With my dad's death last year, an entire branch of the family history was lost, as well as a family member. That history included a foray into the worst War ever, as a young 22-year old Arkansan left for the Pacific, uncertain of ever returning.
Fortunately, when I visited Port Charlotte, FL in 2001 (just after Easter- following my talk at an Atheist Convention in Orlando) I read my dad's war diary again and he allowed me to photocopy the first few pages at the Port Charlotte Public Library - promising later that I'd be able to have the diary itself. Recently, while going back over the file with the notes of my Atheist Convention speech I also found the photocopied diary pages.
What follows are his own words from those first pages as he sailed into the unknown and participation in the Pacific theater that would endure three long years. The time span basically covers the first few months of his war experience.
---
January 16th, 1942 – I left Camp Robinson, Arkansas on a troop train. We went by way of St. Louis and Chicago. On Sunday nite, January 18, we arrived at Indiantown Gap, an Army Camp in Penn.
January 20th, 1942 – about 12:30 P.M. we arrived at port of embarkation in Brooklyn, N.Y. We walked from the troop train to the U.S. Army Transport, “Thomas H. Barry”. This being the first ship I had ever seen, was very large, and there were 5,000 officers, nurses, and enlisted men aboard, when we pulled anchor on the cold morning of January 23.
The “Barry” carried approximately 25 guns, and from the beginning of the trip, I felt sure that we were well protected. Ours was the first largest convoy of troop ships to cross either ocean. The first few days on the water were quite interesting and I somewhat enjoyed it. But as the days became longer, and the ocean rougher, it was a damnable experience for us all. We had only salt water for showers, and shaving, and our drinking water was rationed, one quart a day. Our food was terrible, and most generally we could expect rice and scrambled watery eggs for breakfast, and stew for supper. We were fed only twice a day.
We passed most of our time playing games, reading, and listening to lectures on what to do, if we were attacked by the enemy. One Sunday Morning many of us on deck saw one of our Navy destroyers sink an enemy submarine about three miles out from our ship. Depth charges were used. I had my first and only scare one morning after being at sea for about a fortnight. One of my buddies and I were playing Checkers on the deck – when all at once there’s a loud blast – as though the “Barry” was torpedoed! One of our lieutenants told us to get inside and tighten out life-belts. I was too afraid to speak! I heard guns on the ship firing and my only thought was “God save us!”
After what had seemed hours, but only a few minutes, we learned that our convoy was having an “attack drill”!
February 1st, 1942 – We sail into the Panama Canal, which is our first stop since leaving Brooklyn, eight days ago. Going through the canal and “locks” was very interesting to me. It took our ship eight hours to go through the canal. Panama, as we saw it from the Barry, looked very beautiful with the many coconut trees lining the shores. After taking on supplies, we leave the canal Feb. 2 for our destination, Australia!
Feb. 4th, 1942 – we crossed that famed line, commonly known as the equator! We received our equatorial rights, and were initiated into the “King Neptune Court”. Several weeks later we drop anchor at a South Sea Island, called Bora Bora. Hundreds of Natives came up to our ship in their rugged canoes, or LAKATOI’S, as they are known. Many of us Americans gave them money and toilet articles for fruits, coconuts, pineapples, etc., that we so badly wanted. We were here only six hours, to refuel.
After 35 hellish days and nights on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, we reach our destination, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on Feb. 28, 1942! We marched off the “never-to-be-forgotten” Barry, and boarded an electric train which took us to our new camp, “Royal Park”. This place is paradise! We are fed good, and we’re permitted to go into the city on the second day after arriving. Everyone is very friendly toward us “Yanks”, and they invite us to their homes, parties, dances, etc. The Australians speak English, but they have so much more “slang”, and speak faster and indistinctly. It was difficult at first to understand them, but we soon “caught on”. The Australian girls had rather be with an American, than an Australian soldier, anytime! Odd? Yes, but true. Several of the nice girls that I met asked countless questions about the United States. I admire them for their loyalty to the Australian Commonwealth and their desire to do all they can, to help win this war.
Melbourne was in a “brown-out” every nite, and as I walked down the streets after a show, I would pass young girls and boys singing “Bless ‘em all”, “I’ve Got Sixpense”, etc. From the beginning, I liked Australia very much. The winters seldom get below freezing and the summer months are December, January and February.
Among the many places of interest, I went to Coffee lounges to hear different orchestra’s, Melbourne’s famous St. Kilda Beach where thousands of people swarm and Tuna Park, where one may find rides, shows, and amusements of every kind. I visited Flinder’s Street Railroad station, the busiest in the world – and there it really isn’t safe to turn around and go back!
Our work in Melbourne wasn’t hard. Usually in the morning we would drill, or take a hike to some part of Melbourne. Sometimes we would be on a work detail at the docks (at Port Melbourne) , and we had guard duty at times. We were free about every nite to go to town, or a tent show at camp.
April 17th, 1942, our good times ended in Melbourne, the 43rd Engineers were separated and we’re to go to nearer to “the front”. We, of Co. E, are put on a large freighter, and as I write this now, it’s my understanding that we are to go New Guinea. Our first stop is to be Brisbane. We have a better “set up” here than we had on the “Barry”. Our meals are very good and we have plenty of good water. It should not take over another week to reach Brisbane.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Dumb & Dumber- When will Bible Believers stop?
A recycled ruse of the bible-beaters is to try to press (usually) past scientists into their fold and try to sell their gullible minions that yes, science really stands with them in their superstitions, and no - it isn't true that most scientists are skeptics or atheists. Ordinarily, simple fact would dispel this jabber, but because the bible believers are insularly locked into their own la-la land zone, it doesn't. And since they can't controvert actual surveys (such as the one by New Scientist in 2000 showing 74% of professional biologists are atheists, as are 64% of physicists) they have to lean on the "scientists" of old - not even able to process that the bulk of what we call genuinely modern science (incorporating quantum theory, relativity and advanced genetics) wasn't consolidated until after 1925-26.
One of the biggest howlers going, which I had also heard from Duane Gish when he gave his illustrious creationism vs. evolution lecture in Fairbanks in 1986, was that all the "modern scientists, including ....Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Maxwell, rejected evolution"! Any sane person or let us say educated one, knows however that Darwin's Origin of Species wasn't published until 1859 and took at least 20 years to be circulated outside a limited specialist domain. And neither Kepler, Galileo or Newton were ALIVE then! Hence making such an assertion is about as dumb as saying that the ancient Ptolemaics of Greece wouldn't have accepted the heliocentric theory of Copernicus!
As for Maxwell, he died in 1879, just as the theory of evolution by natural selection was starting to make the rounds - and hence, there's little chance he'd ever have read a single paper. But this doesn't give the bible beaters any pause. Just utter the word science and all their moron followers will stop and take note.
As for Newton, so often cited as some kind of spiritual exemplar by the know-nothing fundies, let's look at some hard historical facts. As opposed to aimless bloviations and imaginings.
Not mentioned by these supercilious fools - who go out of their way to sic disasters on the Hatians for their voodoo- is that Newton dabbled constantly in occult “mysteries". For example, attempting to numerically “decode” parts of the 30 different bibles he owned- that put his shtick more in line with witchcraft, and counting chicken entrails.
In the PBS documentary ‘Newton’s Dark Secrets’ – much of Newton’s occultism is made known, including his calculation that the world would end in 2060. This and other discoveries shed light that Newton was not the “rationalist” so many made him out to be but rather an irrationalist – and as we know this lot gravitate more to superstitious beliefs.
The PBS documentary noted that Newton lived in violent times rife with political turmoil (e.g. the Cromwellian rebellion, beheading of the King, restoration of Charles II and the monarch) and this may have driven him into irrational occultism.
At Cambridge, Newton roomed with John Wickens, who may have influenced his later occult obsessions, including Alchemy and the pursuit of the “philosopher’s stone”. Newton had to conduct his alchemy in private because alchemists if caught were hung on gilded scaffolds, as they were regarded as little different from warlocks. So, how are we to square this fundie belief, that Newton was a genuine theological personage, when his spare time was spent in alchemy and the occult? History, in fact, refutes this claptrap of Newton being a sincere Christian in many ways and I encourage people to see the PBS documentary themselves.
The documentary also goes on to note that Newton violently rejected becoming a Minister at Trinity College – which had been required of all Fellows. Instead, Newton veered into heresy denying the divinity of Christ, as well as the Trinity. The College relented and excused Newton from Ministerial obligations, though he did run the risk of being branded a heretic and even facing death because of his beliefs. I wonder how many fundies would cite Newton as some stalwart if they were remotely aware he denied the divinity of their "Lord and Savior"?
The true fact to take away is had Newton not been protected in an established academic environment, where he made formidable contributions (e.g. with dynamics, the Calculus) he would almost surely have been hung, drawn and quartered. (Incidentally, while I am at it, Kepler was an even more occult devotee than Newton. Invoking Kepler therefore confers no more gravitas on bibles, creationism or other assorted superstitious codswallop)
Another scientist often used as fodder for the gullible believer bible thumpers is Albert Einstein. To all intents, Einstein was an implicit atheist – in the sense of not accepting a personal God. For example, an excellent clue is from Einstein's own book Ideas and Opinions, wherein he says:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called 'religious' then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it".
