Wednesday, June 29, 2005

BRAINY SEE, BRAINY DO!

"Let me expand on this. Our brains are essentially model making machines. We need to construct useful, virtual reality simulations of the world that we can act on. Within the simulation, we need also to construct models of other people's minds because we primates are intensely social creatures. (This is called "a theory of other minds.") We need to do this so that we can predict their behavior. For example, you need to know whether another's action in jabbing you with an umbrella was willful, and so likely to be repeated, or involuntary, in which case it's quite benign. Furthermore, for this internal simulation to be complete it needs to contain not only models of other people's minds but also a model of itself, of its own stable attributes, its personality traits and the limits of its abilities - what it can and cannot do. It is possible that one of these two modeling capacities evolved first and then set the stage for the other. Or - as often happens in evolution - the two may have co-evolved and enriched each other enormously, culminating in the reflective self-awareness that characterizes Homo sapiens.

"At a very rudimentary level we are reminded of this reciprocity of 'self' and 'others' each time a newborn baby mimics an adult's behavior. Stick your tongue out at a newborn baby and the baby will stick its tongue out too, poignantly dissolving the boundary, the arbitrary barrier, between self and others. To do this it must create an internal model of your action and then reenact it in its own brain. An astonishing ability, given that it cannot even see its own tongue, and so must match the visual appearance of your tongue with the felt position of its own. We now know that this is carried out by a specific group of neurons, in the frontal lobes, called the mirror neurons. I suspect that these neurons are at least partly involved in generating our sense of 'embodied' self-awareness as well as our 'empathy' for others." (From A BRIEF TOUR OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS by Ramachandran, pp. 105-106)


BANG BANG, BIG TIME! HUBBLE, HUBBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE!

"The light from a galaxy is the sum of the light emitted by the billions of stars within it. As the light leaves these stars, certain frequencies or colors are absorbed by the atoms in the stars' outermost layers. The resulting lines permit us to tell that stars millions of light-years away contain the same chemical elements as our Sun and the nearby stars. Humason and Hubble found, to their amazement, that the spectra of all the distant galaxies are red-shifted and, still more startling, that the more distant the galaxy was, the more red-shifted were its spectral lines.

"The most obvious explanation of the red shift was in terms of the Doppler effect: the galaxies were receding from us; the more distant the galaxy the greater its speed of recession. But why should the galaxies be fleeing us? Could there be something special about our location in the universe, as if the Milky Way had performed some inadvertent but offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually became clear, had discovered the Big Bang—if not the origin of the universe then at least its most recent incarnation." (From Sagan's COSMOS, p. 254)
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"The waist is a terrible thing to mind." —Ziggy (Tom Wilson)

Monday, June 27, 2005

LOOKING FOR PARADISE?

In 1492 a leading Christian philosopher name St. Thomas Aquinas described where Paradise would be found.

“The situation of Paradise is shut from the habitable world by mountains or seas, or by some torrid region, which cannot be crossed; and so people who have written about topography make no mention of it.” My goodness, if Chris Columbus had only listened to St. Thomas Aquinas, we wouldn’t have found Paradise here in the good old U.S.A., would we? I wonder just what mountain there is we haven’t discovered or what uncharted desert!


AIN’T SUPERSTITION SAD?

“At the height of the middle Ages, say in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were current two very different concepts of the earth. The more popular was of the earth as flat, like a dish surrounded by and floating upon, a boundless sea, in which there were all kinds of monsters dangerous to man. This was an infinitely old notion going back to the early Bronze Age. It appears in Sumerian cuneiform texts of about 2000 BCE and is the image authorized in the Bible.” (Joseph Campbell in MYTHS TO LIVE BY, p. 2)

May I add an analogy in my own words: In 21st Century America there were two versions of how humankind came to walk the earth. One was called Creationism or Intelligent Design in which it was believed that a grand puppet master had hand shaped a manlike being (or puppet) into which he blew the breath of life. The contrary scientific view was called “evolution”.

As Carl Sagan noted in COSMOS, had the mystics not resisted and silenced the great outbreak of Greek science in the sixth through fourth centuries BCE, we would have been much further along then we are now in our voyages outward to the stars and within to the inner truths of human nature.


FILMED REALITY

Let me see if I can put some light on this idea of film reality as I mean it to be discussed. It’s not difficult.

In the late 40’s and early 50’s people went into movies at any time. We didn’t wait for films to begin—we just went in. This is because films were so formulaic and so few plot lines existed that a hip viewer could pick up the storyline at any point. Good guys and bad guys were easy to identify. WWII movies, for example, since they were basically propaganda films, made it so that you just automatically hated the enemy and loved your American GI. A viewer knew exactly where he was at all times. I think it might even signify a point in the evolution of our consciousness, to have still been aggressive at that time. The trouble is that most people also tended to see real life in that way too—good guys versus bad guys. People and movies were pretty simplistic. Simplistic people still wish to see the world that way: evil and good.

However, the more experience I pick up the less able I am to hold onto such simplistic ideas of reality. Films began to change. Films like “David and Lisa” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” presented more complex psychological realities. Soon, bored by standard fare, I began to look around, and I came across “8 1/2” by Fellini and I was blown away. For he shows us the complex nature of reality. Dreams, waking fantasies, psychological projections, memories, altered states and fictional facts are all blended together just as they are in our conscious realities. He doesn’t even bother to separate them for us with clear distinctions. A viewer couldn’t just walk into the middle of his films and make any sense of them. In fact, I didn’t know what I was seeing for years though I knew I was being fascinated by what was being presented to me. But, as I learned more about consciousness, I began to understand what Fellini was doing. The balance between what he brought to alter my consciousness and what changed consciousness I brought to him shifted.

Now I truly do live in a new reality. My consciousness is permanently altered by my experiences, some of which are filmic, and I’m always looking for films and books that expand my understanding of how humans perceive reality, how their consciousnesses are formed. The search after these truths has been my goal since I became a man. It is disheartening to realize that some people still live in that old reality and can’t or don’t want to escape it. They frighten me too, because the structure of their consciousnesses is actually out of touch with reality; they’re a little crazy but don’t know it, so they feel dangerous to me and scary to be around. And some of my angry comments on other threads in this forum are just naturally defensive, because I can’t always remember and accept that some people aren’t in the 21st Century.

