09.02.10
Posted in General at 1:54 pm by nemo
Debates over the big bang, and the origin of the universe, now challenged (quite apart from religious challenges) by the cyclic universe theories as in Endless universe, cited today, reflect a Kantian antinomy, which is a debate, in this case the archetypal form of the debate seen in practive between physicists and religionists. The book Endless Universe, however, shows the real antithesis, between absolute and relative beginnings. And there Kant shows this dilemma to be antinomous, suggesting that a contradiction is resolved by a new idea (dialectic). One route there is to note that timelessness is a logical opposite here. That doesn’t mean it must be considered, but we must be suspicious. But beyond that it is significant that Kant find this antinomy to be evidence of the incoherence of our physics views, and the remedy is his view of transcendental idealism.
Neither creationists nor scientists can quite grapple with the idea that something is timeless, and it isn’t much of a thing.
None of the debates can realize a simple fact: they all invoke a timeless dimension, in so far as time comes into existence with the Big Bang, supposedly. But this is never discussed, or its implications pursued, a sign the discusssion is too naive to be real.
I think that Schopenhauer (and thence Kant) stumbled on the answer, as did his quiet appropriator J.G. Bennett, discussed here several times. Our minds themselves stand beyond space-time because they themselves synthesize space-time. Here Kant and Schopenhauer without saying so completely upset the applecart of both religion and physics.
A lot to be said here, but these obsessives efforts of scientists to confirm their atheism are not very coherent. Don’t let Dawkins get away with a new round of hype here.
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:00 pm by nemo
The Hawking/God Debate at the Times
Hawking should have known better than to make assertions about the creation of the universe. Nothing in physics can really answer this question.
Now the whole game gets taken up by Dawkins et al who will think they can do to the universe what Darwin supposedly did to evolution. Don’t let them get away with it, and recall the simple arguments from Kant about the antinomies that frustrated religionists and physicists here.
Physics cannot get past this boundary to make any statements about creation, if any, behind the Big Bang. It will not be hard to defend against this renewed effort to make hype prevail. Don’t let these people impose a myth on the public exploiting the prestige of Hawking. To say you have a new theory dispensing with god should instantly set off the hype alarm (and I am not a theist here), exactly as with Darwinism, where Dawkins got away with claiming Darwinism grounded his atheism.
These people are brazen, and will lie, like Dawkins, so don’t let it happen.
Quite apart from anything else these people have discredited atheism with this abuse.
However, there is another perspective emerging (as implicit in Kantian antinomies, there is a beginning in time, there is no beginning in time,…), and I also recommend
Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang — Rewriting Cosmic History
This book may not last long, given the complexity of the issues, but the basic idea has finally found some grounding in physics.
What happened to the fine-tuning ideas, as Dawkins lusts to proclaim a cosmic Darwinism?
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:36 pm by nemo
The Grand Design, Hawking…
I will try to get this book read as soon as I can, and find it of interest willynilly, but I am not likely to be impressed based on this blurb.
To be fair, Hawking merely says ‘closer than ever’ to the really really big theory, the object of hope in physicists since Einstein. Closer is probably not very close.
Keep in mind that those who wish for a unified theory can’t even determine that Darwinism is an earlier case of a fake ‘unified theory’ of evolution.
The credibility of scientists here is not good.
How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? Over twenty years ago I wrote A Brief History of Time, to try to explain where the universe came from, and where it is going. But that book left some important questions unanswered. Why is there a universe–why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why are the laws of nature what they are? Did the universe need a designer and creator?
It was Einstein’s dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein’s day hadn’t made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal. And by the time I had begun writing A Brief History of Time, there were still several key advances that had not yet been made that would prevent us from fulfilling Einstein’s dream. But in recent years the development of M-theory, the top-down approach to cosmology, and new observations such as those made by satellites like NASA’s COBE and WMAP, have brought us closer than ever to that single theory, and to being able to answer those deepest of questions. And so Leonard Mlodinow and I set out to write a sequel to A Brief History of Time to attempt to answer the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The result is The Grand Design, the product of our four-year effort.
In The Grand Design we explain why, according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence, or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. We question the conventional concept of reality, posing instead a “model-dependent” theory of reality. We discuss how the laws of our particular universe are extraordinarily finely tuned so as to allow for our existence, and show why quantum theory predicts the multiverse–the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature. And we assess M-Theory, an explanation of the laws governing the multiverse, and the only viable candidate for a complete “theory of everything.” As we promise in our opening chapter, unlike the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life given in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer we provide in The Grand Design is not, simply, “42.”
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:09 pm by nemo
‘Intelligent design’ takes on a new meaning
Was our universe created by another civilization using technology not much more advanced than our own?
