Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 14, 2019 8:18:05 GMT -8
The formal title is "Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution." But there is very little math in this interview. [ Original YouTube video] Most of you here have heard the basic arguments. So I suggest you skip forward to about the 34 minute mark where I think it begins to get interesting. I might add, Berlinski is not good in this and at times seems more than a little intellectually dishonest, particularly regarding the consciousness question. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 14, 2019 20:52:23 GMT -8
One thing that struck me as particularly interesting was at the 34 minute mark where they talk about the state of the world and decay.
Meyer: I see two things when I look at nature: I see evidence of design . . . but you also see evidence of decay. And that’s also something that’s consistent, when designers make things there’s something called entropy . . . From the Judeo-Christian perspective, you would expect to see both evidence of original creation, or original design. But you would also expect to see that something’s gone wrong in nature as well. And I think we see both . . .
It’s interesting, for example, the problem of virulent bacteria . . . They are invariably the result of a loss of information as the result of a mutational process. So the very process that Darwinists have evoked to explain origin of good design is actually, I think, responsible for the evidence of decay.
There’s a question in philosophy known as theodicy.
Robinson: The problem of pain…
Meyer: So I think there are ways of thinking about that. But for me the evidence of design is powerful. It’s ubiquitous in life and at the level of physics, things like the fine-tuning of the laws of physics. So I see a very power signal of design but don’t deny the decay and the suffering in the world. I have a theological way of understanding it.
Robinson: If the bad viruses are always a result of defect….that fits the theology perfectly. The theology suggests that good is the entity. Evil has no independent existence. It’s always a defect or shortcoming of the good. Right? Isn’t that right?
Meyer: I think it does fit. And there’s quite a lot of microbiology that actually supports that viewpoint.
Think about the implications of that. Atheism (and Leftism) must always make friends with the decay and announce it as normal. Think about how, for instance, homosexuality (a dictionary-definition case of something being degenerated or decayed) is being mainstreamed as not a fault but something just as good as anything else. Perhaps even better.
No one here is talking about bullying gays. But you see the two different world views. Whatever one thinks of “Original Sin” or “a fallen world” as nomenclature, one can certainly get on board with the idea that even a perfect design, over time, will suffer decay. (This is almost certainly why there is sexual reproduction. It is a means to fix the decay. Reproduction by cloning would simply degenerate over time because of mutations. Many, if not all, species that clone have a sexual reproduction stage in their life cycles. Aphids come to mind.)
The theology (at least from a Christian perspective) couldn’t be clearer: We are all broken in some way and must connect or re-connect with the Divine (to be saved, healed, and made whole). But we are not to normalize brokeness even while admitting to its ubiquity. It is something to rise above or forgive, not something to make excuses for or treat as exemplary.
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Post by kungfuzu on Aug 25, 2019 20:35:54 GMT -8
Another area of pseudo-science which doesn't receive the amount of criticism which it deserves is psychiatry. If anyone needed further proof that it is nothing but personal opinion made to pass for science through an argot of mumbo-jumbo developed to fool people, then this retired professor from North Carolina should convince you. A Nut of the First OrderCan anyone doubt that modern "psychiatry" is anything other than left-wing political cant with a gloss of technical double-talk? This guy is just the most open example of this phony "science." The only difference; he is now speaking the simple language of the demented instead of the usual pseudo-intellectual argot.
One of the best things about the Trump presidency is that Trump drives leftists insane and makes them come out of the closet and say what they really think about Trump and normal Americans who support him. They and their lunatic beliefs are now on display for all to see.
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Post by timothylane on Aug 25, 2019 20:50:32 GMT -8
Yes, I've read about that chap, too. You may recall that some magazine (I think it was miscalled True) in 1964 polled psychologists and/or psychiatrists on whether Goldwater was a nut. Most wisely didn't answer, but a significant number of leftists jumped at the chance to smear him under cover of their alleged professional skills. Goldwater successfully sued the magazine for libel.
Similarly, in 2000 Janet Reno got some leftist psychiatrist to declare Elian Gonzalez some sort of victim of abuse (her favorite excuse for destroying people). As in the previous case, he never interviewed Elian or any of the relatives who took him in.
Similar things have been done since then. And of course they're all following standard Soviet practice -- anyone who disagrees with us must be crazy.
And now we have this particular lunatic. As one poster to an article on Town Hall observed, maybe now we know why he's a former professor.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 26, 2019 8:35:59 GMT -8
Most counseling, and perhaps all Freudian-based psychiatry, is of dubious benefit. I watched a TV show the other day (I forget which one…it might have been the extremely liberal “Boston Legal”) in which a counselor or psychiatrist was being blamed for the suicide of someone. And we should note that this is television. But it was interesting some of the data they presented (real or imagined). It mentioned that there was a high risk of making things worse via counseling….and to quite a significant degree. The lawyer’s case was something like “If a food product had this kind or risk associated with it, they would ban it.”