So this thread asks for suggestions, in a way, for films that will give me more data about how humans perceive reality.
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“In spite of the cost of living, it’s still popular.” —Kathleen Norris (1880-1966)

Friday, June 24, 2005

FLAILING AT THE MEDIA

Jeez, readers: I had to get up early in the morning to get these two gripes off my shoulders, but, then, I went to bed early, about 9:30 pm, so to get up at 4:30 am maybe isn’t so early after all. Anyhow, I think my letters to the editor which follow are self explanatory. If not, you can always comment:

Dear Editors [of US News and World Report],

I noted a hint of apologetics for the Bush administration (and your news staff) in one of your “The Week” briefs entitled “Terrorism’s Latest Report Card”. (p. 16) Your editors, in an afterward to the brief, call the growth of Iraq into an Afghanistan-like “melting pot” for jihadists around the world “Another unforeseen result of the war’s messy aftermath”. Italics mine.

Your people must have been focusing on Bush, Wolfowitz, Perle and Cheney because I was certainly hearing and reading in other sources [Newsweek] about the possibility that Iraq would become a center for terrorism after our invasion destabilized it long before our illegal invasion of that country made us the world’s newest bad guy. Of course I was out there on the streets doing protest marches with the rest of the nation’s voices of reason at the time too. On the streets one would be likely to hear reason and caution rather than the din of media distortion.

As I now hear it—those most in support of the war and least well informed were listeners to TV and radio, not readers. What happened over there with you guys?

Sincerely from the State of Washington,

Geo


To the powers that be at CPB,

Recently I watched your excellent docudrama about the events which occurred in the nation of Rwanda not too many years ago. A touching picture of what can happen when the forces of the right or left stimulate the ignorant mainstream into acts of political violence. The French Revolution comes to mind and the Nazi regime in Germany and communist revolution under Stalin in Russian. And, of course, the current American administration which stampeded the American masses and religious fools into war in Iraqi.

Imagine my surprise, then, to hear that Paul Wolfowitz was to be commenting after the show about Rwanda. Wolfowitz is a neocon who lied to Congress and the American people about various things (including the made up stories of an Iraqi front woman about Saddam’s atrocities) in order to push America into an illegal war of aggression in Iraq. Mr. Wolfowitz, of course, should be tried by international courts for war crimes, but since he comes from one of the currently most powerful nations of the world, he’ll be spared that. As we know, those who win wars are the ones who write its history.

Of course I didn’t listen to Wolfowitz’s lies after your show. I’ve heard enough of them, but public television has been tainted by letting such a discredited person comment on one of its shows as if he were an impartial observer or a scholar or an objective authority on the world scene. I kind of think of him as a Hutu-type sympathizer for worldly aggression by powerful people upon weaker people.

I do understand that your predicament is yet another act of mind control and falsification by the Bush neocons. As I hear it, there is now an information czar in charge there at CPB who will force on public television a sort of equal opportunity for the liars to have their say. I thought we discredited that sort of deal in commercial TV some time back. Isn’t it the same conservative forces who eliminated that practice on commercial TV the ones who are trying to force it onto public TV? What is the reason for their public hypocrisy?

I will not abandon public TV just because of this current political Hutu-like aberration. I hope a time will come when the current liars will be out of power and scholarly and objective people will be back in the driver’s seat. Then America will be the “good guy” once more in the world and honest investigation the norm at CPB. Is there anything I can do to alter this propagandistic trend?

Thank you for all the good years, and we’ll survive the present bad ones,

Geo
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“Birth, ancestry and that which you yourself have not achieved can hardly be called your own.” —Greek proverb [A solid argument for boosting the estate tax to 100 percent rather than cutting it.]

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

A REAL UNSUNG HERO

from COSMOS, pp. 180-181

[Open quote] Democritus may have come from Abdera, but he was no dummy. He believed that a large number of worlds had formed spontaneously out of diffuse matter in space, evolved and then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that worlds on occasion collide; he believed that some worlds wandered alone through the darkness of space while others were accompanied by several suns and moons; that some worlds were inhabited, while others had no plants or animals or even water; that the simplest forms of life arose from a kind of primeval ooze. He taught that perception—the reason, say, I think there is a pen in my hand—was a purely physical and mechanistic process; that thinking and feeling were attributes of matter put together in a sufficiently fine and complex way and not due to some spirit infused into matter by the gods.

Democritus invented the word atom, Greek for "unable to be cut." Atoms were the ultimate particles, forever frustrating our attempts to break them into smaller pieces. Everything, he said, is a collection of atoms, intricately assembled. Even we. "Nothing exists," he said, "but atoms and the void."

When we cut an apple, the knife must pass through empty spaces between the atoms, Democritus argued. If there were not such empty spaces, no void, the knife would encounter the impenetrable atoms, and the apple could not be cut. Having cut a slice from a cone, say, let us compare the cross sections of the two pieces. Are the exposed areas equal? No, said Democritus. The slope of the cone forces one side of the slice to have a slightly smaller cross section than the other. If the two areas were exactly equal, we would have a cylinder, not a cone. No matter how sharp the knife, the two pieces have unequal cross sections Why? Because, on the scale of the very small, matter exhibits some irreducible roughness. This fine scale of roughness Democritus identified with the world of the atoms. His arguments were not those we use today, but they were subtle and elegant, derived from everyday life. And his conclusions were fundamentally correct.

In a related exercise, Democritus imagined calculating the volume of a cone or a pyramid by a very large number of extremely small stacked plates tapering in size from the base to the apex. He had stated the problem that, in mathematics, is called the theory of limits. He was knocking at the door of the differential and integral calculus, that fundamental tool for understanding the world that was not, so far as we know from written records, in fact discovered until the time of Isaac Newton. Perhaps if Democritus' work had not been almost completely destroyed, there would have been calculus by the time of Christ.

Thomas Wright marveled in 1750 that Democritus had believed the Milky Way to be composed mainly of unresolved stars: "long before astronomy reaped any benefit from the improved sciences of optics; [Democritus] saw, as we may say, through the eye of reason, full as far into infinity as the most able astronomers in more advantageous times have done since." Beyond the Milk of Hera, past the Backbone of Night, the mind of Democritus soared.

As a person, Democritus seems to have been somewhat unusual. Women, children and sex discomfited him, in part because they took time away from thinking. But he valued friendship, held cheerfulness to be the goal of life and devoted a major philosophical inquiry to the origin and nature of enthusiasm. He journeyed to Athens to visit Socrates and then found himself too shy to introduce himself. He was a close friend of Hippocrates. He was awed by the beauty and elegance of the physical world. He felt that poverty in a democracy was preferable to wealth in a tyranny. He believed that the prevailing religions of his time were evil and that neither immortal souls nor immortal gods exist: "Nothing exists, but atoms and the void."

