54 Comments

1. PA Cat:

St. Anselm of Canterbury is surely smiling.

May 14, 2009 - 10:29 pm 2. Allison:

—But all of them went off cliffs or got eaten by lions. At least until we developed sidewalks and put the lions in zoos

But we’ve developed an awful lot of guardrails on that road of reality. What if we really have stopped evolving in concert with reality?

What if nowadays, we’ve had enough generations that we’ve bred people who could survive while believing there is no such thing as evil? What if we’ve watered down the truth of the anthropic principle?

Except now evil isn’t in the form of an individual who can kill you, but one you can kill millions.

Maybe the real reason that cradle-to-grave welfare states can’t survive is because they run afoul of the rest of the planet long enough that their members get wiped out by reality–and not even a black swan. just a white one that got through the defenses.

May 14, 2009 - 10:38 pm 3. Leo Linbeck III:

I think W’s argument is very similar to Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism

Although it way oversimplifies the argument, if evolution is true, then God must exist. But there is no God in naturalism.

In other words, evolution implies: I think, therefore God exists.

I think.

L3

May 14, 2009 - 11:08 pm 4. Alexis:

Perhaps G-d created humanity to give Him somebody to laugh at. So, if life is a joke, perhaps G-d is the divine joker with a strange sense of humor.

Besides, if one believes that G-d plays dice with the universe, then finding randomness in the universe would then become a proof of His existence…

Why can’t the sacred be humorous?

May 14, 2009 - 11:26 pm 5. Asher Abrams:

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick

http://www.philipkdickfans.com/pkdweb/How%20To%20build%20A%20Universe.htm

May 14, 2009 - 11:30 pm 6. whiskey:

It does not take God to know evil. To see it, smell it, realize it. It doesn’t take the devil, either, to know evil exists.

To know either truth or beauty, evil or vileness, requires only the willingness to see, instead of closing one’s eyes. To smell, instead of closing one’s nose. To hear, instead of closing one’s ears. To think, instead of closing one’s mind.

I don’t know if God or the Devil exists, Heaven or Hell. No one has EVER come back from the dead to tell me one way or the other. And I don’t expect they will either.

I do know both good and evil exist. I’ve seen enough of both, directly and indirectly, to know without any hesitation and utter certainty THEY certainly exist. In fact, ANYONE who cares to look, listen, smell, hear, and think can see both every day. Wherever he or she is.

May 15, 2009 - 12:32 am 7. Bob Murphy:

We have survived on the planet because reality eliminated mental structures that were inconsistent with the way things really were.”
Natural Selection, and unfortunately we have been so successful as a civilisation that it doesn’t occur often enough any more. A person can walk around in a self indulgent fog for his whole life and if he doesn’t get hit by a bus he will probably live for 3 score and ten.
But in another way, Wretchard, it didn’t take mental structures aka intellectual projections or elaborate symbol systems like words to survive on the planet.
To see things like they really are without letting luxuries like words and extraneous thoughts slow down your reflexes can enhance survivability.
Instinct, intuition, good hearing, good vision, strength, good reflexes raise the odds for survival on the planet. And the use of simple spears and stones.
I’d reckon only the existence of rival human groups made it utterly necessary to think on a higher level to gain a competitive edge or just to ward off aggressors and be able to hold one’s ground.

May 15, 2009 - 3:59 am 8. ADE:

W
When you referred to the old underground days, I thought you were referring to the original days of the Belmont Club, when your esteemed writings were half religious sermon. Then you disclose that you were talking about your real underground days.

Anyway, you still mess with my mind, thankfully.

So to this: If we as a species have developed notions of math and reason and God and the Devil we ought to treat these ideas with respect because somehow and in some way, these notions have endowed us with a survival advantage.

Can’t argue with this. So DimiJihad has the advantage. His God tells him to kill me. My God tells me to doubt. Modern God is???, well, just text this number 1800 123 456 with ‘For God’/'For Satan’, and God’s existence/non existence will be announced, with the winner getting a fabulous holiday.

There is no God, there is just survival, and God is just a tool in this (aka Weak Antropic Principle).

My money’s on AhmOnAJihad, but my heart is with you.

ADE

May 15, 2009 - 6:08 am 9. ADE:

L3,
I think, therefore God exists.

A big leap, and improveable. But an even bigger leap, but proveable, is that your genes have been passed on from the time the first cell divided.

If one fails to pass on (50%) of this, then a process that was started back in the primevial slime has come to an end. There are people who want to prevent this transmission. Maybe a loving God was invented (bred?) to stop the ‘Genghis effect’, to stop the uniformity?. I tried to get a link to this in Wiki, but couldn’t. It refers to the fact that rape and male extermination was a tool of Genghis Khan’s invasion of middle east, and they all (OK x%)carry Genghis gene out there) There’s stuff on Google

ADE

May 15, 2009 - 6:29 am 10. Jrod:

“Thus, the angel and the devil faced each other and, mouths wide open, emitted nearly the same sounds, but each one’s noise expressed the absolute opposite of the other’s. And seeing the angel laugh, the devil laughed all the more, all the harder, and all the more blatantly, because the laughing angel was infinitely comical.”

