mathematical field of game theory reveal how much of that history was driven by the mutual benefits that accrue from human cooperation. In his latest book, Wright takes on an even grander subject: religion. In The Evolution of God, he both surveys the history of religion and, more important, offers a new theory to explain why this history unfolded as it did.
Wright’s theories should be considered highly dubious from the start, and make a rabbit’s foot out of game theory, which can’t perform the explanations required.
More formally, Wright argues that religious responses to reality are generally explained by game theory and evolutionary psychology, the subjects of his previous books. Subtle aspects of the human mind, he claims, were shaped by Darwinian natural selection to allow us to recognize and take advantage of certain social situations. The most important of these—and the centerpiece of Wright’s theory—are what game theorists call non-zero-sum interactions. Unlike zero-sum games, wherein one player’s gain is another player’s loss, in some games both players can win; hence “non-zero-sum.” The classic example is economic trade. In a free market, trade occurs when both parties benefit from exchange (otherwise they wouldn’t engage in it).
by Mark Vernon, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/dec/23/religion-christianity
What does it mean to accept that God is not the answer to anything, but remains the unanswerable question?
by Muriel Kane – the raw story
from dawkins site
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/29-americans-religion-out-date/
The devolution of Darwin
His science and standing are more firmly established than ever, and yet…
What Darwin promoted was not empirical science but materialistic philosophy. As historian Neal C. Gillespie wrote in 1979, “It is sometimes said that Darwin converted the scientific world to evolution by showing them the process by which it had occurred,” but “it was more Darwin’s insistence on totally natural explanations than on natural selection that won their adherence.” (Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation, p.147) The Darwinian revolution was primarily philosophical, and Darwin’s philosophy limited science to “the discovery of laws which reflected the operation of purely natural or ‘secondary’ causes.” Furthermore, “there could be no out-of-bounds signs… When sufficient natural or physical causes were not known they must nonetheless be assumed to exist to the exclusion of other causes.”
Censorship Lives-Anti-Creationist Librarian Tries to Ban BookBy Discovery Institute, A Positive Vision of the Future – 17 Hours Ago
Neuroscientists Store Information in Isolated Brain Tissue; Possible Basis of Short-Term Memory
Women Tend to Have Better Sense of Touch Due to Smaller Finger Size
ScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2009) — People who have smaller fingers have a finer sense of touch
Orchids’ Sexual Trickery Explained: Leads to More Efficient Pollinating System
ScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2009) — A new study reveals the reason why orchids use sexual trickery to lure insect pollinators.
Synesthetic Experiences, Such as Seeing a Certain Color Associated With a Number, Are Real and Automatic
ScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2009) — For as many as 1 in 20 people, everyday experiences can elicit extra-ordinary associated sensations. The condition is known as synaesthesia and the most common form involves “seeing” colours when reading words and numbers.
Published on Monday, December 28, 2009 by The Coast (Nova Scotia)
Changing Climates
World rulers think their inaction at Copenhagen will save their position of privilege, but the people aren’t rolling over.
by Bruce Wark
My favourite media moment at the Copenhagen climate conference came last Thursday when Evo Morales declared: “Capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity.” Bolivia’s president was being interviewed by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, heard at noon weekdays on CKDU.
Published on Monday, December 28, 2009 by TruthDig.com
One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists
by Chris Hedges
Published on Monday, December 28, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Wall Street Scroogism Wrecking America
by Holly Sklar
The Scrooges of Wall Street were surprised a year ago by visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.
Something about Cameron’s capital-intensive mythology is laudable for a Hollywood Blockbuster. The stunning experience of nature, culture, and politics does achieve an important spiritual reversal of the Cowboys and Indians plot. The audience is skillfully maneuvered into anti-imperialist sympathies so that we can tearfully commit to an improbable reversal of the kind of history that any three-year-old knows.
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