There is no record of Democritus having been persecuted for his opinions—but then, he came from Abdera. However, in his time the brief tradition of tolerance for unconventional views began to erode and then to shatter. People came to be punished for having unusual ideas. A portrait of Democritus is now on the Greek hundred-drachma bill. But his insights were suppressed, and his influence on history made minor. The mystics were beginning to win. [Close quote]


How can we not admire this individual who came to so many conclusions all those many years ago which have proven true with the advances of scientific measurement? Amazing too to think that at one time in the history of humankind, only one (perhaps) person held these thoughts in his head and, now, so many more of us now hold them in our heads. Think also how Democritus's mind functions well beyond our modern fundamentalist's mind which still reckons the world to be but 6000 years old! Just stop, now, and think of it, how marvelous it is!
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"The first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant." —Lord David Cecil [Who?]

Monday, June 20, 2005

ANOTHER EXPERIMENT: THE INVISIBLE DISCOVERED

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that from time to time, I copy in experiments which I come across in my reading. Here’s another one from Carl Sagan’s COSMOS, p. 179-180. How simple and elegant this one is by Empedocles and it was so important too.

“Empedocles performed his experiment with a household implement people had used for centuries, the so-called clepsydra or “water thief," which was used as a kitchen ladle. A brazen sphere with an open neck and small holes in the bottom, it is filled by immersing it in water. If you pull it out with the neck uncovered, the water pours out of the holes, making a little shower. But if you pull it out properly, with your thumb covering the neck, the water is retained within the sphere until you lift your thumb. If you try to fill it with the neck covered, nothing happens. Some material substance must be in the way of the water. We cannot see such a substance. What could it be? Empedocles argued that it could only be air. A thing we cannot see can exert pressure, can frustrate my wish to fill a vessel with water if I were dumb enough to leave my finger on the neck. Empedocles had discovered the invisible. Air, he thought, must be matter in a form so finely divided that it could not be seen.”

I am no scientist and hold my degree in Creative Writing, yet who, but a head in the sand idiot, could fail to honor the methodology of science?


IMMORTAL CATCH 22....

Date: Thursday, March 10, 2005 4:18 PM
To: LTR SPOKESMAN

Dear Editor,

I got to admit that I’ve been perplexed lately, realizing that genetic advances may soon give humankind eternal life—nanobots and such. They’re working on it, that’s for sure. Dadblast it, I’m almost certain I’ll be long gone before science uncovers the secret of immortality. Still, I know many atheists like myself will be very happy in that future, but pity the poor Christian and his catch 22 existence after mortality is vanquished. Imagine—facing eternal life with no possibility of seeing their hypothetical superbeing face to face! Wow, such horror, to be condemned to life in a prison of flesh! If I know Christians, they’ll probably make it illegal for anybody to live eternally, or they’ll discover a Sacrament of Suicide in their Bible and become like the Moslem terrorists of today. However, that’s a risky business, that Suicide Sacrament. The only way to get to heaven will be suicide and, then, to risk eternal damnation, because who really knows? What a choice! Being pragmatic and a sensible atheist, I’m certainly glad I won’t have to make that decision. But then, in fact, I realize that I’ve already faced and made my decision.

Geo


A FEW GOOD PLAYS CAN WORK WONDERS

"Art is by nature political. It helps us use our consciences fully. If you think more intelligently, you'll vote more intelligently. I've know a lot of creative people and none have been Republican." —Edward Albee


FUN AND WORDS (from an email to me)

The Washington Post's MENSA Invitational once again asked readers to
take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners. (None of them get through spell checker.)

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you
realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright
ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject
financially impotent for an indefinite period.

5. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

6. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person
who doesn't get it.

7. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

8. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

9. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

10. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off these bad vibes,
right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

11. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

12. Glibido: All talk and no action.

13. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

14. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've
accidentally walked through a spider web.

15. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your
bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

16. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the
fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

17. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and a jerk.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

BUSH POLICIES KILL

from: Population Institute March-April 2005
 
     [Open quote] In some countries a third of the family planning clinics have closed due to the withdrawal of U.S. funds, according to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.  Howard Dean, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, attributed the closings to the Bush administration’s so-called global gag rule.  The gag rule is a policy that denies U.S. family planning funds to overseas organizations which, in countries where abortion is legal, provide abortion related services or information, using private funds, along with other reproductive health and family planning services.  Before his election to head the DNC, Dean, a former governor of Vermont, was the founder of Democracy for America, a grassroots organization established to support socially progressive and financially responsible political candidates.
     Dean blasted special interest groups that are attempting to bring about a total ban on U.S. finding for family planning services -- even by organizations that abide by the gag rule -- by phony statistics and misleading press releases implying that world population growth has nearly stopped and is about to go into decline.  “Nothing could be further from the truth. Net growth has slowed slightly, but the world’s population is still growing by 76 million per year—the equivalent of adding a new
U.S. population every four years.”
     Dean contended that a “similar campaign of lies and distortions” is under way to raise questions about the safety and effectiveness of condoms.  “Men and women across Africa are dying of AlDS because religious fundamentalists have persuaded them not to use condoms on the basis that the manufacturers have supposedly infected condoms with the HIV virus,” he said.  Twenty-seven million people in sub-saharan Africa are infected with HIV, Dean stressed, and about 20 million have already died of the disease.  He noted that supplies of U. S. donated condoms and other contraceptives have been reduced significantly in at least 29 countries.   “Men in sub-saharan Africa have access to an average of only three condoms a year,” Dean observed. “In southern Africa, where over a quarter of the adult population is living with HIV-AIDS, unavailability of condoms is a death sentence.”
     “The human suffering caused by these misguided policies and inadequate funding is staggering,” he said, pointing out that:
     *The number of women and girls who die every year from pregnancy and childbirth related complications equals the total number of U.S. deaths in World War I, World War II, the Korean war and the Vietnam war combined.
     * 140,000 women bleed to death each year during childbirth.
     * Approximately 100,000 women die each year from infection, another 40,000 from the agony of prolonged labor.
     * 75,000 women die each year trying to end pregnancies. The U.N. estimates that worldwide 18.3 million women and girls try to self-induce abortions each year. Many of those who survive face lifelong disabling pain.
     Dean said that when these statistics are added to “the exhausting burden of repeated pregnancies and births . . . you have a global picture of suffering that demands global response.” [Close quote]

 
I can’t help but note that these superstitious/religious folk who are lying to other superstitious folk about the effectiveness of condoms and who spread the rumor that condom companies are infecting the condoms with the aids virus are just killing off superstitious folk like themselves i.e. the potentially religious. This is why knowledge and modernity will win out over religion, superstition and black magic every time. Stick with the knowledgeable and let the ignorant kill themselves off. I know that sounds cruel, but those who believe the lying religious folk are asking to be duped and to die out.
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“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” —Theodore Sturgeon [Now there’s a positive attitude we all can get behind.]
WHAT’S IN A “THEORY”?