By John Gribbin,
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Intelligent+design+takes+meaning/3467396/story.html#ixzz0yOQSK8rx
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:03 pm by nemo
Metal-Mining Bacteria Are Green Chemists
ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — Microbes could soon be used to convert metallic wastes into high-value catalysts for generating clean energy
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:47 am by nemo
CLIMATE AND CAPITALISM
An online journal focusing on capitalism, climate change, and the
ecosocialist alternative.
http://climateandcapitalism.com
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/CandC-FaceBook
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
09.01.10
Posted in General at 2:20 pm by nemo
Comments of difficulty of eonic model
Arnhart, who operates the NOTORIOUS Darwinian Conservatism blog and is frequently gunning for me, asks an interesting question even as he tries to set me up here, but he misunderstood the point I was making. This issue was raised with a reader of WHEE who told me he wanted the third edition, because it had the full model, which the fourth edition tends to put in the background.
That led to my spur of the moment comment.
But the fact is that understanding evolution has been made difficult by Darwinism, which is so simple, so dumbed down, that the brains of Darwinists must have atrophied.
Further these remarks ony apply to an attempted theory, not a theory as such. There is no theory of evolution in WHEE: such things are impossible for Kantian reasons.
The eonic model is too clever to claim to have solved the evolution question, unlike naive and ambitious Darwinism. It merely shows that world history shows evidence of a dynamical macro driver.
The actual content of the eonic effect is transparently clear,and a dose of empiricism to challenge Darwinian speculation: world history has a clear structure and non-random patterning.
The eonic model is simply an extra put in the notes in this edition.
In any case, if you are driving a car, then it is clear that there is a hybrid situation where a machine and a free agent are working together in a unity of opposites. Is that clear? If so, you have understood the basic idea, and I shouldn’t have said noone understood me.
Larry Arnhart said,
ugust 31, 2010 at 6:23 pm ·
“But I have never met anyone who undersood it”
Why?
nemo said,
September 1, 2010 at 11:27 am · Edit
Good question: I am exaggerating, of course, many have understood the basics, but the combination of novel ideas as a whole is considerable. An identical statement could be made of Kant’s thinking, and for the same reason. But in fact I offer a clever way to understand Kant without reading his main critique first.
In fairness to myself, I have not put it to a test by asking via a poll how many readers understood xyz in the book: the online book has had a huge audience, suggesting the difficulties are mostly at the edges: the core material speaks for itself. But what I meant was that you lose 1. Christians because of an Old Testament critique, and 2. Darwinians, because of a critique of Darwinism, 3…..
That’s a lot of readers to lose at step 1. And the minute you even refer to Kant, many flee in panic. And Kantians stay away because the academic Kant world refuses to challenge Darwin, and can’t even discuss Lenoir’s book on Kant and evolution.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:50 pm by nemo
Christian atheism
It is important to consider this option, although not as portrayed here. We can conduct religion without god-obsessions (look at millennia of Indian religion), and in fact we have no knowledge of God. Worse, believers have trashed the god-idea with their false enthusiasm, and infantile prayer syndrome.
Christianity has made god an object of ‘faith’ with a duty to belief, which is harmful. It had a point once, now lost.
Note that Moslems express a higher unity beyond belief/disbelief: ‘there is no God, but….God’ there is something beyond the duality of belief/disbelief.
The point has been entirely lost, to say the least. But the declaration is clear: there is not god, but….
So Christain atheism, which needn’t be atheism at all, could help to repair the confusion, and seek a religion that helps people without enforcing authoritarian god dogmas.
Please note that the ’son of god’ symbology (which I refuse personally, but is of historical interest, and still sensible in Hegel’s version) meant that ‘god was untterly unknown’, only via a ‘god man’ could the high and the low meet. Every guru in India on every street corner has said as much.
There are any number of problems with this, but is shows what the Christian idiocy syndrome has done to make their religion something people must abandon. A Christian need not slobber on the god name.
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:43 pm by nemo
Comment series on the bed bug…: http://darwiniana.com/2010/08/30/summer-of-the-bed-bug/comment-page-1/#comment-354121
MBFM
Submitted on 2010/09/01 at 11:56am
Yesterdays New York Times science section had an article about bedbugs. It stated that allergic/anaphylactic shock can be triggered by repeated bedbug bites but is rare.
Rare though it it, its life threatening. Here, from the best of craigslist is
one man’s ordeal, entitled ‘An Open Letter to My Bedbugs’, from August, 2006
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/chi/196226851.html
(quote) Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:08 pm by nemo
The End of Religion
By JEFF SCHWEITZER – WWW.RICHARDDAWKINS.NET
Added: Wednesday, 25 August 2010 at 7:37 AM – An RDFRS Original
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/505248-the-end-of-religion
Author Oliver Thomas answered his headline question, “Why Religion” in the August 9, 2010, issue of USA Today with three justifications. All three are deeply flawed, revealing the soft white underbelly of religion’s foundation. He claims that:
1) religion makes us want to live; 2) religion makes it easier to be decent; and 3) religion gives us a sense of purpose and meaning.
He goes on to present three questions that “are not amenable to the scientific method” but that somehow reveal the value of religion: Why are we here? What does it all mean? How should we then live?
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:36 am by nemo
Published on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Spengler for Dummies
by Linh Dinh
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:33 am by nemo
A Grisly Form of Stability
What is the US Legacy in Iraq?