Einstein, as his quote warns, was thoroughly aware that sundry agents, news editors had been putting words into his mouth, trying to portray them as at least allowing for a personal God, or some related pseudo-Christian interpretation. After all, even today, scientists speaking to newspapers have little or no control over their content. Many times they are astonished to see words put into their mouths they never uttered.
More astounding for these lame brains that so often cite Einstein as their pet, he made it abundantly clear he subscribed to NO personal God, nor did he accept an afterlife - nor did he accept the concept of “free will”. After all, he also wrote in his ‘Ideas and Opinions’:
“A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity – internal and external- so that he cannot be responsible….any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes.”
Sadly though, fundies like "Pastor Mike" are clearly so desperate to find some kind of remote scientific support for their claims, they're willing to grab onto a personage (Einstein) that – in any other setting they'd have relegated to a False Doctrines webpage, with Muhammad, Buddha and the Pope!
I mean LOOK at the words! NO free will!
"A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable "
How high an IQ is needed to see that this is not a gentleman whose words should be quoted as some kind of spiritual exemplar or example? Probably a much higher IQ than most bible believers possess.
To put the final kibosh on these erratic efforts to push religion by impressing scientists into the fold, I quote another passage from Einstein, from his same Ideas and Opinions - and hope the words sink in to people like my brother Mike:
"The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events- provided of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causation really seriously. "
Look at the words and context! “The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation”. What does this mean? It means, following the original concept of Lagrange, that every physical effect has a direct physical cause EVERYWHERE in the universe. E.g.
O---------o (B)
A
If object A above collides with object B it will cause B to move off at some defined angle and with some momentum and velocity. Things do not occur without physical causes. Thus, for the serious scientist that accepts this premise, it is impossible to accept also a “being who interferes in the course of events”. In other words, NO miracles – no raising the dead, NO resurrections, and NO God men!
If one cites Einstein, one must at least generically accept this thesis - else one has no clue at all what Einstein is really saying. And it certainly supports no part of the Christian religion or belief system!
One of the biggest howlers going, which I had also heard from Duane Gish when he gave his illustrious creationism vs. evolution lecture in Fairbanks in 1986, was that all the "modern scientists, including ....Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Maxwell, rejected evolution"! Any sane person or let us say educated one, knows however that Darwin's Origin of Species wasn't published until 1859 and took at least 20 years to be circulated outside a limited specialist domain. And neither Kepler, Galileo or Newton were ALIVE then! Hence making such an assertion is about as dumb as saying that the ancient Ptolemaics of Greece wouldn't have accepted the heliocentric theory of Copernicus!
As for Maxwell, he died in 1879, just as the theory of evolution by natural selection was starting to make the rounds - and hence, there's little chance he'd ever have read a single paper. But this doesn't give the bible beaters any pause. Just utter the word science and all their moron followers will stop and take note.
As for Newton, so often cited as some kind of spiritual exemplar by the know-nothing fundies, let's look at some hard historical facts. As opposed to aimless bloviations and imaginings.
Not mentioned by these supercilious fools - who go out of their way to sic disasters on the Hatians for their voodoo- is that Newton dabbled constantly in occult “mysteries". For example, attempting to numerically “decode” parts of the 30 different bibles he owned- that put his shtick more in line with witchcraft, and counting chicken entrails.
In the PBS documentary ‘Newton’s Dark Secrets’ – much of Newton’s occultism is made known, including his calculation that the world would end in 2060. This and other discoveries shed light that Newton was not the “rationalist” so many made him out to be but rather an irrationalist – and as we know this lot gravitate more to superstitious beliefs.
The PBS documentary noted that Newton lived in violent times rife with political turmoil (e.g. the Cromwellian rebellion, beheading of the King, restoration of Charles II and the monarch) and this may have driven him into irrational occultism.
At Cambridge, Newton roomed with John Wickens, who may have influenced his later occult obsessions, including Alchemy and the pursuit of the “philosopher’s stone”. Newton had to conduct his alchemy in private because alchemists if caught were hung on gilded scaffolds, as they were regarded as little different from warlocks. So, how are we to square this fundie belief, that Newton was a genuine theological personage, when his spare time was spent in alchemy and the occult? History, in fact, refutes this claptrap of Newton being a sincere Christian in many ways and I encourage people to see the PBS documentary themselves.
The documentary also goes on to note that Newton violently rejected becoming a Minister at Trinity College – which had been required of all Fellows. Instead, Newton veered into heresy denying the divinity of Christ, as well as the Trinity. The College relented and excused Newton from Ministerial obligations, though he did run the risk of being branded a heretic and even facing death because of his beliefs. I wonder how many fundies would cite Newton as some stalwart if they were remotely aware he denied the divinity of their "Lord and Savior"?
The true fact to take away is had Newton not been protected in an established academic environment, where he made formidable contributions (e.g. with dynamics, the Calculus) he would almost surely have been hung, drawn and quartered. (Incidentally, while I am at it, Kepler was an even more occult devotee than Newton. Invoking Kepler therefore confers no more gravitas on bibles, creationism or other assorted superstitious codswallop)
Another scientist often used as fodder for the gullible believer bible thumpers is Albert Einstein. To all intents, Einstein was an implicit atheist – in the sense of not accepting a personal God. For example, an excellent clue is from Einstein's own book Ideas and Opinions, wherein he says:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called 'religious' then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it".
Einstein, as his quote warns, was thoroughly aware that sundry agents, news editors had been putting words into his mouth, trying to portray them as at least allowing for a personal God, or some related pseudo-Christian interpretation. After all, even today, scientists speaking to newspapers have little or no control over their content. Many times they are astonished to see words put into their mouths they never uttered.
More astounding for these lame brains that so often cite Einstein as their pet, he made it abundantly clear he subscribed to NO personal God, nor did he accept an afterlife - nor did he accept the concept of “free will”. After all, he also wrote in his ‘Ideas and Opinions’:
“A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity – internal and external- so that he cannot be responsible….any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes.”
Sadly though, fundies like "Pastor Mike" are clearly so desperate to find some kind of remote scientific support for their claims, they're willing to grab onto a personage (Einstein) that – in any other setting they'd have relegated to a False Doctrines webpage, with Muhammad, Buddha and the Pope!
I mean LOOK at the words! NO free will!
"A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable "
How high an IQ is needed to see that this is not a gentleman whose words should be quoted as some kind of spiritual exemplar or example? Probably a much higher IQ than most bible believers possess.
To put the final kibosh on these erratic efforts to push religion by impressing scientists into the fold, I quote another passage from Einstein, from his same Ideas and Opinions - and hope the words sink in to people like my brother Mike:
"The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events- provided of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causation really seriously. "
Look at the words and context! “The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation”. What does this mean? It means, following the original concept of Lagrange, that every physical effect has a direct physical cause EVERYWHERE in the universe. E.g.
O---------o (B)
A
If object A above collides with object B it will cause B to move off at some defined angle and with some momentum and velocity. Things do not occur without physical causes. Thus, for the serious scientist that accepts this premise, it is impossible to accept also a “being who interferes in the course of events”. In other words, NO miracles – no raising the dead, NO resurrections, and NO God men!
If one cites Einstein, one must at least generically accept this thesis - else one has no clue at all what Einstein is really saying. And it certainly supports no part of the Christian religion or belief system!
Back to p-adics!
We now return to the p-adics, the novel breed of numbers introduced in the Jan. 13 entry. We left off with three problems related to the content of that article. To refresh, the 3 problems were:
1-- For the triangle in Fig. 2, use 7-adic absolute values applied to the sides of the triangle, thereby compute: A, B and C and show it is isosceles.
2- Find the value of the sum S for: S = 1 + 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + .......
3- Using (2) as written, "invent" a new irrational number based on the p-adic form.
---
For convenience, I've reproduced Fig. 2 from the original blog piece, which we can work with in the course of the solution.
1-
Find the 7-adic value for each side;
[A]_7 = [14 - 1/7]_7 = abs{[2 x 7]_7 - 1/[1 x 7]_7}
1-- For the triangle in Fig. 2, use 7-adic absolute values applied to the sides of the triangle, thereby compute: A, B and C and show it is isosceles.
2- Find the value of the sum S for: S = 1 + 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + .......
3- Using (2) as written, "invent" a new irrational number based on the p-adic form.
---
For convenience, I've reproduced Fig. 2 from the original blog piece, which we can work with in the course of the solution.
1-
Find the 7-adic value for each side;
[A]_7 = [14 - 1/7]_7 = abs{[2 x 7]_7 - 1/[1 x 7]_7}
= abs[1/7 - 7] = 6 6/7 = 48/7
[B]_7 = [1/7 - 21]_7 = abs{[1/[1 x 7]_7 - [3 x 7]_7}
[B]_7 = [1/7 - 21]_7 = abs{[1/[1 x 7]_7 - [3 x 7]_7}
= abs[7 - 1/7] = 6 6/7 = 48/7
[C]_7 = [21 - 14]_7 = abs{[3 x 7] _7 - [2 x 7]_7} = abs{[1/7 - 1/7]_7} = [0]_7 = 1
and from these calculations of p-adic (7-adic) absolute values we find side A = side B = 48/7, hence in the p-adic format the triangle is isosceles.
