EVIDENCE SAYS NO GREAT DESIGNER AND XTIANS LIE
Always and ever, when we humans look at this great designer, puppeteer god of the Middle East regions, he turns out to be very human, even to his mistakes. So even if there were "Intelligent Design" (and there isn't), the designer sure made an awful lot of extremely human mistakes.
"The fossil evidence could be consistent with the idea of a Great Designer; perhaps some species are destroyed when the Designer becomes dissatisfied with them, and new experiments are attempted on an improved design. But this notion is a little disconcerting. Each plant and animal is exquisitely made; should not a supremely competent Designer have been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament)." (from COSMOS, Carl Sagan, p. 29)
The nasty and dishonest twist which the fundamentalist put on this Intelligent Design hypothesis is that they do not intend to honor the hypotheses of honest intelligent design proponents at all. They just use intelligent design to try to wiggle their Old Testament god into the picture of how the universe came into being. If you'll notice, all the honest Intelligent Design theorists usually say that the Designer they speak of is nothing like the Bible god of fundamentalism. So when a fundamentalist pretends to advance the cause of Intelligent Design, he does not honor it in his own mind. He's just being a dishonest trickster.
Of course, the hope most revealed by those who support intelligent design is the wish to be accepted into the scientific community. They show that even they know that the scientific method is the one sure source of truth in the natural world.
IF WE HAD FREE WILL, WE COULD CHOOSE TO LIVE FOREVER
If we had free will, in any spiritual sense, we could choose to live forever, but we are not free, so we run down like old machines and rust away.
HOW VERSUS WHY
Science asks how something works. Religion asks why something works. If most of us got busy finding out how things work, we'd soon lose interest in worrying about why they work. Religionists would stop whining why why why why why why all the way into the grave.
KARPINSKI BOOK REVEALS MUCH
Okay, I may not know if I've spelled her name correctly, but Karpinsky is the once upon a time general in the military, the only one demoted for her role in Abu Ghraib (another name I'm too lazy to look up the spelling for). She was in charge of the prison guards, not the interrogators. She's recently written a book which tells how she was railroaded by higher ups, probably just like Scooter Libby is taking the fall for higher ups. Early on, Karpinski sat in on a meeting General Miller held with interrogation officials. He's the general who was transferred from Guantanamo to Iraq to do the dirty job of getting better intelligence. She heard him tell his people to start treating prisoners like dogs. Thus, the dog collars and leashes which appear in the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib.
At another time during her tour of duty, Karpinsky received an order to hold one captive's name from the rolls, to hide him away out of sight from the Red Cross and all scrutiny. Such an act is in contradiction to the Geneva Conventions. The order was issued directly from Donald Rumsfeld's office. She questioned the order and refused to sign it. She knew that to participate would make her a war criminal. Note, she is the only one who Secretary of War Rumsfeld has punished for the scandal in Abu Ghraib. He's a master of irony, isn't he? It's clear Rumsfeld has no more compunction than a fascist about his actions. If one acts like a fascist, then one is a fascist. If one supports a fascist, then one is also a fascist. Where does George Bush stand in all of this?
___________________________________________________
"The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you're on the job." —Slappy White
Monday, October 31, 2005
Friday, October 28, 2005
THIS CAN'T BE SAID ENOUGH. GET OUT THERE AND DO IT!
"Where physical affection is encouraged, theft, organized religion and invidious displays of wealth are inconspicuous; where infants are physically punished, there tends to be slavery, frequent killing, torturing and mutilation of enemies, a devotion to the inferiority of women, and a belief in one or more supernatural beings who intervene in daily life." —Carl Sagan, COSMOS, p. 331
BUSH'S HEAD IS SO FAR UP HIS _ _ _ THAT HE CAN'T SEE SUGAR
"The one man who has had extensive negotiations with the Iranians, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said to me a few months ago that Tehran is seeking a grand bargain: a comprehensive normalization of relations with the West in exchange for concessions on nuclear issues. It will never give up its right to a nuclear program, he argues, but it would allow such a program to be monitored to ensure that it doesn't morph into a weapons project. But the prize they seek, above all, is better relations with the United States. "That is their ultimate goal," he said." —Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek (Aug. 22, 2005
But will Bush be man enough to admit he's off on the wrong foot and has his total head up his complete ass when it comes to foreign policy? I doubt it. The kind of humility which leads to world peace and world respect is not within the range of the Christian, Texas, and Southern mentality which is central to the Bush league Bush plays in.
EUROPEAN SOCIALISM BETTER THAN
US CHRISTIANITY FOR FAMILY VALUES
"The USA has the lowest percentage among Western nations of children who grow up with both biological parents, 63 percent, [a recent report on marriage out of Rutger's University] says.
'The United States has the weakest families in the Western world because we have the highest divorce rate and the highest rate of solo parenting,' Popenoe [the report's co-author] says."
Why do American neocons constantly degrade socialistic foreign cultures which do so much better at nurturing and supporting families and, generally, in doing so much better at nurturing all people within their cultures? Need I point out that Bush and family are part of the oil culture, an extremely selfish and sadistic subculture within the declining American Empire? We just can't sink no lower than this. . . and him and his.
AND NOW, FOR THE RIGHT STUFF. AND IT AIN'T THE RIGHTIES
"The main product of the space program, I have always maintained, is not science, nor Velcro, nor military advantage, nor national pride, but consciousness. The Earth is mankind's home, but Earth's home is the universe. After all, weren't our very blood and bones made of star dust, composed of atoms forged in ancient starry dynamos? Was not the wheeling of the Galaxy itself—grand cycles of extinction and mutation—mysteriously inscribed in the evolutionary record of life on Earth? Neptune and Mars and all the rest, their craggy moons, and the comets were kin; surely the stars were as connected to us as our toes....
"Where's home, cowboy? Once upon a time, it was the circle around the campfire or cave. But as Soderblom says, home is an expandable concept. Home becomes the neighborhood, the whole valley, the state, the country, the continent. The Earth. And our concept of kin similarly expands—past family, past clan, past commonality of accent, class, language, race—the farther we travel. On Mars, anybody with a head, anybody who spoke at all, would be part of 'us.' I'd like to believe that the notion and criteria of kinship could continue to grow, transcending even animals and the other manifestations of the genetic code. The Solar System and the life starting to crawl through it are of a chemical piece, derived from the same cloud of star dust billions of years ago, with the same chemical signature as our Solar System has now: 94 percent hydrogen atoms by number; 6% helium atoms, 0.04 percent carbon, 0.008 percent nitrogen, 0.07 percent oxygen. Evolution started with that stardust. Perhaps we should recognize even Triton, made of the same stuff as ourselves, as a member of the family, a wayward distant relative included in the family movies at last." —Dennis Overbye in an essay, "Where's Home, Cowboy?" in the collected edition of science writing, MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE, edited by William Shore.
When I hold my head just right and squinch my eyes at just the left angle, this is how I see the Universe, in all it's glory, and humankind's place in it—small, wondering and wonderful.
"Where physical affection is encouraged, theft, organized religion and invidious displays of wealth are inconspicuous; where infants are physically punished, there tends to be slavery, frequent killing, torturing and mutilation of enemies, a devotion to the inferiority of women, and a belief in one or more supernatural beings who intervene in daily life." —Carl Sagan, COSMOS, p. 331
BUSH'S HEAD IS SO FAR UP HIS _ _ _ THAT HE CAN'T SEE SUGAR
"The one man who has had extensive negotiations with the Iranians, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said to me a few months ago that Tehran is seeking a grand bargain: a comprehensive normalization of relations with the West in exchange for concessions on nuclear issues. It will never give up its right to a nuclear program, he argues, but it would allow such a program to be monitored to ensure that it doesn't morph into a weapons project. But the prize they seek, above all, is better relations with the United States. "That is their ultimate goal," he said." —Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek (Aug. 22, 2005
But will Bush be man enough to admit he's off on the wrong foot and has his total head up his complete ass when it comes to foreign policy? I doubt it. The kind of humility which leads to world peace and world respect is not within the range of the Christian, Texas, and Southern mentality which is central to the Bush league Bush plays in.
EUROPEAN SOCIALISM BETTER THAN
US CHRISTIANITY FOR FAMILY VALUES
"The USA has the lowest percentage among Western nations of children who grow up with both biological parents, 63 percent, [a recent report on marriage out of Rutger's University] says.
'The United States has the weakest families in the Western world because we have the highest divorce rate and the highest rate of solo parenting,' Popenoe [the report's co-author] says."
Why do American neocons constantly degrade socialistic foreign cultures which do so much better at nurturing and supporting families and, generally, in doing so much better at nurturing all people within their cultures? Need I point out that Bush and family are part of the oil culture, an extremely selfish and sadistic subculture within the declining American Empire? We just can't sink no lower than this. . . and him and his.
AND NOW, FOR THE RIGHT STUFF. AND IT AIN'T THE RIGHTIES
"The main product of the space program, I have always maintained, is not science, nor Velcro, nor military advantage, nor national pride, but consciousness. The Earth is mankind's home, but Earth's home is the universe. After all, weren't our very blood and bones made of star dust, composed of atoms forged in ancient starry dynamos? Was not the wheeling of the Galaxy itself—grand cycles of extinction and mutation—mysteriously inscribed in the evolutionary record of life on Earth? Neptune and Mars and all the rest, their craggy moons, and the comets were kin; surely the stars were as connected to us as our toes....
"Where's home, cowboy? Once upon a time, it was the circle around the campfire or cave. But as Soderblom says, home is an expandable concept. Home becomes the neighborhood, the whole valley, the state, the country, the continent. The Earth. And our concept of kin similarly expands—past family, past clan, past commonality of accent, class, language, race—the farther we travel. On Mars, anybody with a head, anybody who spoke at all, would be part of 'us.' I'd like to believe that the notion and criteria of kinship could continue to grow, transcending even animals and the other manifestations of the genetic code. The Solar System and the life starting to crawl through it are of a chemical piece, derived from the same cloud of star dust billions of years ago, with the same chemical signature as our Solar System has now: 94 percent hydrogen atoms by number; 6% helium atoms, 0.04 percent carbon, 0.008 percent nitrogen, 0.07 percent oxygen. Evolution started with that stardust. Perhaps we should recognize even Triton, made of the same stuff as ourselves, as a member of the family, a wayward distant relative included in the family movies at last." —Dennis Overbye in an essay, "Where's Home, Cowboy?" in the collected edition of science writing, MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE, edited by William Shore.