By PATRICK COCKBURN
A few days after the US announced that it had withdrawn its last combat brigade from Iraq, the local branch of al-Qa’ida staged a show of strength, killing or wounding 300 people in attacks across the country.
Its suicide bombers drove vehicles packed with explosives into police stations or military convoys from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south.
The continuing ferocious violence in Iraq, where most days more people die by bomb and bullet than in Afghanistan, is leading to questions about its stability once US forces finally withdraw by the end of next year.
American politicians, soldiers and think tankers blithely recommend American troops staying longer, though at their most numerous US troops signally failed to stop the bombers.
The unfortunate truth may be that Iraq has already achieved a grisly form of stability, though it comes with a persistently high level of violence and a semi-dysfunctional state. Bad though the present situation is in the country, there may not be sufficient reasons for it to change.
Politically, Iraq may look increasingly like Lebanon with each ethnic or sectarian community vying for a share of power and resources. But if Iraq is becoming like Lebanon, it is a Lebanon with money. Dysfunctional the state machine may be, but it still has $60bn in annual oil revenues to spend, mostly on the salaries of the security forces and the civilian bureaucracy. One former Iraqi minister says that the one time he had seen the new Iraqi political elite “in a state of real panic was when the price of oil fell below $50 a barrel a couple of years ago”.
Permalink
08.30.10
Posted in General at 1:14 pm by nemo
Core Knowledge of Tree Fruit Expands With Apple Genome Sequencing
ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2010) — An international team of scientists from Italy, France, New Zealand, Belgium and the USA have published a draft sequence of the domestic apple genome in the current issue of Nature Genetics.
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:12 pm by nemo
Published on Monday, August 30, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
Friends of the Earth Urges End to ‘Land Grab’ for Biofuels
Charity predicts more food shortages in Africa because of EU target to produce 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020
by Katie Allen
Permalink
08.29.10
Posted in General at 3:57 pm by nemo
The horrible U.S. air raids on Japan were so successful that by the end of WWII it was hard to find suitable targets for the A-bombs… more
(from A&L)
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:12 pm by nemo
http://www.uncommondescent.com/darwinism/darwin-as-racist-vs-darwin-as-anti-slavery-hero/
Darwin as racist, vs. Darwin as anti-slavery hero
O’Leary
From some correspondence with a friend:
Darwin was a racist, pure and simple. Why can’t people just accept that fact, and get PAST it?
I have become increasingly suspicious of efforts to excuse Darwin’s racism by saying that the old boy was also anti-slavery.
Lots of racists are anti-slavery. That was true thousands of years ago, by the way.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:08 pm by nemo
This happened, but how does one explain it? By DAVIDPHILPOT
Updated: Sunday, 29 August 2010 at 6:19 AM
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/507204-this-happened-but-how-does-one-explain-it
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:06 pm by nemo
Professor Dawkins: Unfair to Maimonides ? By JAY G
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/507496-professor-dawkins-unfair-to-maimonides
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:52 am by nemo
Tiny Gulf Sea Creature Could Shed Light on Oil Spill’s Impact
ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2010) — A University of Alabama molecular biologist will soon bring dozens of tiny, transparent animals that live in Gulf Coast waters back to his campus laboratory as part of an effort to better understand the oil spill’s long-term impact on the coastal environment and creatures living there.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:50 am by nemo
Liver Cells Created from Patients’ Skin Cells
ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2010) — By creating diseased liver cells from a small sample of human skin, scientists have now shown that stem cells can be used to model a diverse range of inherited disorders. The University of Cambridge researchers’ findings, which will hopefully lead to new treatments for those suffering from liver diseases, were published August 25 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:43 am by nemo
Published on Saturday, August 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Nine Years Later, Afghanistan Looks Much the Same: A Mess
by Ted Rall
HERAT, AFGHANISTAN–OK. The roads are impressive. Specifically, the fact that they exist. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, more than two decades of civil conflict had left the country bereft of basic infrastructure. Roads, bridges and tunnels had been bombed and mined. What didn’t blow up got ground down by tanks. Maintenance? Don’t be funny.
It took them too long to get started, but U.S. occupation forces deserve credit for slapping down asphalt. Brutal, bone-crushing ordeals that used to take four days can be measured in smooth, endless-grey-ribboned hours. Bridges have been replaced. Tunnels have been shored up. Most major highways and major city streets have been paved.
But that’s about it.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:41 am by nemo
Published on Sunday, August 29, 2010 by In These Times
90 Years After Suffrage, Impoverished Mothers Need Another Kind of Equality
by Michelle Chen
Just in time for Women’s Equality Day, a new study has dampened the anniversary of women’s suffrage 90 years ago by highlighting the despair of women in poverty today.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:39 am by nemo
Published on Sunday, August 29, 2010 by FlaglerLive.com
Neo-Supremacy Chic: Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin’s Tea-Scalding of MLK
by Pierre Tristam
They don’t call it white supremacy for nothing.
One of the ways this country’s reactionaries have made racism and neo-segregation chic is by co-opting the language of emancipation, equality and civil rights.
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »