The name doesn’t sound at all familiar, does it? Then why chose the word “Legendary” you ask? Well because this man deserved that title more than anyone else in the animation industry.  That is correct, I said animation as in cartoons. We’ve all enjoyed watching cartoons from the past (at least those born before 2000). One cartoon company that has become a household name is Disney. 

I can bet that most young folk do not know that the founder of this company was named Walt Disney, and that he migrated to California with little to no money. Most have also been led to believe that he “created Mickey Mouse”. Wrong.

Disney had the natural talent to sell anything. He knew what, how, and when to say anything. Granted, he also had an artistic talent for drawing an animating, but it was his best friend and business partner that was a master at his craft. That best friend was Ub Iwerks. Look up The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story.

“He was known as the fastest animator in the business in early sound period. He animated Mickey’s first short, Plane Crazy (1928) by himself in only two weeks (700 animation drawings a day!)” (imdb.com).

Iwerks was also the most humble man you could’ve ever met. He never allowed his pride to get the better of him. This is something I admire most. 

I want to be able to reach his level of  artistic skill, but I also want to follow his humble example.

I’m will work hard! I will create something that will live on for generations to come!

Plane Crazy starred Mickey Mouse – six months before the release of Steamboat Willie. In Plane Crazy, Mickey imitates his hero, Charles Lindbergh. Mickey builds an airplane and his girlfriend, Minnie, gives him a good luck horseshoe. Mickey invites Minnie for a ride and they suffer some spectacular misadventures. Mickey’s main goal throughout the short film is to get Minnie to give him a kiss. He finally steals one before Minnie bails from the plane (using her bloomers for a parachute). Mickey is so distracted, he crashes the plane. Minnie storms off after Mickey laughs at her so Mickey throws the good luck charm away. It boomerangs back and the cartoon ends with it swinging around Mickey’s neck.

Walt Disney produced the cartoon and co-directed it. He and Ub collaborated in the writing and a second release in December of the same year added a music background written by Carl Stalling. Mickey himself was a replacement for a character Walt Disney had drawn for Charles Mintz of  Universal Studios. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was “born” in 1927. When Disney asked for a larger budget for the project, he was instead informed he was facing a budget cut and most of his staff was hired away. Since Mintz owned Oswald, he thought he could not lose. Disney instead left and opened the new Disney Studio with just himself and Iwerks.

In Plane Crazy, Mickey was portrayed as both mischievous and amorous and was often described as a rogue. It wasn’t immediately popular and Disney was also faced with difficulties finding a distributor. The two men continued to collaborate and created The Gallopin’ Gaucho. Iwerks did all the animation on the cartoon. The men again failed to find a distributor. Not willing to give up, they tried once again. They finally caught the world’s attention when they put out Steamboat Willie. Mickey Mouse was on his way to stardom.

Mickey Mouse to a three-year-old is a six-foot-tall RAT! –  Robin Williams

When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity. – Walt Disney

Born of necessity, the little fellow [Mickey Mouse] literally freed us of immediate worry. He provided the means for expanding our organization to its present dimensions and for extending the medium cartoon animation towards new entertainment levels. He spelled production liberation for us. – Walt Disney

Mickey Mouse was the star in the early days, but he was too much of a Mr. Nice Guy. – Jack Hannah

Also on this day:

A Cattle Trail Grows Up – In 1905 Las Vegas is established.
Friends Hospital – In 1817, the first private psychiatric hospital in the US opened.
Puckle Gun – In 1718, the first machine gun was patented.

On this day in 1928, Mickey Mouse premiered in his first cartoon – Plane Crazy. The cartoon was produced by The Walt Disney Studio. The cartoon was a silent movie that was not officially picked up by a distributer. The first sound Mickey Mouse cartoon, ‘Steamboat Willie,’ was released later in the year. Plane Crazy was released the following year as a sound cartoon on the 17th March 1929.

For more, visit:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_Crazy

It was during a low point in his life while riding on a train bound to Hollywood that Walt drew Mickey for the first time, even despite people telling him that he couldn’t draw, he wasn’t talented enough.

Dreams have a funny way of being influential no matter what others say.

This was Mickey’s actual debut cartoon, but wasn’t the first everyone saw because it was originally made as a silent cartoon and Walt couldn’t get a distributor for it. Only when him and his team created a sound cartoon, infamously known as “Steamboat Willie,” did Walt get a distributor. After “Steamboat Willie” became an instant hit, Walt went back and put music to “Plane Crazy.” It, too, became a hit.