When I hold my head just right and squinch my eyes at just the left angle, this is how I see the Universe, in all it's glory, and humankind's place in it—small, wondering and wonderful.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
STONE AGE BRAINS. NOT ONLY BUSH'S, BUT HE DOESN'T KNOW IT
I got the following off of the University of California, Santa Barbara, psychology department website. I think I may have linked to this site in it's entirety many many posts before this. But now, I intend to break the interview down into smaller frags and post it piecemeal. Two Chileans interviewed Leda Cosmides for the Chilean newspaper, EL MECURIO. Leda Cosmides is the Director of the Department of Psychology.
[Open quote] Question (Fischer & Araya): You and John Tooby are considered to be among the founders of evolutionary psychology. According to philosopher of mind, Dan Dennett, "you are doing some of the best work in Darwinian psychology today" and "you seem to have uncovered a fossil of our Nietschean past". Can you explain what evolutionary psychology is, and how knowing that "our modern .skulls house a stone age mind" can help us to understand modern humans?
Cosmides: Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of psychology, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a wav of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.
When evolutionary psychologists refer to "the mind", they mean the set of information-processing devices, embodied in the human brain, that are responsible for all conscious and non-conscious mental activity, and that generate all behavior. What allows evolutionary psychologists to go beyond traditional approaches in studying the mind is that they make active use in their research of an often overlooked fact: That the programs comprising the human mind were designed by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. It leads one to look for programs that are well-engineered for solving problems such as hunting, foraging for plant foods, courting mates, cooperating with kin, forming coalitions for mutual defense, avoiding predators, and so on. Our minds should have programs that make us good at solving these problems, whether or not they are important in the modern world.
At the same time, by understanding these programs, we can learn how to deal more effectively with evolutionarily novel circumstances. Consider, for example, that the only information available to hunter-gatherers about probability and risk was the frequency with which they encountered actual events. It looks like our "stone age mind" has programs designed to acquire and reason well about frequency data. Knowing this, evolutionary psychologists are developing better ways of communicating complex modern data about statistics. Let's say you have a positive mammogram. How likely is it that you actually have breast cancer? The typical way of presenting the relevant data—in percents—makes this difficult. If you said that 1% of women randomly screened have breast cancer, and all of these test positive, but there is a 3% false alarm rate, most people mistakenly think a positive mammogram means they have a 97% chance of having breast cancer. But let me give you the same information in absolute frequencies—an ecologically valid information format for a hunter-gatherer mind: Out of every 1000 women, 10 have breast cancer and test positive; 30 test positive but do not have breast cancer. So: out of every 1000 women, 40 will test positive, but only 10 of these will have breast cancer. This format makes it clear that, if you had a positive mammogram, your chance of having breast cancer is only 1 in 4. . . that is, 25%, not 97%. [Close quote]
SAGAN IDENTIFIES THE PROCESSES OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
Although I can't find in my notes who Velikovsky is nor what hypothesis he introduced, I put this entry in to demonstrate the scientific attitude which most scientists bring to their work. I can't imagine a better attitude to bring to this creationist intelligent design controversy.
"Many hypotheses proposed by scientists as well as by nonscientists turn out to be wrong. But science is a self-correcting enterprise. To be accepted, all new ideas must survive rigorous standards of evidence. The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that his hypotheses were wrong or in contradiction to established facts, but that some who called themselves scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky's work. Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental new insights." (Sagan's COSMOS, p. 91)
I got the following off of the University of California, Santa Barbara, psychology department website. I think I may have linked to this site in it's entirety many many posts before this. But now, I intend to break the interview down into smaller frags and post it piecemeal. Two Chileans interviewed Leda Cosmides for the Chilean newspaper, EL MECURIO. Leda Cosmides is the Director of the Department of Psychology.
[Open quote] Question (Fischer & Araya): You and John Tooby are considered to be among the founders of evolutionary psychology. According to philosopher of mind, Dan Dennett, "you are doing some of the best work in Darwinian psychology today" and "you seem to have uncovered a fossil of our Nietschean past". Can you explain what evolutionary psychology is, and how knowing that "our modern .skulls house a stone age mind" can help us to understand modern humans?
Cosmides: Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of psychology, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a wav of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.
When evolutionary psychologists refer to "the mind", they mean the set of information-processing devices, embodied in the human brain, that are responsible for all conscious and non-conscious mental activity, and that generate all behavior. What allows evolutionary psychologists to go beyond traditional approaches in studying the mind is that they make active use in their research of an often overlooked fact: That the programs comprising the human mind were designed by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. It leads one to look for programs that are well-engineered for solving problems such as hunting, foraging for plant foods, courting mates, cooperating with kin, forming coalitions for mutual defense, avoiding predators, and so on. Our minds should have programs that make us good at solving these problems, whether or not they are important in the modern world.
At the same time, by understanding these programs, we can learn how to deal more effectively with evolutionarily novel circumstances. Consider, for example, that the only information available to hunter-gatherers about probability and risk was the frequency with which they encountered actual events. It looks like our "stone age mind" has programs designed to acquire and reason well about frequency data. Knowing this, evolutionary psychologists are developing better ways of communicating complex modern data about statistics. Let's say you have a positive mammogram. How likely is it that you actually have breast cancer? The typical way of presenting the relevant data—in percents—makes this difficult. If you said that 1% of women randomly screened have breast cancer, and all of these test positive, but there is a 3% false alarm rate, most people mistakenly think a positive mammogram means they have a 97% chance of having breast cancer. But let me give you the same information in absolute frequencies—an ecologically valid information format for a hunter-gatherer mind: Out of every 1000 women, 10 have breast cancer and test positive; 30 test positive but do not have breast cancer. So: out of every 1000 women, 40 will test positive, but only 10 of these will have breast cancer. This format makes it clear that, if you had a positive mammogram, your chance of having breast cancer is only 1 in 4. . . that is, 25%, not 97%. [Close quote]
SAGAN IDENTIFIES THE PROCESSES OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
Although I can't find in my notes who Velikovsky is nor what hypothesis he introduced, I put this entry in to demonstrate the scientific attitude which most scientists bring to their work. I can't imagine a better attitude to bring to this creationist intelligent design controversy.
"Many hypotheses proposed by scientists as well as by nonscientists turn out to be wrong. But science is a self-correcting enterprise. To be accepted, all new ideas must survive rigorous standards of evidence. The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that his hypotheses were wrong or in contradiction to established facts, but that some who called themselves scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky's work. Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental new insights." (Sagan's COSMOS, p. 91)
Monday, October 24, 2005
TOM DELAY COULDN'T EVEN FIND THE PUMP
From time to time, when I can find something short enough, I like to enter a little example of how a logical scientific mind works, to show the method in practice. Heaven knows that if goddites could prove the existence of their gods with such clarity, there'd be no argument at all. We'd even know exactly what these gods would want us to do. There'd be no contradictions or muddy instructions.
In an essay from MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE called "Pulling the Handle Off the Pump: Sunlight, Cancer, and the Brothers Garland" (itself a great tale of scientific mystery solved), Peter Radetsky portrays another example of scientific sleuthing.
[OPEN QUOTE] It's a famous story in medical circles—the Garlands revere it as a model of how to conduct an epidemiological investigation. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a devastating epidemic of cholera descended upon England. Snow, a London anesthesiologist who lived in the Soho district of the city, took it upon himself to look into a local outbreak that had killed over 500 people in just ten days. The prevailing theory at the time was that cholera was caused by miasmas, foul emanations wafting through the air. Snow suspected otherwise. He noticed that in the heart of the afflicted neighborhood, at the intersection of Broad and Cambridge streets, was a well renowned for its water's taste and supposed purity. In those days when most houses lacked piped water, the Broad Street pump was used by virtually everyone in the neighborhood. Rather than these vague miasmas, might not the disease be the result of something in the water? Snow decided to find out.
Snow drew a map of the area, marking deaths with tiny coffins. He found that in the streets surrounding the pump they clustered like iron filings around a magnet. The circumstantial evidence was compelling. But then Snow was confronted with exceptions. Among them was the mystery posed by the 70 employees of a nearby Broad Street brewery—none of them had come down with the disease. If the water were at fault, surely some of them should be dead.
Snow interviewed the brewmaster, and soon the solution to the puzzle became clear: The men drank only beer. As the brewery had its own well, they had never once used the Broad Street pump. That was why, in the midst of death, they had survived. But what about the death from cholera of an old woman, a former resident of Broad Street, who had moved miles away to Hampstead some time before? There was no cholera in her new neighborhood—why had this woman been stricken? Snow took a carriage ride to her home and asked her son if there had been anything unusual about his mother's habits. Nothing, the son replied, except for one minor idiosyncrasy. It seemed that from her earlier residence in Soho the old woman had developed a taste for water from the Broad Street pump. To keep her in good spirits, the family had paid a porter to fetch a large bottle of pump water every day. So although the woman did not live in the area at the time of her death, in effect her coffin belonged there. She, too, had been drinking the water.
The exceptions proved the rule. Snow convinced city officials to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump, and the epidemic subsided. [CLOSE QUOTE]
AND NOW FOR A LITTLE MORE OLD TIME RELIGION
Here's another letter to the editor which I helped draft:
For a quarter century, America’s been careening toward “Republican religion”, and we should evaluate the results.
Are we still the most modern, forward-looking nation on the globe, the most financially sound, liberal-hearted nation ever? Is America still the world leader in science, on the cutting edge of scientific research? Is our educational system the best in the world? Are we turning out world class students, fitted for the technologically and scientifically challenging future? Is the gap between rich and poor shrinking? Is our middle-class increasing in numbers and in wealth? Are we still considered by the democratic nations of the world to be the most peace-loving power among them? Is America as widely respected as before?
Most importantly, after decades of increasing “born again” leadership, are we a united America, at peace with one another and sharing a common sense of American destiny? Are minority beliefs valued? Are we certain that government won’t meddle in our personal choices and religious affairs while working diligently to increase the common economic good?