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting–Milan Kundera

May 15, 2009 - 6:43 am 11. E. Nigma:

I think I read once that Dante said (paraphrasing) that God was a comedian playing to an audience that was too terrified to laugh. Hmmm.

The fact that we exist is not an argument for the existence of God.
The fact that there are relativistic arguments for the existence of “good” and “evil”, depending on the local definition, does not prove that God exists.

However, that there can be objective good and objective evil, the consequences of which echo down the centuries, and that many (not all) of us can actually, sometimes, tell the difference, may be a subtle clue to a higher metaphysical power that orders the Universe, in a benign and loving way.
Doubt will always be with us, but faith will light the way in the darkness.

I find it interesting that Mr. Fernandez sometimes pairs two posts together that are both topical, and philosphical.

This is the philosphical post. The next one regarding nuclear proliferation is a topical post here in the present.
But the topical post is based on the “concretes” of the metaphysical reality that we strive to understand, or comprehend. Why is nuclear proliferation “bad”? What makes it “bad”?
It is the implied notion that bad men will have powerful weapons to do terrible things. Does this imply evil exists in the world? El Baradei thinks so, but he is not an apostle for faith, is he?

May 15, 2009 - 7:00 am 12. F:

“I think no one who is incapable of recognizing evil can long survive.”

I wonder when Nancy Pelosi will keel over? F

May 15, 2009 - 7:21 am 13. Annoy Mouse:

I think our leftward friends would argue that the evolution of truth is a social one. From the days of the shaman and through the Enlightenment man has been drawn to religion as an organizing principle. They’d argue that man would sacrifice the virgin, burn witches or wage crusade and that should discredit the notion of god because in the end the interpretation of his word should not lead to such posturing to power nor lead to warfare. The Left would argue that it is the manmade concept of a supreme being that leads to conflict and that man, drawing together under the aegis of an enlightened system of government should not fail. But I would opine that it is the struggle for power itself that leads to strife and a government that holds the vestments of god, that of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to itself that will itself fail. Government is the supposed structure of certainty and man is bequeathed by god the uncertainty of his own destiny. When government plays god it is known as a tyranny and it shall not withstand the tests of time.

May 15, 2009 - 7:24 am 14. sf:

“I don’t know if God or the Devil exists, Heaven or Hell. No one has EVER come back from the dead to tell me one way or the other. And I don’t expect they will either.” –Whiskey

Actually a *vast* number of people have been declared clinically dead but later revived–often without medical intervention. A huge majority of these folks report essentially the same experience: seeing a being that most identify as Jesus, and an overwhelming being identified as God.

Literally tens of thousands of people who’ve had this experience have written short accounts of it, and the congruence between the stories is pretty amazing.

Another interesting aspect is that non-Christians are just as likely to identify the beings as God and Jesus as Christians.

It’s a fascinating body of work.

May 15, 2009 - 7:31 am 15. Charles:

Here’s a pretty good prayer song

May 15, 2009 - 8:24 am 16. JMH:

I think no one who is incapable of recognizing evil can long survive.

Well, sometimes evil kills it’s prey and sometimes it enslaves it.

As far as evolving brains go, I think evidence is starting to mount that we are still evolving and have made some significant mental strides in just the last 10,000 years or so. Of course, our leftist friends like to think that us conservatives are un-evolved troglodytes unfit for the modern world.

But what if the reverse was actually true?

What if the ability to internalize the mental model of a free market, voluntary transactions, private property, investment, and individual autonomy within a functional society, what if that was an evolutionary change that hasn’t completely filtered through the human race?

Consider how baffling leftists sometimes are in their inability to grasp simple concepts like higher taxes equals slower growth or that kudzu-like growth of regulations strangles economic output. Or that soaking the rich hurts the poor even more. These are things I understand without needing a whole lot of theory – they just “click” in my head. That anyone with a human brain could not understand these things is difficult for me to understand. Perhaps their brains aren’t quite the same.

Consider your average primitive hunter gather. If he’s hungry and there’s a bush with berries on it, he grabs the berries and eats them. If there’s no bush, he walks until he either finds a bush or starves. He might go to great lengths to find a bush, or to harvest the berries from one, but it never occurs to him to plant bushes, to invest in future berry production. He also doesn’t recognize the idea that this berry bush is mine, that berry bush is yours. Resources are communal property, available to whomever needs or wants them the most. If there’s a big scary looking guy with a club standing next to the bush, our tribesman will either try to be more scary with a bigger club and drive him away, or else wait until the guard’s not looking and steal the berries. All’s fair. Plus, there’s no real worry about stripping the bush of berries – just look for another one over the next hill.

To this guy, planting bushes is wacky. Why bother, the world has lots of berry bushes, you just have to go looking for them. Farmers have a completely different mindset, they have a responsibility to ensure production. Hunter gatherers don’t worry about production at all – they’re all about locating and consuming what other forces (nature, the tribe in the next valley, whatever) already produced.

Isn’t that about how the typical leftist approaches economic activity? Take what’s wanted, don’t worry about how it got there, the world provides if you just look hard enough? Production problems are a mystery to a leftist, and not worth worrying about anyway because their experience is that stuff just shows up. Not sure how it got here, but here it is so let’s enjoy.