2- S = 1 + 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + .......
So rewrite the sum (multiplying both sides by 7):
7S = 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + (7)^6 + .........
Subtract the lower form from the upper, viz.:
S = 1 + 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + .......
-7S = 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + (7)^6 + .........
________________________________________
S - 7S = 1 (all other top and bottom terms cancel)
whence:
[C]_7 = [21 - 14]_7 = abs{[3 x 7] _7 - [2 x 7]_7} = abs{[1/7 - 1/7]_7} = [0]_7 = 1
and from these calculations of p-adic (7-adic) absolute values we find side A = side B = 48/7, hence in the p-adic format the triangle is isosceles.
2- S = 1 + 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + .......
So rewrite the sum (multiplying both sides by 7):
7S = 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + (7)^6 + .........
Subtract the lower form from the upper, viz.:
S = 1 + 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + .......
-7S = 7 + (7)^2 + (7)^3 + (7)^4 + (7)^5 + (7)^6 + .........
________________________________________
S - 7S = 1 (all other top and bottom terms cancel)
whence:
-6S = 1 and therefore, S = -1/6
Problem 3- We want to use the prior number to invent a new irrational number. The most direct way is to use the same (7-adic) form, and simply increase powers in a different way:
Thus: let N - the new irrational be S' where S' is a variant of S such that:
N=7 + (7)^3+ (7)^6 + (7)^9 + (7)^12 + (7)^15 + .........
Problem 3- We want to use the prior number to invent a new irrational number. The most direct way is to use the same (7-adic) form, and simply increase powers in a different way:
Thus: let N - the new irrational be S' where S' is a variant of S such that:
N=7 + (7)^3+ (7)^6 + (7)^9 + (7)^12 + (7)^15 + .........
Friday, January 22, 2010
Clearing the Air - Once and for all!
It’s come to my attention that my brother, “Pastor” Mike- in the course of a slurry of new blog posts against atheism -continues to labor under the delusion (illusion?) that I “conceded” in the course of a debate on his All Souls I-Net church blog last year. This is to correct that mal-perception, and indicate that any “concession” transpired exclusively in Mike’s confused mind, not in any way by me.
In the exchange – which I had with Mike and an equally impervious cohort named Renee- the debate ranged from issues of the definition of atheist and agnostic (in which I offered standard definitions) to the question of atheist morality to whether Albert Einstein was in any manner a god believer or remote religionist. In the latter case I presented actual quotes from Einstein (from his book ‘Ideas and Opinions’) to show how both Mike and Renee had skewed their interpretations to what THEY wanted. Einstein had no truck with any personal deity and certainly accepted no afterlife.
Using my final contribution to his "I-Net" site (which I happened to save), I now document word for word what I actually wrote and readers can judge for themselves whether I at any time used the term “concession” or "concede":
--
Begin
Mike wrote: "Phil ,stated in his post that atheism is NOT a "religion" , but it IS - because , as my 'brother' Rene said , it's a worldview . "
Reply:
NO, NO AND NO!!!! A "worldview" is NOT a religion!!!! THIS is exactly why it is impossible to conduct a productive debate with you both because you incessantly conflate and obscure words, definitions and terms (as your "brother" Rene with 'atheist')
You corrupt all debates by the misuse of terms and then render them useless. Look, a WORLDVIEW is a WORLDVIEW. For example, the worldview of neo-liberal capitalism which extols the free market is just that - NOT a religion.
If we continue to confuse worldviews and religions and use these terms interchangeably then we confuse and corrupt thought and make all languages more debased and impoverished than it is.
BUT I am thankful to Mike for showing in the clearest terms yet why debates are impossible and indeed futile with him so long as he engages in these tactics.
---
Note the words used above. MIKE showing in clearest terms WHY debates are IMPOSSIBLE. Let's go on:
Mike wrote:
"So , I , MYSELF ask , can the atheist present a logical reason how his worldview can account for the abstract laws of logic?"
This is another example. He is using CIRCULAR reasoning here, basically asking the atheist to use LOGIC (present a logical reason) to account for the LAWS of logic. This again is unworthy of him. One cannot use or invoke circular reasoning by invoking a mechanism, in this case logic, to explain logic!!! This is what we call making a meta-statement which only ensures one remains within a closed loop.
IF now Mike asks how rational thought came to arise, we can provide an answer. And let us bear in mind that logic is an outcome of rational thought. IF one is therefore irrational one cannot employ logic.
The answer is that in the course of brain evolution certain specific neurons developed in a new layer ( the neo-cortex) and from here the ability for abstract thought (which includes logic) ensued.
Once more this is a sterling illustration of why debate is futile. Since in one of my first comments to Mike I referenced the book that explained all this, 'The Evolution of Consciousness' by Robert Ornstein.
--
Again, attend to the language-words used. At no time or point is "concession" or "I concede" ever used. What I was asserting is that debate was futile. If one persists in relying on strawmen, red herrings, malpropisms, circular logic, appeal to authority, ignotum per ignotius - or no logic- then, as Isaac Asimov once noted, "rational debate is futile". Asimov also added that: "in any irrational 'debate' - the irrationalist will always have more comebacks simply because there is more irrational gibberish in the world than rational substance. Just as garbage grows exponentially from simple consumption - so does irrationality from the inability to exercise critical thinking ( from the Lecture at Queen's Park - Barbados, Feb. 1975)
Saying a debate is futile , then, is not the same as a concession! It is saying that an activity (in this case a putative "debate") is sterile, unproductive and useless. It also carries the subtext that the person you are directing arguments act is incapable of making equal, substantive arguments in return. In other words, it's a waste of time. Einstein was the one who also made the famous remark:
"When the same action is repeated over and over without success and the outcome is the same each time, that defines insanity".
So my ending debate was simply to terminate the insanity ongoing with Mike and his disciple, Renee. The insanity of them using the same circular arguments and nonsense and not getting anywhere - just wasting time. Mike, in his fervid, delusionary hallucinations, has wrongly interpreted that as "concession". (He actually apparently even goes to a dictionary in one of his blog posts - which is of course, useless since I myself never used the term - hence the meaning of the word is not at issue but his interpretation of simply rescinding a bad judgment: to wit, to rationally attempt to engage Mike & Renee in the first place.
We go on (this segment had to do with Einstein and God):
--
In truth and in fact then, IF Einstein were alive today and writing this, he'd be just as excoriated on Mike's "False Doctrines" page as Mormons, Catholics and atheists are now.
I do hope he finally processes this without adding any more confusion, when in his lead-in comments to this blog he promised to mainly stay out of it. His incessant intrusions only show he is not only hyper-religious but a control freak as well.
And this IS my final post.
If again people superimpose their own subjective meanings and interpretations on words, we get no where. No logical or rational exchange is feasible. My hope is that one day, my zealous brother will at least spend as much time taking a course or two in Logic (and mayhap some basic science) as he spends devoted to his bible and attacking any form or manifestation of belief (or unbelief) that doesn't bear him imprimatur.
But I am not too confident this can be the case, especially - since our father's untimely departure from this world - he seems to have grown even more combative (against atheism and atheists - with posts including images of boxing gloves) and hyper-religious.
Added Note:
I have been advised to moderate the comments to this blog on account of several spurious, attempted comments that appear to have originated from Chinese or Japanese sources. So, henceforth, all comments will be assessed first, and if they are warranted to add to or enhance the discussion, or the main article- will be allowed. If not, they won't be posted.
In the exchange – which I had with Mike and an equally impervious cohort named Renee- the debate ranged from issues of the definition of atheist and agnostic (in which I offered standard definitions) to the question of atheist morality to whether Albert Einstein was in any manner a god believer or remote religionist. In the latter case I presented actual quotes from Einstein (from his book ‘Ideas and Opinions’) to show how both Mike and Renee had skewed their interpretations to what THEY wanted. Einstein had no truck with any personal deity and certainly accepted no afterlife.
Using my final contribution to his "I-Net" site (which I happened to save), I now document word for word what I actually wrote and readers can judge for themselves whether I at any time used the term “concession” or "concede":
--
Begin
Mike wrote: "Phil ,stated in his post that atheism is NOT a "religion" , but it IS - because , as my 'brother' Rene said , it's a worldview . "
Reply:
NO, NO AND NO!!!! A "worldview" is NOT a religion!!!! THIS is exactly why it is impossible to conduct a productive debate with you both because you incessantly conflate and obscure words, definitions and terms (as your "brother" Rene with 'atheist')
You corrupt all debates by the misuse of terms and then render them useless. Look, a WORLDVIEW is a WORLDVIEW. For example, the worldview of neo-liberal capitalism which extols the free market is just that - NOT a religion.
If we continue to confuse worldviews and religions and use these terms interchangeably then we confuse and corrupt thought and make all languages more debased and impoverished than it is.
BUT I am thankful to Mike for showing in the clearest terms yet why debates are impossible and indeed futile with him so long as he engages in these tactics.
---
Note the words used above. MIKE showing in clearest terms WHY debates are IMPOSSIBLE. Let's go on:
Mike wrote:
"So , I , MYSELF ask , can the atheist present a logical reason how his worldview can account for the abstract laws of logic?"
This is another example. He is using CIRCULAR reasoning here, basically asking the atheist to use LOGIC (present a logical reason) to account for the LAWS of logic. This again is unworthy of him. One cannot use or invoke circular reasoning by invoking a mechanism, in this case logic, to explain logic!!! This is what we call making a meta-statement which only ensures one remains within a closed loop.
IF now Mike asks how rational thought came to arise, we can provide an answer. And let us bear in mind that logic is an outcome of rational thought. IF one is therefore irrational one cannot employ logic.
The answer is that in the course of brain evolution certain specific neurons developed in a new layer ( the neo-cortex) and from here the ability for abstract thought (which includes logic) ensued.
Once more this is a sterling illustration of why debate is futile. Since in one of my first comments to Mike I referenced the book that explained all this, 'The Evolution of Consciousness' by Robert Ornstein.
--
Again, attend to the language-words used. At no time or point is "concession" or "I concede" ever used. What I was asserting is that debate was futile. If one persists in relying on strawmen, red herrings, malpropisms, circular logic, appeal to authority, ignotum per ignotius - or no logic- then, as Isaac Asimov once noted, "rational debate is futile". Asimov also added that: "in any irrational 'debate' - the irrationalist will always have more comebacks simply because there is more irrational gibberish in the world than rational substance. Just as garbage grows exponentially from simple consumption - so does irrationality from the inability to exercise critical thinking ( from the Lecture at Queen's Park - Barbados, Feb. 1975)
Saying a debate is futile , then, is not the same as a concession! It is saying that an activity (in this case a putative "debate") is sterile, unproductive and useless. It also carries the subtext that the person you are directing arguments act is incapable of making equal, substantive arguments in return. In other words, it's a waste of time. Einstein was the one who also made the famous remark:
"When the same action is repeated over and over without success and the outcome is the same each time, that defines insanity".
So my ending debate was simply to terminate the insanity ongoing with Mike and his disciple, Renee. The insanity of them using the same circular arguments and nonsense and not getting anywhere - just wasting time. Mike, in his fervid, delusionary hallucinations, has wrongly interpreted that as "concession". (He actually apparently even goes to a dictionary in one of his blog posts - which is of course, useless since I myself never used the term - hence the meaning of the word is not at issue but his interpretation of simply rescinding a bad judgment: to wit, to rationally attempt to engage Mike & Renee in the first place.
We go on (this segment had to do with Einstein and God):
--
In truth and in fact then, IF Einstein were alive today and writing this, he'd be just as excoriated on Mike's "False Doctrines" page as Mormons, Catholics and atheists are now.
I do hope he finally processes this without adding any more confusion, when in his lead-in comments to this blog he promised to mainly stay out of it. His incessant intrusions only show he is not only hyper-religious but a control freak as well.
And this IS my final post.
If again people superimpose their own subjective meanings and interpretations on words, we get no where. No logical or rational exchange is feasible. My hope is that one day, my zealous brother will at least spend as much time taking a course or two in Logic (and mayhap some basic science) as he spends devoted to his bible and attacking any form or manifestation of belief (or unbelief) that doesn't bear him imprimatur.
But I am not too confident this can be the case, especially - since our father's untimely departure from this world - he seems to have grown even more combative (against atheism and atheists - with posts including images of boxing gloves) and hyper-religious.
Added Note:
I have been advised to moderate the comments to this blog on account of several spurious, attempted comments that appear to have originated from Chinese or Japanese sources. So, henceforth, all comments will be assessed first, and if they are warranted to add to or enhance the discussion, or the main article- will be allowed. If not, they won't be posted.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Why Anti-Evolutionists are regularly thrashed in debates
Announcement of Duane Gish's "Evolution vs. Creationism" lecture in the University of Alaska Sunstar. Alas, no scientists from the University chose to engage him.I still recall the first public lecture (and followup question period) on 'Evolution vs. Creationism' I ever attended in the U.S. It was while I was on a research assistantship to the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, AK. (Hitherto, I'd been teaching, doing solar work in Barbados - since 1971). The presenter was none other than Duane Gish - then of the Institute of Creation Research. (See advert - still preserved from the date it appeared: Feb. 19, 1986)
The sad and sorry aspect is that Gish had invited members of the science staff (any of them) based at The Geophysical Institute (affiliated with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks) to debate him. All of them declined. On being notified of this, Gish commented:
"It's rather strange that they wouldn't be prepared to support evolutionary debate because they teach it year in and year out. If it's supported by the scientific evidence then it should be a simple thing to do".
However, the professional scientists at the Geophysical Inst. were not amused. The Head of the UAF Biology Dept., Stephan McLean noted (from The University of Alaska Sunstar campus newspaper that also reported Gish's comments):
"I refuse to get involved personally in debating this issue. In any case, the question that was put forward was extremely biased. The creationist side chose the topic, booked the hall, and made the rules - then invited this very skilled person. The way it was structured allowed the creationist advocate to take the offensive and put the evolutionist on the defensive".
Then Director of the G.I., Professor Juan Roederer was less polite:
"These individuals are simply impostors. They essentially base their arguments on a distorted or outright falsified interpretation of existing scientific fact."
Most upsetting to me, on attending Gish's performance - which is all that it was- is that anyone half informed would have demolished him by requiring simple rules and debate changes. For example, in all the times (6) I debated religionists in Barbados - no one was permitted to cite from scripture, since evolution is a scientific theory, and bibles are not books of science. Another rule - used in my debates - was a limit of three minutes per response which always had to be direct.
As it was, the "rules" allowed freelancing by Gish, and he exploited them to clown around with specious, irrelevant illustrations ("Anyone here have a grandma that used to be a gorilla?") that totally misrepresented the evolution position. In any genuine formal setting, he'd have been hooted out, but his semi-educated audience ate it up.
His trotting out a question like "Do any of you really really believe Earth is 4 billion years old?" could have been rebutted by appeal to the use of radio-active isotopes that show it. For instance, in a recent use of the isotope delta- 13 C, evidence has been found for the existence of life on Earth at least 3, 850 million (or 3.85 billion) years ago.[1] Quartz (zircon, zirconium) crystals have often found to be of use, since they may harbor small amounts of uranium or thorium at the level of ‘parts per billion’ .
Despite some drawbacks to the use of fossils and the fossil record, anyone with even basic physics knowledge can easily see that radioactive isotope dating is an excellent means of enhancing the quality assurance of dating fossils. The use of such methods (e.g. using delta-13C) to show that life existed on Earth nearly four billion years ago, for example, controverts the thesis claimed by most creationists. The problem is that most of them lack the education to appreciate the methods.
As for another Gish howler, that "humans walked with dinosaurs" - if even remotely so, then humans would never have made it out alive. The best trace remains available from 17-20,000 years ago disclose a human population of barely 50,000. In any one year nearly half were felled and eaten by saber-tooth tigers or other predators, and it was only the shift to agriculture- farming that allowed human number to catch up. Meanwhile, from fossil density extrapolations and dating methods, more than 4- 5 million dinosaurs inhabited the earth - a good proportion of them ferocious killers like T-Rex and Allosaurus. If saber tooths (in the hunter-gatherer era - wherein "Adam and Eve" are purported have arisen) almost reduced human numbers by half, it would have taken only ONE of the main dino predators to reduce them 100%......into extinction. Bows and spears vs. T-Rex? Don't make me laugh!
Interestingly, within three years of the Fairbanks debacle, a bounty of new data and methods showed where and how the bible-punching, anti-evolutionists could be thrashed like eggs by a hammer on an anvil. New dialectic techniques and a more aggressive interest in confrontation also helped. By the time the Discovery Institute arrived, and most creationism had mutated to "intelligent design" - the believers and their ilk were getting regularly hammered. They were forced to call new seminars and conferences to try to keep up with useful methods - but were inevitably a day late and dollar short.
By the time I returned to Barbados to teach at Harrison College, I was using many of these same techniques and advances in formal public debates held at the College's Main Assembly Hall. In the course of those debates, I would learn how and why the Fundie side so often took a drubbing. This most often surfaced in their appalling lack of scientific knowledge and their recourse to debating tricks rather than substance. Some of the primary anti-evolutionist mistakes I'd like to highlight here:
1) The Stupidest Mistakes:
This category is reserved for the outright dumbest, most ignorant - which - if even remotely mentioned screams that the person is either an imbecile, a fool or the most uneducated specimen to escape the American educational system:
a) "If evolution is true, how come all my grand parents, and their grand parents and theirs were ALL human, and not apes?"
The idiot who uses this doesn't have a clue what human evolution means - which is not that humans "descended from apes" - but that both apes and humans descended from a common ancestor.
b) "You guys say chimps differ from humans by only 2% in their DNA structure (genome). So, let me get this straight: If lettuce is 98% water and humans are too, are we not also descended from lettuce?"
This unreconstructed, semi-educated dimwit doesn't grasp anything about genetics which marks his downfall. What has gone over his head (and probably isn't even on the "radar") is the specific cytochrome -c protein sequence. As it turns out, the 2% generic DNA -difference is not the key or critical aspect, it is that humans and chimpanzees have the exact same cytochrome -c protein sequence. In the absence of common (evolutionary) descent, the chance of this occurrence is conservatively less than 1 in 10^93. That is, 1 in 10 to the 93rd power, or 10 followed by 93 zeros.
Thus, the high degree of similarity in these proteins is a spectacular corroboration of the theory of common descent. Furthermore, human and chimpanzee cytochrome- c proteins differ by ~10 amino acids from all other mammals. The chance of this occurring in the absence of a hereditary mechanism is less than 1 in 10^29. Meanwhile, the yeast Candida krusei is one of the most distantly related eukaryotic organisms from humans. Candida has 51 amino acid differences from the human sequence. Lettuce has about 29 amino acid differences.
The problem is that the believer has only tapped the most superficial information to try to take down the evolutionist- but ends up taking himself down.
c) "If evolution is really true, you'd be able to take your watch apart - toss it on the ground - and come back after some time and see it back together!"
This one is so lame it's nearly impossible to assay all the errors, false assumptions and nonsense, yet you'd be amazed how many buy it! For one thing, a watch is a manufactured contrivance - but neither organisms or the universe at large are. Indeed, the fundamental error is that the antagonist confuses the theory of evolution (based on natural selection) with noogenisis.
The concept of life possibly arising from non-life (panspermia is an alternative theory for life origin) is the theory of noogensis.What evolution says is that incremental changes to proteins, and genetic structures are made over time. The changes then become passed on by a process of natural selection to successive generations of an organism. The attributes passed on generally confer a survival advantage.
The related error of many creationists is to assume all evolutionary probabilities are fixed, and all are remote. An example often given (misplaced) is the likelihood of taking a Jet apart and having it come back together by itself. This is erroneous since the Jet is already a manufactured item. Hence if one disassembles it there is zero probability of its reconstruction unless extraneous factors are inserted. Like a team of Jet builders!
Natural selection works differently, in that certain features of living things are already selected for then their repetition is enhanced via reproduction. It is not the same at all. In fact, the increased probability is usually already set once a single simple change occurs. This usually starts with micro-evolution. Micro-evolution implies an incremental change in a small proportion of DNA.Examples of micro-evolution include the re-arrangement of amino acids in proteins such as haemoglobin, or the altered genes for a specific genetic character in successive generations of the fruit fly.
2) Less Dumb Strategies of Anti-Evolutionists:
The following are less dumb tacks, but still pretty dumb - since they open the person to considerable putdowns!
a) "How come I don't see any missing links? Where are they?"
This question mixes chalk and cheese - in that the question is really geared to one sub-theory of evolution called "gradualism" - and not another (promoted by the late Stephen J. Gould) called "punctuated equilibrium". While a "missing link" (exact common ancestor identified by specific genome) would be more or less standard for the gradualist view it is not needed for the latter. We are able to see more in terms of algorithmic branching in the latter, and how numerous competitor common ancestors could have emerged rapidly and co-existed. (Just as we now have evidence that both Neandertal Man and modern Homo Sapiens existed at the same time, for perhaps 50,000 yrs.) Thus, the "missing link" - hyperinflated by creationists like Duane Gish and others, is more a "Macguffin" invented by the ID-creationist crowd to take the spotlight off the genetic evidence for multiple lines of species evolution.
A sound response to such questions is always for the evolutionist to refer directly to the evidence for a "genetic missing link" which would cover both the gradualist and punctuated equilibrium idioms. Specifically, in one of the most powerful ever demonstrations of the validity of evolution, Yunis and Prakash, 1982, Science, Vol. 215, p. 1525, 'The Origin of Man: A Chromosomal Pictorial Legacy', showed that the human chromosome designated '2' was the result of the telomeric fusion of the two ape chromosomes, 2p and 2q. The effect also saw the reduction from 24 chromosome pairs in apes, to 23 pairs in humans. In other words, the duo of ape chromosomes (2p and 2q) can be considered a genetic missing link to humans!
b) "If the second law (of thermodynamics) asserts everything is winding down and getting more disorderly, how can you have more orderly and advanced biological organisms?"
This is directly a result of misinterpretation of the 2nd law, something I often see from those who've never taken a serious physics course - even in high school. Strictly speaking the law states:Entropy (the state of disorder) will tend to increase over time in any closed system.
The last part is very crucial but it is exactly the part that the creationist-ID crowd omits, which renders their question a non-starter.The reason is that neither the Earth nor its biological systems are "closed" systems, hence do not exhibit constantly increasing disorder.The Earth, for example, is open to the radiant energy of the Sun and receives some 1360 watts per square meter. Plants on the Earth are likewise OPEN to solar energy, and receive it and then use it in the process of photo-synthesis.
Other organisms eat the plants and thereby incorporate that energy into themselves. Thus, the path is cleared for higher organizational development and speciation. We do not see a constant wind-down because all these systems are OPEN, not closed.
Using these rebuts and replies, in standard debate formats, I have never seen a religious believing, anti-evolutionist get the better of his evolutionist counterpart. The only remaining place the converse is true is in the anti-evolutionist's own brain. Or maybe his own blog in which he can control all inputs, comments etc. Anders, are you paying attention?
[1] Holland, H.D.: Evidence for Life on Earth More Than 3850 Million Years Ago, in Science, Vol. 275, 3 January, 1997, p. 38.
The sad and sorry aspect is that Gish had invited members of the science staff (any of them) based at The Geophysical Institute (affiliated with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks) to debate him. All of them declined. On being notified of this, Gish commented:
"It's rather strange that they wouldn't be prepared to support evolutionary debate because they teach it year in and year out. If it's supported by the scientific evidence then it should be a simple thing to do".
However, the professional scientists at the Geophysical Inst. were not amused. The Head of the UAF Biology Dept., Stephan McLean noted (from The University of Alaska Sunstar campus newspaper that also reported Gish's comments):
"I refuse to get involved personally in debating this issue. In any case, the question that was put forward was extremely biased. The creationist side chose the topic, booked the hall, and made the rules - then invited this very skilled person. The way it was structured allowed the creationist advocate to take the offensive and put the evolutionist on the defensive".
Then Director of the G.I., Professor Juan Roederer was less polite:
"These individuals are simply impostors. They essentially base their arguments on a distorted or outright falsified interpretation of existing scientific fact."
Most upsetting to me, on attending Gish's performance - which is all that it was- is that anyone half informed would have demolished him by requiring simple rules and debate changes. For example, in all the times (6) I debated religionists in Barbados - no one was permitted to cite from scripture, since evolution is a scientific theory, and bibles are not books of science. Another rule - used in my debates - was a limit of three minutes per response which always had to be direct.
As it was, the "rules" allowed freelancing by Gish, and he exploited them to clown around with specious, irrelevant illustrations ("Anyone here have a grandma that used to be a gorilla?") that totally misrepresented the evolution position. In any genuine formal setting, he'd have been hooted out, but his semi-educated audience ate it up.
His trotting out a question like "Do any of you really really believe Earth is 4 billion years old?" could have been rebutted by appeal to the use of radio-active isotopes that show it. For instance, in a recent use of the isotope delta- 13 C, evidence has been found for the existence of life on Earth at least 3, 850 million (or 3.85 billion) years ago.[1] Quartz (zircon, zirconium) crystals have often found to be of use, since they may harbor small amounts of uranium or thorium at the level of ‘parts per billion’ .
Despite some drawbacks to the use of fossils and the fossil record, anyone with even basic physics knowledge can easily see that radioactive isotope dating is an excellent means of enhancing the quality assurance of dating fossils. The use of such methods (e.g. using delta-13C) to show that life existed on Earth nearly four billion years ago, for example, controverts the thesis claimed by most creationists. The problem is that most of them lack the education to appreciate the methods.
As for another Gish howler, that "humans walked with dinosaurs" - if even remotely so, then humans would never have made it out alive. The best trace remains available from 17-20,000 years ago disclose a human population of barely 50,000. In any one year nearly half were felled and eaten by saber-tooth tigers or other predators, and it was only the shift to agriculture- farming that allowed human number to catch up. Meanwhile, from fossil density extrapolations and dating methods, more than 4- 5 million dinosaurs inhabited the earth - a good proportion of them ferocious killers like T-Rex and Allosaurus. If saber tooths (in the hunter-gatherer era - wherein "Adam and Eve" are purported have arisen) almost reduced human numbers by half, it would have taken only ONE of the main dino predators to reduce them 100%......into extinction. Bows and spears vs. T-Rex? Don't make me laugh!
Interestingly, within three years of the Fairbanks debacle, a bounty of new data and methods showed where and how the bible-punching, anti-evolutionists could be thrashed like eggs by a hammer on an anvil. New dialectic techniques and a more aggressive interest in confrontation also helped. By the time the Discovery Institute arrived, and most creationism had mutated to "intelligent design" - the believers and their ilk were getting regularly hammered. They were forced to call new seminars and conferences to try to keep up with useful methods - but were inevitably a day late and dollar short.
By the time I returned to Barbados to teach at Harrison College, I was using many of these same techniques and advances in formal public debates held at the College's Main Assembly Hall. In the course of those debates, I would learn how and why the Fundie side so often took a drubbing. This most often surfaced in their appalling lack of scientific knowledge and their recourse to debating tricks rather than substance. Some of the primary anti-evolutionist mistakes I'd like to highlight here:
1) The Stupidest Mistakes:
This category is reserved for the outright dumbest, most ignorant - which - if even remotely mentioned screams that the person is either an imbecile, a fool or the most uneducated specimen to escape the American educational system:
a) "If evolution is true, how come all my grand parents, and their grand parents and theirs were ALL human, and not apes?"