No? Why? Look around the globe and observe that fanatical religious leadership generally impoverishes rather than enriches nations, and ask yourself, “Should religiosity be the business of our government?”
From time to time, when I can find something short enough, I like to enter a little example of how a logical scientific mind works, to show the method in practice. Heaven knows that if goddites could prove the existence of their gods with such clarity, there'd be no argument at all. We'd even know exactly what these gods would want us to do. There'd be no contradictions or muddy instructions.
In an essay from MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE called "Pulling the Handle Off the Pump: Sunlight, Cancer, and the Brothers Garland" (itself a great tale of scientific mystery solved), Peter Radetsky portrays another example of scientific sleuthing.
[OPEN QUOTE] It's a famous story in medical circles—the Garlands revere it as a model of how to conduct an epidemiological investigation. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a devastating epidemic of cholera descended upon England. Snow, a London anesthesiologist who lived in the Soho district of the city, took it upon himself to look into a local outbreak that had killed over 500 people in just ten days. The prevailing theory at the time was that cholera was caused by miasmas, foul emanations wafting through the air. Snow suspected otherwise. He noticed that in the heart of the afflicted neighborhood, at the intersection of Broad and Cambridge streets, was a well renowned for its water's taste and supposed purity. In those days when most houses lacked piped water, the Broad Street pump was used by virtually everyone in the neighborhood. Rather than these vague miasmas, might not the disease be the result of something in the water? Snow decided to find out.
Snow drew a map of the area, marking deaths with tiny coffins. He found that in the streets surrounding the pump they clustered like iron filings around a magnet. The circumstantial evidence was compelling. But then Snow was confronted with exceptions. Among them was the mystery posed by the 70 employees of a nearby Broad Street brewery—none of them had come down with the disease. If the water were at fault, surely some of them should be dead.
Snow interviewed the brewmaster, and soon the solution to the puzzle became clear: The men drank only beer. As the brewery had its own well, they had never once used the Broad Street pump. That was why, in the midst of death, they had survived. But what about the death from cholera of an old woman, a former resident of Broad Street, who had moved miles away to Hampstead some time before? There was no cholera in her new neighborhood—why had this woman been stricken? Snow took a carriage ride to her home and asked her son if there had been anything unusual about his mother's habits. Nothing, the son replied, except for one minor idiosyncrasy. It seemed that from her earlier residence in Soho the old woman had developed a taste for water from the Broad Street pump. To keep her in good spirits, the family had paid a porter to fetch a large bottle of pump water every day. So although the woman did not live in the area at the time of her death, in effect her coffin belonged there. She, too, had been drinking the water.
The exceptions proved the rule. Snow convinced city officials to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump, and the epidemic subsided. [CLOSE QUOTE]
AND NOW FOR A LITTLE MORE OLD TIME RELIGION
Here's another letter to the editor which I helped draft:
For a quarter century, America’s been careening toward “Republican religion”, and we should evaluate the results.
Are we still the most modern, forward-looking nation on the globe, the most financially sound, liberal-hearted nation ever? Is America still the world leader in science, on the cutting edge of scientific research? Is our educational system the best in the world? Are we turning out world class students, fitted for the technologically and scientifically challenging future? Is the gap between rich and poor shrinking? Is our middle-class increasing in numbers and in wealth? Are we still considered by the democratic nations of the world to be the most peace-loving power among them? Is America as widely respected as before?
Most importantly, after decades of increasing “born again” leadership, are we a united America, at peace with one another and sharing a common sense of American destiny? Are minority beliefs valued? Are we certain that government won’t meddle in our personal choices and religious affairs while working diligently to increase the common economic good?
No? Why? Look around the globe and observe that fanatical religious leadership generally impoverishes rather than enriches nations, and ask yourself, “Should religiosity be the business of our government?”
Friday, October 21, 2005
MINIMUM WAGE FOR MINIMALIZED WORKERS
A couple of days ago, the Republican-dominated American congress again voted down any increase of the minimum wage. Always with their eyes on the interests of business, those "compassionate" ha ha conservatives just don't get it. I'm taking a class in algebra down at a local two year college, and I watch many young people trying to make ends meet, working two jobs, and trying to go to college at the same time. It ain't always a pretty sight on the grade cards.
CONFUSED BY CREATION? HEBREWS WERE TOO.
I GET A BIG BANG OUT OF IT!
Here's some more of Gary Greenberg's work in 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE: HOW ANCIENT SCRIBES INVENTED BIBLICAL HISTORY, pp. 7-8:
"Genesis begins with two separate and contradictory stories about Creation. The first, in Genesis 1-2:3 and attributed to the priestly source P [one of several sources used by Hebrew scribes to create their creation myth], presents the familiar account of the seven days of Creation, in which the process unfolds in an orderly and structured sequence of events from the formation of heaven and earth to the production of vegetation, animal life, and humanity. Contrary to popular belief, the first Creation story makes no mention of Adam and Eve being created in the image of God. The only reference to humanity is to an entity created on the sixth day that is described as both male and female, and it is this collective entity, male and female, that is created in God's image.
"The second account, in Genesis 2 and attributed to the Yahwist source J, serves as an introduction to the story of Adam and Eve and their children. This version of Creation is less complete than the priestly version.
"The two stories differ in many details. Each provides a different order of Creation and different explanations as to how things came about. Perhaps the most significant difference deals with the question of morality. The first Creation features no talk about moral principles. The second, which serves as an introduction to the stories of Adam and Eve and their children Cain and Abel, deals primarily with issues of moral concern. In it, we have commandments by God about proper behavior, tales of sin, murder, and punishment, and something known as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The second Creation story introduces some of the central moral principles of Western Civilization, such as original sin, moral accountability for one's actions, being our brother's keeper, and the role of marriage.
"In addition, the two versions present different images of the deity. The P source portrays an all-powerful disembodied spirit who can summon forth elements of the universe with a word, wink, or snap of the fingers. The deity in J has corporal form, likes to putter around in the garden, bake animal crackers, sculpt little figurines, go for strolls, and oversee the help as they take care of the house, like a dilettante managing the country estate.
"Theologians concerned with moral teachings and the need for biblical consistency simply ignore the differences and treat the two stories as part of the same cycle, the earlier story presenting the cosmic picture and the later one presenting the human dimension. Scholars, on the other hand, willing to acknowledge contradictions simply accept that the two stories have different origins and that subsequent editors attempted to integrate the two separate accounts into a single narrative. Overlooked is that both sources originate from separate Egyptian traditions."
SAGAN KNOWS HOW TO USE THE WORD "MAGICAL"
Probably everyone knows now that science can analyze the chemistry of objects so far distant that men may never get near them. It's simple, we say, almost humdrum in this modern age that we ought to stop and reconsider it. Imagine the world two-thousand years ago and what men and women knew then. "Feel" how far we've come. What we can do now is almost magic, just as Carl Sagan says.
"... a spectrum can be used to determine the chemistry of distant objects. Different molecules and chemical elements absorb different frequencies or colors of light, sometimes in the visible and sometimes elsewhere in the spectrum. In the spectrum of a planetary atmosphere, a single dark line represents an image of the slit in which light is missing, the absorption of sunlight during its brief passage through the air of another world. Each such line is made by a particular kind of molecule or atom. Every substance has its characteristic spectral signature. The gases on Venus can be identified from the Earth, 60 million kilometers away. We can divine the composition of the Sun (in which helium, named after the Greek sun god Helios, was first found); of magnetic A stars rich in europium; of distant galaxies analyzed through the collective light of a hundred billion constituent stars. Astronomical spectroscopy is an almost magical technique." (Sagan's COSMOS, p. 93)
A couple of days ago, the Republican-dominated American congress again voted down any increase of the minimum wage. Always with their eyes on the interests of business, those "compassionate" ha ha conservatives just don't get it. I'm taking a class in algebra down at a local two year college, and I watch many young people trying to make ends meet, working two jobs, and trying to go to college at the same time. It ain't always a pretty sight on the grade cards.
CONFUSED BY CREATION? HEBREWS WERE TOO.
I GET A BIG BANG OUT OF IT!
Here's some more of Gary Greenberg's work in 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE: HOW ANCIENT SCRIBES INVENTED BIBLICAL HISTORY, pp. 7-8:
"Genesis begins with two separate and contradictory stories about Creation. The first, in Genesis 1-2:3 and attributed to the priestly source P [one of several sources used by Hebrew scribes to create their creation myth], presents the familiar account of the seven days of Creation, in which the process unfolds in an orderly and structured sequence of events from the formation of heaven and earth to the production of vegetation, animal life, and humanity. Contrary to popular belief, the first Creation story makes no mention of Adam and Eve being created in the image of God. The only reference to humanity is to an entity created on the sixth day that is described as both male and female, and it is this collective entity, male and female, that is created in God's image.
"The second account, in Genesis 2 and attributed to the Yahwist source J, serves as an introduction to the story of Adam and Eve and their children. This version of Creation is less complete than the priestly version.
"The two stories differ in many details. Each provides a different order of Creation and different explanations as to how things came about. Perhaps the most significant difference deals with the question of morality. The first Creation features no talk about moral principles. The second, which serves as an introduction to the stories of Adam and Eve and their children Cain and Abel, deals primarily with issues of moral concern. In it, we have commandments by God about proper behavior, tales of sin, murder, and punishment, and something known as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The second Creation story introduces some of the central moral principles of Western Civilization, such as original sin, moral accountability for one's actions, being our brother's keeper, and the role of marriage.
"In addition, the two versions present different images of the deity. The P source portrays an all-powerful disembodied spirit who can summon forth elements of the universe with a word, wink, or snap of the fingers. The deity in J has corporal form, likes to putter around in the garden, bake animal crackers, sculpt little figurines, go for strolls, and oversee the help as they take care of the house, like a dilettante managing the country estate.
"Theologians concerned with moral teachings and the need for biblical consistency simply ignore the differences and treat the two stories as part of the same cycle, the earlier story presenting the cosmic picture and the later one presenting the human dimension. Scholars, on the other hand, willing to acknowledge contradictions simply accept that the two stories have different origins and that subsequent editors attempted to integrate the two separate accounts into a single narrative. Overlooked is that both sources originate from separate Egyptian traditions."