Not sure that this has much to do with Wretchard’s point about evil really existing, though perhaps there’s this: Evil is destructive and inherently parasitical. It can’t create – produce – on its own. If good is the opposite of evil, and my crack-pot theory of evolved libertarianism is correct, perhaps there are those among us genetically incapable of good (ot at least genetically incapable of recognizing evil because it just looks like another tribesman to them).

May 15, 2009 - 9:04 am 17. F:

“What if the ability to internalize the mental model of a free market, voluntary transactions, private property, investment, and individual autonomy within a functional society, what if that was an evolutionary change that hasn’t completely filtered through the human race?”

JMH: I don’t think there’s any “what if” to this — I think you’re right on. The inability of leftists to recognize that socialism is a disproved social theory is a case in point. You said it yourself quite properly:

“Isn’t that about how the typical leftist approaches economic activity? Take what’s wanted, don’t worry about how it got there, the world provides if you just look hard enough? Production problems are a mystery to a leftist, and not worth worrying about anyway because their experience is that stuff just shows up. Not sure how it got here, but here it is so let’s enjoy.”

F

May 15, 2009 - 9:18 am 18. RWE:

In his book “Kicking the Sacred Cow” James P. Hogan presents a pretty convincing proof that God exists. He does this by proving mathematically that classic evolution cannot work. When you figure out all the processes in even a single cell of life, calculate the probability of random accumulations of chemicals that would have to occur for the basic elements-lightning-amino acids-single celled organisms process to occur, and then do the same thing for single-celled to multi-celled to Nancy Pelosi life, then you find that there is no way there have been enough years to do all that. No where close to long enough, and we are talking Nancy Pelosi here, not Albert Einstein.

The other day I heard it reported that the Pope was urging those in the Middle East to cast aside “hatred and prejudice.” But prejudice is learned behavior. As one writer once put it, if you were walking in Africa and saw a lion running toward you, the approaching beast might just be Elsa, the lion from the movie Born Free. But maybe not, probably not, and you would be foolish to rely on it being Elsa. You are prejudiced against lions, and for good reason, even though there are a few examples like Elsa that offer no danger. Getting rid of prejudice is not necessarily a good thing.

May 15, 2009 - 9:27 am 19. maineman:

Most anyone who is open to it eventually comes to the experiential proof that God exists, with the same level of certainty and indefinable nature as “knowing” that the Emperor Concerto or Miss California are beautiful. It can’t be explained or conveyed, except in reductionistic terms that lose the essence, but it is known with certainty nonetheless.

Beauty is really a window to the divine. Darwinism is, on the other hand, a “quaint 19th century theory” (David Warren) that is on its last legs but has taken its far-from-quaint toll in the form of Nazism, abortion, and other eugenics schemes.

As Bob over at One Cosmos has often noted, a theory (i.e. natural selection) that purports to convey truth but cannot account for the existence of a being that can know truth is self-refuting rubbish.

Wallace, Darwin’s associate, backed out of the whole deal when he realized that man was obviously endowed before the fact with the capacities that eventually emerged. He recognized that a member of a primitive tribe would become, say, a contemporary Parisian if transplanted at birth.

What Roger Simon has tapped into, apparently without being consciously aware, is that the 13 year-old Jewishness that remains in him enabled him to react viscerally to evil in the same way Paul of Tarsus was struck and altered by the good news of Christianity. Without the downloaded revelation of his inherited cosmology, Simon may never have known, as he did, that he was in the presence of pure evil.

Spengler, writing under his real name over at First Things, has an interesting recent piece on the inability of a culture that has lost its purchase in metaphysical reality to recognize radical evil when it sees it. He notes that the Judeo-Christian West had no such problems in WWII or the war against Communism in the past. The clarity of its mission on behalf of the good and against evil was predicated on the awareness of the absolute, and that was provided by the religious tenets of the culture.

Now, we are immersed in the morass of post-modern, deconstructionist relativism. The left, in particular, is so unclear on the nature of evil that it/they are constantly misreading what is evil and what is good. (See Linda Kimball’s 2/23/08 article, “The Materialist Faith of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism” for a nice treatment of how this has happened and is perpetuated.)

Simon’s piece and this BC discussion suggest that clarity is beginning to reemerge for many of us. In the nick of time if we’re lucky.

May 15, 2009 - 10:02 am 20. WillDoMathforFood:

The Devil is in the details, but God is in the Structure.

May 15, 2009 - 10:09 am 21. twobyfour:

sf/14

Yes. The association of the being with Jesus is, though, somewhat due to a cultural projection. The core aspects are present, though, so it is somewhat easy for the departee to make that overlay. Most people from other backgrounds use the “god” term.

However, I personally understood it differently. I am not sure why I did not bring any overlays, perhaps because I was quite young and unbound by cultural patterns and curious, inquisitive. There was really no implied hierarchy. As if I were an integral part of the being that I encountered. The limitations on my side were purely limitations imposed by myself. I almost immediately understood that.

