"Genetic Death": The Evolution Meat Grinder

Well, Ive had a busy day carrying the truths of geiology out among the English heathens. I see weve been busy flogging the long dead spirit of Sir Arthur (call me a fake but at least I can glue two bones together) Keith.

Next gunga will be singing the praises of Russ Humphries and Henry Morris.

But he couldn't tell a cricket bat from a tibia, he missed that one completely.

Even after he knew that the two joined mandible sections were treated with K dichromate to age them, he kept his mouth shut and he and Teilhard just went along with Charlie Dawson and Arthur Woodward. There are many stories of fraud and fun in the game of paleoanthropology. Im always gratified that, no matter how credible the source, fraud is always found out.
Now the Creationists, who are still pushing the Paluxy Man prints even after having been severely beaten up by "real science" are still building the "Witness to Creation Museum" near Roseville Texas.


Might I say Duhhhhh?

Back when I was a graduate student in the mid 70's a group of us used to sit around and consider all of the diffusionist fantasy's and frauds that were current in archaeology at the time, Atlantis, Ibero--Celtic precolumbians and the like, and wonder if it was possible to put together a comprehensive anti-science science. It seriously looks to me as if that is being attempted.

The thing about science is, it's self-correcting. Explanations don't work, yu throw them out and get one that does work. Your instruments get better, you get better data and someone eventually comes up with the math that makes them work. People forge their dat, it can't be replicated and someone eventually realizes that someone else cooked their results.

Thing about religion is, it's not self-correcting. That's why Christianity, after 2000 years has got Jerry Falwell and no way to correct the situation.

Acqu wrote-



But bluebottles are "very different from any other species".

Humans not unique and better eh? Who on earth taught you that? Have you ever seen Mahler's Song of the Earth performed by a thousand who all went to champagne receptions afterwards,some actually mating, and I wasn't counting ancillary staff who mostly either go home or to pubs and suchlike.

Anything like the World Cup in the animal kingdom Acqu?

You must take a somewhat jaundiced look at your fellow man not to say depressing.

Unk. I see you writing a book about that "In the Name of Science" Start with the foundation myths and end with Dr Suk (I heard that theres a new fraud in computer tech , also in South Korea)

The world needs a good laugh at what some of these loonies try to pull.

UN wrote-



Of course it is self correcting. That is what theology addresses. The ship of state can't change course as easy as you do in your car. It is a much more difficult process that we can understand.

Non believers have only a short time to focus on and they think things should change to suit them just by waving a magic wand called control freakery. It happens to people who went to the school of soft knocks.

A good friend and colleague of mine did write the book:
Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology
Kenneth L Feder McGraw Hill (5th ed 2005)
It is highly recommended

Acqu wrote-




It will take a bit more than that to get me to read it. You might try enthusing us instead of blurting out assertions.

They are all the same these evolutionists- they think any old clop they blurt out is true on the empirical evidence of them having blurted it. It must be really tiresome living in close proximity to such attitudes.

No wonder the divorce rate is at an all time high. There's only so much anybody can be expected to take of that stuff.

Spendius:

The noted physicist A. S. Eddington commented on what some "Scientists" surely view as the creation--the beginnings of the universe.

Philosophically, the notion of an abrupt beginning to the present order of Nature is repugnant to me, as I think it must be to most, and even those who would welcome a proof of the intervention of a Creator will probably consider that a single winding-up at some remote epoch is not really the kind of relation between God and his world that brings satisfaction to the mind"

from "Cosmos and Creator"

As I said many times, I am not skilled or learned in Science but I do know that there is an important principle called the principle of causation.

It is difficult to believe in God as he is depicted by philosophers such as Mortimer Adler. As far as I am concerned, it is very much more difficult to believe that the universe came into being uncaused.

Your problem is referential, circumstantial, and conceptual ... and without foundation or meaning in reality. The sphere of reference available to us came into being with the emergence of what has become the universe we now observe. Our time, space, physics, causation, "reality", what have you, are meaningless apart from within and with reference to our observed universe. Linguisticly and cognitively, we just don't pack the gear to get there - at least not yet. That which is apart from, beyond, prior to, other than, our observable universe is unavailable to our current referential/conceptual capacities. We may conjecture, postulate, guess, but we cannot theorize, nor even truly hypothesize concerning that apart from our observable universe, for such constructs as hypotheses and theories, to have any scientific meaning, let alone validity, must be testable, consistent with independently confirmable, repeatable observation. Catch 22; we cannot observe and assess, nor even deduce through indirect observation, that which is entirely unobservable within the constraints of our current capabilities.

For one to reject, even to question, evolution - whether biologic or cosmologic, requires at the most charitable a woeful ignorance of science, logic, and reason, a circumstance which reveals unambiguously the urgent need to improve our educational system, and at the worst reveals a wanton, willful, duplicitous, deceitful contempt for science, logic, and reason. There is much unexplained by science, though science adds to its repetoire exponentially, day by day, hour by hour. Religion has explained nothing, and has added nought but dispute and dissention to its repetoire, in millenia.

The idea of a "big bang" is bad science and bad theology wrapped into a package. Having all the mass of the universe collapsed to a point would be the mother of all black holes; nothing would ever bang its way out of that.

Likewise, the idea of an omniscient and omnipotent God suddenly deciding that it would be neat to create a universe 17 billion years ago is worse than "repugnant"; it's idiotic.