That “A” is confusing

The problem was that nobody who had robustly supported Flew during his career could now accuse him of vacuous or superficial thinking.   A thinker was allowed to change his beliefs according to the evidence as presented to him – the whole basis of attracting people to atheism – but not, it would appear, to anything contradicting atheism itself.  Atheism, despite its logical foundation, began to appear to have hidden insecurities and emotional attachments that disallowed a graceful exit.

The accusation that he had lost his grip on reality was contradicted by the forcefulness and complexity of his new arguments, and his increased depth of understanding about biological principles.  All of which he made clear in a strongly worded letter to Richard Carrier of the Secular Web, in December, 2004:

“a deity or a ‘super-intelligence’ is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature..I now realise that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction”.

He blamed his error on being “misled” by Richard Dawkins, claiming Dawkins “has never been reported as referring to any promising work on the production of a theory of the development of living matter”. His 2007 book revisited the question, however, and questioned contemporary models:

“the latest work I have seen shows that the present physical universe gives too little time for these theories of abiogenesis to get the job done..the philosophical question that has not been answered in origin-of-life studies is this: How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self- replication capabilities, and “coded chemistry”? Here we are not dealing with biology, but an entirely different category of problem.” [..wikipedia]

Dawkins himself claims the materialist explanations we have for biological life “are admittedly weak”, but considers them superior to natural intelligence, clearly not on evidential grounds, but on emotional ones.  The fear is that to admit some underlying matrix of intelligence as the single source behind the puzzling tendency of hugely complex biological machinery to arrive at precisely the same evolutionary moment as the neural systems required to control them is to allow a raft of superstitious bric-a-brac to wash in with the tidal wave, like the debris accompanying a tsunami, which causes most of the ensuing damage.

James Watson, in “DNA”, confirms that Neanderthals – a separate species from humans – had funerary rites and, he deduces, a belief in the afterlife.  He attributes this not to primitivism but to cultural sophistication.  If different species develop spiritual beliefs once the cortex expands, they can only be attributed to natural intelligence; should these beliefs have existed at the time of NE1 it would mean that they survived for nearly one million years.  If they existed in the animal world, it leans toward the idea of an intelligent source of biology, since animal behaviour is hard wired from birth

It is sometimes difficult to know how to approach the subject of atheism.  To describe it as a natural progression for the intellect leaves one open to understandable accusations of condescension.  To criticise makes it seem as if its arguments have not been understood; to discount it appears evasive, while to meet its own aggression and smug parodies with the same tools seems self-debasing and hypocritical.  Even if, in any of these cases your moral or intellectual faculties are left open to criticism, it is understandable that for a person focused on demonstrable proof, disillusioned by medieval forms of faith, or even a victim of religious abuse, atheism must be an obvious position.

My father, a scientist, was an atheist with good reason, having seen little evidence of human warmth in his upbringing or the army, or when commercial interests which cared little for human life had worked their way into the medical profession’s supply chain.  He had seen how consultants could become rich by keeping afternoon slots free to sell for hefty backhanders from those who wished to sidestep Canada’s democratic, and notoriously beleagured, health service.  He declared one hospital so inefficient that to send a cat there would amount to a crime.

Hemoglobin molecule: a mechanism impossible to arrive at by chance, even given a trillion universes, each a trillion years old (see To Be or Not To Be)

During the making of one now notorious scandal, I recall he was beside himself with rage.  A number of individuals had been infected with HIV in contaminated transfusions well after the problem had been discovered, because of efforts made by politicians – not to solve the actual crisis and save lives, which would have meant letting the cat out of the bag – but to bury the problem securely on someone else’s desk.  In 1969 he related how cyclamates were banned in North America because of scam-science testing in which mice were given vast quantities of it (the equivalent of 350 cans of soda per day) to provoke tumours.  “You can put anything that big into a mouse and it will develop a tumour,” he explained.  “You could sew a dime inside a mouse bladder and get the same results.  These people don’t have a clue what they’re doing; it’s criminal.”

Over time he had dissuaded my mother of her simple faith, which meant I grew up in an entirely non-religious household.  By the time I left home at 17 I had seen the inside of a draughty, sombre church on perhaps two occasions with no particular desire to make it three.   In high school we had been exposed to a very wide selection of literature and at 14 I had been fascinated by the new computer science course.  In short, I was fully engaged in the world and had no interest at all in formal religion.

Surely one of the most moving books ever written: The Little Prince, by the French pilot Antoine de Saint Exupery.  “I believe that for his escape he took advantage of the migration of a flock of wild birds.”

