Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
A topic that probably causes among the most heated discussions on this blog is the attempt to either displace evolution from Public School Curriculum, or to at least give “intelligent design” equal footing to evolution. My own opinion is that “intelligent design”, or “Creationism” as some call it, has no place in our public school system. Those who would force it on our schools would be destroying the Constitutional separation of Church and State. We saw a blog post by Professor Turley a week ago discussing some crazy State Legislator in Missouri introducing a bill to teach “Creationism” as a scientific theory and to teach “Evolution” as a philosophy, almost all who commented were not only outraged, but some disparaged Missouri as a backward state. A few of the comments belittled religion in general. http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/15/missouri-legislator-introduces-bill-to-teach-creationism-as-a-scientific-theory-and-to-teach-evolution-as-a-philosophy/ . Another blog post by Professor Turley in October 2012, about Missouri Senate Candidate Todd Akin brought a firestorm of angry comments, also disparaging Missouri. http://jonathanturley.org/2012/10/15/akin-disproves-evolution/#comments Interestingly this Conservative State voted for Todd Akin’s opponent when Election Day came around.
Earlier on April 1st, 2012 David Drumm (Nal) did a guest blog titled “The Evolutionary Gorilla in the Room” http://jonathanturley.org/2012/04/01/the-evolutionary-gorilla-in-the-room/ and received almost 240 comments. Now in truth this was an excellent guest blog and certainly drew a lot of discussion. But as I perused the comments, all 238 of them, I noticed something that I think is worth discussing. More than half of the comments were between Gene Howington and Dredd as a continuance of their ongoing argument about Dredd’s microbial theories. I must admit that when it comes to the scientific aspects of biology, I tune out as quickly as Lawrence Rafferty does when Calculus is raised. Another long time regular Bron did have more than a few comments as he tried to insinuate Ayn Rand into the discussion as usual. J Now here is the interesting part, on all three of those blogs there was nary a voice raised in defending “intelligent design.” While here at the blog many of the usual suspects are hostile to organized religion, we do have more than a few “religious” people who drop by and comment. Given the tradition of contentious, yet “civil” discussion here how can that be? I think I have a possible answer to that coming from a study done at MIT, by a renowned Physicist and I must admit I found his answer surprising.
In a Huffington Post article dated 2/12/13 (Darwin’s birthday), Mark Tegmark, MIT Physicist, wrote this to begin his article titled: “Celebrating Darwin: Religion and Science Are closer Than You Think”:
“He looked really uneasy. I’d just finished giving my first lecture of 8.282, MIT’s freshman astronomy course, but this one student stayed behind in my classroom. He nervously explained that although he liked the subject, he worried that my teaching conflicted with his religion. I asked him what his religion was, and when I told him that it had officially declared there to be no conflict with Big Bang cosmology, something amazing happened: his anxiety just melted away right in front of my eyes! Poof!
This gave me the idea to start the MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins, which we’re officially publishing today in honor of Charles Darwin’s 204th birthday. We found that only 11 percent of Americans belong to religions openly rejecting evolution or our Big Bang. So if someone you know has the same stressful predicament as my student, chances are that they can relax as well. To find out for sure, check out the infographic below.”
I frankly don’t know how I could present the “infographic” chart from the article because the technology is beyond me so I suggest you follow this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-tegmark/religion-and-science-distance-between-not-as-far-as-you-think_b_2664657.html and see it for yourself because I think it is of great interest to those, who like myself are nonplussed by the resurgence of religious Fundamentalism, The “infographic” is done as a circular chart that lists all the religions practiced in this country, their percentage of the population and each religious belief’s official view of Evolution. Only about 11% percent of the religious population of this country belong to faiths that are opposed to Evolution, For instance:
Catholics are 23.9% of the population and their official teachings see no conflict with Doctrine.
Methodists represent 6.1% of the population and feel evolution is “not inconsistent with religious doctrine.
Lutherans represent 4.6% of the population and of them only 1.4% (The Missouri Synod) are opposed to the theory of Evolution.