Why wouldn't he have figured that out 17 trillion or 17 quadrillion years ago?

Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which is a kind of paganism. -- Guy Consolmagna.

Source: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=674042006

Suppose Wolf that your opponents assert,as baldly as you do,that science needs religion to provide the orderly society in which to prosper.

We have yet to see on any of these threads how science without religion would provide an orderly society without the use of degrees of terror. Anti-IDers have been repeatedly challenged on this and as yet have offered no suggestions and contented themselves with calling me names.

Anti-IDers so take for granted what religion has delivered that they have forgotten it delivered anything and in attacking the specific belief cement of Christianity,which is as easy as admiring oneself in a mirror, they are actually attacking belief itself as one might expect of people who need empirical evidence for their knowledge. Having invested large amounts of mental energy in their propositions their self-esteem is at stake which explains their defensive and inarticulate blurts of personal invective. They seek out Creationists and avoid like the plague structural/functional arguments for ease of the bone and for the opportunities they provide for aggressive,self-assertive rhetoric.

No intellectual would ever preach anything he wasn't prepared to accept the consequences of if everybody was persuaded by his arguments. Anti-IDers are totally reliant on that not happening and are therefore self-indulgent and they seem blissfully unaware that their arguments are confined to one specific area of human activity valuable though it is and that if they spread into other areas disaster might ensue.

Christianity is a theological distillation of any number of pagan beliefs and practices which removed human and animal sacrifice from society and which concentrated authority in one centre. The American fundamentalist preachers are not Christian at all. Not in the slightest degree.

I have repeatedly pointed out that the Chinese reached a high degree of civilization without reference to organized religion. That did not involve unflattering characterizations of you. After all, you provide those every time you post. You have simply denied that this were so, you've not proven otherwise.

I must admit to knowing very little about Chinese culture.

De Groote is supposed to have treated Taoism,Confucianism and Buddhism as if they were religions in Universismus.

Spengler,quoting Conrady, says that contrary to the usual assumptions,there was a powerful old-Chinese priesthood and that the text of the Shu-King "relics of the ancient hero-sagas and god-myths were worked over rationalistically." He futher claims that if more study was done on the texts of the Hou-li, Ngi-li and the Shi-King more would be revealed than Confucius understood.

To quote him-

"We hear of chthonian and phallic cults in early Chou times; of orgiastic rites in which the service of the gods was accompanied by ecstatic mass dances; of mimic representations and dialogues between god and priestess out of which probably ( as in Greece) the Chinese drama evolved."

He goes on to claim that all this was absorbed into emperor-mythology ( as also in Rome at certain times.)

I think these things derive from ancestor worship and,as such,are common to many cultures although the outward forms may be entirely different.

There is plenty of evidence in the sort of mass music and dance which is today used on state occasions in China to imply a religious origin.

But have a heart Setanta. There's only so much one can study in any depth and the Faustian culture from about 1000 AD to now is quite sufficient to occupy my spare time. I would need some convincing that there was no religion in China. Human nature demands so. All fictional depictions of ultra scientific man show a compassionless, logical, bigoted and elitist automata.

From the little I know there was no Magian dualism or Faustian unity of active forces out of which science has sprung in that religion. It probably varied anyway from centre to centre in a vast country with a low population density. One thing we do know is that the place was a bit of a mess when we began to explore and exploit it. If, as you claim, there was no organised religion in China events seem to demonstrate the sad consequences of that which are now being remedied using our knowledge.

If you compare Chinese art to ours you see a lack of thrusting energy; it rather tempts the viewer's eye to wander easily whereas in, say Rembrandt, there is a drive into the third dimension which has arrived at the launch pad at the Cape. If you were to say that that is fanciful well there you go.

As things stand now only Faustianism looks like being the future and if we export it to the world we are going to look pretty silly if it has departed from us.Which, of course, it won't.

There was a news item recently about Catholic churches openly celebrating mass in Bejing. A temple has been re-opened.

A quietist,accepting religious feeling is unlikely to be "organised" by its very nature.

But I can't prove anything one way or the other as I have only come by what little I have from comparisons with our culture.

BTW. I have no interest in characterisations,unflattering or otherwise, of myself. They will both be equally incorrect in roughly equal measure.

I am born in time not in the 20th century. The idea of 18.30 BST on May 16 2006 is a convenience and it is also an illusion.

I really do not think that Spengler was as certain as some as to the beginnings of "religion" if one can subsume "high mysticism" and "grand legends" under the rubric of "religion".

Spengler asserts:

quote:

The Chinese religion,of which the great "Gothic" period lies between 1300 and 1100 and covers the rise of the Chou dynasty, must be treated with extreme care. In presence of the superficial profundity and pedantic enthusiasm of Chinese thinkers of the Confucius and Lao-Tse type--who were all born in the "ancien regime" period of their state world--it seems very hazardous to try to determine anything at all as to high mysticism and grand legends in the beginning.

end of quote

Please note my refeferene to organized religion. I have nowhere asserted that the Chinese as a people were without religious sentiment. Confucianism was arguably (and a good argument it is) the most telling influence on the Chinese polity and the behavior of individuals. Ancestor worship was the most common practice in pre-Manchu China.

You are correct. My post does not refer to "organized religion" yet I recalled it from Spengler and went back to look it up.