SAGAN KNOWS HOW TO USE THE WORD "MAGICAL"
Probably everyone knows now that science can analyze the chemistry of objects so far distant that men may never get near them. It's simple, we say, almost humdrum in this modern age that we ought to stop and reconsider it. Imagine the world two-thousand years ago and what men and women knew then. "Feel" how far we've come. What we can do now is almost magic, just as Carl Sagan says.
"... a spectrum can be used to determine the chemistry of distant objects. Different molecules and chemical elements absorb different frequencies or colors of light, sometimes in the visible and sometimes elsewhere in the spectrum. In the spectrum of a planetary atmosphere, a single dark line represents an image of the slit in which light is missing, the absorption of sunlight during its brief passage through the air of another world. Each such line is made by a particular kind of molecule or atom. Every substance has its characteristic spectral signature. The gases on Venus can be identified from the Earth, 60 million kilometers away. We can divine the composition of the Sun (in which helium, named after the Greek sun god Helios, was first found); of magnetic A stars rich in europium; of distant galaxies analyzed through the collective light of a hundred billion constituent stars. Astronomical spectroscopy is an almost magical technique." (Sagan's COSMOS, p. 93)
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
HEBREW BIBLE FLOOD PLAN INUNDATED WITH FOREIGN WATERS—
AMONG OTHER THINGS
"But different Hebrew writers emphasized different Egyptian traditions, and conflicting histories of Creation developed....
"This, however, was only part of the story. After Israel moved into Canaan, Hebrew writers were exposed to new traditions from Babylon, the other great influence in the Near East. In 587 B.C., the remnants of the Hebrew kingdom were captured by the Babylonians and the educated elite were forcibly removed to the homeland of their captors, where they became immersed in the local culture. Because of the great respect for Babylonian wisdom, the Hebrews found it necessary to further refine their earlier ideas, which by this time had become divorced from the original Egyptian roots.
"The most difficult problem concerned the flood stories. Originally, the biblical flood story was a Creation myth based on Hermopolitan [adjective form of the Egyptian city, Hermopolis] traditions about the Ogdoad, eight gods—four males and four females—emerging out of the primeval ocean. It preceded the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. In Babylon, however, the Hebrews encountered a new worldwide flood myth that occurred in the tenth generation of humanity rather than at the beginning of time. In an attempt to synchronize their own history with that of the learned Babylonians, the Hebrews moved the flood story from the beginning of Creation to the tenth generation of biblical humanity, and modified the story somewhat in order to correlate better with the local version." —Gary Greenberg, 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE: HOW ANCIENT SCRIBES INVENTED BIBLICAL HISTORY, pp. 6-7.
And here's another myth unraveled in Greenberg's book (p.10) that Hebrew scribblers wove out of whole Egyptian and Babylonian cloth:
"The Myth: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. (Gen. 1:20)
"The Reality: Genesis has two contradictory accounts of the creation of bird life, one reflecting the Egyptian viewpoint, the other the Babylonian.
"On the fifth day of creation, Genesis describes the creation of sea life and fowl, and says that the fowl emerged from the waters. By contrast, in the second Genesis Creation story, attributed to the J source, it says,"And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air" (Gen. 2:19).
"Did birds emerge out of the primeval waters or out of the ground? Once again, the Bible provides contradictory accounts of an event, reflecting the reliance on a variety of materials from different cultural perspectives. The primeval water account suggests a origin in a society that sees water as the source of life, as in Egyptian mythology. The land-based account suggests a society in which the land played a more important life sustaining role, as in ancient Babylon.
"In Egypt, the Nile was the source of life and a large variety of waterfowl inhabited the banks. Egyptian myths associated the flood as the source of life and several myth associate waterfowl with the Creation process."
NOT ONLY HEBREWS WOVE FICTIONAL TALES THEY CALLED FACT
The reason that fundamentalist Bush, the most dishonest and inept president in recent memory, remains popular with his fundamentalist Christian base is that their churches and his administration operate in similar ways. Within his administration and their churches are found inflexible dogmatic thinking, secretiveness, inability to admit to errors, covering up, pretense to perfection, simplistic superstitious thinking, fear of scientific objectivity, male dominance, the good old boy network, resistance to change, arrogance, fear of facts, hatred and smearing of enemies, black and white thinking, oppression of those who think differently, plotting and scheming, unwillingness to listen to reason, kowtowing to authority, silence, rigidity, ignorance of the facts, impulsive actions, and, finally, rash and fear-driven behavior. Did I miss anything? I know that some of the traits I’ve listed overlap, but, I wanted to make the case crystal clear.
All the above traits are those you’d expect to find in a kingdom or dictatorship, not in a healthy democracy. Is there some connection between Bush’s appalling administration, the absence of examples of democratic governments in the Bible and the fact that fundamentalists fervently pray to live in an eternal dictatorship after they die?
______________________________________________
"Tell the boss what you think of him and the truth shall set you free." —Paula Poundstone
AMONG OTHER THINGS
"But different Hebrew writers emphasized different Egyptian traditions, and conflicting histories of Creation developed....
"This, however, was only part of the story. After Israel moved into Canaan, Hebrew writers were exposed to new traditions from Babylon, the other great influence in the Near East. In 587 B.C., the remnants of the Hebrew kingdom were captured by the Babylonians and the educated elite were forcibly removed to the homeland of their captors, where they became immersed in the local culture. Because of the great respect for Babylonian wisdom, the Hebrews found it necessary to further refine their earlier ideas, which by this time had become divorced from the original Egyptian roots.
"The most difficult problem concerned the flood stories. Originally, the biblical flood story was a Creation myth based on Hermopolitan [adjective form of the Egyptian city, Hermopolis] traditions about the Ogdoad, eight gods—four males and four females—emerging out of the primeval ocean. It preceded the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. In Babylon, however, the Hebrews encountered a new worldwide flood myth that occurred in the tenth generation of humanity rather than at the beginning of time. In an attempt to synchronize their own history with that of the learned Babylonians, the Hebrews moved the flood story from the beginning of Creation to the tenth generation of biblical humanity, and modified the story somewhat in order to correlate better with the local version." —Gary Greenberg, 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE: HOW ANCIENT SCRIBES INVENTED BIBLICAL HISTORY, pp. 6-7.
And here's another myth unraveled in Greenberg's book (p.10) that Hebrew scribblers wove out of whole Egyptian and Babylonian cloth:
"The Myth: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. (Gen. 1:20)
"The Reality: Genesis has two contradictory accounts of the creation of bird life, one reflecting the Egyptian viewpoint, the other the Babylonian.
"On the fifth day of creation, Genesis describes the creation of sea life and fowl, and says that the fowl emerged from the waters. By contrast, in the second Genesis Creation story, attributed to the J source, it says,"And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air" (Gen. 2:19).
"Did birds emerge out of the primeval waters or out of the ground? Once again, the Bible provides contradictory accounts of an event, reflecting the reliance on a variety of materials from different cultural perspectives. The primeval water account suggests a origin in a society that sees water as the source of life, as in Egyptian mythology. The land-based account suggests a society in which the land played a more important life sustaining role, as in ancient Babylon.
"In Egypt, the Nile was the source of life and a large variety of waterfowl inhabited the banks. Egyptian myths associated the flood as the source of life and several myth associate waterfowl with the Creation process."
NOT ONLY HEBREWS WOVE FICTIONAL TALES THEY CALLED FACT
The reason that fundamentalist Bush, the most dishonest and inept president in recent memory, remains popular with his fundamentalist Christian base is that their churches and his administration operate in similar ways. Within his administration and their churches are found inflexible dogmatic thinking, secretiveness, inability to admit to errors, covering up, pretense to perfection, simplistic superstitious thinking, fear of scientific objectivity, male dominance, the good old boy network, resistance to change, arrogance, fear of facts, hatred and smearing of enemies, black and white thinking, oppression of those who think differently, plotting and scheming, unwillingness to listen to reason, kowtowing to authority, silence, rigidity, ignorance of the facts, impulsive actions, and, finally, rash and fear-driven behavior. Did I miss anything? I know that some of the traits I’ve listed overlap, but, I wanted to make the case crystal clear.
All the above traits are those you’d expect to find in a kingdom or dictatorship, not in a healthy democracy. Is there some connection between Bush’s appalling administration, the absence of examples of democratic governments in the Bible and the fact that fundamentalists fervently pray to live in an eternal dictatorship after they die?
______________________________________________
"Tell the boss what you think of him and the truth shall set you free." —Paula Poundstone
Monday, October 17, 2005
SOURCES OF BIBLE INVENTION
Here's more stuff from Gary Greenberg's book, 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE. Succinctly, Greenberg explains how Genesis was structured out of stories that Hebrews heard in Egypt and elsewhere which they believed and wrote down about the origins of the Earth:
"Structurally, Genesis 1-11 presents a fascinating insight into how the Bible evolved from a collection of polytheistic myths and legends from various cultures into a mostly coherent monotheistic account of Israelite history. At its core are two separate biblical source documents, P and J, each presenting contradictory accounts of events and very different points of view about deity. Unbeknownst to the biblical editors who tried to integrate the two sources into a single seamless narrative, the P and J accounts of Creation and the flood originally developed independently of each other from two separate Egyptian mythological traditions.... (p. 3)
"While many people believe that the Bible was divinely inspired, several biblical authors cite specific reference works that they relied upon in composing their work and many also quote passages from other books of the Bible. In effect, these references would be the equivalent of footnotes....[i.e. "Book of the Generation of Adam" (Gen. 5:1) or "Visions of Ido the Seer" (2 Chronicles 9:29) and many others (see page xxiii)] These biblical "footnotes" show the variety of materials upon which biblical writers relied and how they went about editing the materials for their own purposes. To this collection of specific citations in the Bible, other source materials can be added, such as the myths and legends preserved by other peoples of the Near East, which were widely circulated and with which the Hebrew scribes would have been intimately familiar.
"In considering how these extra-biblical materials affected biblical writers, we should note that the ancient peoples did not think of these myths and legends as falsehoods or untrue. They believed the stories preserved historical truths, and whether or not one believed in one god or another as the responsible agent, one could still believe that the underlying act occurred.