Nevertheless the literature, art and music I was drawn all seemed to have some mystical element hovering elusively around its periphery.  The one book I treasured from high school was not Slaughterhouse Five, 1984, On Walden Pond, Fahrenheit 451 or Sons and Lovers, but The Little Prince – a charming, surreal character whose wanderlust and indifference to adult complexity were a metaphor for the spirit’s journey through planets of embodied life.  At 13 we studied the book in class, and I was asked to read a chapter aloud, an ordeal I dreaded because of a nervous stammer which haunted me like some malevolent spirit.  But after my effort, instead of the obligatory elastic bands, spitballs or good humoured ridicule which greeted any and all presentations, there was a deep silence.  The teacher – a warm hearted soul named Mrs Phillips – asked if I would mind continuing; I ventured a quick look around and found every face intensely preoccupied, as if looking up from the little paperback might betray some deeply uncool emotion.  This was a new sensation for me, to harness some measure of credibility as the words, which could only have emerged from a deep place in the writer’s heart, reflected their grandeur in passing, onto a nervous child stumbling through the beautiful tale.

One day, through a filthy oil-covered radio in a Sunoco petrol station in the stifling heat of my summer job, Third Stone From the Sun’s eerily floating, other-worldly drone rooted me to the spot.  Its strangeness was beyond definition.  Hendrix had died two years earlier, but I was fortunate by 15 to have seen BB King, Roy Buchanan, Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana playing live, and climbing to the front of the stage had found Santana’s framed photo of Sri Chimnoy and his seagull-shaped effects board from his religious period merely puzzling.  Out of all these luminaries it was the shy, quietly spoken Buchanan in Massey Hall, playing his The Messiah Will Come Again with its soaring blue notes and firework arpeggios which utterly gripped me.  This could never be mistaken for the smug Olympian cascades of Satriani or Vai, but was music which could only have emerged from the purest of hearts, played on the simplest of instruments.  Mysticism could even give hard living rock musicians a sincere, almost saintly air.

Roy Buchanan’s intimate three piece gig at Massey Hall seemed more moving even than Clapton’s soldout night to seventeen thousand ecstatic fans at the Maple Leaf Arena

In 1976 I found an analysis of The Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox, the Christian writer and lecturer of the 30′s and 40′s – who had addressed some of the largest groups of people ever assembled to hear one man’s views on the Bible – and foundits treatment of religion as an inevitable bridge to cross for one seeking a different dimension to life an astounding revelation.  It had never occurred to me that religion might have a practical layer, and read it cover to cover; it is one of the only possessions I managed to hang on to ever since.  It is easy to attribute a yearning for spiritual knowledge to ignorance, but from the inside, that sentiment appears nothing of the sort, and is filled with detail and enquiry: question after question, answer after answer.

The common element at work in both atheists and the devout is the human mind.  The mind might be attracted to ideas of intelligence, design, and emotions of wonder simply because it owes its existence, survival and enjoyment of life to these same concepts.  The mystery is not in components as much as the way they are assembled.  A pen is an ingenious instrument, but an alphabet is more inventive still, and a gripping novel even more so for the human mind.  In these increasing levels of complexity, any level could never have been foreseen by an examination of the one beneath it.  One does not incrementally turn into the next, any more than could a single teacup slowly transform itself into a restaurant.  There is something additional at each turn, something which depends not on mindless expansion but on determined direction, and it is this transformation is of profound interest to the normal human mind.

The well-thought out “After Atheism” logo

Approaching the situation through pure intellect, Flew seemed to pass through atheism as he expanded his understanding.   There are people glad to have achieved a resonant outlet for long-standing anger, or a safe and sturdy plateau of reasoning to keep them aloft of the masses they despise, who – despite embellishing their vocabulary or seeking new soft targets for the same old well-sharpened arguments – maintain essentially the same stance for life.

There is another kind of person never resting at one level as they are driven not by security or self-inflating technique but an inner expansion of consciousness which they are powerless to resist.  This accounts for all walks of life, but for Flew, at a certain point the intellect became overwhelmed and wonder took over.  It seems the spiritual sense easily re-entered the picture simply because the intellect, saturated with impossibilities, completely failed to cope with new understandings about biological life.  What was grasped was not a small array of sharpened facts, easily turned into weapons against the faithful, but, looking up, the vastness of the whole arena.  The scale of the problem, of complexity’s origin, had always interested him deeply, and now drove him to emply a far deeper perception.