“One of the fundamental reasons for the ongoing conflict between the religious and scientific communities involves differences in terminology and word usage. Having heard many lay people scoff “evolution is only a theory” or refer to “the theory of Intelligent Design,” it seems prudent to discuss differences in usage and understanding, as Creationists are misusing the understanding of this and other scientific terms by the average individual to further their own aims.

“In science, the word "theory" is not used in the manner understood by most people, i.e. I have a theory that if I do X, Y will result or perhaps my theory is that man was created by divine intervention. They equate the word with “conjecture,” “supposition,” or at worst “guess.” However, phrases such as these fall under the heading of "hypothesis" or “hunch” for the purpose of scientific inquiry. In a scientific context, the word theory is reserved for ideas that have been repeatedly tested experimentally under very rigorous conditions and confirmed to behave as expected. Quantum electrodynamics, heliocentrism, and plate tectonics are other examples of scientific theory; they are areas that have been independently studied and repeatedly verified over decades or centuries using increasing amounts of hard data.”

If you want to read a good discussion of what a “theory” really is, read the full article at this site:
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal.
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“Arguing with a Bible literalist about evolution is like arguing with a Moslem jihadist about the number of virgins awaiting him in heaven.” —George Thomas

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

BRAIN SCIENCE: IT DOESN’T TAKE A BRAIN SCIENTIST. . . .

“Leda Cosmides was interviewed by Alvaro Fischer and Roberto Araya for the Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio (portions of the interview, translated into Spanish, were published therein on October 28, 2001). This was part of a project entitled "New Paradigms at the Beginning of the Third Millenium", jointly sponsored by the Chilean Engineering Institute and the Chilean Academy of Sciences. The interview covered so many frequently asked questions that we decided to post it here.”
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“Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood.” —Louise Beal

Monday, June 13, 2005

MIRROR NEURONS or HOW HUMANS MADE CULTURE UP

Among our neurons are neurons which not only fire when we perform an action but, also, a set of neurons which fire when we watch someone else perform an action. Mimicry—is that the source our culture, consciousness and rapid evolution?

"Consider what's involved in judging somebody else's movements. Maybe you need to do a virtual reality internal simulation of what that person is doing, and that may involve the activity of these very same neurons, these mirror neurons. So mirror neurons, instead of being some kind of curiosity, have important implications for understanding many aspects of human nature, such as interpreting somebody else's actions and intentions. We think it is this system of neurons that is damaged in some patients who have anosognosia. The patient can therefore no longer construct an internal model of somebody else's actions in order to judge whether that person is accurately carrying out a command or not.

"I believe that these neurons may have played an important role in human evolution. One of the hallmarks of our species is what we call culture. Culture depends crucially on imitation of parents and teachers, and the imitation of complex skills may require the participation of mirror neurons. I think that, somewhere around 50,000 years ago, maybe the mirror neurons system became sufficiently sophisticated that there was an explosive evolution of this ability to mime complex actions, in turn leading to cultural transmission of information, which is what characterizes us humans." —Ramachandran in A BRIEF TOUR OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, p. 38)

And from culture, we advanced into more sophisticated forms of warfare about which the next two entries in today's posting comment.


WELL, OF COURSE! WE COULD HAVE TOLD YOU SO. . . .

"Military officials say that insurgents seem to be getting only savvier. Improvised explosive devices, typically rigged on roads used by U.S. military convoys, are bigger and better placed than before. The fighters themselves are adapting changing tactics, becoming better organized and equipped. When marines launched Operation Matador last week near the Syrian border, they were surprised to find fighters in uniforms and body armor. As Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, remarked to Pentagon reporters last week, 'This is a thinking and adapting adversary.' " (US News and World Report, May 23, 2005, p. 33)


THIS SPEECH IS NEEDED IN 2005

Again, as I read the Stevenson biography by John Martin (ADLAI STEVENSON AND THE WORLD), I come across another passage in a speech by Stevenson that someone ought to be delivering today toward the Bush regime which is ten times more the aggressor and bully in and to the world's nations.

"Too often of late we have turned to the world a face of stern military power. Too often the sound they hear from Washington is the call to arms, the rattling of the saber.... Thus have we Americans, the most peaceful and generous people on earth, been made to appear hard, belligerent, and careless of those very qualities of humanity which, in fact, we value most. The picture of America—the kindly, generous, deeply pacific people who are really America—has been clouded in the world, to the comfort of the aggressors and dismay of our friends.... We will be welcome to the sensitive people of Asia, more as engineers and doctors and agricultural experts, coming to build, to help, to heal, than as soldiers..... So I say, let us present once more the true face of America—warm and modest and friendly, dedicated to the welfare of all mankind, and demanding nothing except a chance for all to live and let live, to grow and govern as they wish, free from interference, free from intimidation, free from fear. Let this be the American mission in the hydrogen age. Let us stop slandering ourselves and appear before the world once again as we really are—as friends, not as masters; as apostles of principle, not of power; in humility, not arrogance; as champions of peace, not as harbingers of war. For our strength lies, not alone in our proving grounds and our stockpiles, but in our ideals, our goals, and their universal appeal to all men who are struggling to breathe free." —Adlai Stevenson (from a radio address on April 11, 1955, might I add, just a couple of months before I graduated from Stivers High School in Dayton, Ohio and sped off ten days later to join the United States Navy)
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"War is the unfolding of miscalculations." —Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989)

Friday, June 10, 2005

IF YOU DON'T KNOW, JUST LET GOD BE IT

"If a faithful account was rendered of Man's ideas upon Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word "gods" has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of the natural, the source of known causes, ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods . . . . When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon . . . does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?" —Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron von Holbach, Systeme de la Nature, London, 1770


America: WHERE SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE WERE ONCE HONORED

Following are the intellectual conditions by which a nation grows great. Let's hope that under the Bushite fundamentalists America does not slip into superstitious and religious ignorance which will make us a second rate nation. Already we are behind Europe and some Asian countries in economic and educational standards, and our health care is also falling behind. I hope that some future historian may not have to speak of the U.S. as a place science and reason were "once upon a time" honored.