The part that I call “review” is fascinating. Imagine that you go through your life, in crystal clarity, no fuzzy memories, but added to that you also see yourself in perceptions of others, and experience their emotional states as related to you. It is intense beyond your imagination. This all played almost at once, the time works differently in that realm, it can contract and expand as needed, unrelated to out perception or concept of time, the parameter is focus. You are your own judge, no one is doing it for you and there is probably no harsher judge than yourself–you have all the tools to do the job to your disposal and there is nowhere to hide from yourself. The being helps you to grasp non-linear causal relationships, as if to prevent you from going overboard.

There is much more to it, but maybe some other time… work to do…

May 15, 2009 - 10:14 am 22. twobyfour:

RWE/18

The lion senses your emotional state (predominantly fear) and acts upon it. If you were able to quiet your mind, utterly, the lion would come close, but because he can’t make sense of you, seeing just an object (like a stone or a tree, smell of a human notwithstanding), he would soon leave.

You could also project a large animal, elephant maybe or even a dragon. Your mind has to be focused on creating every fold or scale. The lion would not even come to explore the “object” because he would perceive what you project. You could do this also with humans, but you don’t need to be that thorough, for some reason we are more susceptible to receive these projections, perhaps as concepts and we fill in the blanks.

Later…

May 15, 2009 - 10:33 am 23. twobyfour:

perhaps as concepts and we fill in the blanks

All on subconscious level, that is.

May 15, 2009 - 11:19 am 24. Marie Claude:

He recognized that a member of a primitive tribe would become, say, a contemporary Parisian if transplanted at birth.

neenderthalians excepted, and that makes us go up to – 30 000, era were the Cromagnons our natural ancestors appeared ; neenderthalians and cromagnons have parallelly co-inhabited for quite a while before disappearing. Their modus vivendi were different, their body morphology, their arms and preys too. Some have interbred but it seems that their offspring had no reproduction ability, like with a horse and a donkey union, its result, the mule is unfertile !

evolution in this occurence can’t be measured in such a small scale comparatively to the millions of years life earth has

Beauty is really a window to the divine.
ie Plato on the symetries

Darwinism is, on the other hand, a “quaint 19th century theory” (David Warren) that is on its last legs but has taken its far-from-quaint toll in the form of Nazism, abortion, and other eugenics schemes

also though :

“On The Evolution Of Ashkenazi Jewish Intelligence”

This paper elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography and sociology of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe selected for intelligence. Ashkenazi literacy, economic specialization, and closure to inward gene flow led to a social environment in which there was high fitness payoff to intelligence, specifically verbal and mathematical intelligence but not spatial ability

The researchers have demonstrated that it’s quite possible for nurture to change nature. Culture can drive heredity. Economics and social customs alter gene frequencies

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002812.html

so the quarrels on darwinism are very dated, post WW2, and rely more on opinion than of science and or history

May 15, 2009 - 11:53 am 25. maineman:

MC, the question is not whether there are qualitative differences and changes in organisms over time but whether they could have been accomplished via natural selection or require some other explanation(s). The point about the primitive Parisian is that there would be no selection bias at work in the wilds to produce the attributes needed to adapt to the more advanced cultural setting.

The Ashkenazim theory was examined by Charles Murray in a recent article on Jewish genius and found inadequate. He reluctantly concluded that it looked like the Jews may just be special (i.e. chosen).

Even were the Ashkenazim to have been the product of environmental influences, such examples demonstrate how external factors lead to the expression of different characteristics that are already genetically present, and they almost always regress to the mean eventually.

Natural selection is unable to explain how one thing can turn into something else. That’s the problem, and that’s why Darwinism is a theology rather than science.

May 15, 2009 - 2:10 pm 26. HV:

Postmodernism: If our heads are filled with stories none of which are privileged with the truth, then that would be true, and if we had it in our head that this is the case then that would be a true story in our head.

May 15, 2009 - 2:38 pm 27. GerryP:

One sure producer of an “aha!” moment comes when anyone witnesses an undeniably supernatural event. For at least that person, the G-d question is settled.

Science operates on certain underlying assumptions, just as every other field does. One of the most basic assumptions is that there is no supernatural – no unseen beings, etc. That every fact can be, and must be, explained by purely natural, material means. No exceptions. They do not allow professional discussions that do not start with the presupposition that the material is all there is.

One problem with that, as Berkeley’s Philip Johnson pointed out, is circular reasoning. If we start by assuming something does not exist, then addressing the question of whether it exists is not allowed. That is current practice in science. But primary assumptions still matter and inevitably affect the outcomes of models and arguments.

Some skeptics have been convinced of the factual, material truth of the gospel by considering the drastic difference it has made in many lives. Others, like attorney Lew Wallace (Ben Hur), originally set out to disprove scripture, but their investigations led them to belief instead.

Others are convinced by the character of Jesus. Some of scientific bent are convinced by the sheer statistical improbability of so many prophecies coming to pass later, even some with 8-20 variables. There have been many roads that point to the truth of what had been disbelieved before.

My seminary was thoroughly liberal, basicaly agnostic, but loved whatever they thought G-d was and clung to the symbolism of Christianity. Very fine people, all. But I thought they made a weak case. The simple case that Christianity was literally true was a somewhat stronger case in my view.

Once one really takes the trouble to investigate the question of whether G-d exists, a change of mind can happen – even to a scientist.

May 15, 2009 - 3:37 pm 28. Voltimand:

Aquinas may have been the tie-breaker in the God game when he made “existence” the fundamental “fact” about things as they are. The alternative to “existence” is nothing at all, and bringing something that exists out of a state in which nothing exists at all is qualitatively more “miraculous” then bringing this particular item out that particular item: evolution and its versions and its enemies.

God blinks and the result is not “great change” in things as they are; the result is absolutely nothing at all.

It is perhaps the failure to deal with the fact that every time we get up in the morning the most miraculous thing is that it’s all there again, just as it was when we went to bed. This-causes-that causality tells us why this rather than that; existence tells us why this rather than nothing at all.

And this is what becomes the fundamental problem of problems when discussions of God’s existence founder on the matter of evolution, change, this versus that. Can’t prove why this becomes that? So what. Prove why this, and all the other “thises” in the world exist at all. If not God or “God,” then what?

In short, why the world is this way or that way is not a miracle, and a question that science can ask and to some extent answer.

But why the world is, just “is”? So as Aquinas said Aristotle and his “unmoved mover” was the answer. If the unmoved mover was the Christian or whatever god, that’s a another question, not to be confused with the existential one.

May 15, 2009 - 3:51 pm 29. Marie Claude:

The Ashkenazim theory was examined by Charles Murray in a recent article on Jewish genius and found inadequate. He reluctantly concluded that it looked like the Jews may just be special (i.e. chosen).

I just reread his article, it concerns mostly an american audience, cuz none cared of his writing on the european continent, I bet that our Askenazi elite didn’t endorse it, otherwise we would have heard of it. It is written in a religious frame (the chosen), here none would think that there is a “chosen” population. ie that’s why we made the revolution, to become equal as so the noble elite as far as the basic right of justice.

Also, Mr Murray forgets to quote our religious monks and roman christian eminences (our first known philosopher and thelogian is Abelard)… you had to attend religious scholars to get some education, future seminarists were the only educateds until school got democratised, unless you were of a noble origin, or of bourgeoise origine, you had a private teacher then.

Those that had some knowledge weren’t bankers, but could genuinely administrate domains, also some genious political advisers surrounded our kings and princes.

Greek philosophes made that our architecture became that of the gothic splendeur, only persons that could master mathematics, geometry and physics could achieve that, I don’t see jewish names there, but anonymes ; Signing a work with a name wasn’t in the rules of the masonic corporations, but with signs. Well it’s architecture, therefore space, not in the qualities evocated by Mr Murray and alikes for Jews IQ standards.

Otherwise, apart those famous jewish scientists and artists, but not in the spacial domains (architecture, painting, sculpture… gardening), I can’t see that they don’t fit the averages of all the populations : intelligent sometimes, dumb, stoopid, partisans most of the times.

About the “primitive” becoming suddenly a good Parisian, I have some doubts, if you knew the story of how Paris devevelopped, generally the country persons that wanted to go up to the capital without introduction letters, or a region communauty already settled there to welcome him, most likely this person would have to prostitute, or to become a looter.

Natural selection is unable to explain how one thing can turn into something else

According to late experiences, memory is transmissible to foetus
(journal of neuroscience)

May 15, 2009 - 4:16 pm 30. NahnCee:

I was a little surprised at Simon’s reaction to Ahmadinnerjacket. I thought the general consensus was that Ahmah is a popped up poofinjay front man for the evil mullah’s pullling the strings behind the scenes.

I’m granting that Roger Simon has spent enough time in Hollywood to be able to recognize the face of evil when he sees it, which then must mean that Ahmadinnerjacket is much worse than I had been giving him credit for.

And that, in turn, means that Iran’s mad mullah’s are *so* much worse evil-wise than their front-man President that I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around their evilosity.

Yikes.

May 15, 2009 - 4:21 pm 31. twobyfour:

GerryP/27

Science operates on certain underlying assumptions, just as every other field does. One of the most basic assumptions is that there is no supernatural – no unseen beings, etc. That every fact can be, and must be, explained by purely natural, material means. No exceptions. They do not allow professional discussions that do not start with the presupposition that the material is all there is.

That is only a recent status quo. Originally, in Descartes’ terms, science was supposed to deal with observable, verifiable phenomena. It had no business to ascertain philosophical (and metaphysical) aspects of reality, only if they derived directly from the observation.

But let me wrap it in a tessaract instead of looking from another angle and then: Any advanced technology beyond our capabilities would appear as magic.

In my view, there is nothing supernatural. We just have very limited understanding what is “natural”. Paradoxically, materialism deals with illusion–there is no ghost in the machine not because there is no ghost, but because there is no machine. For me, the ultimate science lies in the realm that I described previously: any question you have has an immediate and definitive answer–in fact they are simultaneous, the moment you formulate the question, the answer is there.

{BTW, don’t try temporary flatlining to get your answers. Some form of filter prevents the transfer, this part of reality operates on different principles and what you do remember are just concepts, skeletons in only vague form; yet you do remember the exhiliration of being able to know and exercise motion by focus and the depth of the other reality compared to which the present one is a mere shadow, a reflection on a rippled surface.)