People with no Church affiliation represent 16.4% of the population and see no conflict.
Jews represent merely 1.7% of the population and 1.3% see no conflict with Evolution, while the other .4% have no official position on it.
There are conflicts between the various Baptist and Presbyterian Denominations, with some accepting Evolution and some rejecting it. Again please look at the chart at the link because I guarantee you will find it as absorbing as I did.
What are we to make of this data which demonstrates that of the various religious beliefs that make up our country, 89% seemingly have no religious conflict with Evolution? Yet Evolution has become a major issue. Professor Tegmark comments:
“So why is this small fundamentalist minority so influential? How can some politicians and school-board members get reelected even after claiming that our 14 billion-year-old universe might be only about 6,000 years old? “That’s like claiming that my 90-year-old aunt is only 20 minutes old. It’s tantamount to claiming that if you watch this video of a supernova explosion in the Centaurus A Galaxy about 10 million light-years away, you’re seeing something that never happened, because light from the explosion needs 10 million years to reach Earth. Why isn’t making such claims political suicide?
Part of the explanation may be a striking gap between Americans’ personal beliefs and the official views of the faiths to which they belong. Whereas only 11 percent belong to religions openly rejecting evolution, Gallup reports that 46 percent believe that God created humans in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. Why is this “belief gap” so large? Interestingly, this isn’t the only belief gap surrounding a science-religion controversy: whereas 0 percent of Americans belong to religions arguing that the Sun revolves around Earth, Gallup reports that as many as 18 percent nonetheless believe in this theory that used to be popular during the Middle Ages. This suggests that the belief gaps may have less to do with intellectual disputes and more to do with an epic failure of science education.”
Professor Tegmark’s is of the opinion that scientific education in America has been a failure and thus we have the gap between religious belief and science. I think his explanation is a rather middle of the road one and to that extent I disagree with him. The science education I received in elementary and high school was excellent, even if I was too lazy a student to study much. How much I do know scientifically and how much those peers of my age know is quite adequate. There has been a two pronged attack on our educational system that began in the late 60’s. A conscious effort to “dumb down” the people of America has been in effect since then to make them more pliable and easier to fool. The first part has been cutting funding and the second part has been attacking the curriculum. If you add to it the evolving of the Internet and the changes that has wrought, we see that it is not that the scientific education has failed, but the political support for it.
Most of us assume when we are told by someone that they are deeply religious and know their “bible” front to back, that they are truthful. I believe that in their hearts most feel they are being truthful, but their truth falls far short of reality. Many people don’t read their entire holy documents, but instead rely on their religious leaders to guide them as to what is “true” and what is important. We know that some religious leaders focus on what THEY think is important like The Book of Revelations and they don’t “preach” the Jesus who gave The Sermon on the Mount” I think there are many, like Professor Tegmark’s first year student who didn’t know just what his denomination believed about the Cosmos. This is not just true for Christians, but I believe it is true for Jews, Muslims, Hindu’s and Buddhists.
Another problem is our mainstream media plays a role in religious ignorance. I addressed this in July 2011. I was writing about the many TV documentaries being produced on networks like The History Channel and even ABC’s Primetime-Nightline which ran a series titled “Battle With the Devil”, a show that “investigates the belief in satanic will or possession by a demon”. Because the Religious Right in this country is so well funded, they speak with a loud voice. Our media, corporate controlled, fears anything that might hurt the bottom line, so they cater to those with the loud voices and the money behind them. http://jonathanturley.org/2011/07/23/fundamentalist-religion-and-tv-documentaries-a-problem/ What we see then is that a population if 11% in our country, that is working to force their silly, medieval beliefs onto all of us.