"Never before or since has Holland been the world power it was then. A small country, forced to live by its wits, its foreign policy contained a strong pacifist element. Because of its tolerance for unorthodox opinions, it was a haven for intellectuals who were refugees from censorship and thought control elsewhere in Europe—much as the United States benefited enormously in the 1930's by the exodus of intellectuals from Nazi-dominated Europe. So seventeenth-century Holland was the home of the great Jewish philosopher Spinoza, whom Einstein admired; of Descartes, a pivotal figure in the history of mathematics and philosophy; and of John Locke, a political scientist who influenced a group of philosophically inclined revolutionaries named Paine, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin and Jefferson. Never before or since has Holland been graced by such a galaxy of artists and scientists, philosophers and mathematicians.

The connection between Holland as an exploratory power and Holland as an intellectual and cultural center was very strong. The improvement of sailing ships encouraged technology of all kinds. People enjoyed working with their hands. Inventions were prized. Technological advance required the freest possible pursuit of knowledge, so Holland became the leading publisher and bookseller in Europe, translating works written in other languages and permitting the publication of works proscribed elsewhere. Adventures into exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers to reconsider the prevailing wisdom and showed that ideas that had been accepted for thousands of years—for example, on geography—were fundamentally in error. In a time when kings and emperors ruled much of the world, the Dutch Republic was governed, more than any other nation, by the people. The openness of the society and its encouragement of the life of the mind, its material well-being and its commitment to the exploration and utilization of new worlds generated a joyful confidence in the human enterprise." (from Sagan's COSMOS, pp. 141-143)
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"'Irrationality' originally meant only that a number could not be expressed as a ratio." —Carl Sagan in COSMOS.

"Now 'irrationality' is synonymous with evangelical Christianity." —George Thomas

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

GROWING OLD IN RAINY SPOKANE

A rainy day in old Spokane, and I feel very drowsy and ambitionless, but it’s a comfortable feeling, and I ought to honor it by doing nothing all day. The lawn is growing thicker and this Spring rain doesn’t help. Soon the lawn, the gardens, the flowers will demand more attention. I already got the “weed and feed” to hose onto the lawn, and the little bottles just sit there, telling me to get busy as I go in and out the back door. The weeds already own some of the back yard which I cleared last year preparatory to planting more xeric plants. Now I’m at square one again.

Growing old and thinking about death these days, I recall when I was younger and every time I thought of my death I could imagine myself in the coffin under the ground. It was terrifying. I know I’ve talked about this before, about the terror of being in a coffin alive under the earth. That’s why I used to be afraid of dying.

Now of course, I know death’s just a sleep I’ll slip into, dreamless, from which I won’t awake. There’s no god, of course, but I might be an experiment by alien beings who will awake me after I die in some other form. Actually, that’s a lot more likely than the fairy tale Christian story.

(Ten minutes later.) The drowsiness has passed. It was just the sinus pill I took to clear my head and ears because I was getting dizzy.


AN ORTHODOX NEOCON ISRAELI SAYS PSALMS ARE ABOUT REVENGE

For years I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen that the Psalms are full of violence and paranoia. Christians have looked at me like I was nuts. But last night (April 5) I was watching Nightline, a segment on the Jewish right wing in Israel which is as murderous as any Nazi party ever was.

These Jews want to drive out or murder any Palestinian who refuses to leave and thoroughly cleanse Israel of all non-Jews. They say it’s god’s will and all that nonsense. They sound like George Bush with his god’s will nonsense. And most of those Israeli Jews looked at lot like redneck American Christians, beards and all. They’re average Jewish citizens but, like most Southern fundamentalists, not very bright. One or two of them had facial tics and eye rolls that showed signs of mental retardation. Simpleton types, the kind easily led by emotionalism and ignorance into any desperate plan. Ignorant, yes, but scary none the less because capable of violence.

Anyhow... one of the Jewish extremists mentioned the Psalms and said he reads them all the time. He said, “Read them! Only two psalms about healing the sick and all the rest about ‘revenge’!” Finally, a man of the Old Testament noticing what I noticed many years ago. The Psalms are full of revenge and asking god to get even with enemies, asking god to kill other races and religions. That’s the psalms, that’s where a lot of American Christians get their anger and self-pity. The psalms are paranoid and filled with fear and resentment and the spirit of revenge. Read them honestly, you’ll see! But you must be fair and impartial when you read them.


W. R. GRACE AND CONSERVATIVES

Also watched a PBS show on the decimation of the population of Libby, Montana by the asbestos plague W. R. Grace Company created while mining there. And the pain and suffering caused by the mining giant is so obvious and far reaching, I had to laugh, again, at the silly Sears salesman who told me that no company would consciously kill off it’s customer base. God, sometimes, you gotta wonder what planet these neocons live on, and why they know so little of history. Is it a mental disease caused by listening to too much Hannity, Limbaugh and O’Reilly?

Actually, we know that the distortion of history which goes on on their shows is pretty complete and it’s beginning to hurt Americans ability to know and tell the truth.


WHEN EMOTION MUST DIE

I was discussing the role of feeling in the human animal with a friend at the Spike the other day. He says that emotion is a large part of human life and hinted we can’t do without emotion. But I see a day coming when humans are going to have to make some pretty tough, dispassionate decisions about human life. What will we do when we can predict much of the course of a human life before it’s born?

Let’s say we can predict accurately that a particular fetus will have an 80 percent chance of committing a violent assault and that the assault will 60 percent of the time result in a death. What will we do? Given those odds, carefully compiled by actuaries, will we decide to terminate the life of that fetus? What if we can tell that a fetus will 90 percent of the time develop a nonfatal but crippling disease in a culture which no longer has the resources to maintain that life in any sort of comfortable manner? What percentage will we decide is significant in any of these cases? How much is too much or too little? What will we do with such an unfortunate fetus? Will we coldly, dispassionately make decisions which benefit all culture even though for one family the pain would be great?