"Legends about how locations acquired their place names provide numerous illustrations of how false histories came into existence, and the Bible has many such stories. One of the most typical involved the invention of an ancestor who had the same name as the territory and was therefore made the founding father of the people who lived there. Another common motif was to find an interesting characteristic at a particular site, say an amusing rock formation or a rare water hole, and create a story about how the feature came to be. These tales would be repeated from generation to generation until the entertaining story came to be an article of historical truth." —Gary Greenberg, 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE: HOW ANCIENT SCRIBES INVENTED BIBLICAL HISTORY, p. xxvi
And following (on p. 21) is another example of how biblical scribes used and altered Egyptian myths, which they believed as true, to make up the Bible story.
"The Myth: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Gen. 1:11-12)
"The Reality: Genesis follows the Egyptian Creation sequence in putting the appearance of vegetation before the sun.
"The third day in Genesis finishes with the appearance of vegetation: grass, seed, and fruit. Parenthetically, this creates problems from a scientific view, since plant life requires sunlight to survive and grow and the sun has not yet appeared. But, we concern ourselves here only with the mythological aspects of the discussion.
Keeping the Genesis description of the third day in mind, consider this brief excerpt from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, c. 79:
"Hail Atum!—
Who made the sky who created what exists;
Who emerged as land who created seed.
"This passage describes the same precise sequence as in Genesis, the appearance of sky, followed by land, followed by vegetation. The same sequence appears in other Egyptian texts describing the Creation process. The oldest son of Heaven and Earth, for example, was Osiris, whom Egyptians identified with grain, again showing that vegetation appeared right after heaven and earth.
"Throughout the Egyptian Creation tradition, vegetation appears right after the division of heaven and earth and the gathering of the waters. This is the sequence followed in Genesis, and shows the continuing parallel, event for event, between Egyptian Creation myths and the Genesis Creation story."
It's hard, isn't it, even if we know that Christianity is nothing but one milestone on the road from the superstitions of Neanderthals to the present, to imagine clearly the long, step by step process by which one religion becomes the next religion? Though the time frames for religious change are but a gnat's sneeze compared to evolution's morphological change, still it's hard to realize that all religions lie along one continuum or another from some European primitive's prehistoric belief to some American's current belief. Just recall how little we know of our great grandparents' beliefs. Of course, the printing of books, now has a tendency to solidify current religions more rigidly, but the rise of Mormonism, recently detailed in NEWSWEEK, shows that new religions can come along, based on any old religion, and find a foothold. A thousand years from now, who knows? The Protestant religions are fairly recent and look how they've split and split again from Luther's first protest. You would think to listen to them that the Moslem and Christian fundamentalists' beliefs have been around since time immemorial. Ah, poor deluded fools!
Here's more stuff from Gary Greenberg's book, 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE. Succinctly, Greenberg explains how Genesis was structured out of stories that Hebrews heard in Egypt and elsewhere which they believed and wrote down about the origins of the Earth:
"Structurally, Genesis 1-11 presents a fascinating insight into how the Bible evolved from a collection of polytheistic myths and legends from various cultures into a mostly coherent monotheistic account of Israelite history. At its core are two separate biblical source documents, P and J, each presenting contradictory accounts of events and very different points of view about deity. Unbeknownst to the biblical editors who tried to integrate the two sources into a single seamless narrative, the P and J accounts of Creation and the flood originally developed independently of each other from two separate Egyptian mythological traditions.... (p. 3)
"While many people believe that the Bible was divinely inspired, several biblical authors cite specific reference works that they relied upon in composing their work and many also quote passages from other books of the Bible. In effect, these references would be the equivalent of footnotes....[i.e. "Book of the Generation of Adam" (Gen. 5:1) or "Visions of Ido the Seer" (2 Chronicles 9:29) and many others (see page xxiii)] These biblical "footnotes" show the variety of materials upon which biblical writers relied and how they went about editing the materials for their own purposes. To this collection of specific citations in the Bible, other source materials can be added, such as the myths and legends preserved by other peoples of the Near East, which were widely circulated and with which the Hebrew scribes would have been intimately familiar.
"In considering how these extra-biblical materials affected biblical writers, we should note that the ancient peoples did not think of these myths and legends as falsehoods or untrue. They believed the stories preserved historical truths, and whether or not one believed in one god or another as the responsible agent, one could still believe that the underlying act occurred.
"Legends about how locations acquired their place names provide numerous illustrations of how false histories came into existence, and the Bible has many such stories. One of the most typical involved the invention of an ancestor who had the same name as the territory and was therefore made the founding father of the people who lived there. Another common motif was to find an interesting characteristic at a particular site, say an amusing rock formation or a rare water hole, and create a story about how the feature came to be. These tales would be repeated from generation to generation until the entertaining story came to be an article of historical truth." —Gary Greenberg, 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE: HOW ANCIENT SCRIBES INVENTED BIBLICAL HISTORY, p. xxvi
And following (on p. 21) is another example of how biblical scribes used and altered Egyptian myths, which they believed as true, to make up the Bible story.
"The Myth: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Gen. 1:11-12)
"The Reality: Genesis follows the Egyptian Creation sequence in putting the appearance of vegetation before the sun.
"The third day in Genesis finishes with the appearance of vegetation: grass, seed, and fruit. Parenthetically, this creates problems from a scientific view, since plant life requires sunlight to survive and grow and the sun has not yet appeared. But, we concern ourselves here only with the mythological aspects of the discussion.
Keeping the Genesis description of the third day in mind, consider this brief excerpt from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, c. 79:
"Hail Atum!—
Who made the sky who created what exists;
Who emerged as land who created seed.
"This passage describes the same precise sequence as in Genesis, the appearance of sky, followed by land, followed by vegetation. The same sequence appears in other Egyptian texts describing the Creation process. The oldest son of Heaven and Earth, for example, was Osiris, whom Egyptians identified with grain, again showing that vegetation appeared right after heaven and earth.
"Throughout the Egyptian Creation tradition, vegetation appears right after the division of heaven and earth and the gathering of the waters. This is the sequence followed in Genesis, and shows the continuing parallel, event for event, between Egyptian Creation myths and the Genesis Creation story."
It's hard, isn't it, even if we know that Christianity is nothing but one milestone on the road from the superstitions of Neanderthals to the present, to imagine clearly the long, step by step process by which one religion becomes the next religion? Though the time frames for religious change are but a gnat's sneeze compared to evolution's morphological change, still it's hard to realize that all religions lie along one continuum or another from some European primitive's prehistoric belief to some American's current belief. Just recall how little we know of our great grandparents' beliefs. Of course, the printing of books, now has a tendency to solidify current religions more rigidly, but the rise of Mormonism, recently detailed in NEWSWEEK, shows that new religions can come along, based on any old religion, and find a foothold. A thousand years from now, who knows? The Protestant religions are fairly recent and look how they've split and split again from Luther's first protest. You would think to listen to them that the Moslem and Christian fundamentalists' beliefs have been around since time immemorial. Ah, poor deluded fools!
Friday, October 14, 2005
EGYPTIAN MYTHS FROM WHICH THE BIBLE CAME
In an interesting book, 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE, I came across sometime back but which I am only now getting around to reading, Gary Greenberg explores the premise that the PENTATEUCH is made up of mythological stories about the beginning of life which were common in Egypt at the time when the people who would become the Hebrews lived there. Later, before Hebrew scribes wrote down the final edition of the Bible as we now know it, they had also been in Babylonian and Persian exile and their elite intellectual classes who wrote the Bible had experienced those culture's creation myths too. Those earlier myths were wide spread in the Mediterranean area and, of course, in writing their own myths to explain their beginnings, the Hebrew had to incorporate material which was widely and commonly believed to be true, even by them.
Too many modern Christians are just not intellectual enough to understand history and how ideas become mythical facts. They cannot understand that at one time, their Bible was not a hard and fast cannon already collected in a single document. They don't understand the mental processes by which details and bits of history and old wives' tales are woven together into myths. I think they sense that the Bible was from time immemorial in the mind of their god. In these matters, modern Christians are totally out of touch with reality.
Here's Greenberg's text on the matter and the example of the flood story to back up his claims:
"Biblical history claims a long sojourn in Egypt during Israel's formative stages. The Bible constantly chastises Israel for succumbing to Canaanite influences. Prior to the Bible taking its final form, Israel's educated elite lived in forced exile in Babylon and, a century later, under a more benevolent Persian rule when the Persians defeated Babylon and freed the Hebrew leaders. Any attempt by learned Hebrew scribes to construct their own history of the world, from Creation down to the time of the writing of any source document, would have to take into account what their neighbors have said about the same times and places, because the stories of the neighbors were well known and widely circulated. They were the stories that most educated people of those times believed.
"On December 3, 1872, this question moved into the forefront of biblical studies. On that date, an Assyriologist named George Smith read a paper in London to the Society of Biblical Archaeology. He had been rooting through a cache of thousands of tablets and fragments from a seventh century B.C. Assyrian library belonging to King Ashurbanipal. On what would become known as Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh epic, written in Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language older than Hebrew, he found a flood story that had remarkable parallels to the biblical flood account.
"Although it was polytheistic where the Bible was monotheistic, it told the same basic tale. The gods had become angry at humanity and determined to wipe out the human race with a flood. One of the deities warned a human friend by the name of Utnapishtim to secretly build an ark and prepare for the fateful day. When the rains started up, Utnapishtim brought onto the boat his family, a variety of animals, and a number of artisans. When the rains stopped and the flood subsided, Utnapishtim released three birds, spaced out over time, to determine if it was safe to come off the ark. Eventually, the boat landed on top of a mountain. As in the Bible, after the flood, the gods regretted their actions against humanity."
____________________________
Here's another sample of the format of Greenberg's book (p. 17), showing the Egyptian roots of the Bible myth about the "firmaments" arrival on the scene in the Hebrew text:
"The Myth: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. (Gen. 1.6-7)
"The Reality. This firmament arising out of the waters is the primeval mountain of Egyptian myth.
