spendius wrote:Last night was enough to kill my last hopes that anti-IDers will be able to cope.
I am not against Intelligent Design within the context of an individual's personal beliefs per se, however I am for rational, reliable, scientifically based processes, and the corresponding weight of evidence it provides, when at all possible.
The chief problem with, and threat from, ID-iots, is their inability, or at the very least unwillingness, to differentiate among philosophy, theology and ideology. Conflating them into a single concept, they perforce endeavor to impose their ideal, setting for themselves a political goal, which essentially is the thinking behind all totalitarianism; at root, ID-iots functionally are little different, apart at least so far from arms and militant tactics, from Islamofascists or any other group seeking to impose its will and preferences.
Yeah, they're trying to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of our society against our will and preference for the separation of church and state. They are a dangerous group of morons that continues to destroy our freedoms.
timber-
You could just as easily say the same thing about scientific methodologists and a good number of fiction writers have done so.
I don't however recall any who gave the impression of it being wonderful unless you think Huxley's idea of never copulating with the same pneumatic floozie more than once is the way forward which,I must admit, I am inclined to think a good idea. It does make evolutionary sense.
spendi, How many pints will you need before you copulate with a mechanical woman?
That's a hypothetical question and thus any attempt to answer it would signify a foolishness on a par with the asking of it.
spendi wrote:
I don't however recall any who gave the impression of it being wonderful unless you think Huxley's idea of never copulating with the same pneumatic floozie more than once is the way forward which,I must admit, I am inclined to think a good idea. It does make evolutionary sense.
Spendi,
Can you demonstrate the scientific methodologists inability, or at the very least unwillingness, to differentiate among philosophy, theology and ideology and how this distills into a dangerous political goal?
Chum-
I might give it a try tomorrow if I feel like it.
Right now it's bedtime and I like bedtime a very great deal.
Sweet dreams.
Chum-
I don't know what you mean by a scientific methodologist.
I know what I mean by the term and it does not include those who simply assert that they are scientific methodologists. It is quite easy to assert. The test is whether one lives by such ideas which is more or less impossible if one is to play a part in a social system.
One is obliged,as a scientific methodologist in a social system, to pay lip service to the subjectivism of one's fellows or become a hermit. People do not like to contemplate Shakespeare's "signifying nothing". They can just about take it if it passes swiftly by distanced from them by the stage setting and soon forgotten in the subsequent action but in their face all the time is generally a little too much. Not for everyone of course. I have met cynics who live by such a notion but they are unpopular and everything they say is corrosive and inimical to successful social organisation. One said in my company that he could view his wife being gang-banged on the pool table in the pub, a cruise ship sinking with no survivors and a stain on his shirt with equal aplomb. He had a Ph D in physics. Philip Larkin had similar tendencies. So did Rabelais and Stendahl and Frank Harris and Henry Miller and England's leading adult comic, VIZ, is posited on the notion. Private Eye less so.
If one hasn't found oneself drawn towards this satirical school of ideas one is probably not a scientific methodologist. I wouldn't like to choose who in that genre is the most corrosive, by which I mean who shreds every last ounce of one's fond illusions the most comprehensively. They have no sense of indignation and pursue pleasure,the relief of tensions, by the easiest method they can manage with never a backward glance. Proust is 3000 odd pages of piss taking.
None of them would ever dream of pursuing political goals. On the idea that "power corrupts" any pursuit of such goals is dangerous and, in the view of a strict scientific methodologist, futile.
Is it possible to be a semi-strict scientific methodologist? The suspicion arises that selection would play a part. Which could be cynical but not when indignation is shown. But even that might be acted.
BBB
It's becoming obvious to me that the Evangelical-Fundamentalist sects in the U.S. are trying to turn back the clock before the Enlightenment. What is really strange is that it was the Enlightenment that inspired most of the Founders as the basis of the of the U.S. Constitution.
These Americans are most similar to the Islamic Sects around the world which are trying to turn back the clock to the Mohammad era.
They both reject Modernism in a modern world in favor of ancient religions.
BBB
BBB, Well stated; I've said almost the same thing on another thread.
The "Enlightenment". Titter-titter-titter. Goodness me!
Stick a label on. Put a pin through it and display it in a glass case of one's erudition.
The organic logic of the facts of the vast and varied European landmass which fed and clothed and protected the populations (sometimes) is supplanted by a mechanical description in psychological disguise. The psychology of the instant and easy understanding.
