11.30.10
Huxley: Darwin’s first champion, and first critic
Huxley’s Contradiction And Evolution #1 and #2
Huxley was the great champion of Darwin, but he was first critic of natural selection, and ended up finding a decisive flaw in the theory.
Axial ages, new religions
The Axial Age and the complexity of religious evolution
Christians are often confused by the clear passage beyond their religion, and are probably feeling hounded by the slick nonsense of the New Atheists.
I think a look at world history, the Axial, and the evolution of religion in civilization will show why the sense of the waning of religion is occurring. Just as with the Axial Age, so with modernity a sudden recycling of religions begins its drama. The New Age movement shows the field of potential developments (too often looking backwards) beyond the Axial Age. In that field the New Atheists are a hucksters game, and a dangerous Nietzschean cult in disguise. That’s not an argument for theism. Indeed, the New Atheists are performing a humble task, but their formulation of religion and science is almost grotesque. What the future holds is not clear. Caveat emptor.
Transformation of Christianity/dangerous passage
Are We Becoming an Atheist Nation? 3 Reasons Young People Are Abandoning Religion
Chances are that if you are in your 20s or 30s, you are not hanging around a church. Here are some reasons why.
These articles endlessly confuse Christianity, belief in god, and religion. This article depicts the sociological waning of Christian church membership.
It doesn’t follow that the result is atheism.
The normal progression of secular modernism beyond Christianity is not the same as the rise of atheism, or the end of religion. In fact, the New Age movement shows the pot boiling, about to produce a large spectrum of future religious perspectives.
In that context the New Atheism movement is almost primitive in its misuderstandings. Those who move beyond Christianity should be wary of the crackpot atheism/scientism of the Dawkins cult.
It is a dangerous passage.
Evolution and theism
Evolution and a belief in God are incompatible By BLITZ442
Added: Monday, 29 November 2010 at 8:07 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/555746-evolution-and-a-belief-in-god-are-incompatible
Marsupial Embryo
Marsupial Embryo Jumps Ahead in DevelopmentScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2010) — Long a staple of nature documentaries, the somewhat bizarre development of a grub-like pink marsupial embryo outside the mother’s womb is curious in another way.
Unwilling to Gamble
Apes Unwilling to Gamble When Odds Are UncertainScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2010) — Humans are known to play it safe in a situation when they aren’t sure of the odds, or don’t have confidence in their judgments. We don’t like to choose the unknown.
Pterodactyl Flight
Engineer Provides New Insight Into Pterodactyl FlightScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2010) — Giant pterosaurs — ancient reptiles that flew over the heads of dinosaurs — were at their best in gentle tropical breezes, soaring over hillsides and coastlines or floating over land and sea on thermally driven air currents, according to new research from the University of Bristol.
Crop Failures and Drought Within Our Children’s Lifetimes
Published on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 by The Independent/UK
by Steve Connor, Science Editor
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/30-0
Children today are likely to reach old age in a world that is 4C warmer, where the 10,000-year certainties of the global climate can no longer be relied on, and widespread crop failures, drought, flooding and mass migration of the dispossessed become a part of everyday life.
Fabricating Terror
The Portland “Bomb” Plot
Fabricating Terror
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts11302010.html
Why does the FBI orchestrate fake terror plots?
The latest one snared Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American teenager in Portland, Oregon. The Associated Press report by William Mall and Nedra Pickler (11-27-10) is headlined in Yahoo News: “Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Oregon.”
Missing the Mark on Deficits
Elite Consensus
Missing the Mark on Deficits
By RALPH NADER
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader11302010.html
Workers Hopscotch Across USA for Temp Checks
mxmail
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-26-amazon-temporary-workers_N.htm
By Jere Downs, The (Louisville,
Ky
Courier-Journal
CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. —
Amazon.com
has
what many migrant workers want for the holidays: a job.
Hard-up retirees and unemployed workers with children have converged on this
rural town in RVs and campers to spend a few months earning $10 an hour
filling orders at an Amazon warehouse.