May 15, 2009 - 4:28 pm 32. Belmont Club » The Living Poets society:

[...] verse. One commenter who works in the biological field sends these lines, which grew out the post A Trip To Durban. They are after the Read More.

May 15, 2009 - 4:33 pm 33. programmer:

Does physics imply God?

The conclusion of the above cite:

Just because you understand quantum mechanics doesn’t mean you’re enlightened. Physics is an explicitly 3rd-person approach to reality, whereas meditative, contemplative, or mystical disciplines are explicitly 1st-person approaches to reality. Neither perspective is more real than the other, but each perspective does disclose different truths, and you cannot use the truth disclosed in one domain to “colonize” another. The study of physics, as a 3rd-person discipline, will not get you enlightenment; and meditation, as a 1st-person discipline, will not disclose the location of an asteroid (or an electron).

The “content” of enlightenment is the realization of that which is timeless, formless, and eternally unchanging. The content of physics is the understanding of the movement of form within time, i.e. that which is constantly changing. And if you hook Buddha’s enlightenment to a theory of physics that gets disproved tomorrow, does that mean Buddha loses his enlightenment?

May 15, 2009 - 4:55 pm 34. JMH:

The Ashkenazim theory was examined by Charles Murray in a recent article on Jewish genius and found inadequate. He reluctantly concluded that it looked like the Jews may just be special (i.e. chosen).

Why are the two incompatible? What baffles me about some of the opposition to evolution is the notion that the existence of a Creator eliminates the possibility of evolution. Why? Or, to put it another way, who are you (or me, or anyone) to tell God how He should do things?

Of course the reverse is true as well. If evolution exists, that does not mean God doesn’t. In fact, of all the things known or suspected to exist on Earth and in the Universe, evolution would be fairly low on my list of things that would make me doubt God. The existence of Ichneumon Wasps and Ahmadinejads is far more problematic as far as I’m concerned.

May 15, 2009 - 5:07 pm 35. RWE:

Natural Selection is one thing. Evolution is another. An example given in the book is that if you take 50 soldiers in woodland camo and 50 soldiers in winter white camo and put them in a typical southern forest in July and start picking off the ones you can find, at the end of the day you will have far more woodland camo troops than white ones. This does not mean that the white ones have evolved into woodland camo.

Another example of Natural Selection:

Twobyfour: “RWE, stand very still and do not show fear. The lion will not be able to understand what we are or see us as a target.”

RWE: “BANG!”

I will admit that I have seen a number of snakes around here that seem to be baffled when an apparently inanimate object (rake, hoe, lawnmower) starts poking at them, but I doubt that would work with a lion. And even the snakes do not sit around and try to figure things out for more than an instant.

May 15, 2009 - 5:12 pm 36. twobyfour:

RWE/35

“RWE, stand very still and do not show fear. The lion will not be able to understand what we are or see us as a target.”

That may be what you though I said, but that is NOT what I said. I accept the possibility that you did not understand a word I said. In fact, I am almost certain of it. It takes years to be able to master the state I described, and it does not readily translate to common experience.

There is a laundry list of steps which a sorcerer (shaman) apprentice in mayan tradition has to go through. One of the steps is to go to mountains and bring back a whisker of an adult jaguar. If you don’t bring back the whisker, you would be a target of derision for the rest of your life, or you’d be a meal. One of two. The trick is to act exactly as I described, and let the jaguar come inches from you and in one swift move, just your arm–nothing else, take one whisker. The jaguar feels that something happened, but is not exactly sure what. The whole experience makes it even more confused and it leaves without satisfying its curiosity.

I am not on the level of testing a lion, perhaps because I am not a mayan sorcerer apprentice, but I do well with human predators. They don’t notice me. They see me, but the image on their retina does not translate to perceiving me. It is not that I would be a victim otherwise, I just dislike cracking skulls needlessly.

May 15, 2009 - 5:44 pm 37. winslow:

Ideas and information do exist, insofar as there are minds to accept and transmit them. This is the essence of my notion of cultural streams, that is, bunches of information that are transmitted as a unified coherent group. Wretchard’s blog is a wonderful example of this (the comments being an approximately equal contribution.)

The limitations of our senses make it almost impossible to know what reality is. It is certainly true that the closer our mental models are to actuality, the more likely we will be able to survive and prosper.

Unfortunately, it is prosperity itself which enables truly wrong-headed ideas (socialism and global warming) to continue. Those who entertain such false (but attractive)ideas are supported by the very culture they attempt to destroy.

May 15, 2009 - 6:17 pm 38. Tamquam:

Science, any science, is an organized body of knowledge. In the last few centuries the scientific method as an approach to discovery and organization of knowledge was developed, and, because of it’s pragmatic utilitarianism, gained preeminence. It is often understood to be the ONLY legitimate approach to science, even by those who don’t understand it and even by those who do but misuse it. The fact is that before the advent of the scientific method sciences (organized bodies of knowledge) existed. Some of these have been superseded, but others have not yielded their authority to upstart modern science. Modern science, as yet unable to develop tools to adequately study these ancient sciences, scorns and derides them as mere superstition. Some in fact are mere superstition, but by no means all.

