FINE! I saw it and it is every bit as good as they say. Now on to the supprisingly small amount of nitpicking…

Copernicus Grades Cameron On The Science of AVATAR!! — Ain’t It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news..

In my last post I drew attention to the Collapse journal and its role in disseminating the so-called Speculative Realist ‘movement’. The proposed sixth issue promises much to those working on progressive ecocritical and ecophilosophical projects without necessarily cementing the journal’s relationship to Graham Harman et al. Having recently spoken with editor Robin Mackay about the new volume, I can confirm that it is still in preparation, but an announcement will be made soon and advance orders will be possible at that time. Arriving in December, “late contributors and general perfectionism have held up publication…” Perhaps more interestingly, Mackay expressed concern over the journal’s affiliation with the latest philosophical trend, stating that “it’s not really centred on ‘SR/OOO’, indeed I’d be happy to distance Collapse from this apparent new orthodoxy!”

Following Collapse V’s inquiry into the legacy of Copernicus’ deposing of Earth from its central position in the cosmos, Collapse VI: Geo/philosophy will pose the question: Is there nevertheless an enduring bond between philosophical thought and its terrestrial support, or conversely, is philosophy’s task to escape the planetary horizon, to abjure ‘everything that makes us scurry about blindly on the desolate surface of the earth’ (Badiou)?

Following early-modern geophilosophical experiments in utopia, geographies and cartographies real and imaginary have played a double role in philosophy, serving both as governing metaphor and as an ultimate grounding for philosophical thought. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant draws a direct line of correspondence between the spherical shape of the Earth as a planetary model for the horizon of thinking and the nature of transcendental idealism, so as to establish and determine the boundaries in which human thinking should and may occur – the spherical shape of the Earth as an unequivocal model for ‘the limits of all possible geography’. However, if Kant grants the Earth a direct determinative sovereignty in regard to thought, Nietzsche subverts the gravitational horizon of the Earth so as to bring about the possibility of the Great Politics and ‘Overman as the meaning of earth’. Thus Zarathustra begins his journey by exhorting to the people of the city, ‘Be faithful to the Earth’. Yet as his journey is prolonged, Zarathustra’s faith for the Earth turns into a longing for the ‘fresh air’, his will to remain faithful to the Earth is only nurtured by a ‘weightless affirmation’ of it. Schelling, on the other hand, thinks the earth as depth, inflecting Nietzsche’s weightless affirmation toward a profound, productive earth with a geological history: an earth turned inside-out, whose destiny is determined by its churning depths rather than by its surface inhabitants.

It is this enigmatic passage between the Earth as a geographical determination and the possibility of a weightless identification of the Earth that conditions Deleuze and Guattari’s discovery of a new ground for Geophilosophy – a philosophy that grasps thinking in relation to territory and earth.

Collapse VI: Geo/philosophy begins with the provisional premise that the Earth does not square elements of thought but rather rounds them up into a continuous spatial and geographical horizon. Geophilosophy is thus not necessarily the philosophy of the earth as a round object of thought but rather the philosophy of all that can be rounded as ‘an’ (or ‘the’) earth. But in that case, what is the connection between the empirical earth, the contingent material support of human thinking, and the abstract ‘world’ that is the condition for a ‘whole’ of thought?

Urgent contemporary concerns introduce new dimensions to this problem: The complicity of Capitalism and Science concomitant with the nomadic remobilization of global Capital has caused mutations in the field of the territorial, shifting and scrambling the determinations that subtended modern conceptions of the nation-state and territorial formations. And scientific predictions present us with the possibility of a planet contemplating itself without humans, or of an abyssal cosmos that abides without Earth – these are the vectors of relative and absolute deterritorialization which nourish the twenty-first century apocalyptic imagination. Obviously, no geophilosophy can remain oblivious to the unilateral nature of such un-earthing processes. Furthermore, the rise of so-called rogue states which sabotage their own territorial formation in order to militantly withstand the proliferation of global capitalism calls for an extensive renegotiation of geophilosophical concepts in regard to territorializing forces and the State. Can traditions of geophilosophical thought provide an analysis that escapes the often flawed, sentimental or cryptoreligious fashions in which popular discourse casts these catastrophic developments?

Collapse VI: Geo/philosophy will bring together philosophers, theorists, eco-critics, leading scientific experts in climate change, and artists whose work interrogates the link between philosophical thought, geography and cartography, in order to create a portrait of the present state of ‘planetary thought’.

There are a myriad contradictions in South Africa.  And none more so than the constant complaints about the paucity of science graduates in a region hailed as the cradle of humankind.  For this is also the region — and the country — where the unscientific creation myth still holds sway in most schools.

A curriculum that largely promotes blind faith within a society that also demands critical analysis and scientific rigor is doomed to create confusion.  Never mind the language issue if the message — in whichever of the country’s 11 official languages — is a blatant contradiction between faith in proclaimed absolute truths and the the need to question everything.

This is the contradiction too many of us live with today in a region most of the world — applying a scientific assessment based on the theory of the evolution of species — regards as the origin of homo sapiens.  The “Cradle of Humankind” at Sterkfontein, outside Johannesburg  and “digs” such as at the West Coast fossil park, north of Cape Town, provide a wealth of evidence about the origins of the planet and all that exists on it.

But it is evidence that is largely ignored or even contradicted within much of the schooling environment.  Shortly after his appointment as minister of education in 1994, Sibusiso Bengu was asked why he was not insisting that the theory of evolution be taught in all South African schools at all levels and he reportedly replied:  “I don’t want a revolution about evolution.”

In a country where the literal interpretation of Bibilical creation has been deeply implanted across all colours and classes, he was probably correct to be concerned about a backlash against any general introduction of evolutionary theory.  But it ensured that the line between dogma and rational thinking remained blurred.

The result was that teachers were left, especially at the primary school level, to carry on, if they wished, to preach that the stories contained in the book of Genesis in the Bible are the literal truth.  This despite the fact that most mainstream theologians accept the evidence presented by science about the age of the earth and the evolution of species.  However, when they do so, they add a theistic slant about the beginning of the beginning.

The Vatican, many Christian and Jewish groups, liberal Islamic and Hindu scholars all accept the evidence of the billions of years of history of our universe;  of the progress of evolution of species.  They merely maintain that these are the workings of divine laws;  laws stemming from an unknowable deity, from God.  This is a belief and, as such, requires no evidence;  but to science it remains an open question for which answers may or may not one day exist.

However, many lay members and some clergy of the various religions — in South Africa, more than 80 per cent of the population professes some form of Christian belief — do not accept the more nuanced approach of theistic evolution adopted by their leaders;  some hold fast to the literal, Biblical, text, others take on the idea of design, claiming that an intelligent force must lie behind the development of features such as the human eye.  But the design claims too, do not stand up to scientific scrutiny:  the human eye or the eyes of insects or fish or whatever all provide clear evidence of adaptation through millions of years of evolution and of the process of natural selection.

The explosion of knowledge about ourselves and all living things that accompanied the development of genetics has also underlined as never before, the evolutionary relationship of  living things.  There are, of course, arguments about precisely how or even exactly when various species parted company with a common ancestor.  But these. and other, similar, debates, are about the precise mechanics of the evolutionary process, they do not deny the process itself.

Such debates are also inevitable, because science, unlike dogma, does not lay claim to possessing the absolute truth.  All scientific truths are open to constant critical analysis:  they remain true within the bounds of our existing knowledge and are constantly refined and developed as our knowledge expands. That is how we, as a species, have progressed, sometimes against tremendous, often religion-based, resistance from those who benefit from maintaining ignorance.

Perhaps the best-known cases historically are those of Copernicus and Galileo who dared —correctly — to challenge the orthodoxy of the time that the earth was the centre of the universe.  Some 500 years have passed since then and it has been several hundred years since the first debates about evolution emerged, culminating in the production of Darwin’s Origin of Species, exactly 150 years ago this year (2009).

Since then, a wealth of geological, paleontological and, especially, genetic information has  underlined the veracity of the theory — not belief — of evolution.  Yet today, in the United States, surveys reveal that only 40 per cent of the population thinks that evolutionary theory is valid;  another 40 per cent opt for one or other form of creationism while 20 per cent admit that they do not know whether “human beings as we know them developed from earlier species of animals”.

Many among the creationist group are supporters of the “Creation Museum”, a multi-million dollar animated extravaganza in Petersburg, Kentucky that features human children playing alongside dinosaurs.  And, as late as 2005, the creationist lobby in the US attempted — using an “intelligent design” argument — to reintroduce creationism into the secular school system.

Surveys locally indicate that South Africa may have an even greater level of creationist belief;  that a considerable degree of ignorance exists about the evidence that continues to mount to validate evolution.  What seems certain is that a significant minority — if not a clear majority — of South Africans still cling to creation myths of one kind or other and that these continue to be promoted in many schools.  This is an indictment of the South African education system and a worrying sign for the future.

John Byl has some helpful interaction here with some of the latitudinarian neo-Calvinist thinking at Reformed Academic.  A couple of paragraphs that caught my attention:

Then, as now, the central issue concerned the nature of biblical authority and interpretation. The Cartesians argued that the Bible was not a source of knowledge in natural philosophy but that the Bible was accommodated to fallible human opinion. The orthodox Reformed theologians, on the other hand, insisted on a fully authoritative, inerrant Bible that must be interpreted in a literal, rather than allegorical, manner.

Upon reading the detailed account by Rienck Vermij The Calvinist Copernicans: The reception of the new astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575-1750 [2002, 452pp], one is struck by the remarkable similarity between the view of Scripture of the Cartesian theologians and that of the ReformedAcademic in its current attack on the historicity of Genesis 1-11.

On this episode of The Wheelhouse: Bower and “The Sweet Nasty” Chris Cause are joined by author – oooohhhhhh….classy! – BRETT COHEN. He wrote a book called “STUFF EVERY MAN SHOULD KNOW” to determine exactly what makes a man, manly and thus, how NON-manly they are. Then – since none of THAT interview was heard LIVE (due to blogtalkradio.com issues), we are joined early by COPERNICUS to prepare you for the BREEDERS CUP this weekend with an ALL-NEW “RACE HORSE OR GAY PORN” and then it’s off to the NFL where Copernicus challenges “The Champ” JEFF PECK in a Week #9 “STUMP THE SALLY”.

HEY…a couple of BIG TIME announcements to come on Sunday Night!

Download the Podcast – HERE!

So this is how it happened… an appealing story, though… one has to admit.

It’s really easy for people today to assume that people who lived ‘back then’ were dumber. 

And some modern historians want to belive that a lot of people who lived ‘back then’ were secret athiests, becuase today it’s pretty obvious that much of what organized religion will claim is fairly laughable and unscientific.  (Excepting for the christian ethical code, which in its historical sense, is probably one of the better ethical codes that any religion has come up with – a good mix of humanism and egalitarianism lies at the core of the gospels).

The other option, which the average layperson believes, is that people back then were just dumber, because they didn’t have so much technology as we have now, and because their society was less sophisticated.  Let’s clear that one up right away:  as individuals, we haven’t gotten any smarter over the last few hundred years, that’s for sure.  And the brightest minds of a few centuries ago were in many ways better, in a global sense, than most of the people that we can call a genius today.  Moreover, these people were not gullible – many of them were far more perspicacious than 99.9% of those of us who pretend to sophistication today–and a lot of this is because it was easier to be well-rounded back then, because we did not suffer from overspecialization like we do today:  a side effect of the inforamtion age, where the number of published books has mushroomed in the past 50 years, so that no one can be a polymath anymore.  In many ways, we are less well rounded human beings today, much more so in the past 50 years than any time in the past 500 years. 

So, when you really look at what the well-educated people of back then could accomplish, and what they thought about, compared with supposedly well-educated people of today, one could easily argue that, quite the contrary, we have actually become dumber as a species, and as a society, and as individuals (though the great egalitarianization of the past 50 years, as well as the increasing sophistication and anti-dogmatism of the liberal arts has shown, that in reality, as a culture, we have become much more sophisticated than before – only, we’ve lost the ability as individuals, I think I would argue, to be comprehensive – most of us, that is… with very few exceptions).

But what many historians can forget about historical people’s seemingly automatic faith, is that it was not necessarily based on gullability, or on lack of sophistication, or indoctrination, or desire to be patriarchal, or willful ignorance, or any other such thing.  Rather, it’s easy to forget that, until Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, it was scientifically almost impossible to blieve that there _wasn’t_ a god.

Yep, that’s right.  In ancient times, philosophers were more or less universally convinced that the world was created by someone, and therefore, God had to exist:  he was the one who had created everything.  And it was pretty obvious that someone had dictated the laws of physics and chemistry, and biology, and all the other laws of mathematics, and of science, and logic, and language, which seemed to them to be quite so obviously systematic, and regular, and well-thought out, so that it seemed manifest proof that, indeed, someone, some intelligence, had to have ordained these laws.  So, clearly, God existed (or gods).  And in fact, we really can’t disprove that at all today.

The problem is that then Greek thought got all mixed up with the Hebrew egocentrism where they took their own tribal god, and claimed that he was higher than everyone else (this was done during the Babylonian captivity, when the Hebrews were in danger of losing their identity… it was a good propaganda tool, and, probably unfortunately, it has worked for a long time).  The Greek-influenced lands became either Christian, or, later Muslim, which is an offshoot of Christianity/Judaism.  So that philosophical notion that God had to exist because a) someone had to have created the universe, and b) someone had to set the logical and orderly laws of science in place, got all intermarried with the Garden of Eden myth of creation of Adam some 8000 B.C., and that the earth was created in 7 days, and that the earth broke asunder when Adam ate the apple, and that Jesus had come and redeemed man, who was an innate sinner, and the earth would be made whole when he came back a second time, (and literally perfectly around again – as medievals believed it had been before the fall, because the rest of the cosmos seemed to be made of perfect spheres), and so the long and short is, that the philosophically logical propositions at the core got all tangled up with these notions of the universe that were derived (in Europe) from christian mythology. 

This cosmos was based on the Greek Ptolemy of Alexandria (3rd century B.C.), who had mathematically, and very convincingly, proved that the earth was the center of the universe, and that all the planets and sun and moon revolved around it.  By some trick of fate, this is so mathematically convincing, that it took mathematicians over 150 years to prove that Copernicus was superior to Ptolemy, after Copernicus pointed out that the Earth probably revolved around the Sun!  So, by a trick, it’s just as mathematically feasible that the Sun can revolve around the Earth, as vice versa.  So, the medievals accepted what seemed like the most obvious answer, and it was very verifiable, and in this cosmos, it looked like the sphere of the stars was fixed, like a planetarium dome, and that the lights in the sky were pinpricks in the black dome, which revealed the light of heaven.  How comforting!  And this dome was only a few thousand miles above the earth, and above that was the great golden walled city of heaven, with god’s palace at the centre!  But we’ve already talked about this when we talked about having faith.

Unfortunately, the earth got dethroned.  But wait, that’s not the end of the reason to believe in god!  Newton came along by the 1680s, and demonstrated the Newtonian laws of physics.  This, all people realized, showed just how simple and logical the principles of science were – and how absolute they were.  For someone to have made such an elegantly rational universe, was surely proof that God was intelligent, and reasonable, and had wanted everything in the universe to be well-ordered.  People became deists – they suggested that god was not interested in the details of everyday life, but, at least, he was benign, and orderly, like good president Washington, or perhaps more like some enlightened monarch.   They called him the ‘divine watchmaker.’  He had set the universe running, and then left it to its own devices.  It was up to man, in this view, to find the laws of the universe, and then to make the world into a better place, by tidying it up.  That was our work here on earth. 

Likewise, there was  no reason not to believe in the immortality of the soul – especially since it seemed as if all of the creatures on earth had been created by god as distinct, immutable and eternal species – meaning categories.  Since man was always man, and since man alone of all creatures combined intelligence with beastiality, then it stood to ancient reason (since Greek times) that when men died, their souls would remain part of the ether, the cosmic background – and also, there was no reason to believe that the animus, the breath, of creatures, was in essence their souls.  So, when you died, your breath/soul left you, and became part literally of the atmosphere.  Many people believed that animals’ souls worked in this way as well – but philosophers at least accepted that the intellectual parts of your mind were too much like those of God to have been just a fluke -

They reasoned this because, like Plato asks, how could we recognize beauty?  How could we figure out how to do math?  How could we discern the laws of mathematics themselves, and of physics, unless we were created out of the divine mind?  The divine soul?  How, indeed, could we recognize that a chair was a chair?  When there are so many types of chair in the world, how do we always know, as soon as we see it, that each one is supposed to be a chair?  even if it’s red, blue, black, fuzzy, hard plastic, leather, with a back, or without – how do we know that?  Plato argued that that’s because our minds partake in the divine mind.  And the same logic holds with understanding mathematical laws, which seem to be part of nature itself.  They determine how it works.

And then, as i’ve argued in other posts, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein come along, and put all of this into doubt.  But not that Einstein’s theory of relativity is only published in 1905.  And it took a while to sink in.  That was the first time that the newtonian ideas about the Divine Watchmaker could be scientifically called into question, and the notion that all things were random and relative could be scientifically maintained.   Even einstein tried to avoid this conclusion, and put in a ‘cosmological constant’ to account for God’s being there (which it turns out was a red herring – the cosmological constant isn’t there… adding further fuel to the notion that God can’t exist). 

But the point is, that all thorough the Ptolemaic and the Newtonian eras, that is, from at least 200 A.D. though 1905, there was no scientific reason to doubt the existence of God.  Even Darwin alone, who published the origin of species in 1859, and/or 1872, if I remember, didn’t disprove the existence of god – but he did make the universe much much older than it had seemed (as chemists and geologists then confirmed).  So that, at least, showed that instead of working in terms of a few thousand years, god had been working over literally billions of years – and that man had only been ‘created’ in the last fraction of that.  It all seemed like man was highly insignificant, and therefore, that man (no longer in god’s image, b/c his image was always evolving – not absolute) could not be a big part of god’s plan, and/or, if so, then he took his sweet time about it. 

After about the 1910s, then, it became increasingly obvious that the old notions about God, and the history of the world, and how god works in the world were not just myths, but that they had been happily ascribed to by the people who wanted to maintain themselves in power (namely rich white men)… it now seemed as if these were tools of oppression.  And in that vein, they look even more ridiculous to scientifically and humanistically minded people today, and the people who believed them seem even more benighted. 

But, it’s good to remember that it’s only been over the course of a single human lifetime that there has been any scientific reason to doubt the existence of god.  And, in the end, we still don’t know who created the universe, and why it works according to many laws that seem to have an internal logic.  And, as the cognitive philosopher/scientist david chalmers argues in The Conscious Mind, we’re still not really sure what consciousness is:  it certainly is more than what any machine we could make could ever have, even if it could learn… but that’s the topic for another post.  In the meantime – we shouldn’t be so smug.  There was in fact, what seemed like very compelling, logically, scientifically and mathematically verifiable evidence for the existence of God until very recently.  And in fact we now choose to ignore much of this (although the extreme age of the universe –only discovered in the 1920s through teh 40s– certainly makes the divine watchmaker seem distant in the extreme, to the point of us legitimately wondering why he would ever create our universe, and then wait 15 billion years before creating us)…

At any rate, when one really weighs all of the evidence, we have very little reason to be able to look down at our noses at our ancestors for their faith.  And in fact, if we take time to read their letters, especially those of so many writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and then we compare them with most of the literary production of the later twentieth century, we really do have to wonder what sort of people our society is producing, and whether we are missing quite a lot of the human potential in our current portrait of an ideal human being.

Leonardo, Jean-Baptiste, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, Thomas Aquinas, Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus, Galileo, Copernicus.

I like to think about how truly and deeply quiet it was…

From my own experience and from talking with other college professors, I know that the great majority of university students assumes that technology is almost all good.  Historians tell us that that the average person in western society became increasingly enamoured of science, and of increasing technology, since about the mid-nineteenth century; at roughly the same time when advances in chemistry and medicine enabled the creation of effective drugs on a whole new scale.  While many traditional medicines did help many ailments, there were also plenty of basic things which were untreatable by such methods.  For example, the industrial revolution caused many people to live crowded together in cities, so that they could be close to the factories where they often worked for 16 hour days, six days per week. 

But no one had yet discovered that the resulting sewage difficulties was a major cause of cholera, which would devastate whole towns, carrying off many of the children in partciular.  Then, scientists developed the germ theory of disease, which led to effective urban planning, and cholera began to be less of a factor.  Pasteur discovered how to keep bad milk from killing people, and in the earlier twentieth century, antibiotics were invented.  About the year 1900, asprin was discovered and put on the market, providing tremendous relief for people who had suffered chronic headaches for years:  L. M. Montgomery wrote in her journal that asprin was perhaps the single greatest invention in human history, in terms of how much suffering it relieved.  Today, we take a lot of this older stuff for granted, but the feeling remains:  people who have grown up in the presence of continuing medical miracles are very apt to be impressed by medical science, and to worship doctors as demigods.  And of course, they are right to do so, to a degree:  since doctors are pursuing one of the main goals of the species (which I have written about in this post), which is to become immortal (we may pretend otherwise, but this has always been a human goal, generally speaking–see the quoted post for details).

Since the 1970s, the microcomputer/electronics revolution has rapidly accelerated the pace of new gizmos which have been introduced to us as ‘consumers’; and these things seem to come in such a bewildering array, and seem to be able to do such marvellous new things, that it seems as if whole new realms of human possibility are being opened up every few years.  And, of course, there is plenty of truth to this, though, again, it’s also good to keep all of this razzle-dazzle in perspective–because in the end, all of our new technology is all focused to solving a very limited number of problems which face human beings.  All that the electronics revolution can do, in essence, is speed communication.  That’s it.  It can enable us to access other people’s thoughts and words faster, whether  these are being spoken live, or have been recorded in some written medium, or videotaped.  Art forms such as dance and music can also be accessed over distances this way, and our cars can access satellite tracking capabilities, etc., but it all boils down to access and organization of information.  Again, this is pretty handy, but, my point here is to point out that this is not the sum total of what humans are capable of.

Technology since the Industrial Revolution has enabled us as a species to pursue three goals:  first, the goal of ‘immortality’ (or health, if you’d like to put it that way).  Second, the goal of transportation:  we can transport ourselves more places faster.  Third, the goal of communication:  we can access more information faster, and/or organize our own thoughts more easily.

But at what cost?  I have already spoken in the last post  of the fact that, since the scientific revolution, western man (and now pretty much everyone else – though monotheistic fundamentalists are trying very hard to keep their heads in the sand) has very much lost the really comforting sense of being taken care of, which medieval monotheists had developed over the course of nearly 1,500 years.  In this view, the earth was the very centre of the universe, and, according to the medieval Caholics, Jesus had come down to earth in order to save it from the original sin which had consumed the earth after Adam and Eve were driven from Eden.  And the funny thing is, is that the notion that the erath is the centre of the universe, and that all planets revolve around it, is mathematically sustainable, given the tools which were available to ancient and medieval man.  In other words, by a funny trick of fate, the mathematics for an earth-centric universe happen to work out quite well, and they are quite consistent with one another, leading to the “proof” which held for 1,500 years that the earth was indeed the centre of it all.  But copernicus beginning in the 1540s (under the influence of the renaissance) began to question the mathematics behind the terrocentric universe, based on some very subtle incongruities.  The funny thing is, that for some 80 years, Copernicus’ own math was no more convincing than the old calculations of the Alexandrian Greek Ptolemy, on whom the medieval terrocentrism was based.  It took until the 1610s, and Galileo’s new findings, to turn the tide, and begin to prove that, sorry folks, the cosmos was not earth-o-centric.

The story of how the earth was dethroned as the centre of it all is a very interesting one, but we’ll have to skip that for now, so that we can move on to more recent developments.  The main point for now is, that when earth was dethroned, man was dethroned too.  And gradually, through the early 20th century, astronomers kept shrinking our place in the universe, i.e., they kept telling us that, well, the universe is far, far bigger than we ever imagined.  In the Ptolemaic system, medieval people believed that the sky was perhaps only a few tens of thousands of miles high, and that the stars were located in a fixed sphere (like a planetarium dome), and that on top of that was the beautiful walled and gated city of heaven.  Wouldn’t that be fabulous?  How comforting is that?  To have heaven be right there, only a few thousand miles up – no wonder they believed that angels were ascending and descending on ladders every night, to watch over us.  How beautiful, how magnificent!  And they believed that the stars and planets themselves were luminous lights, which were given off by angels, or intelligences, which circled above us in the sky, shedding their celestial influence (and being the basis of the system of astrology which we still see in newspapers). 

But science shattered all of those illusions:  and by the early 20th century, the universe had gone from being a short stairway to heaven, peopled with angels (and demons), to being an extraordinarily, unfathomably enormous, and shockingly cold, and dark, and empty place.  Very very sad indeed:  even our brief sense in the 1930s that there might be aliens out there soon proved to be far-fetched:  this golden age of science fiction was perhaps the last attempt of the race to people the universe.  As humans, we thrive, we have a very strong sense that population is good:  we need other people in order to survive, to converse, and to be human.  Evolutionarily, if we are alone, we tend to die.  So we are very unnerved by this notion of an empty universe, and it is deeply depressing.  Whenver I see pictures of Jupiter’s moons or Saturn’s moons being discovered and explored by NASA, i no longer get those feelings of excitement that I did as a kid:  as an adult I can only think of how desperately far away these places are, and how utterly silent, and lacking in atmosphere, and so cold that methane would freeze to ice.  It’s really not cool. 

The point being:  science has first of all turned our universe from highly inviting, to desperately existentially depressing.  Next, the scientists told us that we were not created in god’s image, but had merely evolved from monkeys.  That was Darwin’s fault.  Moreover, there was not even any absolute notion of ‘man’ but that millenia ago we looked like hairy brutes, and that millenia from now we would look like space aliens or something else weird.  There was nothing to lean on:  no absolute image.  Man was essentially a hollow image, we could conclude.  And we weren’t even the kings of the world any more, this meant, either, not in any absolute sense like the Eden myth had taught us.  We weren’t put here by god to be stewards – but had merely usurped that position by having bigger brains.  So, we were not only de-centered in the universe, but also in the animal kingdom as well.  And god was taken away from us:  the ultimate father figure.

Then Freud came along, and taught us that our subconsciouses were merely those of animals:  we were not noble, as the enlightenment taught, but merely animals, whose main drives were to kill people, kill ourselves, shag as many people as possible, and grab all the food from everyone else.  And that our id was the seat of all of these base drives, and that our ego helped us to rationally figure out how to achieve these objectrives, while our superegoes did a number on us, to try and keep our egos in check, but more often than not led to psychoses.  In the eighteenth century, the enlightenment had taught that we were vessels of virtue.  Now, Freud taught us that we were a bunch of psychotic fuckups.  We couldn’t even trust our own minds anymore:  we were constantly having to second-guess our own amalistic instincts; and more often than not, we would find ourselves acting self-destructively, all because our parents had raised us wrong, or we had seen some traumatic thing as children that we were doomed by our faulty mental apparatus to keep repeating.  And a look at most families today will tell you that Freud was right, in the main.

So, in other words, the advance of science, including psychology, has already caused us as humans to lose a lot of reasons for confidence.  We were literally gods, in the eighteenth century:  no wonder the founding fathers could achieve so much, with so much confidence.  And now we’re born, with science essentially telling us that there is no point (one reason why I have started this website:  to accept the science, but to get around the negative implications by seeking out the positive ones, which have not been all that obvious over the last century).

But advancing technology, which has gone hand in hand with science, has also taken its toll on our quality of life, and our mental environment.  In many ways, the advance of entertainment technology has been one of the worst culprits.

Viz, the phonograph.  Prior to its invention, people had to make their own music.  While it was still in a primitive state, ca. 1910, there were more pianos in middle class homes then there would ever be.  People were not embarrassed to make music in this kind of environment, because they were not constantly bombarded with music from recordings.  And the problem with recordings, is that, naturally, companies will record the best artists that they can get – which means, that when one listens to a phonograph, or record or any other sound-reproducing technology, one is suddenly exposed not just to the best person in one’s village, but in the entire country, or even the world.   Whereas people who sang songs in 1910 had mostly ever just heard their neighbours singing around the piano (and did not need to feel selfish), afterwards, everyone was continually comparing themselves to Frank Sinatra, or Madonna, or whever else was in fashion at the time – this is a pretty humbling experience, and the result is, that most people stopped singing.

Same with playing music:  most people who hear recordings, which feature the world’s best artists, digitally remastered and often after dozens of takes, will inevitably feel that their own homemade music – particularly after the advent of electronic sounds on recordings, which feature all sorts of odd noises that very often cannot be produced naturally– will of course sound pathetic, and homespun, compared with what one will hear on the latest CD.  And more recently, with all of the effects being put on voices, it’s virtually impossible for a normal person to sound like the latest hip songster, and so the result, is that no one wants to sing.

Same with acting plays, which during the nineteenth century was a favourite pasttime of many children and teenagers.  Nowadays, except for high school plays, which will still get some people interested in theatre, the TV has made it absolutely absurd to parade around in homespun costumes, and with homemade scripts, and poor local acting… also one will feel self conscious since only the most beautiful and/or charasmatic people end up on the TV, anyway – even on most ‘reality’ TV. 

So:  through technology, in just the past 100 years, we’ve lost singing, we’ve lost music playing, and we’ve lost acting.  Ditto with dancing:  thus, technology has led to a restriction of what the average person thinks they can do.  Whereas before, almost everyone could consider themselves to be ’something of a singer,’ or something of an actor, or dancer, or even a poet– nowadays, there is so much professionalization made possible through the medium of instant access to information, that the species has been squeezed of its talent – and it’s all been concentrated into the lives of a few individuals.  The rest of us have been bereft of most of our artistic impulses – they ahve been esentially beaten out of us, or rather, embarrassed out of us.

Same goes for the conception of what is ‘cool.’  With the advent of TV, and album covers, etc., what was cool became increasingly divorced from what was possible.  Fashion has always in Western Europe aped the rich, throgh the 1920s, which wasn’t exactly fair.  But after the 1920s, fashion began to follow film stars, who set examples of glamour which far outshone any simple rich perosn – since film stars were both rich, and beautiful, and ultra-charismatic to boot.  With the 1960s revolution, music stars took over from film stars, though film stars have more than held their own – so, i guess you can say that they muscled their way up – and now, in the MTV and post-MTV era, we are bombarded with ever more ridiculous stars, who are more and more outrageous, since they need only be believable for about 2 minutes and 30 seconds’ worth of ridiculous dancing and/or prancing.  And so, since the 80s, and entirely due to the technology which fostered it, fashion gets reduced to the mere image of some dancer/prancer – whoever can look the most outrageous.

And we dont’ even need to touch upon the TV, which studies now show lead to ADD, and we all know that it leads to wasting your life.  I remember, as an American middle class kid in the 80s, reading an interview with Drew Barrymore, who was asked her favourite TV show – and to my astonishment at the time, she said, “I don’t watch TV, I have too much going on.”  And I was shocked.  And didn’t quite believe her.  Having chosen to give up the tube in my 20s, as I embarked upon a career as a scholar – I realized that I had so much to learn, that I really had very little if any time for the tube.  And besides, once you get your mind to a certain level, where you could be writing the scripts for TV shows, it pretty much takes the fun out of it – you can no longer suspend your disbelief – and you don’t want to , because they almost inevitably come across as banal, with a few exceptions, in the hands of a few truly gifted writers.

And then there are video games - and here I’d argue that the Matrix people are essentially right – within a few decades, we’re going to see many people just “plugged in.”  In Asia, where there is less cultural taboo vs. electronics than even in the US, many teens are essentially lost to the real world already – they spend 16 hours or more online at a time… stopping only to sleep, if that.  We’re going to see more and more of this – and we’re going to do have to do something about it – some way or another.  Already, Xbox has such graphic images, that they are damaging our very democratic and humanist values, such as the unacceptability of torture, as I have said in this post.  It’s happening so quickly, that alternate reality is beginning to take on the dimensions of life in ancient Rome, with all of its barbarity and brutality.  And new humanists are going to have to come forward, in order to help the people save themselves from themselves once again – this time in an alternate world – if we are ever going to build a truly ideal and egalitarian society.

This also says nothing about the fact that technology has enabled us to increase the food production of the planet to previously unimaginable levels, so that our population has mushroomed accordingly – thus creating the danger that, like locusts, we as a species are going to overrun the entire earth, as we’re already seeing with global warming, disappearing forests, and the fact that nearly all the intersting species on the planet are on the verge of extinction – let alone the fact that it’s virtually impossible to find a wild spot to retreat to anymore.  (Or just a job which doesn’t require a commute through the visual and sensory equivalent of a journey to the fourth level of hell).       

We can also mention the built environment–all buildings built until about 1900 are inherently pleasing, but with modern materials, which were not natural, we began to be able to build on an entirely inhuman scale – causing people to feel dwarfed once again, this time in their own cities and communities.  And many of the building materials were so hideous, that they create eyesores 30 stories high, all over the world, which cause one’s soul to weep whenver one has to be anywhere near such a monstrosity.  Prior to 1900, the fact that all things had to be made of more or less natural materials, meant that they all had an earthy, homespun feel, which is inherently soothing – people almost inevitably find it comforting to visit the old centre of a european or old east coast town, for precisely this reason.

And that’s not even to go into one of Marx’s main points which was that, prior to the Industiral Revolution, almost everyone had the satisfaction of building complete products (think a blacksmith, or carpenter, or silversmith), whereas afterwards, people spent all day tending machines, which made just, say, the heads of pins.  All day, just pinheads.  Day in, day out.  Absolutely stultifying – factory labour, and its modern successor cubicle labour, is nothing like a complete work experience – no one can take pride in finished products, they never see the end of it, the point of it – it’s all just working for da man, to get a paycheck.  Filling endless reports, which will always be endlessly repeatedly in need of doing, etc.  That’s no way to work.  It’s incredibly alienating.  But that’s the downside of increased technology, which increases productivity, and makes for very cheap products.  So, we get lots of stuff, in return for having to spend most of our waking lives in zombification chambers.

In short, there have been plenty of ways in which, both as species and as individuals, we have been robbed of many of our birthrights by technology.  Next time we see an advert which beckons us to worship at the altar of technology, we should remember that humans come first – gizmos a distant second.  Humans still have souls (whether we actually do or not is immaterial…what matters is that we can feel that we have souls), which are very complex, and multifaceted, and, more to the point, we have conscious minds – a feat that no computer can come close to emulating.  These machines that we have created have helped us in many ways to become like the gods that God originally wanted us to be (that is, that our own subconscious yearnings have always wanted us to become), but we need to remember that they have upset a great deal of the thousands of years old balances that our species has evolved into, and with, and in dialogue with. 

It’s very important that some of us, at least, can take the long view, and take stock of our profits and losses, over the longue duree.  This way, we can hopefully keep ourselves from falling so blindly in love with the latest iphone, that we forget that we are still very much the biological product of millions of years of more or less technology-free evolution – and that our biological needs cannot change nearly so rapidly as the latest model of toaster.  If we forget who we are, and what our ambitions are – i.e., if we forget our history, then we are very highly likely to find that the rapid pace of technology, which is after all guided almost entirley by profit, and by short-term desire, will create for us a world in which we suddenly discover that we cannot really be happy… if indeed we can live in it at all.

Anyone who has read the Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav will know that the line between physics and metaphysics has become blurred over the past few decades. Many researchers have gotten quite philosophical about what they are discovering.

But many had thought that science had put the deathhold on the Church when they came up with the Big Bang Theory. Here, at last, many saw a mathematical and mechanical process that replaced God in the formation of the universe.

Unfortunately, the Big Bang was the vision of a Catholic Priest.

Surprised? Don’t be.

Copernicus, that great scientific rebel, was a canon of the Church; Galileo was a devout Catholic; Newton was extremely religious and even warned against using the laws of mechanics he discovered as being a replacement for the Divine.

So, how far a stretch is it to imagine that the Church itself somehow had a hand in the creation of science, the “renegade religion”?