"After calling forth the first light and dividing the light from the darkness, Genesis tells us that God caused a firmament to rise in the midst of the waters, and this firmament divided the waters from the waters. As the verses quoted above clearly show, the dividing of "the waters from the waters" refers to the separation of water above the firmament from the water below the firmament.
"In all the Egyptian Creation myths, following the appearance of the first light (usually identified with the god Atum) the Creator god caused a mountain to emerge out of the primeval waters. This mountain, by its nature, was a solid physical entity, a firmament, and according to the Egyptian view, it separated the primeval waters into waters above and waters below. The Egyptians viewed the sky as a waterway through which the sun god Re sailed the solar barque. The primeval mountain became the space in between the waters above and below and provided the force that held them apart.
"The rising firmament in Genesis is indistinguishable from the primeval mountain that emerged out of the Nun, the primeval waters, and in both the biblical and Egyptian stories, the rising occurs in the same sequential order in the Creation process, after the summoning forth of the first light by the spoken word."
In an interesting book, 101 MYTHS OF THE BIBLE, I came across sometime back but which I am only now getting around to reading, Gary Greenberg explores the premise that the PENTATEUCH is made up of mythological stories about the beginning of life which were common in Egypt at the time when the people who would become the Hebrews lived there. Later, before Hebrew scribes wrote down the final edition of the Bible as we now know it, they had also been in Babylonian and Persian exile and their elite intellectual classes who wrote the Bible had experienced those culture's creation myths too. Those earlier myths were wide spread in the Mediterranean area and, of course, in writing their own myths to explain their beginnings, the Hebrew had to incorporate material which was widely and commonly believed to be true, even by them.
Too many modern Christians are just not intellectual enough to understand history and how ideas become mythical facts. They cannot understand that at one time, their Bible was not a hard and fast cannon already collected in a single document. They don't understand the mental processes by which details and bits of history and old wives' tales are woven together into myths. I think they sense that the Bible was from time immemorial in the mind of their god. In these matters, modern Christians are totally out of touch with reality.
Here's Greenberg's text on the matter and the example of the flood story to back up his claims:
"Biblical history claims a long sojourn in Egypt during Israel's formative stages. The Bible constantly chastises Israel for succumbing to Canaanite influences. Prior to the Bible taking its final form, Israel's educated elite lived in forced exile in Babylon and, a century later, under a more benevolent Persian rule when the Persians defeated Babylon and freed the Hebrew leaders. Any attempt by learned Hebrew scribes to construct their own history of the world, from Creation down to the time of the writing of any source document, would have to take into account what their neighbors have said about the same times and places, because the stories of the neighbors were well known and widely circulated. They were the stories that most educated people of those times believed.
"On December 3, 1872, this question moved into the forefront of biblical studies. On that date, an Assyriologist named George Smith read a paper in London to the Society of Biblical Archaeology. He had been rooting through a cache of thousands of tablets and fragments from a seventh century B.C. Assyrian library belonging to King Ashurbanipal. On what would become known as Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh epic, written in Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language older than Hebrew, he found a flood story that had remarkable parallels to the biblical flood account.
"Although it was polytheistic where the Bible was monotheistic, it told the same basic tale. The gods had become angry at humanity and determined to wipe out the human race with a flood. One of the deities warned a human friend by the name of Utnapishtim to secretly build an ark and prepare for the fateful day. When the rains started up, Utnapishtim brought onto the boat his family, a variety of animals, and a number of artisans. When the rains stopped and the flood subsided, Utnapishtim released three birds, spaced out over time, to determine if it was safe to come off the ark. Eventually, the boat landed on top of a mountain. As in the Bible, after the flood, the gods regretted their actions against humanity."
____________________________
Here's another sample of the format of Greenberg's book (p. 17), showing the Egyptian roots of the Bible myth about the "firmaments" arrival on the scene in the Hebrew text:
"The Myth: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. (Gen. 1.6-7)
"The Reality. This firmament arising out of the waters is the primeval mountain of Egyptian myth.
"After calling forth the first light and dividing the light from the darkness, Genesis tells us that God caused a firmament to rise in the midst of the waters, and this firmament divided the waters from the waters. As the verses quoted above clearly show, the dividing of "the waters from the waters" refers to the separation of water above the firmament from the water below the firmament.
"In all the Egyptian Creation myths, following the appearance of the first light (usually identified with the god Atum) the Creator god caused a mountain to emerge out of the primeval waters. This mountain, by its nature, was a solid physical entity, a firmament, and according to the Egyptian view, it separated the primeval waters into waters above and waters below. The Egyptians viewed the sky as a waterway through which the sun god Re sailed the solar barque. The primeval mountain became the space in between the waters above and below and provided the force that held them apart.
"The rising firmament in Genesis is indistinguishable from the primeval mountain that emerged out of the Nun, the primeval waters, and in both the biblical and Egyptian stories, the rising occurs in the same sequential order in the Creation process, after the summoning forth of the first light by the spoken word."
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
LIKE A LOT OF PRESIDENT BUSH'S CRITICS,
Jonathan Alter says, "I supported the Iraq war at first. Because of the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction laid out by Colin Powell, I agreed that we needed to disarm Saddam Hussein. I even think it's possible that 25 years from now, historians will conclude that the Iraq war helped accelerate the modernizing of the Middle East, even if it doesn't fully democratize it. But if that happens, Bush might not get as much credit as he hopes, and not just because most historians, as Richard Nixon liked to say, are liberals. Bush may look bad because his leadership on Iraq has been a fiasco. He didn't plan for it: the early decisions that allowed the insurgency to get going were breathtakingly incompetent. He didn't pay for it: Bush is the first president in history to cut taxes during a war, this one now costing nearly 1 billion [dollars] a week. And most important of all, he didn't tell the American people the truth about it: taking a nation to war is the most solemn duty of a president, and he'd better make certain there's no alternative and no doubt about the evidence." —Jonathan Alter (NEWSWEEK columnist in July 25, 2005 issue)
GEORGE CLOONEY AND EDWARD R. MURROW
Have you heard about the new movie George Clooney directed and is soon releasing, based on the Edward R. Murrow/ Senator McCarthy dust up in the Fifties? In black and white, it's supposed to be a gem of a film true to the times and the conflict between news people and McCarthyism. Clooney's dad was a television newsman whose idol was Murrow. Clooney himself is a self-proclaimed "actorvist", and a liberal one to boot.
He is reported to have said in a NEWSWEEK article that it infuriates him that it's become a dirty word [the word 'liberal']. "It blows my mind," he says, "because [unlike conservatives] we don't have to put the word compassionate in front of it to say we actually give a shit about people. I'm going to keep saying 'liberal' as loud as I can and as often as I can."
Clooney goes on to say that this administration certainly reminds one of those long ago days. "There is no end of McCarthy. It's been a tough time for journalists—if you ask a tough question of this administration, on a rare occasion when they have a press conference, you're put in the back of the room, or you're Maureen Dowd and you get your credentials pulled. To question anything about them is meant to be unpatriotic."
Bill "O'Really?" [can't spell his last name for some reason] has already attacked Clooney for his liberalism, threatening to end his career if he continues to speak out about the war and liberalism. Talk about a nascent McCarthyite, O'Really is certainly one of those.
______________________________________________
"I hate people. People make me pro-nuclear." Margaret Smith
Jonathan Alter says, "I supported the Iraq war at first. Because of the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction laid out by Colin Powell, I agreed that we needed to disarm Saddam Hussein. I even think it's possible that 25 years from now, historians will conclude that the Iraq war helped accelerate the modernizing of the Middle East, even if it doesn't fully democratize it. But if that happens, Bush might not get as much credit as he hopes, and not just because most historians, as Richard Nixon liked to say, are liberals. Bush may look bad because his leadership on Iraq has been a fiasco. He didn't plan for it: the early decisions that allowed the insurgency to get going were breathtakingly incompetent. He didn't pay for it: Bush is the first president in history to cut taxes during a war, this one now costing nearly 1 billion [dollars] a week. And most important of all, he didn't tell the American people the truth about it: taking a nation to war is the most solemn duty of a president, and he'd better make certain there's no alternative and no doubt about the evidence." —Jonathan Alter (NEWSWEEK columnist in July 25, 2005 issue)
GEORGE CLOONEY AND EDWARD R. MURROW
Have you heard about the new movie George Clooney directed and is soon releasing, based on the Edward R. Murrow/ Senator McCarthy dust up in the Fifties? In black and white, it's supposed to be a gem of a film true to the times and the conflict between news people and McCarthyism. Clooney's dad was a television newsman whose idol was Murrow. Clooney himself is a self-proclaimed "actorvist", and a liberal one to boot.
He is reported to have said in a NEWSWEEK article that it infuriates him that it's become a dirty word [the word 'liberal']. "It blows my mind," he says, "because [unlike conservatives] we don't have to put the word compassionate in front of it to say we actually give a shit about people. I'm going to keep saying 'liberal' as loud as I can and as often as I can."
Clooney goes on to say that this administration certainly reminds one of those long ago days. "There is no end of McCarthy. It's been a tough time for journalists—if you ask a tough question of this administration, on a rare occasion when they have a press conference, you're put in the back of the room, or you're Maureen Dowd and you get your credentials pulled. To question anything about them is meant to be unpatriotic."
Bill "O'Really?" [can't spell his last name for some reason] has already attacked Clooney for his liberalism, threatening to end his career if he continues to speak out about the war and liberalism. Talk about a nascent McCarthyite, O'Really is certainly one of those.
______________________________________________
"I hate people. People make me pro-nuclear." Margaret Smith
Monday, October 10, 2005
EVOLUTION IS A FACT, NOT A THEORY
[Open quote] The fossil record speaks to us unambiguously of creatures that once were present in enormous numbers and that have now vanished utterly. Far more species have become extinct in the history of the Earth than exist today; they are the terminated experiments of evolution.
The genetic changes induced by domestication have occurred very rapidly. The rabbit was not domesticated until early medieval times (it was bred by French monks in the belief that newborn bunnies were fish and therefore exempt from the prohibitions against eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar); coffee in the fifteenth century; the sugar beet in the nineteenth century; and the mink is still in the earliest stages of domestication. In less than ten thousand years, domestication has increased the weight of wool grown by sheep from less than one kilogram of rough hairs to ten or twenty kilograms of uniform, fine down; or the volume of milk given by cattle during a lactation period from a few hundred to a million cubic centimeters. If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world. Evolution is a fact, not a theory.