Two days ago Professor Tegmark followed up with a second Huffington Post article relating his experiences after he posted his first article. Here are some snippets from it:
“I’d been warned. A friend cautioned me that if we went ahead and posted our MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins, I’d get inundated with hate-mail from religious fundamentalists who believe our universe to be less than 10,000 years old. We posted it anyway, and the vitriolic responses poured in as predicted. But to my amazement, most of them didn’t come from religious people, but from angry atheists! I found this particularly remarkable since I’m not religious myself. I have three criticisms of these angry atheists:
1)They help religious fundamentalists:
A key point I wanted to make with our survey is that there are two interesting science-religion controversies: a) Between religion & atheism b) Between religious groups who do & don’t attack science
2)They could use more modesty:
If I’ve learned anything as a physicist, it’s how little we know with certainty. In terms of the ultimate nature of reality, we scientists are ontologically ignorant. For example, many respected physicists believe in the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, according to which a fundamentally random process called “wavefunction collapse” occurs whenever you observe something. This interpretation has been criticized both for being anthropocentric (quantum godfather Niels Bohr famously argued that there’s no reality without observation) and for being vague (there’s no equation specifying when the purported collapse is supposed to happen, and there’s arguably no experimental evidence for it).
3)They should practice what they preach:
Most atheists advocate for replacing fundamentalism, superstition and intolerance by careful and thoughtful scientific discourse. Yet after we posted our survey report, ad hominem attacks abounded, and most of the caustic comments I got (including one from a fellow physics professor) revealed that their authors hadn’t even bothered reading the report they were criticizing. Just as it would be unfair to blame all religious people for what some fundamentalists do, I’m obviously not implying that all anti-religious people are mean-spirited or intolerant. However, I can’t help being struck by how some people on both the religious and anti-religious extremes of the spectrum share disturbing similarities in debating style.
Having watched the religious debates that go on here continually, I do think that Professor Tegmark has a valid point. Although I am a Deist, I have no affection for either organized religion, or for the “holy books” that make up their various canons. However, I have in my life experienced what I would call the ineffable, so I personally won’t preclude the fact that there is a “Creative Force” of some kind that drives this Universe. Please understand me in this, because as Tegmark saw even his peers criticized him far too quickly: Because I don’t preclude doesn’t mean I think there is one, I just won’t rule it out. From what I know of modern physics in its current fashion there is the belief that the Universe is a lot “weirder” than science at the beginning of the 20th Century imagined it to be.
While I understand that most of us are angry and fed up with those 11% who believe in something like Genesis, perhaps we should aim our fire directly at that group of benighted fools and accept that others might be more approachable. What do you think? As I finish this I have a vision in my head of having to duck, where do you think that comes from?
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
`
Speaking of Keith Richards.
Is he Evolving, does he have himself as a Religion, and is his art the result of painstaking experiments, as in Science.
Some artists are like old vintage wines: some improve with time, others go flat and are in fact dead..
Here is 12 years after the video posted above.
Answer the questions for yourself.
That is to say: studying science is correctly a waste of time for lawyers, and a number of other professions as well. Understood, I hope!
No snarks hiding here.
Feel free to correct other types of “errors”.
EVOLUTION, RELIGION AND SCIENCE INCLUDING QUANTUM PHYSICS
We can believe, but hopefully not worship the science of quantum physics,which of course (?) lies behind our being here, evolving, and developing religions.
Anything at the quantum level can not be seen to happen. Any measurement constitutes an intrusion, and thus an influence which is (often?) indeterminate. In the famous double split experiment, hypothetical as well as in the lab proves that electrons are “aware” of being examined, Each and every slowly emitted electron. The observer is part ot the system and thus effects it.
Someone quoted above Nils Bohr in his famous quote, which I won’t repeat, but will say for myself that the bandying of quantum by posters here is to prove one has not understood WTF ýou are talking about.
It has been perhaps 75 or more years since Bohr said that.
And we are in fact no closer today to understanding quantum phenomena than then. “Strings” I won’t bother talking about. Wasted years!
Is there an unseen mechanism that determine when a reaction will occur, when a radiation decay generated particle will be emitted?
What mechanism lies behind that? Unlike Einstein, I will leave God out of the question.
Statistics of atomic decay can be determined for a large (number of atoms) in a mass, but not for any individual atom. Same with regard to the rate of chemical reactions.