More importantly, does the pain have to be so great? Can’t the human animal learn to transcend selfish personal pain for a larger view of the good life? Most people, I know, are afraid of being so dispassionate. They are! But what will we do as human life continues to choke the arteries of the planet and we get to the place that we need to cut back procreative urges or die?

Of course, there is one hope which remains. That science, once it can predict the future of a fetus, can also find ways to correct the genetic defects.
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"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin." —H.L. Menken

Monday, June 06, 2005

LITERALLY, THE LITERALIST DROWNS IN THE LAMB'S BLOOD

I'm always troubled when I discuss atheism or religion with fundamentalists because they're so sadly dead and plodding and unpoetic. They don't know what they're missing. O—they're emotional enough, writhing in the clutch of their Jesus experience, but they are also like frothing pit bulls who won't let go the seat of his pants. As to any larger feel for the visionary Universe, they get nothing. Their god is a puppet maker who whittled them from mud and who never left earth. Their god has no imagination. He's a petty choirmaster who punishes them or the choirmaster's wife who gives them milk and cookies.

Never mind that in every encounter with the details of science, fundamentalists have, throughout history, lost in the courts of time. You would think that, therefore, they would embrace a less literal interpretation of their big book and take up a poetic and symbolic interpretation.

Christian and Moslem fundamentalists are more alike than they are different when it comes to a contrast with most rational Americans. They are ever people of the law rather than people of the spirit. As Thomas Merton writes below, "One cannot apprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence."

I've lost much of my own poetic spirit with the ravages of time. A certain ability to concentrate my consciousness seems to have declined, but, still, I recall how spiritual and painful is the truly poetic way of experiencing reality. The poetic and symbolic way challenges the petty laws of the literalists and allows doubt to flourish. In the brief passage I quote below, I found for myself an explanation of the literalist's problem which I have never forgotten, and then, recently, Joseph Campbell explained further.


"... the language of religion, including most of the Bible, is necessarily figurative or symbolic and therefore the literalist, who by definition, lacks imagination or poetic insights, is the least religious of men." (from THE DARTMOUTH BIBLE, 2nd Edition, p. xl)

[OPEN QUOTE] "The symbols of the higher religions may at first sight seem to have little in common," wrote a Roman Catholic monk, the late Father Thomas Merton, in a brief but perspicacious article entitled "Symbolism: Communication or Communion?" "But when one comes to a better understanding of those religions, and when one sees that the experiences which are the fulfillment of religious belief and practice are most clearly expressed in symbols, one may come to recognize that often the symbols of different religions may have more in common than have the abstractly formulated official doctrines."

"The true symbol," he states again, "does not merely point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself. A true symbol takes us to the center of the circle, not to another point on the circumference. It is by symbolism that man enters affectively and consciously into contact with his own deepest self, with other men, and with God." " 'God is dead' . . . means, in fact, that symbols are dead."

The poet and the mystic regard the imagery of a revelation as a fiction through which an insight into the depths of being—one's own being and being generally —is conveyed anagogically. Sectarian theologians, on the other hand, hold hard to the literal readings of their narratives, and these hold traditions apart. The lives of three incarnations, Jesus, Krishna, and Shakyamuni, will not be the same, yet as symbols pointing not to themselves, or to each other, but to the life beholding them, they are equivalent. To quote the monk Thomas Merton again: The symbol is an object pointing to a subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness, far beyond the level of subject and object.'"

Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions, are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a "presence" or "eternity" that is whole and entire in each. In this function all mythologies, all great poetries, and all mystic traditions are in accord; and where any such inspiriting vision remains effective in a civilization, everything and every creature within its range is alive. The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill if it is to render life to modern lives is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the mind. Whereas theologians, reading their revelations counterclockwise, so to say, point to references in the past (in Merton's words: "to another point on the circumference") and Utopians offer revelations only promissory of some desired future, mythologies, having sprung from the psyche, point back to the psyche ("the center"): and anyone seriously turning within will, in fact, rediscover their references in himself. [CLOSE QUOTE] (from MYTHS TO LIVE BY, Joe Campbell, pp. 265-266)
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"All god's children are not beautiful. Most of god's children are, in fact, barely presentable." —Fran Lebowitz (She spends lots of time looking in the mirror too.)

Friday, June 03, 2005

WHO'S WATCHING YOUR BACKSIDE?

Several times I've come across this bumper sticker: REAL MEN LOVE JESUS. It says a lot to me about certain types of fundamentalist males that one of their primary concerns is whether or not they are "real men". Most of us who—what?—gave up worrying about our manhoods when our sexual identities finally carified, sometime pretty early on in life.


FROM DEMOCRATIC SOURCES

The following material came to me on the internet, but I can’t recall from which source. However I thought you might be interested in reading how the Dems plan/planned to fight back against Republican tyranny.

[Open quote] As a matter of comity, the Minority in the Senate traditionally defer to the Majority in the setting of the agenda. If Bill Frist pulls the nuclear trigger, Democrats will show deference no longer. Invoking a little-known Senate procedure called Rule XIV, last week
Democrats put nine bills on the Senate calendar that seek to help America
fulfill its promise. If Republican's break the rules Democrats will use the rule to bring to the Senate floor an agenda that meets the needs of average Americans, such as lowering gas prices, reducing the cost of health care and helping veterans.

“Across the country, people are worried about things that matter to their
families – the health of their loved ones, their child’s performance in
schools, and those sky high gas prices,” said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. “But what is the number one priority for Senate Republicans? Doing away with the last check on one-party rule in Washington to allow President Bush, Senator Frist and Tom Delay to stack the courts with radical judges. If Republicans proceed to pull the trigger on the nuclear option, Democrats will respond by employing existing Senate rules to push forward our agenda for America.”

Democrats have introduced bills that address America’s real challenges. (Details attached)

1. Women’s Health Care (S. 844). “The Prevention First Act of
2005” will reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions by
increasing funding for family planning and ending health insurance
discrimination against women.

2. Veterans’ Benefits (S. 845). “The Retired Pay Restoration
Act of 2005” will assist disabled veterans who, under current law, must
choose to either receive their retirement pay or disability compensation.

3. Fiscal Responsibility (S. 851). Democrats will move to
restore fiscal discipline to government spending and extend the
pay-as-you-go requirement.