May 15, 2009 - 9:43 pm 39. Derek:

Darwinian evolution describes a corrective/adaptive mechanism within a complex system.

Darwin challenged an orthodoxy that was absurd. And replaced it with another orthodoxy that is equally absurd.

Evolution as a dogma exists in opposition to another dogma, and couldn’t otherwise.

I listened to a Dawkins lecture, one he gave in Montreal a couple of years ago. He could have fit in a evangelical church anywhere if he replaced ‘evolution’ with ‘god’. Talked about the mysteries that are incomprehensible, etc. Quite funny, and I don’t think the effect he wished.

Derek

May 16, 2009 - 6:28 am 40. twobyfour:

Derek, metaphysics are cool as long as they are coated by a thick veneer of science’s elders seal of approval.

When I was young I so loved science because of its promise of unimpended inquiry, until I realized it became another church.

May 16, 2009 - 7:01 am 41. Karen Yvonne:

JMH @34: What baffles me about some of the opposition to evolution is the notion that the existence of a Creator eliminates the possibility of evolution… Of course the reverse is true as well. If evolution exists, that does not mean God doesn’t.

If you believe that God designed creation along the lines of Darwinian evolution, then what you have is an impersonal God who provided the basic ingredients and then set the universe on autopilot. It shouldn’t be surprising to find serious Christians rejecting that, when the entire Biblical content presents a stikingly different portayal of God’s nature.

May 16, 2009 - 3:23 pm 42. twobyfour:

Karen, see… the Bible is not a Word of God, but a word of men how they see and interpret God. It is an inspired edifice.

Anyway, in what you stated as objection is reflected your (or serious Christians) understanding of the concept of god. But that is simply an anthropomorphization.

There is no contradiction between the concept of God and evolution as a law inherent in our world. Not necessarily Darwininan evolution, but containing some elements of randomness and chance, at least as our perception and conceptual model of it is concerned.

That does not make a god relationship with the world impersonal, it is only your narrow viewpoint that presumes it. Either you think of god as a higher being/entity with a degree of human traits projected (a la Olympian gods) and in that case your conclusion may be valid, or understand god as omnipotent and omniscient, unlimited in any way, and in that case the notion of impersonal relationship would be invalid. There are other reasons why it is not so, but they are only available on the “other side”.

BTW, notice that even the number of my post is providing a proof (answer). Coincidence?

May 16, 2009 - 6:54 pm 43. twobyfour:

Not sure if I did not mention it once, but Australian Aborigines have a peculiar notion of evolution (yes, that is a part of their belief system).

They use a term that had been translated as Dreamtime. It is not really an accurate translation. Probably Supernature would be a tad closer.

The story goes like so:
“One day, fish dreamed/imagined of becoming a turtle, and became a turtle. Then turtle dreamed/imagined another day of becoming a lizars and became a lizard. Then lizard dreamed/imagined of becoming a roo and became a roo…”

The progression in the story may be somewhat familiar. But the story does not seem to elucidate the mechanism. Or does it?

There seems to a consciousness and will implied in the mechanism. It does not mean that the animal was the source of the “dream”.

I think that a long time ago, Aborigibes had a quite well developed body of what we call today a science.

Some oddities that seems to point to that beside their apparent cocept of evolution:
They were able to do blood transfusion by use of a straw obtained from one type of grass. They cut both ends at a sharp angle (like a medical needle) and inserted one end in a vein of a donor and the other end in the vein of a recipient. They knew blood types, or rather they had elaborate rules how to avoid mixing of wrong blood types. They also knew a plant that was functioning like a pill–e.g anticonception medicine.

In that light, the presence of the concept of evolution is not that surprising. But in contrast to modern reductionist science, they knew where the Dreamtime imagining originated.

May 16, 2009 - 7:27 pm 44. GerryP:

TwobyFour @ 42:

“That does not make a god relationship with the world impersonal, it is only your narrow viewpoint that presumes it.”

2by4, I doubt you really meant to patronize Karen when you described a part of her thinking as “your narrow viewpoint.” But upon reflection, you might see how it could be taken that way.

May 16, 2009 - 8:11 pm 45. Karen Yvonne:

twobyfour @42: BTW, notice that even the number of my post is providing a proof (answer). Coincidence?

You’re always seeing connections and meanings everywhere. I like that about you.

…the Bible is not a Word of God, but a word of men how they see and interpret God. It is an inspired edifice.

Well actually, the Bible claims itself to be the exact opposite of the above statement. 2 Peter 1:20,21: “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

What I said @41 has nothing to do with anthropomorphization. Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Unlike plants or animals, man already has within him the inherent ability to know something (but not everything) about God, who He is, what he is like, what is His nature; in short, no anthropomorphizing needed.

I didn’t say that no Christian could possibly believe in evolution. I was giving one possible answer to JMH’s question of why many Christians view evolution and the existence of God as incompatible.

I may or may not have, as you asserted, a narrow viewpoint, but I don’t think that a rejection of evolution as true is necessarily a proof of one’s narrow-mindedness. See the comments of RWE @18 or maineman @19, for instance.