In a mass, yes there is a measurable reaction rate on our human scale of things, but NOT for any individual atoms interacting to form a compound.
Of course, everyone here knows this!??? No snark, just irony as emphasis.
Lawyers study how many bailiffs can dance in pairs with judges on a pin while receiving bribes. Adding a touch of humor berating our system of injustice.
Earlier I said that I would eschew gettiing into two person’s argument, but let me try another technique, only quoting a sentence or two and quibbling over them.
“The best explanation of the mechanisms behind adaptive evolution is still natural selection.”
Summarizing a needed long exposition which is needed, with one sentence, is a useful tool when tired.
That this was snarky was dut to my inability to phrase it better.
And I haven’t had my breakfast yet.
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“The research and development of scientific evidence and discussions (in peer reviewed papers and about peer reviewed papers) tells us what is in the shit that happens.”
Which proves actually nothing. Peers reviewed peers for centuries in science. Both people who review and the journal system itself can be and probably are corrupt. See Chomsky, et al. One more authority!
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Descending to ad hominems is in effect conceding that the other has won. My wife taught me that. When anger enters, then reasoned thougjt flees. However, this may only be a debased debate technique
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´How can a beloved popular belief (=science in medicine). be replaced by a “better one”. Love of new things overrides comfort.. And of course the strife eternal between the young and the old, ie people.
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One more: ´Prions and viruses are not biotic, ie living. Then how come they are dependent on a biotic substrate to procreate. Prions, in my ignorance, could be the result of a mutation. Folding proteins to increase does not seem to be a part of the abiotic world.
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Do i love to niip at people’s heels? No, but decorum and rules, plus the slowness of this debate technique (ie internet blogging) are irritating.
Why is a two-man fight so sancrosanct? I can give reasons but won’t.
Oh,yes I will. Congress is one example of meeting the need of reasoning on a matter..
A mob, as one of our programs called Debate often is, often descend into chaos with interrupting non-sequiturs and blatther, which can yield little in terms of a reasoned conclusion by any part. Even if in Congress the number of consecutive speakers may be large, you can be sure that approved party line will be observed. Which brings up back to the dialogue between two parties (pun not intended).
Guaranteed so long that none will read it. Brevity is best. Our brains are accustomed to sound bites. The writings of the 19th century philosophers suits me best.
pete9999
the influenza virus doesn’t care if you believe in it or not, but if it did not mutate then one vaccination would keep you from getting the flu for life.
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Thanks, I got a chuckle out of that. Well said.
A virus cares about nothing, not even itself. It’s not alive. It doesn’t mean you harm. It doesn’t know that you exist, or that it exists.
Likewise, evolution doesn’t care whether you believe that it happens.
You’re caught within evolution. It produced you. It doesn’t care about you.
The theory of gravitation doesn’t know you exist. The effect that the theory describes, gravity, just kills you if you jump out of a plane without a parachute. It’s real. It matters not, whether you believe in the theory. Nothing personal.
Oh, and an atheist is a person who doesn’t believe in a deity. That’s all it means. It’s not a religion. It’s not a belief. It’s a lack of belief.
A true atheist doesn’t sit around thinking, “I believe there’s no deity.”
A true atheist never thinks about it, at all, any more than you sit around thinking, “I believe there’s no Santa Claus.”
I’m also pretty certain that without violating separation of church and state I could draw up a high school curriculum that incorporates the Bible (and all the other books of faith and the world’s great mythologies) with the result that every graduate would probably be a secular humanist — and by using current teaching practices.
The modern theory of cosmology would serve as the background for geology, geography, biology, and even physics. Before that, though, the students would be taught the parameters of science and the scientific method so that the modern theory of cosmology could be compared and contrasted with the various creation stories.