Amazon offers a free place to park and plug in. When work ends Christmas
Eve, the campers pull out.
Many have lost their homes and live on the road, home schooling their
children along the way. Others are retirees who had planned to see the
country but now work along the way to supplement depleted investments. Those
not old enough for Medicare typically lack insurance.
“We are among the economic refugees. We are lucky to earn enough to get our
laundry done and eat macaroni and cheese,” said April McFail, 52. “I think
it says America needs something different. This is supposed to be freedom
and a good life. Now it is a sad note.”
McFail’s husband, Terry, lost his job last year at Dow
Chemical
$18 hourly in southern Michigan. They lost their home to foreclosure in May.
Pooling $8,000 in savings, they purchased a 1987 Winnebago and hit the road.
They worked as campground hosts in South Dakota for the summer, arriving in
September to begin work at Amazon.
A short time later, April McFail’s diabetes forced her to quit the Amazon
job. She could not manage 10-hour shifts four days a week lifting packages
up to 30 pounds each. Health care benefits left over from her husband’s job
at Dow expire Tuesday.
Real Hope
Chris Hedges | Hope, Real Hope, Is About Doing Something
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3332?akid=291.96588.XqGJ0t&t=20
Specter of ‘Resource Curse’
Afghan Gold Mine Raises Specter of ‘Resource Curse’
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3328?akid=291.96588.XqGJ0t&t=12
Mind the Gap
Mind the Gap: Bumper Bonuses Are Back, Yet Millions Struggle on Welfare in US
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3326?akid=291.96588.XqGJ0t&t=8
Year of Extremes
Will Year of Extremes End with a Whimper?
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3323?akid=291.96588.XqGJ0t&t=2
Global market for anti-terrorism
Rg mail
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel-homeland-security-20101128,0,3300966.story
The Los Angeles Times November 27, 2010
Israeli firms see a global market for their anti-terrorism know-how
Wikileaks crisis
RG mail
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/29/us_facing_global_diplomatic_crisis_following
Democracy Now November 29, 2010
U.S. Facing Global Diplomatic Crisis Following Massive WikiLeaks Release of
Secret Diplomatic Cables
Wikileaks Cables
RG mail
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/deceits-plots-insults-america-laid-bare-2146208.html
The Independent 29 November 2010*
Wikileaks Cables:
Deceits, plots, insults: America laid bare
Diplomatic communiqués released by Wikileaks shine unprecedented light on
the US and how it sees the world
11.29.10
The Old Testament, the Axial Age, and design
The Old Testament As Eonic Data
The irony of design arguments is that their own proponents have spoiled them, due to their confusion over design, intelligent design, and the action of a divinity.
If we examine the Axial Age we see a ‘design’ in history, and this design is ‘evolutionary’ by a mechanism too complex for our understanding. But we would be mistaken to call that ‘god’. And, ironically, the Old Testament history in the Axial interval shows that same ‘design’, but it would be difficult to say that that was the action of ‘god’.
Unbelievable attacks on Behe
Note also that philosopher Maarten Boudry and his colleagues have an attack on ID. This article is online and Nick Matzke says it’s “quite good.”
The Behe piece hasn’t yet appeared (I’ll let you know when it does), but Nick has this take on it:
If past experience is any guide, Behe’s article will make abstract arguments about the improbability of adaptations *if* many simultaneous events are required, but will present no evidence that many simultaneous events are likely to be necessary for the sorts of adaptations we actually see in biology. Positive evidence for ID will not be provided at all, but the article will be trumpeted as such by the usual ID propagandists. But the article isn’t out yet, so we’ll see, I suppose.
A confusing vagueness fills Behe’s argument, and the result throws his perfectly sensible arguments out of whack. I fail to see why kneejerk attacks on these arguments are taken so easily as good science.
Behe’s point should be obvious, whatever the details. For Darwinists to attack him on endless quibbles, with hypotheticals and Darwin dogma simply shows the damage done to the science public by Darwin propaganda.
Religon and fitness?