It's the same with the "Renaissance". Sounds good. Real posh. Got everything you need to know in one quick shot.
Oh-if only I could be so clever.
Just a process eliminating inevitable destiny.
Here we are. A nice neat proposition that what happened was a sequence of mechanical states, like a bus stopping and starting, which lends itself to rational analysis and thus that causes,means,methods and objects could be stuck in a specimen bottle, a label pasted on "THE ENLIGHTENMENT" and eureka! It becomes comprehensible.
Braudel never even mentions it. It's a Sunday Supplement concept to flatter readers that they have brilliant minds and are superior to their fellows.
Pure urban gobbledegook.
How does one "turn the clock back" to anything let alone such an abstract concept or to something predating it when it didn't even exist in reality. What existed was the triumph of wheat and the new plants from far off lands and pasturage and meat and fish eating and brewing and house building and sea routes and migrations of peoples and products and ideas and double entry book-keeping and printing and much more in an ongoing "movement" that you can't hold up to the light of the ego and say "look at that-it's the Enlightenment don't you know".
No wonder I'm incoherent. My fleeting knowledge of history gained from only hundreds of books can't stand up to 100% enlightenment.
When people talk of "The Permissive Society" or "The Government" I'm in awe of their vast erudition and the brilliant theories they erect on these absurdities which seem to satisfy their need for order and nice little compartments of idle thoughts and LOLs.
wande-
I have listened to him talk.I have read many of his articles. I have a letter from him. I've read that post through and many others of a similar nature.
I can resist him. He oversimplifies. And he flatters you into thinking that you now understand which is pure UNOWOT. (The United Nations Organisation of Wankers On Tarts.)
Hey-I can jest as well.
splenid saysQuote: I have a letter from him.
NOT REALLY A LETTER, ITS A RESTRAINING ORDER
Seems that Splendi is rather full of himself today. Have we been eating our ACE inhibitors and developing new mutations to synapses?
Nah fm-
It has been a quiet Bank Holiday Monday here. The Test Match finished early and the soccer (football) is in hiatus. Or the lull before the storm.
My synapses are still in primeval mode. Mutations are for the sophisticated urban intelligentsia.
Don't you know a simple thing like that yet at your age?
Wandel, Steve Palumbi, a more available writer and cutting edge researcher in molecular evolution has a book called "The Evolution Explosion" . Its about 5 years old but gives a careful and readily understandable argument about such things as cumulative selection via generational mutations on specific extra genetic loci. The explanation he proposed has been studied as a workable model for rapid selection in such things as
1 HIV retroviruses
2rapid acquisition of immunity to most pesticides by insects and , in the case of DDT immunity in malaria mosquitoes, an esterase is produced which actually binds to the organochlorines and "diffuses" them. So the mosquitoes develop a twofold immunity .
Palumbi is a good presenter , like Jones, except he is able to exercise his wit as well as his skills as a teacher/researcher.
As for splendi
He will opine a plethora of views
regards-the square of the Hypotenuse.
Apologies to Gillie and Sully.
spendi, typing to us from his frayed anorak, is a splendidly harmless fellow. It is simply in the nature of a certain sort of Englishman to be roused to trumpeting indignation at that worst of improprieties - category-heading errors. The presumption of it! "Enlightenment" will simply not do at all unlike "urban intellectuals" which presents no problem at all.
But just popping in to pass on a different tip on matters of propriety in the event that one ever hosts His Emminence...
Quote:No tampons for the pope
Sweet Jesus. Pope Benedict is going to Poland, and in his honor various municipalities are showing just how fun devotion can be by banning the sale of alcoholic beverages and certain desserts. Also banned: TV ads for lingerie, contraception and tampons. Yes, tampons -- those harbingers of hedonism, those lascivious reminders that vaginas exist -- will be hidden from papal sight.
Zbigniew Badziak, the state-run TV network's head of advertising, told the Associated Press that "there is always the risk that the faithful may feel hurt if programming devoted to the Pope's visit is interrupted by frivolous ads." Not that they banned all advertising -- just frivolous ads for contraception and feminine hygiene. Still OK: useful, important advertising like car commercials.
As our tipster noted in an e-mail, "Apparently the female reproductive cycle and its consequent necessities are somehow evil and offensive to the Church hierarchy? Oh wait, somehow I think I already knew that."
I mean, did the Virgin Mary not menstruate? Or is it just that the church prefers pads?
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/