That the mechanism of evolution is natural selection is the great discovery associated with the names of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. More than a century ago, they stressed that nature is prolific, that many more animals and plants are born than can possibly survive and that therefore the environment selects those varieties which are, by accident, better suited for survival. Mutations—sudden changes in heredity—breed true. They provide the raw material of evolution. The environment selects those few mutations that enhance survival, resulting in a series of slow transformations of one lifeform into another, the origin of new species. [Close quote] (from COSMOS by Carl Sagan, p. 27)
THE LANDSLIDE FELL ON MY HEAD WITH REASON
Christians and other like-minded Puritans constantly look for the will of their hypothetical superbeings, good and evil, in everything that befalls humankind and individuals. If someone lovely dies or if a perceived “bad” or “evil” person meets an untimely death, these seekers for meaning put all things to god’s will. If a good person dies, for example, they often say that god called them to himself. They always think that god is plotting and scheming to do good while their evil spirit does harm to man. They think that god gives them talents. They say to “trust god”. They say “let go and let god”. But in actual fact, none of them has any evidence that god is involved in anything that happens. It just gives them comfort to say these things they learned as children, and, of course, saying these mantras makes them feel special and above the ordinary, even if what is coming their way is bad stuff. To be honored for attention by the devil also lifts them above the ordinary. Satan, in their minds, is always out to tempt them. But, where’s the evidence for their claims other than their saying it’s so? None. No evidence.
Things, good and ill, happen to human beings and to assign supernatural meanings to these occurrences is to spit into the wind. It’s just as natural and logical to look for the will of natural law in all things that befall human beings, individually or communally. One can just as validly say, “It is nature’s will that this or that happened,” as it is to imagine that a supernatural being did it. There’s no difference in reality between the acts of a perceived supernatural being and the whims of natural laws. In fact, to assign logical causes to natural acts makes even more sense than to attribute one’s calamity or good fortune to the acts of a supernatural being. How does one discover the difference between an act of nature and the act of a supernatural being anyway?
ARE YOU STILL READING?
"Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries." —Carl Sagan, COSMOS, p. 282
___________________________________________
"She Got The Gold Mine, I Got The Shaft" —song title by Jerry Reed
[Open quote] The fossil record speaks to us unambiguously of creatures that once were present in enormous numbers and that have now vanished utterly. Far more species have become extinct in the history of the Earth than exist today; they are the terminated experiments of evolution.
The genetic changes induced by domestication have occurred very rapidly. The rabbit was not domesticated until early medieval times (it was bred by French monks in the belief that newborn bunnies were fish and therefore exempt from the prohibitions against eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar); coffee in the fifteenth century; the sugar beet in the nineteenth century; and the mink is still in the earliest stages of domestication. In less than ten thousand years, domestication has increased the weight of wool grown by sheep from less than one kilogram of rough hairs to ten or twenty kilograms of uniform, fine down; or the volume of milk given by cattle during a lactation period from a few hundred to a million cubic centimeters. If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world. Evolution is a fact, not a theory.
That the mechanism of evolution is natural selection is the great discovery associated with the names of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. More than a century ago, they stressed that nature is prolific, that many more animals and plants are born than can possibly survive and that therefore the environment selects those varieties which are, by accident, better suited for survival. Mutations—sudden changes in heredity—breed true. They provide the raw material of evolution. The environment selects those few mutations that enhance survival, resulting in a series of slow transformations of one lifeform into another, the origin of new species. [Close quote] (from COSMOS by Carl Sagan, p. 27)
THE LANDSLIDE FELL ON MY HEAD WITH REASON
Christians and other like-minded Puritans constantly look for the will of their hypothetical superbeings, good and evil, in everything that befalls humankind and individuals. If someone lovely dies or if a perceived “bad” or “evil” person meets an untimely death, these seekers for meaning put all things to god’s will. If a good person dies, for example, they often say that god called them to himself. They always think that god is plotting and scheming to do good while their evil spirit does harm to man. They think that god gives them talents. They say to “trust god”. They say “let go and let god”. But in actual fact, none of them has any evidence that god is involved in anything that happens. It just gives them comfort to say these things they learned as children, and, of course, saying these mantras makes them feel special and above the ordinary, even if what is coming their way is bad stuff. To be honored for attention by the devil also lifts them above the ordinary. Satan, in their minds, is always out to tempt them. But, where’s the evidence for their claims other than their saying it’s so? None. No evidence.
Things, good and ill, happen to human beings and to assign supernatural meanings to these occurrences is to spit into the wind. It’s just as natural and logical to look for the will of natural law in all things that befall human beings, individually or communally. One can just as validly say, “It is nature’s will that this or that happened,” as it is to imagine that a supernatural being did it. There’s no difference in reality between the acts of a perceived supernatural being and the whims of natural laws. In fact, to assign logical causes to natural acts makes even more sense than to attribute one’s calamity or good fortune to the acts of a supernatural being. How does one discover the difference between an act of nature and the act of a supernatural being anyway?
ARE YOU STILL READING?
"Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries." —Carl Sagan, COSMOS, p. 282
___________________________________________
"She Got The Gold Mine, I Got The Shaft" —song title by Jerry Reed
Friday, October 07, 2005
DAVE AND ME AT LOGGERHEADS AGAIN AND STILL
My fundamentalist acquaintance Dave says, “so you want to assign us to a christian ghetto ... the churches? and you, with your beliefs, are free to spout in the public square? am i the only one seeing the hypocrisy in this approach? there'll never be a theocracy in this country, george, because a lot of christians like me won't allow it. who's going to run the show? the catholics, because of their greater numbers? the mormons? the liberal churches? those who fall under the umbrella of christianity or so split they could never agree to a single set of moral marching orders or a leader. you should celebrate the fact that christians are engaged in the debate for the country's soul rather than taking up arms to enforce their will on the larger population like the muslim extremists do. christians in this country largely aren't violent. but we have the same right as citizens to push our views as you do to push yours....”
And I replied, “I do agree that Christians have the same right to push their views as anyone, on radio, TV and print journalism. That’s why you and I call it a free country. But those of us who support the Constitution agree that people of differing beliefs from each other must agree that the state and the representatives of the state are to keep our secular nation and their private religious worlds separate in the public square and to not use our government as their sounding trumpet for their own religious views. Every time George Bush tells me about doing god’s will, he tells me he doesn’t represent me, doesn’t care to represent me, nor does he speak for my wife’s Buddhist beliefs. The President is to represent all America’s people. He and I can have disagreements on policy issues, and nothing in the Constitution says that George has to agree with me on policy issues, but as President, the Constitution does speak of separating religion and politics in his office and suggests that that he should respect the multitudinous religious and non-religious beliefs in this country. After all there were no religious qualifications he had to meet to run for President, but George is such an ideologue he can’t even remain silent on the only issue that the Constitution requires him to show some discretion about. As Lincoln said, this is a nation “of the people, by the people and for the people.” He didn’t say it was a nation “of god, by god and for god.”
“Finally the continuing science debate between theists and non-theists. We agree that at the root of our differences is that theists believe in the existence of a limitless force called god which thinks very much like modern humans do and which for some needy reason had to make a universe to play with while non-theists do agree there is a universe but don’t find any evidence of god’s work in that observable universe. Theists, however, ask something of non-theists that scientific methods find funny. Theists say that non-theists must prove that a god doesn’t exist. That’s not how science works. When Darwin came up with the idea of “natural selection” to explain many of the biological phenomena he observed in the natural world, he knew that it was his job to prove it, and over the years science has continually added to his initial evidence. Genetics offers the strongest proof of evolution. It’s no accident that chimps and humans share 99 percent of their DNA, nor that humans, dogs, hippos and birds all have four appendages and a spinal column, and that fish fins show the beginnings of four appendages.
“Even if a god did create all this, like some puppet master making a theater to entertain himself with and to fend off his loneliness, for some unknown reason this force made it look like it worked with the mechanism of natural selection and gave us abundant evidence of it. Theists are making this claim of god’s existence and have been getting away with their unproven theory for as far back as we can see in the historical record. So non-theists now say, come on, let’s require of theists the same intellectual standards that the rest of us live up to, the same one’s theists require of Darwin and biology in general.
“Theists offer up a tricky reply when they ask that atheists prove that no god exists. How can an atheist prove that something which does not exist physically in the universe does not exist physically in the universe? That’s logically impossible. Atheists appeal to scientific methodology as the gold standard of proof. They say that it’s up to the person who makes a claim of something being in the universe to prove it’s in the universe. Non-theists have a very valid argument when they claim that on the surface in the observable universe there is no evidence of the existence of god. It’s obvious no god exists. Our senses tell us no god exists. So if there is a god, non-theists ask for evidence of god, real evidence that passes scientific muster. Atheists know that in order to discuss, measure and observe or prove anything, evidence must be offered up, but theists can give them no evidence to discuss or inspect. Why is that? It’s up to the theists to come up with the evidence of this god somewhere in the universe. Show me, says the atheist. As one with a scientific temperament myself, I’m open to looking at any hard evidence of god’s existence. Until such time as evidence is forthcoming, my reason remains in the realm of atheism, but my mind is not closed.”
————————————————————————————
"Voters want a fraud the can believe in." —Will Durst
My fundamentalist acquaintance Dave says, “so you want to assign us to a christian ghetto ... the churches? and you, with your beliefs, are free to spout in the public square? am i the only one seeing the hypocrisy in this approach? there'll never be a theocracy in this country, george, because a lot of christians like me won't allow it. who's going to run the show? the catholics, because of their greater numbers? the mormons? the liberal churches? those who fall under the umbrella of christianity or so split they could never agree to a single set of moral marching orders or a leader. you should celebrate the fact that christians are engaged in the debate for the country's soul rather than taking up arms to enforce their will on the larger population like the muslim extremists do. christians in this country largely aren't violent. but we have the same right as citizens to push our views as you do to push yours....”