Grammar class would examine the 23rd Psalm as an extended metaphor, as would also be done for Frost’s equally beautiful but not divinely inspired The Road Not Taken. In literature we could examine the precursor of Noah’s flood in the Gilgamesh. In history, we could search for the real Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha. Of course the comparative religion’s class would begin with the following video —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eoxt1hRm9c
BTW, Mike, the history course would correct the misconception that “the Pilgrims who founded a section of this country left Europe because they weren’t free to express their religious beliefs there.” Actually, as emigres in the Netherlands they were free to exercise their religious beliefs to their hearts’ content, the same as everyone else and therein was the rub — their kids were being affected by liberal beliefs. They mostly sailed to the New World for economic reasons because, as emigres in the Netherlands, work was hard to come by and there was no social net. In fact, their trip to AmeRica was funded by venture capitalists intent on exploiting the beaver fur trade with the Indians. In fact, within just a few years after the Pilgrim’s and other European arrivals, the New England beaver population was nearly wiped out
I’ve just spent nearly two entertaining hours (the links slow things down) reading every word of this comment and responses, even those of folks I usually skip over. Kudos to all.
Getting back to the original infographic, my denomination happens to have the longest red strip on the chart. Oh, well, my denomination is also known for folks not agreeing with each other.
There seems to be minor semantic games going on in some of the responses, the same sort of word games that are used by my denomination.
The most serious word game is equating a scientific “theory” to the common use of the word as meaning “hypothesis.” Sloppy wordsmanship makes for a sloppy argument.
The other is the word “belief” or its variants. As rightly noted, we personally know very little, and most of that is limited to personal experiences which themselves may have been mis-perceived. We operate on beliefs. The issue is whether the belief is warranted or not, a warranted belief being based on facts scientifically observed or derived — something that can be measured or observed in our common four dimensional reality, Something natural.
Or our belief is based on faith — something that cannot be scientifically proven, measured, or observed directly or indirectly (I added that last clause to pick up dark energy and matter), something outside our ordinary four dimensional reality. Something unnatural. Something for which there is no reason to believe. Faith.
If I could prove God, wherefore faith?
And that is by definition, And that is part of the teachings of my denomination — that faith is a gift from God. He is not a scientific proof. And this should make people of faith to be among the humblest of all folks, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.
Often a believer will comment that disbelief is the opposite of faith. No it isn’t. Certitude is the opposite of faith,
Certitude is the believer’s stumbling block, for it blinds the faithful to an indelible and eradicable corollary of his faith that will follow him in his walk all the days of his life.
He could be wrong.
There is a difference between “believe” and “believe in.”
One is a statement of fact, the other is a statement of hope. Both terms have wiggle room. It is more scientifically accurate to say that evolution is a fact. I believe in using facts to explain our universe.
Whether there is a Prime Being is a matter of faith, hope and conjecture. If one wants to believe in that concept it is a free society. But do not try to impose that faith based belief as a substitution for the empirical experimental method.
Riesling
1, February 23, 2013 at 3:14 pm
If evolution is scientific fact, why does one have to “believe” in it?
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the influenza virus doesn’t care if you believe in it or not, but if it did not mutate then one vaccination would keep you from getting the flu for life.
Interesting find there Indigo. I’m marginally aware of Kropotkin’s work because I was taught evolution by a professor very much in the proper Darwinian meaning of “survival of the fittest” as having been distorted by Huxley into something it wasn’t. I have a fairly robust understanding of the disservice Huxley did. The way I was taught cooperation and competition are polar opposite inputs and that while both can be drastically influenced by environmental and resource factors (cooperation being easier when resources are abundant and vice versa), when all things are equal neither is more important than the other as an input for natural selection. I’m not too surprised to find that I agree with Gould’s criticisms of both men’s argument, but pleasantly surprised that he and I both ended at the same biological/ethical/sociological place vis a vis finding a basis for ethics in the natural world. I agree with Gould on a lot of things (especially the idea of punctured equilibrium), but not everything.
That article was a keeper though. I bookmarked it. Thanks.
Makes me want to go read Kropotkin’s original works.
@gene, dredd
You two may be interested in this article by Stephen Jay Gould, “Kropotkin was no Crackpot.”
http://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm
It presents a coherent critique of Darwin’s view of competition from the perspective of an overlooked school of Russian evolutionary biology.