Most of the western world slipped from under the iron fist of the Church in the Age of Enlightenment. Their marvelous Inquisition was unable to keep the flock contained – a surprise to them as fear had worked so well during the centuries before.

Rather than let the world cast them aside, wouldn’t it be so much easier to infiltrate the opposition (especially as they had trained most of them) and guide it in the “correct” directions.

Now, you might say that could not happen because science is ruled by facts not religious mumbo-jumbo. But that, too, is illusion. Most of science is dominated by theory. And facts that do not match the accepted theory are too often cast aside, buried, ridiculed, forgotten. Check out the work of William R. Corliss to find out more.

And the motive for this manipulation?

Come on! Use your imagination…

Europe’s “Renaissance” is Islamic; (October 19, 2009)

            This post will demonstrates that Europe’s “renaissance” in the scientific disciplines and scientific research methods could not have been launched without the import of Islamic scientific manuscripts and knowledge in the sciences and mathematics.     

            In a previous post I demonstrated that the Catholic Church of Rome was the most obscurantist religion from 400 AC (when it exercised central power to Europe) till late 16^th century: no scientific manuscripts or “heretic” opinions were permitted to reach her sphere of spiritual and temporary influence. During all that period, Europe’s borders were practically opened to all kinds of trades except in two instances after the Crusaders were kicked out from the Orient about 1200 and when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in around 1450.  Europe didn’t dare challenge the Papal restrictions to knowledge until Martin Luther weakened the central religious power.  This qualitative shift was long due for a modern paradigm.  Islam never adopted any centralized religious power and thus managed to acquire knowledge “even from China” as the Prophet Muhammad admonished the Moslems.

            In the same vein, Orthodox Christian Church of Byzantium was the obscurantist central religious power in Constantinople that wasted four centuries on the Near East region to produce any worthwhile scientic advancement. This region had to wait for Islamic Empires to conquer most of the Near East from the Byzantium Empire for sciences to get a new lease on life.

            This post is to demonstrate that Islam civilization had fundamentally the zest to acquiring scientific knowledge while feeling confident that the One and only God is a rational creator.  Without the breakout from Papal influence Europe would have never greedily acquired Islamic scientific manuscripts and then translate them into Greek, Latin, and German and thus move on to experience renaissance.  After the 17^th century, Papal Rome hurried to catch up with the trend and exhibited the will to show off that the Catholic Church is the main conservator of sciences and its promoter.

             As a brief post, it will refrain from being exhaustive. The medical field was highly developed. Al Razi treaties were translated as early as the 13^th century by Gerard de Cremone.  Ibn Sina (Avicenna), an acclaimed physician and eminent philosopher wrote many books on medicine and in pharmacopeias; his main translated medical manuscript was the basic source in Europe as late as the 18^th century.

            The renowned mathematician Al Khwarismi (820 AC) wrote “The beginning of algebra” (Kitab al Jabr); he developed what is known as algorithm; in his honor Europe gave this field of math his name (Algorithm).  Ibn Yahya al Maghrebi wrote “The brilliance in algebra” (al baahir fil Jaber). Actually, current mathematicians have discovered that an ancient Islamic mathematician solved Fermat theorem that was stated in 1620 and which took centuries to be demonstrated lately in Europe.

            The Element of Euclid in geometry was translated by Al Hajjaj in the 9^th century and commented extensively by Al Tusi.  Al Biruni founded the geodesic and mineralogy disciplines.  Around 770 Caliphate Al Mansur hired Indian astronomers.  Caliphate Al Maamun built the first observatory on mount Qassioun by Damascus around 830 and astronomy received a new impetus: Al Fazari and Yaaqub ibn Yarid adapt the Indian astronomy table Zij al Sindhind; the Almageste of Ptolemy is translated and Al Farghani wrote a compendium on the sciences of stars; Thabit ibn Qurra works on the Book of Solar Year; and Al Batani wrote the Sabean Tables.

            The mathematician and astronomer Ibn Al Haytham (Alhacen) in the 11^th century developed strong doubts on Ptolemy cosmology model and offered several updated models; he much further by presenting the concept that it is not productive to do astronomy and physics before acquiring firm knowledge in mathematics. Al Haytham offered a mathematical model for astronomy instead of the cosmology alternative of drawing schemas of the world with concentric circles and other schematic models.  Kepler adopted this line of investigation in studying astronomy.  As a matter of fact, European educational systems of sciences focus mostly on mathematics as primary disciple before venturing into studying sciences.

            The newly radical Islamized Mogul invaded Damascus and were defeated by the Mamluk’s Empires of Egypt.  The Mogul Hulago built the famous observatory of Maragha (Nizamiyya) in Mossul (Iraq). This observatory was the center of astronomy for thirty continuous years and graduated famous scientists.  The center was directed by the eminent mathematician and jurist the Persian Kamal al Din Ibn Yunus. Among the astronomers were Al Urdi, Al Tusi, Al Shirazi, Zij Ilkhani, and Ibn al Shatir.  Al Tusi proposed different cosmological models with non-concentric circles. Ibn Al Shatir synthesized the models for the Universe perfectly geocentric and completely different of Ptolemy’s. Copernicus adopted integrally Al Shatir’s cosmology; he even replaced the exact Arabic alphabet with the Latin counterparts; Copernicus didn’t need a translated version since the schema was self-evident.

            Islamic Andalusia (Spain) (from 800 to 1,400) took the rationality relay as the central power in Baghdad weakened around 1050 by the arrival of newly radical converted princes from the central Asia provinces and the Caucasus.  Ibn Baja, Ibn Tofail, Ibn Rushd were the prominent thinkers whose works were quickly disseminated in Spain and Padua (Italy).

            Europe’s “Renaissance” was becoming receptive to knowledge after 11 centuries of the Dark Age that was imposed upon it by the Catholic Church of Rome. Albert the Great, Dietrich of Freiberg, and Master Eckhart were avid readers of Islamic scientific manuscripts of Avicenna, Maimonide, and Averroes (Ibn Rushd).  The Prussian Emperor Frederic the Great was educated in Sicily and received his knowledge directly from Islamic sources.

Note: I stated historical facts; it is by no means a completely coherent model for the genesis of European civilization; it would be advisable to refrain from extrapolations at this stage.

Unlike in the time of Thomas Jefferson, when “Creator”, “religion” and “church” represented three distinct ideas, “religion” today is a very loaded term.  It is entirely inaccurate, as Bill Maher and other atheists often do, to lump belief in God, organized religion and the evil that adherents of a particular religion engage in, together under a common term and then, to place the blame there for humanity’s problems.

For example, Jesus is very clearly not the founder of Christianity or anything remotely like it, nor is it any more fair to blame Jesus for what people do in his name, than it is to blame Copernicus and Isaac Newton for Hiroshima.  The same applies in varying degrees to Buddha, Confucius, Zarathustra and certain other so-called “founders” of various religions.  There is no greater critic of fundamentalist religion or religious hypocrisy in history than Jesus, nor is there any greater advocate for personal, local and global peace.

Like religion, science and education are historically intimately entwined with war and human oppression on a massive scale, tracing back from ever more effective designs for ancient war chariots, DaVinci’s war-machine inventions and, on up through the Manhattan Project, the modern-day military industrial complex and ever worse weapons of mass destruction.  The American, French, Russian and several other revolutions were fomented by so-called “enlightened” intellectuals.