Again, this is “Boston Legal,” paragon of liberal virtue signaling. Still, it comes to mind in regard to the subject at hand. I had always figured that counseling was, in many cases, just a waste of money. But, indeed, might it not also be a source of great harm? This show mentioned that “digging up the past,” which is the stock in trade in psychological counseling, can do as much or more harm than good. Maybe.
I think in the case of Allen Frances, he certainly is no credit to his profession. And he sounds a little mentally off-balance himself from his words, elevating any disagreement about policy or people into the realm of “you must be crazy.”
Indeed, I do think Leftism does make people a little crazy. And dangerous. This isn’t speculation. They keep running this experiment and it keeps coming out the same.
What is (or can be) helpful for people is to talk out their problems with someone and get a different perspective on themselves. I’ve never done counseling but I’ve read about it and have had friends who are counselors. To me, it’s clear that most counselors mean to do well. But they are all wounded puppies to begin with. That's how they got into the profession. So they are out to “save others” but it seems to me to be an ongoing therapy for themselves in their attempt to help others. That is, customers are often just Guinea pigs for working out their own stuff.
My favorite TV counselor of all time is William Devane as Dr. Dix in the “Jesse Stone” series. Some of the best aspects of that show are the conversations between Devane and Tom Selleck. My bet is that you can find no-nonsense counselors like that out there, but you’re going to have to search far and wide.
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Post by kungfuzu on Aug 26, 2019 8:47:18 GMT -8
I have believed the same thing since I was in my late twenties/early thirties. One can't help but wonder how much they infect those they "treat" with their own pathology. The old saying, "Physician heal thyself" (first) would be good advice in such cases.
I completely agree with you as regards Dr. Dix in the Jesse Stone series.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 26, 2019 9:01:10 GMT -8
That is probably why such things as gardening are so effective at bolstering mental health, broadly defined. You’re working with something tangible. It’s living. You’re helping something. You’re shaping something. You’re outdoors. You’re escaping thinkiing about the same old stuff, round and round. I don’t personally believe that writing is particularly good for mental health. It can be a wormhole, especially when intellectualism allows for a practiced disconnect from reality and from common sense. Mark Twain might have been a good example of the reverse: Writing might very well have saved his life. It gave him purpose. But look on the internet. Anywhere. Do you get the sense that this is a clean, healthy activity? I almost never get that impression, although once in a while I come across an article (or a mind) who isn’t a font of toxicity or intellectualism. I enjoyed this rare article at National Review: The Diverless-Car Pile-Up by Michael Gibson. But reading a steady diet of David French, Kevin Williamson, Jonah Goldberg, or most of the others, is a recipe for moral and intellectual confusion and despair. Granted, this particular writer might have it wrong. Perhaps if enough monkeys sit tapping on their experimental self-driven typewriters, they can make these self-driving cars reliable enough. As one commenter notes, “What is 'good enough?' Simple - better than 95% of existing human drivers.” I mean, that’s not a particularly unattainable goal. |
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Post by timothylane on Aug 26, 2019 9:04:54 GMT -8
Well, to use the old joke quoted by a psychiatrist in the movie The Terminal Man, "Anyone who would go to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined." (I don't remember if the joke was also in the book. Michael Crichton could be very interesting at times, so maybe. Both the book and movie had the line, when the head of the project was asked about mind control, "What do you call compulsory education through high school?")
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 26, 2019 9:09:29 GMT -8
So true. We have went from training people in academic subjects that are tangibly useful (reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, etc.) to trying to mold them socially. Little Johnny quite often can’t read. But he knows to hate Donald Trump, Big Oil, and has a mad craving to “save the planet.”
If elected dictator (as in old Rome) to take care of an emergency, I would privatize public schools. I would break up these increasingly toxic institutions and not one dime of public support for colleges either. In this day and age of computers, are you telling me it takes $150,000 a year to sit in some lecture hall to listen to some pompous Harvard part-time asshole?
I don’t think so.
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Post by kungfuzu on Aug 26, 2019 9:10:03 GMT -8
I had not thought of that before, but believe you may just be right. He was in ways a sorry human being, and this came out somewhat in his later writings.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 26, 2019 9:29:42 GMT -8
I think reading and writing go together. Writing and traveling go together. But the common denominator is, you have to have something to write about other than (as is typical on Facebook and other anti-social media) what you’re having for breakfast.
That’s not to say we can’t all have a good chin-wag between friends. But I’m talking frankly and unabashedly about the obvious nature of what passes for online communication in the wider world. That which isn’t mind-numbingly trivial is so often outright toxic.
So read a good book. Watch a good movie. Travel to an interesting place. Have something stored away which then can elicit interesting writing. But what we see so often from professional online writers is obviously of the “publish or perish” variety. They must fill their word quota. And so often it shows. They very often actually have nothing (or very little) to say.
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Post by timothylane on Aug 26, 2019 10:34:49 GMT -8
Samuel Clemens seems to have been a misanthrope, which shows up in his popular fiction (the lynching attempt in Huckleberry Finn, for example) as well in essays such as "The Damned Human Rice" and short pieces such as "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg".
Many, many years ago, I read an article in Conservative Chronicle, I think by Charley Reese, noting that if it weren't for his ability to express himself (both talent, and having a column to do it in), there's no telling what might have happened to him. I can understand that very easily. People who can't do that may be some of those who decide to make more violent statements. On the other hand, today we're getting a lot of mass killers with their own manifestos, so I think this is changing. The El Paso shooter's problem wasn't inability to express himself. The Charleston church shooter's problem wasn't that he couldn't speak, but that no one chose to pay attention.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 26, 2019 11:23:42 GMT -8
Timothy, you speak volumes.
There’s been an entire Freudian movement since whenever that says that one must express oneself. Unexpressed (aka “repressed”) emotion and thought will explode out into society in unpredictable and usually violent ways. This mindset is throughly attached to a very large segment of society (that is, a whole lot of people believe this claptrap).
There is some truth in this, of course. But that’s not the point. The greater point was that this mindset was a free ticket to just “feel good and do it.” It was a liberal type of Indulgence. It’s become a society-wide “You show me mine and I’ll show you yours.” Never is anyone putting away what really ought not to be shown in the first place. We taken it so far, we regularly celebrate crudity. That arts are now thoroughly infected with scatology.
The practical aspect of this movement hasn’t been to create a society of Rembrandts. Instead, restraint has been shunted aside and called unhealthy “repression.” Nearly all forms of art are infected with this as mediocrity becomes not just routine but celebrated as good.
This is convenient for the amoral and immoral (not to mention those with not much talent). But as an honest commenter, I’ll readily acknowledge the reality of both sides. We do need to express ourselves. But there is an equal, if not greater, need to clean up our act. When you actually combine the two, you might once in a while get a Michelangelo.
Society has gone for the former. And to the extent anyone “cleans their act up,” they project that aspect onto the planet at large.
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Post by timothylane on Aug 26, 2019 11:34:31 GMT -8
You have a right to express yourself (First Amendment and all that). No one else has any obligation to listen, much less to agree. And they are just as free to express themselves critically in response.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 27, 2019 7:45:57 GMT -8
In theory. In practice, the right not to not be offended by conservative thoughts seems to be the rule now.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 12, 2019 11:58:25 GMT -8
This article illustrates why I have long found many scientists, particularly physicists, a bunch of speculating con artists. They go around making pronouncements about the universe, which cannot be proven or known, and act as if we should all believe their nonsense. Old Man UniverseThese people aren't the gods they seem to believe they are. |
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Post by timothylane on Sept 12, 2019 12:22:20 GMT -8
Timing events you can't witness is always tricky. A good example is the rate of genetic drift, which is used to compute the separation between species. But no one actually knows how reliable the numbers are, especially when used to deal with separations going back to Cambrian or Precambrian days. (Richard Dawkins has used it that way.)
One way it can be checked -- and in particular, validated as usable regardless of what numbers they come up with -- is to compare similar species. For example, at some point the line leading to gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans diverged from the line leading to orangutans. In theory, every species of the former 3 should be just about exactly the same genetic distance from every species of orangutan. Has any attempt ever been made to check something like this out? (It can be done with a lot of species, and should be as a matter of basic scientific research.)
I would think the minimum age of the universe would reflect how far we can see. If we see something 12 billion light years away, then the universe must be at least 12 billion years old. Of course, that leads into the question of how they actually determine such distances. A lot of questions in science involve using unreliable yardsticks to determine the value of other unreliable yardsticks.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 12, 2019 12:24:59 GMT -8
Generally called "assumptions." Sometimes I find the "assumptions" of science to be little different from those of religion. At least religion admits one requires faith.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 12, 2019 17:08:28 GMT -8
Oh, indeed. "Scientists" are playing fast and loose with "facts" about the universe. They are caught up in a web of baloney.
But although some of these facts might be interesting, the dirty little secret is that whether the universe is 15 billion years old or 13 billion years old, that tells us nothing about the why there is a universe, what the meaning is, etc.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 12, 2019 17:17:45 GMT -8
Well, I'm currently reading The Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies (a Kindle copy, a little over one third complete). So far there hasn't been much on the title issue (which is unfortunate, because that's why I chose to read it). He covers the history of cosmology and the related aspects of modern physics, and so far there are bits and pieces I can understand.
In essence, there are lots of theories, not all of them supported (which makes them nothing more than pure, if sometimes interesting, speculation). The Goldilock Enigma itself, of course, is the question of why our universe happens to be well suited for Life As We Know It. This can lead at least to asking Big Questions such as who and why. I'll keep you posted when he finally gets to these issues.
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