And I replied, “I do agree that Christians have the same right to push their views as anyone, on radio, TV and print journalism. That’s why you and I call it a free country. But those of us who support the Constitution agree that people of differing beliefs from each other must agree that the state and the representatives of the state are to keep our secular nation and their private religious worlds separate in the public square and to not use our government as their sounding trumpet for their own religious views. Every time George Bush tells me about doing god’s will, he tells me he doesn’t represent me, doesn’t care to represent me, nor does he speak for my wife’s Buddhist beliefs. The President is to represent all America’s people. He and I can have disagreements on policy issues, and nothing in the Constitution says that George has to agree with me on policy issues, but as President, the Constitution does speak of separating religion and politics in his office and suggests that that he should respect the multitudinous religious and non-religious beliefs in this country. After all there were no religious qualifications he had to meet to run for President, but George is such an ideologue he can’t even remain silent on the only issue that the Constitution requires him to show some discretion about. As Lincoln said, this is a nation “of the people, by the people and for the people.” He didn’t say it was a nation “of god, by god and for god.”
“Finally the continuing science debate between theists and non-theists. We agree that at the root of our differences is that theists believe in the existence of a limitless force called god which thinks very much like modern humans do and which for some needy reason had to make a universe to play with while non-theists do agree there is a universe but don’t find any evidence of god’s work in that observable universe. Theists, however, ask something of non-theists that scientific methods find funny. Theists say that non-theists must prove that a god doesn’t exist. That’s not how science works. When Darwin came up with the idea of “natural selection” to explain many of the biological phenomena he observed in the natural world, he knew that it was his job to prove it, and over the years science has continually added to his initial evidence. Genetics offers the strongest proof of evolution. It’s no accident that chimps and humans share 99 percent of their DNA, nor that humans, dogs, hippos and birds all have four appendages and a spinal column, and that fish fins show the beginnings of four appendages.
“Even if a god did create all this, like some puppet master making a theater to entertain himself with and to fend off his loneliness, for some unknown reason this force made it look like it worked with the mechanism of natural selection and gave us abundant evidence of it. Theists are making this claim of god’s existence and have been getting away with their unproven theory for as far back as we can see in the historical record. So non-theists now say, come on, let’s require of theists the same intellectual standards that the rest of us live up to, the same one’s theists require of Darwin and biology in general.
“Theists offer up a tricky reply when they ask that atheists prove that no god exists. How can an atheist prove that something which does not exist physically in the universe does not exist physically in the universe? That’s logically impossible. Atheists appeal to scientific methodology as the gold standard of proof. They say that it’s up to the person who makes a claim of something being in the universe to prove it’s in the universe. Non-theists have a very valid argument when they claim that on the surface in the observable universe there is no evidence of the existence of god. It’s obvious no god exists. Our senses tell us no god exists. So if there is a god, non-theists ask for evidence of god, real evidence that passes scientific muster. Atheists know that in order to discuss, measure and observe or prove anything, evidence must be offered up, but theists can give them no evidence to discuss or inspect. Why is that? It’s up to the theists to come up with the evidence of this god somewhere in the universe. Show me, says the atheist. As one with a scientific temperament myself, I’m open to looking at any hard evidence of god’s existence. Until such time as evidence is forthcoming, my reason remains in the realm of atheism, but my mind is not closed.”
————————————————————————————
"Voters want a fraud the can believe in." —Will Durst
Monday, October 03, 2005
THE THREE GRATUITIES
I’m a movie buff, have been since I was a junior high kid in the late 1940s who went to 8 movies a weekend for a time. Like Woody Allen I liked to get out of the house. Lately, I’ve noticed a new trend, a trend back to those old, really false portrayals of life that 40s and 50s movies presented us. Nowadays, bowing to the fanatically religious among us, movies sometimes present the viewer with what I’ll philosophically name “the three gratuities”—gratuitous violence, gratuitous sex and gratuitous god talk, all in the same movie.
A BABY’S MIND IS A POWERFUL THING TO WASTE
Recent research into baby brains (no—not Bush’s, Rumsfeld’s or Delay’s brains) reveals several interesting facts according to a report which appeared in the August 15, 2205 NEWSWEEK:
[Open quote] The research shows how powerful emotional well-being is to a child's future health. A baby who fails to meet certain key "emotional milestones" may have trouble learning to speak, read and, later, do well in school. By reading emotional responses, doctors have begun to discover ways to tell if a baby as young as 3 months is showing early signs of possible psychological disorders, including depression, anxiety, learning disabilities and perhaps autism.” [Close quote]
What’s interesting in the previous paragraph, if you’ve been reading my blog for some time, is how we can see that so many human traits are genetic, correctable, but genetic in nature. If babies can begin to show these emotional responses, then we can conclude that we are pretty well formed even before we enter the rough and tumble of the survival world.
I include the next information just because I find it so darn interesting.
[Open quote] One of the earliest emotions that even tiny babies display is, admirably enough, empathy. In fact, concern for others may be hard-wired into babies' brains. Plop a newborn down next to another crying infant, and chances are, both babies will soon be wailing away. "People have always known that babies cry when they hear other babies cry," says Martin Hoffman, a psychology professor at New York University who did the first studies on infant empathy in the 1 970s. "The question was, why are they crying?" Does it mean that the baby is truly concerned for his fellow human, or just annoyed by the racket? A recent study conducted in Italy, which built on Hoffman's own work, has largely settled the question. Researchers played for infants tapes of other babies crying. As predicted, that was enough to start the tears flowing. But when researchers played babies recordings of their own cries, they rarely began crying themselves. The verdict: "There is some rudimentary empathy in place, right from birth," Hoffman says. The intensity of the emotion tends to fade over time. Babies older than 6 months no longer cry but grimace at the discomfort of others. By 13 to 15 months, babies tend to take matters into their own hands. They'll try to comfort a crying playmate. "What I find most charming is when, even if the two mothers are present, they'll bring their own mother over to help. . . .” [Close quote]
WHO CAN READ A BABY’S MIND?
You might wonder how researchers can claim to look into a baby’s brain and find out what they claim to know about babies. After you’ve read enough psychology, you begin to come across repeated techniques for understanding how psychologists do it and this NEWSWEEK article recaps some of the techniques.
“This might be a good place to pause for a word about the challenges and perils of baby research. Since the subjects can't speak for themselves, figuring out what's going on inside their heads is often a matter of reading their faces and body language. If this seems speculative, it's not. Over decades of trial and error, researchers have fine-tuned their observation skills and zeroed in on numerous consistent baby responses to various stimuli: how long they stare at an object, what they reach out for and what makes them recoil in fear or disgust can often tell experienced researchers everything they need to know. More recently, scientists have added EEGs and laser eye tracking, which allow more precise readings. Coming soon: advanced MRI scans that will allow a deeper view inside the brain.”
____________________________________________
“Have children while your parents are still young enough to take care of them.” —Rita Rudner
I’m a movie buff, have been since I was a junior high kid in the late 1940s who went to 8 movies a weekend for a time. Like Woody Allen I liked to get out of the house. Lately, I’ve noticed a new trend, a trend back to those old, really false portrayals of life that 40s and 50s movies presented us. Nowadays, bowing to the fanatically religious among us, movies sometimes present the viewer with what I’ll philosophically name “the three gratuities”—gratuitous violence, gratuitous sex and gratuitous god talk, all in the same movie.
A BABY’S MIND IS A POWERFUL THING TO WASTE
Recent research into baby brains (no—not Bush’s, Rumsfeld’s or Delay’s brains) reveals several interesting facts according to a report which appeared in the August 15, 2205 NEWSWEEK:
[Open quote] The research shows how powerful emotional well-being is to a child's future health. A baby who fails to meet certain key "emotional milestones" may have trouble learning to speak, read and, later, do well in school. By reading emotional responses, doctors have begun to discover ways to tell if a baby as young as 3 months is showing early signs of possible psychological disorders, including depression, anxiety, learning disabilities and perhaps autism.” [Close quote]
What’s interesting in the previous paragraph, if you’ve been reading my blog for some time, is how we can see that so many human traits are genetic, correctable, but genetic in nature. If babies can begin to show these emotional responses, then we can conclude that we are pretty well formed even before we enter the rough and tumble of the survival world.
I include the next information just because I find it so darn interesting.
[Open quote] One of the earliest emotions that even tiny babies display is, admirably enough, empathy. In fact, concern for others may be hard-wired into babies' brains. Plop a newborn down next to another crying infant, and chances are, both babies will soon be wailing away. "People have always known that babies cry when they hear other babies cry," says Martin Hoffman, a psychology professor at New York University who did the first studies on infant empathy in the 1 970s. "The question was, why are they crying?" Does it mean that the baby is truly concerned for his fellow human, or just annoyed by the racket? A recent study conducted in Italy, which built on Hoffman's own work, has largely settled the question. Researchers played for infants tapes of other babies crying. As predicted, that was enough to start the tears flowing. But when researchers played babies recordings of their own cries, they rarely began crying themselves. The verdict: "There is some rudimentary empathy in place, right from birth," Hoffman says. The intensity of the emotion tends to fade over time. Babies older than 6 months no longer cry but grimace at the discomfort of others. By 13 to 15 months, babies tend to take matters into their own hands. They'll try to comfort a crying playmate. "What I find most charming is when, even if the two mothers are present, they'll bring their own mother over to help. . . .” [Close quote]
WHO CAN READ A BABY’S MIND?
You might wonder how researchers can claim to look into a baby’s brain and find out what they claim to know about babies. After you’ve read enough psychology, you begin to come across repeated techniques for understanding how psychologists do it and this NEWSWEEK article recaps some of the techniques.
“This might be a good place to pause for a word about the challenges and perils of baby research. Since the subjects can't speak for themselves, figuring out what's going on inside their heads is often a matter of reading their faces and body language. If this seems speculative, it's not. Over decades of trial and error, researchers have fine-tuned their observation skills and zeroed in on numerous consistent baby responses to various stimuli: how long they stare at an object, what they reach out for and what makes them recoil in fear or disgust can often tell experienced researchers everything they need to know. More recently, scientists have added EEGs and laser eye tracking, which allow more precise readings. Coming soon: advanced MRI scans that will allow a deeper view inside the brain.”
____________________________________________
“Have children while your parents are still young enough to take care of them.” —Rita Rudner
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