The idiot who uses this doesn't have a clue what human evolution means - which is not that humans "descended from apes" - but that both apes and humans descended from a common ancestor.
b) "You guys say chimps differ from humans by only 2% in their DNA structure (genome). So, let me get this straight: If lettuce is 98% water and humans are too, are we not also descended from lettuce?"
This unreconstructed, semi-educated dimwit doesn't grasp anything about genetics which marks his downfall. What has gone over his head (and probably isn't even on the "radar") is the specific cytochrome -c protein sequence. As it turns out, the 2% generic DNA -difference is not the key or critical aspect, it is that humans and chimpanzees have the exact same cytochrome -c protein sequence. In the absence of common (evolutionary) descent, the chance of this occurrence is conservatively less than 1 in 10^93. That is, 1 in 10 to the 93rd power, or 10 followed by 93 zeros.
Thus, the high degree of similarity in these proteins is a spectacular corroboration of the theory of common descent. Furthermore, human and chimpanzee cytochrome- c proteins differ by ~10 amino acids from all other mammals. The chance of this occurring in the absence of a hereditary mechanism is less than 1 in 10^29. Meanwhile, the yeast Candida krusei is one of the most distantly related eukaryotic organisms from humans. Candida has 51 amino acid differences from the human sequence. Lettuce has about 29 amino acid differences.
The problem is that the believer has only tapped the most superficial information to try to take down the evolutionist- but ends up taking himself down.
c) "If evolution is really true, you'd be able to take your watch apart - toss it on the ground - and come back after some time and see it back together!"
This one is so lame it's nearly impossible to assay all the errors, false assumptions and nonsense, yet you'd be amazed how many buy it! For one thing, a watch is a manufactured contrivance - but neither organisms or the universe at large are. Indeed, the fundamental error is that the antagonist confuses the theory of evolution (based on natural selection) with noogenisis.
The concept of life possibly arising from non-life (panspermia is an alternative theory for life origin) is the theory of noogensis.What evolution says is that incremental changes to proteins, and genetic structures are made over time. The changes then become passed on by a process of natural selection to successive generations of an organism. The attributes passed on generally confer a survival advantage.
The related error of many creationists is to assume all evolutionary probabilities are fixed, and all are remote. An example often given (misplaced) is the likelihood of taking a Jet apart and having it come back together by itself. This is erroneous since the Jet is already a manufactured item. Hence if one disassembles it there is zero probability of its reconstruction unless extraneous factors are inserted. Like a team of Jet builders!
Natural selection works differently, in that certain features of living things are already selected for then their repetition is enhanced via reproduction. It is not the same at all. In fact, the increased probability is usually already set once a single simple change occurs. This usually starts with micro-evolution. Micro-evolution implies an incremental change in a small proportion of DNA.Examples of micro-evolution include the re-arrangement of amino acids in proteins such as haemoglobin, or the altered genes for a specific genetic character in successive generations of the fruit fly.
2) Less Dumb Strategies of Anti-Evolutionists:
The following are less dumb tacks, but still pretty dumb - since they open the person to considerable putdowns!
a) "How come I don't see any missing links? Where are they?"
This question mixes chalk and cheese - in that the question is really geared to one sub-theory of evolution called "gradualism" - and not another (promoted by the late Stephen J. Gould) called "punctuated equilibrium". While a "missing link" (exact common ancestor identified by specific genome) would be more or less standard for the gradualist view it is not needed for the latter. We are able to see more in terms of algorithmic branching in the latter, and how numerous competitor common ancestors could have emerged rapidly and co-existed. (Just as we now have evidence that both Neandertal Man and modern Homo Sapiens existed at the same time, for perhaps 50,000 yrs.) Thus, the "missing link" - hyperinflated by creationists like Duane Gish and others, is more a "Macguffin" invented by the ID-creationist crowd to take the spotlight off the genetic evidence for multiple lines of species evolution.
A sound response to such questions is always for the evolutionist to refer directly to the evidence for a "genetic missing link" which would cover both the gradualist and punctuated equilibrium idioms. Specifically, in one of the most powerful ever demonstrations of the validity of evolution, Yunis and Prakash, 1982, Science, Vol. 215, p. 1525, 'The Origin of Man: A Chromosomal Pictorial Legacy', showed that the human chromosome designated '2' was the result of the telomeric fusion of the two ape chromosomes, 2p and 2q. The effect also saw the reduction from 24 chromosome pairs in apes, to 23 pairs in humans. In other words, the duo of ape chromosomes (2p and 2q) can be considered a genetic missing link to humans!
b) "If the second law (of thermodynamics) asserts everything is winding down and getting more disorderly, how can you have more orderly and advanced biological organisms?"
This is directly a result of misinterpretation of the 2nd law, something I often see from those who've never taken a serious physics course - even in high school. Strictly speaking the law states:Entropy (the state of disorder) will tend to increase over time in any closed system.
The last part is very crucial but it is exactly the part that the creationist-ID crowd omits, which renders their question a non-starter.The reason is that neither the Earth nor its biological systems are "closed" systems, hence do not exhibit constantly increasing disorder.The Earth, for example, is open to the radiant energy of the Sun and receives some 1360 watts per square meter. Plants on the Earth are likewise OPEN to solar energy, and receive it and then use it in the process of photo-synthesis.
Other organisms eat the plants and thereby incorporate that energy into themselves. Thus, the path is cleared for higher organizational development and speciation. We do not see a constant wind-down because all these systems are OPEN, not closed.
Using these rebuts and replies, in standard debate formats, I have never seen a religious believing, anti-evolutionist get the better of his evolutionist counterpart. The only remaining place the converse is true is in the anti-evolutionist's own brain. Or maybe his own blog in which he can control all inputs, comments etc. Anders, are you paying attention?
[1] Holland, H.D.: Evidence for Life on Earth More Than 3850 Million Years Ago, in Science, Vol. 275, 3 January, 1997, p. 38.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
NO! - To Bible Quotes on Rifle Sights
It seems that with the onset of the post-9-11 era, and Muslims in American Christians' sights – a near Crusade mentality has taken hold. A lot of this can be traced to reckless policies and wanton war mongering, as well as defense department infiltrations by extremist Christians - that occurred in the Dubya administration.
Five years ago even, atheists and free thinkers at the Air Force Academy – talking about the first year "hoolies"- were almost totally isolated and forced to regularly run a gauntlet called “the Heathen’s Run”. In that gauntlet the atheist cadets were forced to race between two lines of twenty bible-toting zealots who banged the hapless victims into submission with their “good Books”. By the end of it many had been clobbered on the head, and suffered black eyes and bruises. In addition, to add insult to injury, the Christian Fundie cadets were allowed to go off campus to attend events next door at Focus on the Family, while atheists were denied similar freedoms.
This nonsense stopped once former cadet Mickey Weinstein filed suit against the AFA, as his (Jewish) son also had to endure this abuse meted out by the goodly “loving Christians”. A prolonged court battle ensued and the AFA promised to change its ways, and leaders. At least now, AFA members can not only go off campus to free thought meetings, but also have special guests (such as Christopher Hitchens) give guest appearances.
Most recently, the latest outrage that has come to light is that a defense contractor, Trijicon of Wixom, Michigan- has been manufacturing rifle sights with Bible quotatons inscripted on them! Has no one ever taught these ignorant yahoos about the separation of Church and state? Seems not.
ABC News first broke the news that Trijicon, a weapons manufacturer with a $660 million contract for 800,000 sights for the Marine Corps, inscribes all of its sights with codes, such as “JN8:12,” that refer to scriptures in the books of Revelation, Matthew and John.
In the above example, JN8:12 refers to John 8:12:
“Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying ‘I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life”.
This offal was actually imprinted on the Advanced Combat Optical gunsight- which is standard issue to most U.S. operations forces.
Meanwhile, the Trijicon Reflex sight was imprinted with “2COR4:6”
A reference to the second part of a letter by Paul to the Corinthians:
“For God who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”
Even more inflammatory than the manufacturer’s transgressions is that the Defense dept. actually features photos on its web site showing Iraqi forces training with the inscribed sights.
Make no mistake that this is an abomination. Not only should those DoD photos come down forthwith, but all the rifles bearing the inscriptions need to have them burnt off in place. Thousands of directed, mini-blow torches could do the job and it shouldn’t take overly long. One thing for sure, we can’t have any rifles bearing these inscriptions anywhere in the field. Once they fall into the wrong hand they will certainly be used as recruitment fodder to gather millions into a new “Crusade” – since the inscriptions would clearly show a crusade of Christian U.S. vs. Islamic world is what it’s all about. As Dumbya once asserted”
“Y’er either with us or agin’ us”
Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation who also took on the AFA's abuses against non-Christians- correctly opined that any of these sights would give the Taliban or other enemy forces a perfect propaganda tool. That “American Christian troops are invading Muslm countries”
Meanwhile, even the most conservative newspaper in Colorado – The Colorado Springs Gazette – has come out against the inscriptions in its latest editorial. As they put it:
“To protect the integrity of any religion, the First Amendment precludes government from establishing one as more important than others.. That’s why United States Marines should not be issued rifle scopes inscribed with Bible verses…. . American warriors with high powered rifles are government force in its purest form. They should be defending religious freedom, not the scriptures of one religion…”
I couldn’t agree more, and do hope this national travesty and outrage is soon corrected, as it slurs and slanders (even indirectly) all non-Christians who trust their government is not conducting a hidden crusade and imperiling our long term security.