“M-theory allows for 11 dimensions and 10,500 different Universes, in which the laws of physics are different. Only in our Universe are the mass of the electron and the strength of gravity, for example, what they are. This is the crux: the only ‘special’ thing about our Universe is that it’s the one in which conditions are just right for life to exist. As for God, no omnipotent hand is required to start things off. In M-theory, mathematics takes care of it.” (Patrick Moore)

The idea of design is hard to extinguish, and to abandon natural tendencies for a materialist approach seems akin to a suicide of sorts, as if a person is trying to make themselves into a non-person.  Especially so when it now becomes apparent that those embracing them seem to create a raft of art, music, literature, philosophy or just moment-by-moment enjoyment of a Universe.  Believing a Universe which has the appearance of stunning ingenuity to be organised in a comprehensible way explains the mathematical, physical, biological, scientific – and spiritual – ambitions to reach this root cause.

If the Grand Unified Theory encompasses the Big Bang, multiple dimensions, and all possible biological life, then whoever discovers it needs to be more than a physicist, more than a biologist, more than an astronomer.  If it requires a superhuman mind to simply understand the situation, then sooner or later we must either cultivate such a mind, or abandon the search as hopeless, and stagnate.  The former is the only possible avenue for an ambitious mind, and leads inevitably to the conclusion that consciousness must have possibilities far in excess of our present state.

“With the aid of  new analytical technologies, we can scrutinize the fossilized remains of a dinosaur that lived millions of years ago to develop new approaches to the systems we design today,” says Ron Wilson, editorial director ESD, EDN & EE Times Designlines. “..We can map the shape and density of fossilized bones, build biomechanical computer models, and determine much about how these creatures actually lived their lives. These same modeling techniques are used in developing advanced embedded systems in aerospace, transportation, and medical applications.” (..Design News)

The argument can be reversed: if at the root of the Universe is only chaos, there is no point in trying to extract law and order from it, and anyone who persists in such a search must be deluded in trying to impose explicability where there is none.  This presents a paradox in which the hope for progress is limited to the deluded or the insane.  But mankind is united in its search for order, and a lack of this desire is even implicated in the name we give mental illness – mental disorder – and therefore our worldview already points entirely the opposite way.  As I tried to point out in Do Atheists Have a Soul? the search for these ever-expanding laws is not carried out inside matter – which contains the same potential and puzzles it has always held – but within our own deepening consciousness.

The story of mankind does not show a Universe growing ever more complex, because it remains what it has always been: consciousness alone is the expanding element.  The possibility of connsciousness’ expansion is unique to humans, and without it, all fields of knowledge would remain static.  Religion presents the possibility of other forms of consciousness besides man’s, often in an image of a mortal possesed of Divine attributes; it is as much a part of this expansion as physics, being also a core property of the human mind.

Complex engineering: large vertical flanges provide maximum attachment for extended and overlapping muscular-tendon assemblies.   The middle part of Diplodocus’ tail had oddly shaped double-beams on the underside, which gave Diplodocus its name, and prevented the blood vessels from being crushed if the animal’s heavy tail pressed against the ground

The inescapable conclusion is that searching for ever more advanced forms within consciousness presupposes an endless investigation, or else, as Stephen Hawking says, stagnation will occur sooner or later.  There is no sign of stagnation at the moment: in fact the reverse is true: in every direction, the Universe takes on a more intricate, more impressive, and for the saturated intellect, a more wondrous aspect.  Specialists flock to an ever-expanding front with ever more advanced equipment and ever faster computers, digging constantly within their minds for new discoveries in astronomy, physics, atomic research, computer CPUs, memory storage, biology, neuroscience, geology, genetics, nanotechnology.. nobody is giving up.

After Atheism t-shirt

It is not, as Dawkins once said, that Jesus was so intelligent that he would have been an atheist – which may even have been true at one point in Jesus’s life for all we know about his career as a builder and carpenter – it is that Jesus’ consciousness expanded to where atheism was no longer a possibility, as it would have contradicted everything his expanded consciousness – not solely his intellect – revealed to him.  At that point there could be no doubt that he was more part of the world of universal consciousness than of the human world.

The atheist complaint that if Jesus was enlightened, he should have immediately presented answers to every human problem under the sun shows utter ignorance about the nature of the human mind.  In our ancestors, the first brain to develop self-consciousness from the former instinctive awareness of the animal world may well have caused a stir but evidently did not, at one stroke, arrive at the complete laws of physics, mathematics, thermodynamics, medical science, engineering, language, social systems and philosophy – all products of the intellect standing on the foundation of self consciousness.

This process of discovery, perhaps relying on gradual development to ensure lasting worth, took hundreds of thousands of years and continues to this day, employing all the members of the race.  Even amidst today’s greatly increased pace, there is still a sifting of evidence, intense discussion, endless experimentation and even dispute about what is right and what is incorrect, only over length spans of time adding to man’s store of knowledge arising from this single attribute of the brain.

One reader clearly sympathised with Sartre’s atheist conclusions, which perhaps stemmed from those he formed about childhood

In 1984, Jean Paul Sartre, the most celebrated atheist of the 20th century, was reported in the February 1984 edition of Harper’s magazine:

“As for me, I don’t see myself as so much dust that has appeared in the world but as a being that was expected, prefigured, called forth.  In short, as a being that could, it seems, come only from a creator; and this idea of a creating hand that created me refers me back to God.

Naturally this is not a clear, exact idea that I set in motion every time I think of myself.  It contradicts many of my other ideas; but it is there, floating vaguely.  And when I think of myself I often think rather in this way, for want of being able to think otherwise.”

In their collaboration over a decade and half, Koch and Crick reduced the question to its basic form: What are the neuronal correlates of the minimum of awareness, say the experiencing of a single visual percept? This staggeringly complex inquiry about the brain almost certainly could not have been pursued before the whole suite of technologies for brain research became available. The Quest for Consciousness systematically explains the brain science and experimental methods required to understand the question and the research. Koch and Crick did identify and characterize the essential NCC for visual perception. (Dana Foundation)

Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA who once claimed “we have found the secret of life, and it is just chemistry” also admitted the problem of design requires a kind of self-hypnosis, a suppression of natural feelings – a mental coercion whose physical sequel might be the suppression of nausea on being asked to continually swallow some noxious or unnatural product:

“In his autobiography, Crick says very candidly biologists must remind themselves daily that what they study was not created, it evolved; it was not designed, it evolved.

Why do they have to remind themselves of that? Because otherwise, the facts which are staring them in the face and trying to get their attention might break through.”

Richard Dawkins admits to the simple problem which biological life presents: they look like absolutely masterful designs.   As Phillip Johnson points out:

“Dawkins begins The Blind Watchmaker with the statement that biology is the study of extremely complex things that look as if they were designed by a creator for a purpose.

It is the job of the biologist to show that this is not so, that it is an illusion and that they are really produced by the mindless, purposeless process of a Darwinian evolution.”

Therefore what is actually happening is the human mind is reducing something beyond its intellectual comprehension to forms matching the nature of its intellectual process.  The intellect works only in an incremental way; it is forced to view the world through this filter, and therefore produces a philosophy operating in precisely the same way as its intellect.  Even though the fossil record, cell biology, and all the evidence of their own senses contradicts their theory, the intellectuals at the heart of biology could hardly arrive at any other conclusion; knowledge would remain stuck there indefinitely if there was not a superior sense already now making inroads and disrupting the cosy house of cards the intellect mistakes for the source of all knowledge.  Life itself is bypassing this rigid dependence on incrementality.

The decline of any movement takes an interesting course: there is a gradual stripping away of the looser outer layers – those most susceptible to reason and intelligence – exposing an intractable centre of hard core believers: individuals who maintain their allegiance even ni defiance of common sense.  Literal beliefs such as the “rapture” in which individuals are raised to heaven in a beam of light appeal only to a core of individuals who take ancient parables literally, and seem immune to reason.  Even when there are far more attractive, and even one can say more beautiful, explanations for their cherished beliefs, the fundamentalist clings to superstition.

The same process holds true in political forms: when Gaddafi was finally routed by the outraged masses in Libya, all but his most fanatical followers had deserted him.  The small group huddled in a sewer when they were found by the rebels: begging for the armed mob to spare his life, Gaddafi pleaded, “what have I ever done to you?” before he was shot.  The same processes attended the end of Hitler, of Ceaucescu, of Mussolini, Saddam Hussein and dozens of other once mighty rulers of men, when expanding human consciousness reduced their vast empires to nothing.

The alarming conclusion from this process of whittling away is that only at the very end we see with a shock that the source of the whole affair, the very centre of the movement we feared or respected or had to continually take into account, had a fanatic in the driving seat all along.  Intellectual movements also have their rise and fall: due to the restless expansion of the human mind what seems fashionable, magnificent or full of hope to one generation often appears garish, crude or absurd to the next.

Shorn of his power, Hitler faced the same exposure of his real nature as all despots. “Hitler and his bride were married in the Conference room of Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. Hitler was then a very sick man: his face was ashen, his gaze wandered. It is a miracle Eva Braun accepted to marry such a wreck. He was wearing the crumpled tunic in which he nowadays laid on his bed all day; he has just pinned on it the Gold Party Badge, the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Wounded Medal of the Great War.” ( Otto Günsche)

At a recent Fighting Faith meeting in America, one of the world’s most famous atheists – or anti-theists, as he prefers, went on the promotional video and said that if Jesus was not the son of God, then he was a vile and wicked fraud.  This really extraordinary outburst hardly needs a defence, if only because Jesus’ ministry was probably the highest moral example humanity has seen, which is the sole reason he made the impact he did.  The question of his divinity is easily explained (“What Would Jesus Not Do?”) in the light of the prevailing mental climate of the time.  And in any case, Jesus constantly referred to all men as sons of God – which is why the Lord’s prayer begins “Our Father”.

A poster in the Fighting Faith event declared: “Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.”  A sentiment sure to touch people such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela: two modern religious examples who, rather than offering theoretical musings, seem able to affect the state of the real world by the force of their character and the strength of their morality.

Recently on Richard Dawkins’ site I saw a page called the Atheist Out campaign, which enourages atheists to declare themselves and come out of the closet – but sternly advises them not to “out” other atheists until they were ready to admit their atheism.  Better safe than sorry!

The page makes the very good point that atheists are good neighbours, good people and good friends.  This surely goes without saying – they are people like everyone else.  But why a need to declare one’s beliefs in order to bolster a cause whose premise is that belief must remain a very private matter?  I come from an atheist family, I know many atheists; it makes not one whit of difference to their lives unless they feel an urge to find something deeper.  That urge is their business and nobody else’s, and it is hardly a measure of progress to prevent them from doing so.

As well as encouraging science to investigate religion, for which it is high time, I hope this blog defends religion from the cynicism and snide comments which hurt those who harbour an honest and peaceful faith.  I have had friends who are not armed with the voracious intellectual hunger and dagger-sharp wit of a Hitchens, and who feel genuinely slighted by the idea that their faith woudl disappear if only they were smarter.  In its true light, religion is a natural instinct, and spiritual beliefs have as much if not more justification from intellectual analysis of the world than atheistic ones.  They have also immeasurably enriched mankind, and provided solace in times of distress.

I have had enouraging emails from people who despaired at the trendy, but bleak, atheism which made them feel the world was hardly worth living in or bringing new life into, and they have been supremely cheered to see that at the root of life appears to be a marvellous intelligence which grows more incredible with every step in scientific research.  Above all, mind must be the sovereign entity even in a material Universe – even the atheists are forced to agree with this, or else they discredit all their own conclusions.

Information about the uncanny intelligence within living matter is not generally presented by atheism, which tends more to leap on media items about odd religious quirks, and be keenest of all to present atheists as applaudable individuals, which of course they are.  But it is this very information which convinced Antony Flew that atheism, while having solid historical foundations as a reaction to overbearing religious dogma, seemed rather poorly thought out at a time when science convinced us that the world is a far more astounding place than even the most fervent preacher could have managed to do less than one hundred years ago.

As for a person being anti-theist, it can hardly make sense to declare active animosity towards something which is not supposed to exist.  The whole extremist stance and call for recruits reminds not so much of wondrous, expanding frontiers to whome all are drawn, but the fall of Berlin.

Aside from the intuitions of genius on the verge of great discoveries, who feel they walk along an endless shore of possibilities, the experience of mystics is the only time in which the human brain is directly exposed to a form of consciousness different than its own.  Gopi Krishna (1903 – 1984) was a Kashmiri Brahmin who underwent years of difficulties after forcing this chamber in the brain to unexpected activity, and who, at his lowest ebb, even considered suicide rather than be doomed to “wander the awful wildnerness of insanity.”

Something missing – and quite obviously so (proposed cover design by Gill Figno)

As he relates in Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, time and again when his situation seemed the most hopeless he sensed another intelligence at work, and felt the inspiration to take imemdiate steps to avert a disaster.  Now consciously aware of the activity of the nervous energy acting within his body, he witnessed its lightning-like, intelligent, decisive behaviour – the very same attributes which have caused Kundalini to be represented by a darting white serpent in full flight.  He concludes that:

“It was not my own efforts that saved me from disaster or helped me through the grueling ordeal, day in and day out, for years.

My Saviour was a mysterious, higher self, a superior personality, a divine presence that I could dimly perceive many years later, but even then never clearly make out.

It was most intimately connected with my own frail suffering ego-consciousness and yet above and beyond it, entirely unaffected by the grief that Ibore, and the torment I endured.”

Whatever detection of intelligence in the Universe is made can only be by intelligence itself.  As scientists agree, consciousness cannot be measured by any electrical, mechanical, chemical or even atomic process.  It remains apart from what we call the material world, and yet intertwined with it.   The forms atoms take in countless molecules and structures, can never arise from human design as they defy our attempts at a full understanding.  Fighting against the instinctive conclusion that such assemblies can only arise from a powerful intelligence of unknown form requires constant effort.