Essentially, the Russians viewed Darwin as a provincial Brit too heavily under the influence of Malthus, which makes enough sense given Darwin’s life on an island nation; Kropotkin, however, in the expanse of the Russian wilderness, was attuned to other, symbiotic dynamics.
Evolution. A lot of things have evolved over time. Take the Sixth Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill. It is written in stone. Then along comes the Y’all Cans. The Y’all Cans are a group who really thrive in the southern United States but can be found in all 50 states. They say that the Sixth Commandment has evolved and that If “you would read youre Bible JoeBob, you would know that the state can execute a murderer”. That is what we sometimes get on the blogsphere if we discuss the killing of a human by The People of The State of Texas. The Sears Roebuck Bible has evolved to the situation where it is ok for all of the people of a state to kill. Of course they call it an “execution”. When my time comes, and thank dog I dont live in Texas, I would not want to have to explain away my role to Saint Peter in the killing of all of those humans by the executioners in Texas on death row. Saint Peter says that Y’all Can is not a defense. So residents of the State of Texas beware and you better have a better reply to Saint Peter than that apCray about the Sears Roebuck Bible.
Interesting quote considering you’re the one who keeps insisting that microbes, viruses and prions are the dominant force in evolution instead of recognizing that any form of symbiosis is simply another input into the matrix of probability that makes up natural selection. You bemoan control and yet seek to explain away parts of human nature by stating microbes, et al., are the most important influence on adaptive evolution.
Curious contradiction.
Unless, of course, one is misapplying misunderstood science to create a surrogate for unseen forces that control our lives. Misunderstood science is a poor substitute for religion just as misunderstood religion is a poor substitute for science.
Maybe you’ve changed your mind and now recognize horizontal gene transfers for what they are which is namely an influence but not an ipso facto determinative or controlling influence any more than environment and genes are in the process of natural selection. And that microbes don’t make art, have civilization or practice either religion or science. Or that abiotic is alive despite the word itself meaning “physical rather than biological; not derived from living organisms: abiotic chemical reactions
devoid of life; sterile”. All of which are erroneous claims you have previously made.
All in all, nested in the anthropomorphic fallacy.
Nature doesn’t need a boss. There is nothing magical about life. It happened as a function of a complexity threshold being reached and it probably happens anywhere there is enough liquid water and basic elements to mix with enough energy for a biotic chemistry/biome to arise. There are millions of worlds with life – technological or otherwise. Just so, there are probably just as many worlds that were near misses and one or more factor wasn’t suitable for anything but simple life and/or not quite making it to biotic chemistry over the life threshold abiotic chemistry. I know this because mathematics tells me so.
Life is in many ways simply a symptom of the fractal nature of this reality.
Wiggy McSmart once said: “where there is a need of control, there is insecurity.”
Wiggy McSmart once said: “where there is a need of control, there is insecurity.” Dredd
Please tell that to my wife of 24 years.
“… dominating or controlling our evolution …”
Interesting that these words glom on to each other with control at the nucleus …
Dr. Keith Richards of Rolling Stone University participated in an experiment that shows inter alia that “control” is kinda out …
Young species like homo sapiens are not even in the movie “Control” … a science fiction where religios and evolos turn their word factories on each other … boom bam pop crack …
None of which negates that prions are not alive, that viruses ride on the cusp of abiotic and biotic chemistry and that neither are dominating or controlling our evolution. Anyone who thinks they are doesn’t understand evolutionary processes.
Gene H. 1, February 23, 2013 at 12:50 pm
Microbes do a lot of neat things for higher order complex beings. Some of them kill us, but a great many of them don’t. Some of them provide benefit. A lot of them do nothing at all to us. The same can be said of their non-living simpler cohorts in smallness, the prions and the viruses.
They are not, however, controlling our genetic destiny.
The best explanation of the mechanisms behind adaptive evolution is still natural selection.
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Mike S has affection for you, as he mentioned in past comments and in the body of his post today:
Perhaps getting a room is in order? 😉
I jest.