Five years ago even, atheists and free thinkers at the Air Force Academy – talking about the first year "hoolies"- were almost totally isolated and forced to regularly run a gauntlet called “the Heathen’s Run”. In that gauntlet the atheist cadets were forced to race between two lines of twenty bible-toting zealots who banged the hapless victims into submission with their “good Books”. By the end of it many had been clobbered on the head, and suffered black eyes and bruises. In addition, to add insult to injury, the Christian Fundie cadets were allowed to go off campus to attend events next door at Focus on the Family, while atheists were denied similar freedoms.
This nonsense stopped once former cadet Mickey Weinstein filed suit against the AFA, as his (Jewish) son also had to endure this abuse meted out by the goodly “loving Christians”. A prolonged court battle ensued and the AFA promised to change its ways, and leaders. At least now, AFA members can not only go off campus to free thought meetings, but also have special guests (such as Christopher Hitchens) give guest appearances.
Most recently, the latest outrage that has come to light is that a defense contractor, Trijicon of Wixom, Michigan- has been manufacturing rifle sights with Bible quotatons inscripted on them! Has no one ever taught these ignorant yahoos about the separation of Church and state? Seems not.
ABC News first broke the news that Trijicon, a weapons manufacturer with a $660 million contract for 800,000 sights for the Marine Corps, inscribes all of its sights with codes, such as “JN8:12,” that refer to scriptures in the books of Revelation, Matthew and John.
In the above example, JN8:12 refers to John 8:12:
“Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying ‘I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life”.
This offal was actually imprinted on the Advanced Combat Optical gunsight- which is standard issue to most U.S. operations forces.
Meanwhile, the Trijicon Reflex sight was imprinted with “2COR4:6”
A reference to the second part of a letter by Paul to the Corinthians:
“For God who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”
Even more inflammatory than the manufacturer’s transgressions is that the Defense dept. actually features photos on its web site showing Iraqi forces training with the inscribed sights.
Make no mistake that this is an abomination. Not only should those DoD photos come down forthwith, but all the rifles bearing the inscriptions need to have them burnt off in place. Thousands of directed, mini-blow torches could do the job and it shouldn’t take overly long. One thing for sure, we can’t have any rifles bearing these inscriptions anywhere in the field. Once they fall into the wrong hand they will certainly be used as recruitment fodder to gather millions into a new “Crusade” – since the inscriptions would clearly show a crusade of Christian U.S. vs. Islamic world is what it’s all about. As Dumbya once asserted”
“Y’er either with us or agin’ us”
Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation who also took on the AFA's abuses against non-Christians- correctly opined that any of these sights would give the Taliban or other enemy forces a perfect propaganda tool. That “American Christian troops are invading Muslm countries”
Meanwhile, even the most conservative newspaper in Colorado – The Colorado Springs Gazette – has come out against the inscriptions in its latest editorial. As they put it:
“To protect the integrity of any religion, the First Amendment precludes government from establishing one as more important than others.. That’s why United States Marines should not be issued rifle scopes inscribed with Bible verses…. . American warriors with high powered rifles are government force in its purest form. They should be defending religious freedom, not the scriptures of one religion…”
I couldn’t agree more, and do hope this national travesty and outrage is soon corrected, as it slurs and slanders (even indirectly) all non-Christians who trust their government is not conducting a hidden crusade and imperiling our long term security.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Time to Jettison the G-word!
In the previous two -part article headed, Truth, Existence claims and God Talk, I showed the utter meaninglessness and futility of using the word 'G-O-D' in any language context. It is simply another linguistic nonsense symbol, like flying spaghetti monster, 'tooth fairy' or 'Silmarillion'. I was reminded of the senselessness of the G-word again (underscored by its very ubiquity - in that any simpleton, zealot or madman can invoke it) on reading a story in today's paper that Mehmet Ali Agca had been released from prison. For those who don't recall or know, he was the one that fired shots at Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 and left the pontiff in critical condition. Now, on his release, Agca has exhibited no remorse, merely asserting: "I am the messenger of GOD!"
Now, in a rightful society or rational world, such a joker - even if not re-imprisoned for uttering such a remark, should at least be forced to enter an insane asylum. NO ONE gets messages from God, any more than from "the Supreme Pink Unicorn"! Anyone who says so is a rank fool or insane. The prescription ought to be confinement to a rubber room, preferably also bound into a straight jacket - with electric shock delivered on the hour, interspersed with lithium administrations.
I would prescribe this for anyone calling down a nonsense word in the interest of either justifying a killing (like those who murder abortion providers), or torturing (like the 77-year old Colorado granny who held her 11 year old grandson in a tub of boiling water because "God ordered me to do it" to "cleanse his body of Satan") or just plain old blabbering the G-word to threaten atheists, or agnostics with another nonsense H-word.
Meanwhile, the whole frickin' planet - or at least every lunatic in it - appears to be coked up on the G-word! The most recent abomination has seen the spectacle of Muslims in Indonesia and now Nigeria burning down Christian churches merely because the Christians wish to be able to use the word 'Allah' for GOD. At that allowance, the Muslims freaked. But if both words are presumed to refer to the same ULTIMATE entity what's the big deal? Here we enter into the "rose by any other name" line of thought.
From Pat Robertson sitting in his Virginia redoubt and proclaiming "the Haitians deserve their fate", to the incineration of churches because one group merely wishes to generalize ultimate Being by reducing name chauvinism, to old ladies torturing their grandchildren because "God told them to" - the use of the G-word means imbeciles, insane madmen, and rank zealots leave nothing to choose or discriminate when they use the term. Nor if they invoke the bible, since therein (especially in the Old Testament) is a portrayal of the grossest sociopath that ever was - as he extirpates this human group or that merely because they evince some small mode of independence)
Startling? Unusual? Hardly! But deluded religious believers would like the general population to believe all the foregoing are extreme or abnormal and not a scathing indictment of divinity -oriented religions. The fact is there’s no such thing as normal religious expression, since all demand the sacrifice of reason to an unverifiable absolute or god. In this sense, each of the above cited incidents are logical extrapolations from the same intolerant and closed mindsets.
The evidence of religious insanity is now so abundant that only the most terminally purblind or ignorant disputes the preceding point. And yet many do. Despite all the religiously-induced carnage noted, people still pray to their respective "gods", get ‘sacraments’, surrender their minds en masse to doctrinal ‘authorities’ and denounce those who refuse to grovel on bended knee to a god. This means that no matter how many incidents of religious insanity erupt, they don’t undermine religious belief. Nor do apocalyptic disasters which - if a genuine and benevolent Being exists - would't befall the same people again and again. Case One: the Haitians. But give the Haitians this, no matter how many calamities strike them - from multiple hurricanes to earthquakes - they still believe a beneficent deity is watching over them. Their faith is so pathological, it's imperturbable.
But why does this nonsense and attachment to a nonsense word -as if something really exists behind it - persist?
Anthropologist Richard Dawkins, in his book, The Selfish Gene[1] makes the eminently reasonable point that religions probably proliferate through a cultural counterpart to the gene which he calls the meme. Just as genes are units of transmission of biological heredity, memes are units of transmission of cultural customs, rituals and beliefs - including religion. Genes occur within a changing gene pool, while memes occur within an evolving meme pool. The survival of memes in the meme pool is directly related to their mass appeal to human brains. The more appealing, i.e. in respect of what they have to offer, the more likely they’ll be accessed by many brains and survive through generations .
Dawkins believes that the god meme affords high survival value to humans because of the benefits provided in confronting an unfeeling universe. Unable to tolerate a hostile universe replete with randomness (like earthquakes or tsunamis) and absence of purpose, human brains project their desires (and primate-driven instinct for hierarchies) onto nature and come up with gods, which - according to Dawkins – are embraced “as a cushion against their own inadequacies".
Dawkins maintains, and I concur, that this is why god ideas are readily transmitted through successive generations of humans. Most humans feel themselves alone as orphans of the cosmos and require a Cosmic Daddy to hold their hands. He says (Op. cit. , p. 206).
"God exists if only in the form of a meme, with a high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture"
I believe this statement holds the key to eradicating religious beliefs (read ‘god memes’) as well as the G-word in all its varied and spurious incantations, and is incredibly perceptive in light of some recent research[2] . Consider this: at the present moment in human history religion no longer holds center stage but atheists remain stigmatized in varying degrees. Why? Because the ideas we seek to circulate: no afterlife, no god, no salvation and so on, go against many engrained ‘comfort providing’ memes to which most brains have become habituated and dependent on. Like a crack addict, when you remove the crack pipe - the religious addict freaks and attacks the benefactor. Or threatens him with "hellfire" for daring to pull his security blanket away and tell him he no longer needs it. That he's a grown up now, so time to lose the Cosmic Santa pacifier and sippy cup.