4. Relief at the Pump (S. 847). Democrats plan to halt the
diversion of oil from the markets to the strategic petroleum reserve. By
releasing oil from the reserve through a swap program, the plan will bring
down prices at the pump.

5. Education (S. 848). Democrats have a bill that will: strengthen head start and child care programs, improve elementary and secondary education, provide a roadmap for first generation and low-income college students, provide college tuition relief for students and their families, address the need for math, science and special education teachers, and make college affordable for all students.

6. Jobs (S. 846). Democrats will work in support of legislation that guarantees overtime pay for workers and sets a fair minimum wage.

7. Energy Markets (S. 870). Democrats work to prevent Enron-style market manipulation of electricity.

8. Corporate Taxation (S. 872). Democrats make sure companies pay their fair share of taxes to the U.S. government instead of keeping profits overseas.

9. Standing with our troops (S. 11). Democrats believe that putting America’s security first means standing up for our troops and their families

“Abusing power is not what the American people sent us to
Washington to do. We need to address real priorities instead -- fight for
relief at the gas pump, stronger schools and lower health care costs for
America’s families,” said Senator Reid. [Close quote]
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“Old age comes at a bad time.” —Sue Banducci

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

ANOTHER EXCHANGE WITH DAVEO

This exchange began with a complaining letter I sent about one of the Spokesman Review’s columnists. She wrote an essay about evil and seemed to give credence to such religious nonsense as exorcisms and etcetera. That, of course, fired me up and my letter followed. Then Dave jumped in and off we went to the races. Hope you enjoy our titanic struggle:


Dear Editorial Board,

Rebecca Nappi’s muddled and uninformative essay on Wednesday about “evil” is a clear example of what I’ve been saying about the fact that no one on your paper represents a rational, useful and clear-eyed point of view on current events. She added nothing to anyone’s understanding of human behavior and so her column was a waste of everybody’s time.

I read a few of [Scott] Peck’s earlier works, when he was still a bit more sensible, but he’s fallen off the edge now, so to speak. S. J. Gould did a good job of picking apart Peck’s theories of human behavior quite some time ago, and I wish I could recall which of Gould’s essays performed the vivisection so that I could recommend it to the Board.

Who cares whether we call an act “good”, “evil”, “cute”, “bad” or “criminal”? Labeling an act by any name yields not the slightest information of why the act appeared in the behavior repertoire of an individual human being. None whatsoever. Historically, labeling never stops an act from occurring again, never has, and it doesn’t really explain the behavior. If it did, the human race would have had only to experience one Hitler. So Rebecca’s column was just an exercise in futility and commiseration. She waved a soggy handkerchief at the problem of human behavior and turned her back on some potentially real answers.

I’ll cut to the conclusion that Rebecca should have arrived at. An appeal for more funding for the scientific research of evolutionary psychology and a genetic understanding of the real causes of human behavior. In those fields some real understanding of human behavior is already being uncovered. Over and over I’ve recommended to your august company some of the names of those books for your reading pleasure. However, none of the solid and useful information from those books seem to be getting into your paper.

Human behavior does not occur in the way that most under-educated Americans think it does. Really, to hear most people talk, you’d think that all the sensory data which bombards the human animal every second goes to some little room in the brain where sits a homunculus (or soul, armed or unarmed with moral imperatives) which reviews all the arriving data for its moral content then selects from a repertoire of action levers on the wall beside it and pulls one or another to achieve some moral purpose. You’d also think that two other creatures also inhabit this control room, one which tells the little homunculus to chose the good action lever and one which urges it to pull the other lever. If you listen to most babble and commiseration about human behavior, you’ll see that’s what underlies most people’s simplistic idea of how behavior erupts from the human psyche. Nothing could be farther from the truth. How stupid, uninformed and actually immoral in it’s callous disregard for the knowledge being developed that could eventually change human behavior to more constructive ends.

I’ve got a lot more to say about the hows and whys of human behavior, but why should I bother? No one listens down there anyhow and we get the same old religious nonsense to explain everything. I’ll once more recommend a book by a scholar in behavior: Stephen Pinker’s “The Blank Slate”. Then when you finish that book packed with information, look in its index for other books about the whole issue of the evolution of human consciousness and the solid information being developed about human behavior. Anything less on your Board’s part is criminal neglect of your job or, at least, dereliction of duty. I keep appealing to your duty to inform your readers rather than to stroke their ignorance.

Sincerely,

Geo

PS: Really, Rebecca, a Yale graduate, you should be ashamed of yourself for supporting such superstitious nonsense to explain human behavior. Could it be correct that George Bush was right when he said the admission of women into Yale was the downfall of that institution? Please don’t make Bush and Harvard’s current president right nor let us male supporters of feminism down. Show that you do have the ability to think scientifically. I’ll support you one hundred percent.
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george; do you ever just let it go? what's your point in your constant carping? do you believe we listen when you rip a respected colleague? or do you prefer to be further marginalized in our sight? you have been relentlessly nasty to our board for years. i don't understand your strategy. you've turned off even those who might agree with your humanistic view of the universe. you're too intelligent to behave this way. you amaze me -- dfo
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Dave,

I just reread my comments about Rebecca Nappi’s column. It barely touches her, Dave. It’s mostly an appeal for someone with a scientific knowledge of how the world works to get some space in your paper. I was specific about the issues which troubled me and with how Rebecca Nappi failed to satisfy even a moderately scientific view of the universe. I even bothered to write a paragraph or two showing the clear clash between her view of the world and what science shows us so that she would see where I’m coming from. You media conservatives are in power, Dave. You get all the ink. To me, even most liberals, who still cling to only moral arguments, are conservatives. Way behind the curve. Therefore, as I also note with the situation with other minorities, since we rarely see our views represented in media pages, of course all our comments will, by necessity, sound negative. I’ve written in to praise some of the paper’s political positions when I’ve agreed.

I’m in constant communication with John Hill too, and you guys down there give him a bad rap. Most everything he writes is informed, accurate and telling. It’s the truths he tells which insult the uninformed and isn’t that how it’s always been? Right now the government is forcing scientists to lie just as the Vatican forced Galileo to lie. Isn’t that interesting? Where’s the outrage down at your paper? And, by the way, it’s Bush and that Harvard president who deep down insult women. All I did was challenge Rebecca to do some research. For Pete’s sake, Dave, I was in my 60’s before I started to really get into this science thing. It’s never to late for anyone who’s still rational.