It is correct to say religion is a tool often used to foment war and human oppression and, it’s just as fair to point out science and education are often used for the same purpose.  However, it is not accurate to pretend either one is a root “cause” of human aggression. Believers in God and scientists both often leave a positive legacy and, many of history’s most revered individuals demonstrated a profound personal belief in God.  Jesus correctly singled out religious hypocrisy, rather than belief in God, as having a significant negative societal impact.

Since the invention of printing, which helped break the societal stranglehold of organized religion, justification for war has more and more been shifted away from religious to other excuses.  In a so-called “post-Enlightenment Age”, wars are now often fought in the name of democracy, freedom, communism, socialism, anarchism and even human rights.  Those who blame belief in God for war, rather than placing the blame for war where it squarely belongs, on individual human beings making their own poor choices, are plainly liars.

According to Jesus and some New Testament authors and, according to ALL known scientific and historical evidence, the root cause of humanity’s problems is sin, causing individual human frustration, greed and aggression, resulting in negative choices being made by individual human beings.  Families, tribes, cities, states, nations, armies, religions, political parties, corporations, unions, educational institutions, professional scientists and all other “groupings” of human beings, are made up of individual people, each making their own individual choices.

It would be refreshing if modern educators and people like Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens could grow up just a little and, begin placing the blame for humanity’s problems where it belongs, squarely on our own self-contradicting shoulders. Perhaps then, a modern species in grave peril of losing it’s own commonly shared global habitat, could begin to have a little more unbiased and accurate understanding of where Jesus and the authors of the Bible are actually coming from.

Were the American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions, WWI, WWII, Vietnam and Iraq, among hundreds of other wars from the 20th Century forward, caused more by belief in God, organized religion, intellectual idealism, nationalism or just plain old common human greed, as ALL wars can invariably be traced back to?  Does belief in God really cause war?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

Many intellectuals claim some of what Jesus taught was first said by other people and, Jesus himself might be the first to agree.  Human rights, morality and ethics are clearly based on a shared human conscience, something the authors of the Bible, Thomas Jefferson and the historical evidence all strongly agree concerning and, something the ACLU, Richard Dawkins and many other ivory tower pedagogues apparently, have entirely overlooked.

Unlike many modern educators, Jesus is not about stroking his own ego by pushing his own private vision and agenda.  Rather, Jesus is about promoting the “best” idea that will best help humanity.  Thus, if an idea was already the best, Jesus used it, if it could be improved upon, he improved on it and, if he had a better idea, he taught that instead.

This is a far more advanced and “enlightened” concept of education than we find in this so-called “post-Enlightenment” age, where various “pop” pundits are out to make it big on best seller lists by pushing “their” supposedly “new” ideas.  As the Bible says, “there is nothing new under the sun.”  Regardless of how we change and re-arrange terminology, violence, human oppression, suffering, sorrow and, the solution for alleviating and eliminating them remains the same.

We live in an age of extreme soapbox bias, an age of defending various political, intellectual, religious and other “sides”, rather than an age centered on a search for what is really true and, what actually might be the best idea.  Modern education is divided into distinct categories like “science”, “history” and, “religion”, as if we can divide up reality and expect to have any idea what is actually true.  We conveniently place Jesus in “religion” category and thus, our children entirely lose out on the best ideas in human history.

Jesus taught that treating other people like we want them to treat us is the sum of all wisdom; does Richard Dawkins have a better foundation for human rights?  Jesus implied the more we know what is true, the more free we will become; does Richard Dawkins have a better foundation for education?  According to Jesus, a common grass flower is better clothed than Solomon was; does Richard Dawkins have a better foundation for environmental awareness?

Jesus taught the way to honor God is to love our neighbor as ourselves; does Richard Dawkins have a better foundation for morality and ethics?  Jesus taught the way to achieve peace is to put away our swords and spread peace and goodwill, rather than like scientists, create more and bigger swords, which is the Greek, Roman, American and world civilization history method of “securing the peace”.  Does Richard Dawkins have a better idea?

Why do modern scientists, after 10,000 years of moral education to the contrary, continue to create weapons of mass destruction?  In a post-Enlightenment age of atheism, science and wonder, why does war and the poor still remain with us, as Jesus predicted they would?

Richard Dawkins implies Jesus was delusional.  Is he smarter than Jesus?  Is anybody smarter than Jesus?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

No one knows for certain who designed Stonehenge or the pyramids of Egypt or, exactly how they were constructed.  Yet, no archaeologist or historian has ever proposed they appeared on their own, without input from designers or builders.

Such universal assumption is the most likely conclusion given the known evidence and, much of what science “believes” is based on similar assumptions.  Even though people can create things that can repair and even create other things by themselves, all known evidence indicates no finite living being or object can exist without a creator.

Descartes first principle of philosophy, science and reason states: “Accept nothing as true that is not self-evident”.  The history of science tracing prior to ancient Greece on into the present, is a history of the most likely conclusion based on the current known evidence.

Just as all evidence indicates for every action there is a re-action, likewise all evidence indicates nothing can be in motion by it’s own volition.  All known evidence indicates a universe filled with “zillions” of complex parts within ever greater complexity of parts and, containing intelligent finite beings of conscience and conscious awareness, requires Creative Intelligence.  Thus, the correct postulate of true science is “Eternal Creator(s)” until proven otherwise.

Pretending that “science” is somehow different than belief in God is an obvious lie. Just as scientists “believe” in black holes and invisible light based on mirrored evidence, much more so, mirrored evidence of a Creator(s) is overwhelmingly self-evident.  And, just as if someone claims the earth is cube-shaped or, A2 + B2 doesn’t equal C2, the burden of proof remains on atheists, because all known evidence indicates the opposite conclusion.

According to Jesus, as well as many historical scientists and sages of note, basic to wisdom, education and survival itself, is to attempt to sort out what’s actually true, from whatever fiction the cultures and religions we are born into claim is true.  As Jesus implied, if we don’t know what’s true, we have no hope of being free.

Believing the earth is square doesn’t change the reality of the shape of the earth.  What is true about the earth remains the same, regardless of what we believe or, fail to believe.  Whether we label it “science”, “religion” or something else, what is actually true remains the same.

Someone can’t just assume a steel ball and feather will fall at the same rate of speed and call it a “scientific theory”, without significant supporting evidence.  There is nothing more unscientific and irrational than pretending there is no God, because all known evidence indicates the opposite conclusion.

If someone says they don’t know if there’s a God, perhaps they just need to get out and smell the roses once in a while.  However, if someone says there is no Creator, they are by all scientific and other rational default, plainly a liar, because there is no evidence to support such an absurd position.

Is atheism scientific?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

According to the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”  This amendment clearly meant something entirely different to the Constitutional framers than the ACLU pretends it did.

Jefferson edited the New Testament while a sitting president and, attempted to have his version become the official U.S. government-endorsed version, ensuring it would be read in every public schoolhouse of his day.  Madison stated he believed the 1st Amendment would aid in the spread of Christianity and, Franklin openly complained the framers were not seeking God’s guidance enough while drafting the Constitution.

Many so-called “experts” interpret “religion” to mean belief in God, while it is far more likely it meant institutional religion to the framers.  Regardless, protection of free expression has nothing to do with what is actually true about God, science or anything else.  Whether modern evolutionary theory is true or just a poorly constructed fairytale, is not relevant to 1st Amendment protections.