Here is how Scott Kelso, a neuroscientist who applies complexity theory to the dynamics of the brain, describes his view of what lies beyond the boundaries of conventional physics: … my answer to the question, is life based on the laws of physics? is yes, with the proviso that we accept that the laws of physics are not fixed in stone, but are open to elaboration.

..it will be just as fundamental to discover the new laws and principles that govern the complex behavior of living things at the many levels they can be observed… At each level of complexity, entirely new properties appear, the understanding of which will require new concepts and methods. (http://liology.wordpress.com)

Stephen Hawking included these final sentences in his Brief History of Time:

“However, if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist.

If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”

He nearly cut the last sentence in his revised version, but it stayed in not because he was so attached to the sentiment – he was indifferent to it – but because he realised this is what a large proportion of people expected physics to lead to, and book sales might easily be cut in two without any evidence of it.  This single sentence might explain more about the human mind than the entire rest of the book.

Minnie’s underwear comes in handy.  After his distributor stole Oswald the Lucky Rabbit along with all his animators, Disney fulfilled the remainder of his studio’s contract while secretly coming up with a new character.  Mickey Mouse, in Plane Crazy was animated singlehandedly by the loyal Ub Iwerks at the impossible rate of 500 drawings per day

This reaching for the deep appears in many careers of the talented. It seems consciousness, like a planet, can be approached from any direction and still seem orientated perfectly for us, whether via politics, literature, art, science, philosophy, humanitarianism, engineering, pure thought or the sciences.  The deciding quality seems to be not talent alone but a desire to use it in the service of others.  The strong moral background running through the families of geniuses, confirmed by studies such as Howard Gardner’s in Creating Minds (Perseus Books, 1993) shows its importance to evolution, since mankind progresses only through the talented mind; it also accounts for its emphasis in religions.

Walt Disney begins his career satisfied if he can raise laughs from an impatient audience with a few moments to spare before a live action film, using the novelty of animated characters who seem to think for themselves.  But he ends by stretching the technology to the absolute limit, and manages to rouse magnificent emotions with Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Snow White.

Nigh on Bald Mountain: Disney’s Fantasia harnessed classical music and a stable of superb artists to bring sophisticated humour to the animated genre, as well as the devil, the soul, and salvation

Neil Diamond starts out eking out a living writing songs on the well-worn themes of love and drinking, for pop musicians such as the Monkees.  But at his zenith, he delves within the soul, finding mystical emotions whose source even he could sometimes not explain.  This theme of going deeper into consciousness until a universal model of it is encountered and expressed returns again and again to those gifted with talent and intelligence.

It is not only in the field of the arts; the same progress applies to those earnestly involved in the sciences and politics.  Einstein begins as a lowly patents clerk, but left to his own devices he soon changes the face of physics, finding a new dimension to the Universe.  Ghandi begins as an ambitious, well-heeled lawyer with a fancy hairstyle but, sensitive to injustice, he gathers supporters willing to go to jail or even die for their beliefs, and finally orchestrates the fate of a subcontinent.

Very few lawyers would garner such obituaries as those of General George C. Marshall, the American Secretary of State: “Mahatma Gandhi had become the spokesman for the conscience of mankind, a man who made humility and simple truth more powerful than empires” or of Einstein who added, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

Buddha starts life as a spoiled aristocrat, and ends by converting half a planet to a new spiritual vision.  Jesus, a lowly carpenter working for his father, shrugs off criticism and mockery to express his vision; he sets in motion events which lead to a new spiritual dimension of human life.

Vincent’s State Lottery Office juxtaposed the eagerness of those hoping to escape grinding poverty by winning a fortune with the ever-present and inescapable mundane reality of their lives

Van Gogh began his career as an artist having failed at everything else – and even then, hoping only to bring to everyone’s notice the wretched life of the peasant.  His first works were black and white sketches as he laboured to grasp shading and perspective.  But he discovers colour, and along with it, something else – using only his own wit and imagination he turns his mundane surroundings into masterful, exuberant displays of light that somehow reach into the very heart of things.  From where did these feelings emerge?

The expansive nature of the sould can even be salvation for those burdened with difficult or antisocial tendencies.  Paul Gauguin was a bored stockbroker who painted for amusement, until he risks all on a trip to the Pacific Islands, and despite his machiavellian nature and calculated ambitions, taps into a vein of strange mysticism that captivates even now.  His last great painting was an attempt to resolve the issues of life, entitled, “Where do we come from?  Where are we going?”  Without his art, his name would now be forgotten even by his descendants; instead, an abrasive middle class office worker becomes a household name and more than a century later, crowds pack galleries to try and extract some measure of his spirit from the strange canvases.  This is a remarkable alchemy.