I did not insult Nappi’s character. I was specific in pointing out just where she fails IN HER RESPONSIBILITIES AS A JOURNALIST to be aware of what’s going on in the world around us. To me, to not know anything about evolutionary psychology and what hard science is showing us about consciousness and behavior is a significant failure on the part of those in charge of our media. It keeps us talking about behavior as if it were 10,000 bce. We’re not making any progress, and we never shall if one can’t tell the difference between an Imam’s and an American Christian columnist’s view of reality. America is incredibly dumb when it comes to science, and that’s a crime in my book.

I suggest you read my comments again, and note that I didn’t just rant on about Nappi’s ignorance. I didn’t call her stupid. I suggested she was uninformed, which is true when it comes to science, and superstitious which she is when she talks about things which don’t have any evidence to support them. When I was in college, Dave, and someone pointed out how uninformed I was, which I often was and can still be, I was also hurt and still am when caught out, but I redoubled my efforts to know more about the subjects under discussion. Thus I’ve delved more deeply into Bible scholarship to understand the debate between Bible scholars on both sides of the inerrancy controversy. Etcetera. My goal is to keep knowing more each day until my mind gives out. Else why waste my time being alive other than the procreative (i.e. family values thing) and survival (work) drives which come from my evolved animal nature”

Shoot, Dave, I wanted to be short, but no discussion with me is short because my thinking is nuanced and layered and one thought is connected to another in a logical manner by the synapses of my brain. I think that means I have a connected and sensible view of the universe, at least as far as my chemical self goes.

Take ‘er easy,

Geo
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george; you... are so passé in your embrace of atheism. even the scholars and philosophers are passing you guys by because findings in science point to creative design, not away from it. here's an article from the washington times backing that up: http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050303-115733-9519r.htm . you and hill remind me of the guys described in the Bible who are always seeking but never coming to the saving knowledge of the truth. trouble is, God has set eternity in your hearts ... a deep-down knowledge that this ain't all there is ... and you two have to find a way to scratch that itch to bring some meaning to your lives. so, you acquire knowledge. others, like hagadone in coeur d'alene, can't get enough of things. still others can't get enough of women. or sports. or drugs, etc. in the end, it's so much chasing the wind. if you're right re: the lack of a God, you're existence is meaningless. so you might as well fill your hours until the grave by keeping your mind busy. what futility. what a waste -- dfo
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Dave,

Look, I’m well aware of those who are after getting intelligent design into the mix, so that they can bring god back into the picture, but, so far, the best scientific minds don’t buy the argument. But, Dave, you’re missing something. Those respectable scientists who are considering intelligent design don’t go to anything like the god of your Bible. I read one of those articles you sent me awhile back, and that philosopher (not scientist), who supposedly went toward “creative design” away from traditional theory, pointedly pointed out that what he was suggesting was a plan which had nothing to do with a god like in the Bible. He was talking about some mechanisms in the process which forced the universe to end up so that consciousness could understand it. He’s talking way beyond where you’re at, Dave. You need to read and understand the stuff you’re passing on. According to the best minds who are considering intelligent design, the “designer” could just as well have been a germ from Mars as a creature from Jupiter or a purely mechanistic process without any spiritual content. None of them is predicting anything like a god with a will and consciousness so very much like us as to allow for us to have created it as well as it having created us. Only those already convinced of an answer without an open mind go to the god of your particular limited religion.

Please understand what you are talking about.

Geo
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doggone it, george, quit this condescending horse crap. of course, i knew the folks i sent you were talking about a God other than the one I believe in. the point is ... they believe in something. which is light years ahead of your enlightened foolish position. i wanted to show you that very educated people believe in something out there. and so do you -- deep down. i saw it in your eyes when we chatted at starbucks. you'd like to slam the door on a monotheistic God because of all the relatives who let you down over the years (save your grandmother). but it's under your skin. i'll take my limited God and the abundant life He's given me any day over your broad-minded hopelessness. Why would anyone ever trade for so-called enlightenment that must hope that life ends at the grave? you have nothing to offer but the vanity of acquiring knowledge for knowledge sake and believing you're intellectually superior to others. pride cometh before a fall, pal -- dfo
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Dave,

This one is insulting. My only reason for believing the way that I do is because, believe it or not, I honor the truth and believe that the human race will get nowhere if they are living with false gods. And, please don’t bring in that family stuff. That’s underhanded and untrue. I’ve faced all those demons and won through to science. That little story I began to tell you has three more parts. They document my journey to the truth, only as I see it. I believe you are sincere in your truths too. Our only real conflict is I say there’s no proof of a god anywhere that can be tested. You say there is. Other than that, I honor your positions as having the same integrity as mine.

Geo
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george, i despair. everything around you should tell you how wrong you are about a superior being of some kind. the fact that we're here. and everything else is, too. i don't think it's an intelligent position to say it all just happened. that flat doesn't make sense. you can't prove where it all came from scientifically; yet, you hold on for dear life to an impossible position. that's fine. but don't be so dang condescending with your religion of unbelief. scripture dismisses your position rather succinctly. i can't prove God scientifically. and you can't disprove Him scientifically. He's in a different realm. He's like the wind. You can feel it. See its results. But you can't see it. In the form of Jesus Christ, however, you have God in the flesh, with plenty of Scripture to foretell his coming and even pen down where He was going to be born and how he and why he was going to die. but enough of this. you don't buy a word. and we've plowed over this ground. i don't mean to be insulting. but you are, too. i suppose you want me to turn the other cheek. i'm not good at doing that. i respect that you're a decent guy who truly is seeking truth. i continue this conversation for that reason only. i would not be having this conversation with your friend. although i believe we're wasting each other's time, i like you -- dfo
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That was the end of our conversation. I let him get in that last word, but here, I must prevail. On his own blog site, he always gets in the last word when he wants to. But I don’t want to actually argue with him in this place. What I do want to point out is how we both go around and around, and every thing he says, I’ve heard a million times. And I agree, when it comes to stuff outside of space/time where a god would have to be in order to have created space/time, neither of us can prove anything. So that brings us back to science which only claims to measure and explain what’s inside the space/time envelope. It’s when religionists of any world religion try to tell us that their tale-telling religious books better describe the material phenomena of this realm than does science that I say “poo poo”. Always and ever, when push comes to shove, science has always been right whenever scripture and science have clashed over the physical universe.

Wheeew! (Wipe brow.) A long one, eh?