May 16, 2009 - 8:34 pm 46. Karen Yvonne:

GerryP: “I doubt you really meant to patronize Karen…”

Thanks, Gerry. I don’t know either, whether it’s intentional or not, but I’m starting to get used to it, LOL.

May 16, 2009 - 8:45 pm 47. twobyfour:

Karen, it was unintentional. I did not mean “narrow mindedness”. I meant narrow viewpoint, e.g. viewpoint that is defined by some specific pre-set parameters. Maybe focused viewpoint may do?

As for the points you make.

Re Peter 1:20,21:
The problem is merely semantics. The prophets did not receive dictations. They received information and wrapped it in the frame of reference relevant to their contemporaries so the message is understood in that context. That is one of the problems with interpreting stuff outside of the cultural niveau of a prophecy origin–a great deal of ambiguity. For instance, the Revelation of John… you can see clearly how many interpretations the book spawned and some with contradictory conclusions. The context is largely missing at this time; in fact not too many were even aware of the context at the time the book was written.

Re Genesis 1:27:
The problem here is what is meant by “image”. Is it the physical characteristics? If you dive into Sumerian sources (yes, the story of Genesis is described in Sumerian literature and in more elaborate terms, and don’t forget that Abraham came from Sumerian city of Ur, whence he brought the original story from), you’d find out that the Bible contains rather a condensed version of the story. In the Sumerian version, the term image would have a meaning that would be closer to our concept of a soul–imprint of a soul, thusly. The second hint in the Sumerian literature is that the image means information and its rendition (naturally, the post I write and the disk it is stored on aren’t the same, are they?). What kind of information and its rendition we are talking about is documented by the frequent appearance of intertwined snakes on cylindrical seals within scenes that depict the creation of adam (a.da.mu–those that from mud came). Notice I did not say Adam, because that is what the Sumerian story states–creation of a kind, not of a single individual named a.da.mu. BTW, Eve (eb.da ->eba->eva) does not mean “from rib-she”, but “from mud-she”, contextually a “substance, a building material”. The “rib” is simple Hebrew mistranslation or may be a play on words sounding similarly.

May 17, 2009 - 4:59 am 48. twobyfour:

Karen,
Unlike plants or animals, man already has within him the inherent ability to know something (but not everything) about God, who He is, what he is like, what is His nature; in short, no anthropomorphizing needed.

You have there a good understanding of the meaning, or a facet of it. That does not prevent others from interpreting it in the literal sense, thusly by inversion, God looks like a human. Anthropomorphization, like I said.

May 17, 2009 - 5:18 am 49. aaron:

science, to me is merely a handy way of posing questions, in such a way as to obtain useful answers. as a process it is a valuable tool in the quest for truth.

the argument of Darwin is almost comical, but i really find it tragic. He observed something and wondered how it worked. since then he’s been damned and cursed, praised and deified.

his observation led to other peoples observations. along this path many interesting things have been found.

When people argue about Evolution they often bring up their feelings about Darwin. but let me bring up the working definition of evolution: it is a change in allele frequency in a population over time.

huh. what’s that? it’s really a change in the occurance of certain genes in a population. lots of things can bring this about. darwin described some of them. he did not describe all of them. neither did gregor mendel. but they got a glimpse of the truth and shared their little pieces of it with us.

i’ve personally cut and spliced genes and give genes to populations that did not have them before. it’s fundamental for undergraduate molecular biology. i don’t doubt evolution. I count it as one of our blessings.

We know alot more about the world than some people are comfortable with. Personally i find life AMAZING and love learning about it. I don’t necessarily feel threatened by what we learn as we study the world around us and our part in it. I do think truth and knowledge are blessings, but I do think they can be abused and turned to the designs and advantage of less than noble souls. As with many things it’s the people using the tools to keep an eye on, not the tools themselves.

May 17, 2009 - 8:43 am 50. aaron:

doh. pardon my spelling.

the argument OVER darwin…

sorry.

May 17, 2009 - 8:49 am 51. Marie Claude:

umm, the dream thing is quite a key, just look at Jules Verne science fiction novels, less than a century after, his “visions” happened realities !

May 17, 2009 - 1:08 pm 52. twobyfour:

MC, there is an old daguerrotypie with Jules Verne and some man, that is presumed to be one of his friends (no one knows who he is). There is also an old copper engraving of Johannes Kepler with one of his friend. Strange thing is, both men look like identical twins.

May 17, 2009 - 2:00 pm 53. Marie Claude:

I don’t know about these of these “twins”, can you link something ? thanks

Kepler is quite an apart personality too, may-be more subtile than Jules Vernes

May 17, 2009 - 4:21 pm 54. twobyfour:

MC, no link, something I remembered… a friend of mine researched it more than a quarter of century ago back in my old country. I saw the reproductions. Lost a contact with him after I moved to North America.

If I did not know the span of time separating Kepler and Verne, I would swear their “friend” was the same man.

Who knows. Maybe one of them Watchers, if they exist, subtly providing them with revelations here and there.

May 17, 2009 - 4:52 pm

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