The bottom line here, is that it is the rationalist, the Materialist, and the atheist who are on the right track in making the world a more tolerable abode for all. In this light, French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion (‘God Without Being’, 1991) was quite correct in challenging people to think of G-O-D in a non-conceptual way. That is, only with a strike through when the word is written, to indicate no one has the capacity to describe, grasp, conceptualize or manipulate the underlying entity. Or say it without uttering meaningless drivel.
If then the entity is de-conceptualized it can’t be debated. Which would be a great accomplishment, as it would leave millions with much more time to actually do productive work.
As for Christians who insist their G-word "makes them holier" or allows them to "see the light". I say, fine, then prove it to me by leaving all your worldly possessions behind - like your "Son of God" commanded, and live with the poor and homeless for a year to show me you can translate these high powered beliefs into action. Don't just waste your time writing about them, casting aspersions on others, or making (afterworld) threats against them. You will get not one scitilla of respect from me by doing that. Talk is cheap. I need to see if you actually live in the real world, or if perhaps you live only in your own....you need some ECT administered.
As for atheism, it truly appears to be "a disease of the learned" as James Allen Cheyne has put forth in his fascinating article 'Atheism Rising' (Skeptic, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2009). The appellation here has apparently been used since the dawn of the Enlightenment- since atheism was observed to be prevalent mainly among only the most intelligent and educated classes. By the time of the classic 20th century studies of James Leuba, who found scientists are the most irreligious, it was realized this isn't just malarkey. Brainpower certainly does appear to go hand in hand with disbelief. (Especially as Leuba noted only 7% of National Academy ofd Science members were believers).
Of course this doesn't help us now with the lesser educated - so prone to G-word overuse they're almost drunk with it. Anyone have any ideas for mass brain transplants? Or better, as Arthur Koestler once proposed, configuring believers' brains to function in tandem with mini-computers and electrodes implanted into them!
[1] See Dawkins, R: 1978, The Selfish Gene, Paladin Books, London, Gr. Britain.
[2] See the fine monograph Consciousness Explained, by Danile Dennett (Litte & Brown, 1991), which gives an excellent Materialist interpretation of brain functions, including that which generates the "faith meme".
Now, in a rightful society or rational world, such a joker - even if not re-imprisoned for uttering such a remark, should at least be forced to enter an insane asylum. NO ONE gets messages from God, any more than from "the Supreme Pink Unicorn"! Anyone who says so is a rank fool or insane. The prescription ought to be confinement to a rubber room, preferably also bound into a straight jacket - with electric shock delivered on the hour, interspersed with lithium administrations.
I would prescribe this for anyone calling down a nonsense word in the interest of either justifying a killing (like those who murder abortion providers), or torturing (like the 77-year old Colorado granny who held her 11 year old grandson in a tub of boiling water because "God ordered me to do it" to "cleanse his body of Satan") or just plain old blabbering the G-word to threaten atheists, or agnostics with another nonsense H-word.
Meanwhile, the whole frickin' planet - or at least every lunatic in it - appears to be coked up on the G-word! The most recent abomination has seen the spectacle of Muslims in Indonesia and now Nigeria burning down Christian churches merely because the Christians wish to be able to use the word 'Allah' for GOD. At that allowance, the Muslims freaked. But if both words are presumed to refer to the same ULTIMATE entity what's the big deal? Here we enter into the "rose by any other name" line of thought.
From Pat Robertson sitting in his Virginia redoubt and proclaiming "the Haitians deserve their fate", to the incineration of churches because one group merely wishes to generalize ultimate Being by reducing name chauvinism, to old ladies torturing their grandchildren because "God told them to" - the use of the G-word means imbeciles, insane madmen, and rank zealots leave nothing to choose or discriminate when they use the term. Nor if they invoke the bible, since therein (especially in the Old Testament) is a portrayal of the grossest sociopath that ever was - as he extirpates this human group or that merely because they evince some small mode of independence)
Startling? Unusual? Hardly! But deluded religious believers would like the general population to believe all the foregoing are extreme or abnormal and not a scathing indictment of divinity -oriented religions. The fact is there’s no such thing as normal religious expression, since all demand the sacrifice of reason to an unverifiable absolute or god. In this sense, each of the above cited incidents are logical extrapolations from the same intolerant and closed mindsets.
The evidence of religious insanity is now so abundant that only the most terminally purblind or ignorant disputes the preceding point. And yet many do. Despite all the religiously-induced carnage noted, people still pray to their respective "gods", get ‘sacraments’, surrender their minds en masse to doctrinal ‘authorities’ and denounce those who refuse to grovel on bended knee to a god. This means that no matter how many incidents of religious insanity erupt, they don’t undermine religious belief. Nor do apocalyptic disasters which - if a genuine and benevolent Being exists - would't befall the same people again and again. Case One: the Haitians. But give the Haitians this, no matter how many calamities strike them - from multiple hurricanes to earthquakes - they still believe a beneficent deity is watching over them. Their faith is so pathological, it's imperturbable.
But why does this nonsense and attachment to a nonsense word -as if something really exists behind it - persist?
Anthropologist Richard Dawkins, in his book, The Selfish Gene[1] makes the eminently reasonable point that religions probably proliferate through a cultural counterpart to the gene which he calls the meme. Just as genes are units of transmission of biological heredity, memes are units of transmission of cultural customs, rituals and beliefs - including religion. Genes occur within a changing gene pool, while memes occur within an evolving meme pool. The survival of memes in the meme pool is directly related to their mass appeal to human brains. The more appealing, i.e. in respect of what they have to offer, the more likely they’ll be accessed by many brains and survive through generations .
Dawkins believes that the god meme affords high survival value to humans because of the benefits provided in confronting an unfeeling universe. Unable to tolerate a hostile universe replete with randomness (like earthquakes or tsunamis) and absence of purpose, human brains project their desires (and primate-driven instinct for hierarchies) onto nature and come up with gods, which - according to Dawkins – are embraced “as a cushion against their own inadequacies".
Dawkins maintains, and I concur, that this is why god ideas are readily transmitted through successive generations of humans. Most humans feel themselves alone as orphans of the cosmos and require a Cosmic Daddy to hold their hands. He says (Op. cit. , p. 206).
"God exists if only in the form of a meme, with a high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture"
I believe this statement holds the key to eradicating religious beliefs (read ‘god memes’) as well as the G-word in all its varied and spurious incantations, and is incredibly perceptive in light of some recent research[2] . Consider this: at the present moment in human history religion no longer holds center stage but atheists remain stigmatized in varying degrees. Why? Because the ideas we seek to circulate: no afterlife, no god, no salvation and so on, go against many engrained ‘comfort providing’ memes to which most brains have become habituated and dependent on. Like a crack addict, when you remove the crack pipe - the religious addict freaks and attacks the benefactor. Or threatens him with "hellfire" for daring to pull his security blanket away and tell him he no longer needs it. That he's a grown up now, so time to lose the Cosmic Santa pacifier and sippy cup.
The bottom line here, is that it is the rationalist, the Materialist, and the atheist who are on the right track in making the world a more tolerable abode for all. In this light, French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion (‘God Without Being’, 1991) was quite correct in challenging people to think of G-O-D in a non-conceptual way. That is, only with a strike through when the word is written, to indicate no one has the capacity to describe, grasp, conceptualize or manipulate the underlying entity. Or say it without uttering meaningless drivel.
If then the entity is de-conceptualized it can’t be debated. Which would be a great accomplishment, as it would leave millions with much more time to actually do productive work.
As for Christians who insist their G-word "makes them holier" or allows them to "see the light". I say, fine, then prove it to me by leaving all your worldly possessions behind - like your "Son of God" commanded, and live with the poor and homeless for a year to show me you can translate these high powered beliefs into action. Don't just waste your time writing about them, casting aspersions on others, or making (afterworld) threats against them. You will get not one scitilla of respect from me by doing that. Talk is cheap. I need to see if you actually live in the real world, or if perhaps you live only in your own....you need some ECT administered.
As for atheism, it truly appears to be "a disease of the learned" as James Allen Cheyne has put forth in his fascinating article 'Atheism Rising' (Skeptic, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2009). The appellation here has apparently been used since the dawn of the Enlightenment- since atheism was observed to be prevalent mainly among only the most intelligent and educated classes. By the time of the classic 20th century studies of James Leuba, who found scientists are the most irreligious, it was realized this isn't just malarkey. Brainpower certainly does appear to go hand in hand with disbelief. (Especially as Leuba noted only 7% of National Academy ofd Science members were believers).
Of course this doesn't help us now with the lesser educated - so prone to G-word overuse they're almost drunk with it. Anyone have any ideas for mass brain transplants? Or better, as Arthur Koestler once proposed, configuring believers' brains to function in tandem with mini-computers and electrodes implanted into them!
[1] See Dawkins, R: 1978, The Selfish Gene, Paladin Books, London, Gr. Britain.
[2] See the fine monograph Consciousness Explained, by Danile Dennett (Litte & Brown, 1991), which gives an excellent Materialist interpretation of brain functions, including that which generates the "faith meme".
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