Picking up the blather of evo-psych to promote religion is clever, but won’t work.
Echinoderms
An increased likelihood of evolving certain features? By MISFIRE
Added: Sunday, 28 November 2010 at 7:16 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/555051-an-increased-likelihood-of-evolving-certain-features
I enjoy learning about science and genetics, despite my irrelevant education.
One fact which caught my attention today at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which I recommend, was that among echinoderms, the distinctive 5-directional, or pentaradial symmetry arose three separate times.
Behe on design
Finding design in natureAlthough we may not know the details of how living things are assembled, it is clear to me that they are designed
Andrew Brown’s comment on the debate I had with Michael Reiss missed a critical point.
Behe’s argument has some valid points, but they are ruined by his suspected theism. Note: an atheist can make this case, much better, without the confusing addition of the term ‘intelligent’ to design.
Natural teleology is going to be evident as design in nature, however it evolved.
My contention is that ‘the purposeful arrangement of parts’ to achieve a specific purpose is the criterion that enables us to recognise design. I argued that the conclusion of design in the bacterial flagellum and in many other biological systems is no different from discerning it for a mousetrap or a Ford Mondeo.
So what makes Intelligent Design fundamentally different from Darwinism? The Darwinian view which dominates biology holds that the design we all see in life is merely illusory and that life is essentially a blind and purposeless phenomenon. Intelligent Design claims that the design is real and demonstrable; we are left to draw our own conclusions about the implications.
How the design is delivered, however, is a separate matter. I was clear that we do not yet know the details of how these designed systems were assembled over the history of life. It was in this context that I made the comment that the operation of natural law might play a part. To imply, as Brown does, however, that intelligent design can be reduced only to the operation of natural law and therefore is essentially indistinguishable from Darwinism is to confuse fundamentally the end (design) with the means of delivering it.
Intelligent Design is an inductive argument from empirical observations like the irreducible complexity of molecular machinery. Intelligent causation as an explanation is consistent with all our experience of finely engineered machines which have intelligent designers. The Darwinian alternative is to propose a phenomenon never observed anywhere, namely that complex machinery can assemble itself without any planning or direction.
Andrew Brown’s comment on my debate with Reiss makes a category error. A lack of clarity about the processes by which living systems are assembled does not diminish the perception of their inherent design.
Earth’s lakes are warming
Earth’s Lakes Are Warming, NASA Study FindsScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2010) — In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth’s largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change.
The ‘Pickiest’ Marsupials
Koala Bears May Be the ‘Pickiest’ Marsupials AroundScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2010) — Koalas may be the pickiest marsupials around: They evolved to feed almost exclusively on the leaves of Eucalyptus trees, and they are highly selective when it comes to which species and even which individual trees they visit. When the furry leaf-eater settles on a particular tree, it relies on a number of factors, including taste, to make its selection. In a study published in the November issue of Ecology, a journal of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), researchers used koala feeding preferences to design a new method that could help ecologists and conservationists map habitats.
Deceits, Plots, Insults
Published on Monday, November 29, 2010 by The Independent/UK
Deceits, Plots, Insults: America Laid Bare
Diplomatic communiqués released by Wikileaks shine unprecedented light on the US and how it sees the world
by Jerome Taylor, Cahal Milmo and David Usborne, US Editor
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/29
The doors to a previously hidden world of diplomatic intrigue and insults were dramatically thrown open last night as the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks published its vast tranche of secret American diplomatic communiqués. The release of hundreds of thousands of secret messages from staff at US embassies revealed how Washington has struggled to confront the geopolitical realities of a post-9/11 world.
Commodifying Nature
Published on Monday, November 29, 2010 by Friends of the Earth International
Commodifying Nature in an Age of Climate Change
by Nnimmo Bassey
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/29-2
For about two weeks, starting today, the world will be locked into another session of negotiations on how to tackle climate change. The conference, to be held in Cancun, Mexico, has drawn less excitement than its predecessor held in Copenhagen, Denmark, a year ago.