Seriously now, I appreciated your comment, even though it seemed to me to be overly cautious in the sense of not giving in too much … it was a good mixture of defense and offense.
And ripe with challenges: you used “non-living … cohorts … prions … viruses”
Gene H, don’t you realize that I sense it when you dis my homies?
In my post up-thread to the good Swede I mentioned than none other than the owner of Schrödinger’s Cat had a published a paper: “What is Life” (1944).
Now, if such a notable cat owner can professionally wonder “what is life“, why can’t I take a tad of umbrage at your, in effect, calling my homies “deadbeats” sir?
I will remind you that you have not offered sufficient evidence and discussion about DeathLife Valley — the place where dead became alive in evolutionary terms (I called it a “canyon” up-thread talking with Idealist707)
Anywar, we need to remember the bigga badda boom (a.k.a. The Big Bang) was not a biotic event, it was an abiotic event.
Mother Bang was a machination baby.
Way on down Highway 61 is the place where the machination became biotic undulation.
At the canyon I talked about with Idealist707 just up-thread.
So here is the matrix:
Or as Dr. Keith Richards of Rolling Stones University puts it: “shit happens.”
The research and development of scientific evidence and discussions (in peer reviewed papers and about peer reviewed papers) tells us what is in the shit that happens.
Dr. Per-Olov Löwdin, a Swedish genius, parachuted into that deep canyon, that wierd canyon of quantum physics, (“DeathLife Valley”) and came up muttering something like “quantum biology.”
Was he talking about a place of convergence, a place where unnatural selection and natural selection overlap, oscillate back and forth like a tunneling proton?
Anyway, I appreciated your comment, but still wonder about my homies the prions and viruses being non-life.
I mean in the sense of the morality that thinks life is better than machines.
Montessori kids make a “timeline of the universe” in their early years. They lay it out on a long, long, long roll of felt, and they measure and illustrate all sorts of geological events all the way along it. I think the roll of felt they use in the construction of their time-line is 10 or 12 feet long. Way way way at the far end (being the most recent years) they have about a half inch for human history. The creation of this time-line is a very hands-on visual and tactile experience for them to be able to understand what their world is about. I have never met a Montessori-educated kid who had not LOVED the work they did on the time-line.
So I was in a used book store recently and I saw a beautiful book, about 15″ by 28″, like a coffee table book, called “The World Chart of World History,” and I thought it would be a beautiful representation of the time-line, but in a paper form and capable of being thumb-tacked onto a wall somewhere, and I picked it up for my friends who are Montessori teachers.
Woe is me, I got home and opened it to discover that it STARTS with Adam and Eve, and the caption reads, “God created the Heaven and the Earth.” The funniest part is that the author was Professor Edward Hull (1829-1917), a geologist and stratigrapher, who was the director of the geological survey of Ireland! And he was Professor of Geology at the Royal College of Science in Dublin. He has the dates all set forth in there, including the ages of a lot of the folks represented. Eve has a cute curly hairstyle and dimpled knees. She and Adam wear their traditional grapeleaves! The world dates back to 4004 BC.
Kind of messed up that HTML code, but it is readable anyway.
Riesling:
belief</strong
/biˈlēf/
Noun
1. An acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.
2. Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction.
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If I KNOW something, I also believe it.
If I have a belief based on a hunch or faith, I do NOT KNOW for certain it is true, but will bet on it anyway.
c.f.: I know there was a horrific wreck at the end of the NASCAR race at Daytona just a few minutes ago. I saw it live on television. I do not know if there were any serious injuries. I can safely say “I believe that was a bad multi-car crash.” Those statements are based on observation, even though I am hundreds of miles from Daytona.
I believe there were no serious injuries, based on observation and what the television commentators said, but have no way to know that for sure at this moment in time. The latter is just a belief, not a knowing.
I believe it may rain tomorrow, so if I go out I will take an umbrella. My belief in rain is based on what the weather report says on the little weather bug on my computer toolbar. I do not know if it will rain or not, but will take precautions based on my belief.