According to various polls, over 80% of adults and 50% of American educators believe in a Designer.  Though several major living scientists believe the evidence indicates design, the ACLU refuses to protect their highly credentialed scientific viewpoint.  Instead, they demand American educators deliberately lie to our children by omission, leaving out the known fact that major historical and living scientists and every Declaration signer believe(d) the scientific evidence indicates design.

The “God question” is central to the scientific thought and inquiry of virtually every major historical scientist, including Darwin himself.  Still, so-called “progressives” pretend God is not a question for science.  To allow only one myopic viewpoint is to teach children questioning what is true is not relevant to education. These are the same ‘progressives’ who are angry over the one-sidedness of talk radio.

Modern evolutionary theory does in fact, address the “God question”.  Any theory assuming that everything in the universe is a result of “natural” unguided processes is stating there is no God, not to mention, scientifically completely wacko.  Nobody from our perspective could possibly know the overall process is unguided. Atheism has no more protection under the 1st Amendment than Catholicism. Is freedom of speech or science really being served when only a non-evidenced based superstitious assumption is allowed to be taught?

According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Albert Einstein said:  “I have a deep feeling of faith, a deep religiosity that comes from my appreciation of the way the Lord made the universe.” Every signer of the Declaration of Independence agreed the evidence of a Creator is beyond all rational dispute.

Should we forbid Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, DaVinci, Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Faraday, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Einstein and leading DNA expert Francis Collins to teach a public science class?  Or, should we petition our Creator to toss the ACLU into a bottomless black hole and throw away the key, allowing our children a proper education without any further undue hindrance from the feeble-minded?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article:
http://www.freedomtracks.com/500/firstamendment.html 

The illusion of knowing is the major obstacle to discovery; (October 4, 2009)

            Even a century ago, a scientist published a single manuscript after a life time of research and toiling; transmission of opinions and suggestions were sent via long erudite letters by peers. Translators of these remarkable books didn’t go unnoticed and were rewarded academically. Nowadays, any “respectable” scientist works for several institutions, private and public, and at various nations.  Two centuries ago, scientists did not need to refer to Pythagoras or Archimedes.  Modern scientists have no time to refer to Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Lavoisier, or Kelvin; soon Einstein and Heisenberg will be outmoded.

            The team of the geeks in “Sciences and Future” met in August for brainstorming in “pause mode” to deliberate on the unique question “In the last few decades, what discoveries were true breakthroughs?”  The team reached an understanding on five scientific fields: climatology, neuroscience, astronomy, cellular biology, and Internet. Consequently, I will answer a few of the questions that you might think you know in these fields so that our knowledge is no longer an illusion.

The internet shifts from the virtual to the real

            There are three generations of internet or Web. The first generation or Web1.0 was created from 2003 to 2005 and is represented by MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube that gathers people on common interest social aspects or making “friends”.  The second generation or Web 2.0 is represented by Twitter or the microblogging platform for messages restricted to 140 characters. Thus, these micro messages can be regrouped and analyze to constitute a story contributed by many Twitter bloggers.  The third generation of Web 3.0 is ready technologically; this generation is already labeled object oriented intelligence sources.  For example, you record a message on your cell phone and then stick a yellow sticker on a wall or an object. The next visitor will pass his cell phone over the sticker and copy your message of whatever you have seen or appreciated. This generation can zip all kinds of products and gather intelligence and compare with other resources.  Personally, I think that even the Twitter is already a perfect source of information by intelligence agencies; these centers can hire thousands of Twitter users and direct them on specific topic of interests in many countries.

Cells can be rejuvenated to its embryo stage

            The lab technician would take samples of your skin. The skin cells can be treated to reach its first born state.  Whatever genetic diseases that cell inherited it will take another 30 years for the disease to emerge.  All the while you are thirty years younger. Better, skin cells can be treated to isolate a specific cell for any body member like liver, heart, brain, or whatever.  The sick tissue in any part of your body can be rejuvenated within a month. This biomedical technique of treating adult cells into embryo state was made possible because many laws prohibited using fetus embryo on the ground that the cell belonged to another person.

Is man’s activity altering nature more than geophysics?

            Man feared the return of the ice age; it turned out that the climate is getting hotter and the poles are melting.  The emergence of urban and industrial societies as a geophysical force is altering the environment power for rejuvenation according to human threshold for survival.  Since 1824, Joseph Fourier theorized that gases in the atmosphere have the potential to increase surface temperature. Even in 1896, John Tyndall predicted that the concentration of CO2 will increase temperature to 5 degrees by the end of the 20^th century. Now, this is a fact and each year the casualties in man and nature are increasing by the violence of climatic changes. People are waiting anxiously the international summit on the environment in Copenhagen this December. Awareness of man effective participation in climatic changes was proven when the ozone layer of O3 in the stratosphere was depleting. Seas level is increasing 3 mm a year since 1993.  So far, only Danemark produces the fourth of its power using eoliens or wind turbines.

            Ex-President Bush Junior said in 1992: “The American way of life is not negotiable.” The philosopher Michelle Serres said in 1990: “This world that we treated as an object is returning as a subject; capable of vengeance.”  The humorist Coluche said: “For an ecologist to be elected as President then trees should be allowed to vote.”

The brain is in perpetual re-structuring

            There are specialized neurons that can be activated when an action is executed or when an action is also observed (mirror neurons).  These mirror neurons are the biological basis for empathy, imitation, and training; almost every decision is influenced by our emotions.  Neurons have the potential to flow or transfer from one brain to another when recycling cognitive aptitudes such as reading and writing are elevated.  Neurons and connections are modified when training tasks are memorized.

            We have 8 varieties of intelligence; mainly the visual, spatial, naturalist, logic-mathematics, corporal, musical, inter-personal, and intra-personal intelligences. The new battery of experiments for testing cognitive and movements capabilities are designed to account for our eight kinds of intelligences. It is the quantity of synapses (connections) and not the weight of the brain that differentiate among the various intelligences. There are phases in our sleep when brain activities are most intense while muscular activities are extremely inhibited; this phase is called “paradox sleep”.  We produce new neurons at every stage of growth, especially in the hippocampus and the smell brains. Almost 10% of our synapses are established when we are born and they increase with our activities and cognitive demands (efforts, mental and physical, mean increase in fresh synapses and neurons).

Hormones or chemical messengers for the brains  

            Serotonin is a chemical messenger to the brains; it is implicated in sleep, feeding and sexual habits. A decrease in its production is associated to depressive moods. Anti-depressant drugs increase the concentration of serotonin in the blood.

            Dopamine is a chemical hormone that controls movements, moods, addiction, and the circuit of pleasure; its deficiency generates rigidity in the muscles which is the symptoms of Parkinson disease.

            Adrenaline is a chemical hormone that is secreted at moments of stress and is attached on large numbers of receptors to re-enforce cardiac functions, accelerate the heart beats, elevate arterial pressure, inhibit digestion and increase the level of glycemy.

            Cortisol is secreted in moments of stress to increase the rate of glucose in the blood stream and liberating energy to counter dangers.

            Insulin enhances the stock of glucose in the tissues and thus decreases glycemy.

            Acetylcholine is a neuro-transmitter that excites the targeted brain when acquiring new training and for enhancing memory; its deficiency is the origin of Alzheimer disease.

            Erythropoietin stimulates the synthesis of red blood cells; its deficiency results in anemia.  The word “doping” is related to sport competitors abusing of this hormone.