Manao Tupapao: The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch. Tahitians believed the spirits of the dead, the Tupapao, hovered about the living, and appeared at night as flickering lights. Gauguin returned to his young vahine very late to find her terrified by his struck match.  It was all a far cry from the cosy Paris suburbs where he would paint to pass the time on a Sunday

What else are we witnessing but the soul’s expansion to an area where it becomes part of mankind’s wn consciousness?  How can these achievements be explained if consciousness does not have its own properties and patterns of growth?  It seems that from any starting point an expanding consciousness with even a token measure of altruism, arrives sooner or later, at mysticism.  This is a river seeking a deeper and more concentrated source behind human life, whose nature is often a mystery even to those through whom it expresses itself.

The idea that proposing a God requires an explanation of how that God was created is a circular argument.  As John Lennox said in debate with Richard Dawkins, a created God is by definition a delusion.  But the idea that a God must grow from humble beginnings imposes, once again, our own familiar forms onto a deity – the same fault which atheism levies against religions.

Supreme nanotechnology: spider silk spigots.  Every form of  life has neural systems precisely matching their hugely complex biological machinery: one never arises without the other.  The spider’s 360 degree vision, specially configured legs and silk mechanisms are devoted to a life spent amidst two dimensional web structures hundreds of times larger than itself and impossible to see properly from any point on their surface.  Weight for weight, the silk is stronger than steel and completely different kinds are created on demand for scaffolding, transport, elasticated web joins, vibration detection, capture of prey and so on.  The symmetric dependence of these systems is evidence that the two must appear at precisely the same evolutionary time.  If so, a single matrix must underly both the coded design for biological machinery and the neural intelligence required to control it.  The limiting factor of a single source, and the precise match of mental attributes fully explains why the insect does not vary its fundametal behaviour despite a genetic system comparable to ours (around 15000 genes compared to around 25000)  even after hundreds of millions of generations

We could just as easily theorise that the base state of the Universe is highly concentrated intelligence, and that mankind journeys towards it not from divine decree – Christopher Hitchens’ outraged objection being that no God should create a sick race and then command it to be well – but because it is mankind which needs to understand its own path to expansion, and not the other way around.

Natural intelligence of the Ant Shepherd: a black ant (Lasius niger) herds Black Bean Aphids (Aphis Fabae) to milk their honeydew. By stroking the aphids with its feelers, the shpeherd encourages them to excrete drops of honeydew, which are collected and stored in the ant colony  (Photo: Matt Cole)

Our planet shows life as native to this Universe, springing forth in a million varied forms.  Its adaptation being as readily achieved in savagely hostile as benign conditions, as ingenious in unbelievable as predictable solutions, shows an unstoppable force at work.  This is no prima donna, no cossetted, spoiled and favoured energy.  Life grasps any conditions and tailors itself immediately to take advantage of them.  Nothing stops it, not even tons of rock, winds which freeze the blood, or vicious, scalding sea vents.

Specialised honey storage ants

There is nothing much unusual about our planet – faced with 10 to the power 23 stars, with gravity, time, and atomic forces all constant throughout the universe, from where did we get the idea that Earth alone has life, and that man is the peak of all possible evolution?  This narrow minded superstition continues to haunt the intellect.  We are not even prepared to accept that life forms can be made out of different materials than our own, when the universe clearly supports multiple dimensions.  It is hard to know who is more arrogant – the medieval priest declaring God on his side, or the modern intellectual declaring the whole universe to be beneath him.

“It was previously not understood how a tiny insect brain could use multiple brain pathways to judge motion,” Associate Professor David O’Carroll says.  “It appears they take into account different light patterns in nature, such as a foggy morning or a sunny day, and their brain cells adapt accordingly. This mechanism in their brain enables them to distinguish moving objects in a wide variety of natural settings. It also highlights the fact that single neurons can exhibit extremely complex behaviour.”  Note also the complex shielded ball and socket joints on antennae, embedded beneath hard-edged protective brows; hugely complex eyes wit high component redundancy and full front, rear, and side to side vision, and the precisely fitted body segments

The human mind finds it difficult to visualise any form of consciousness other than variations on its own.  The migratory abilities of birds and whales or the extremely sensitive detectors in moths, able to detect a single molecule of scent given off by their mates from as far as seven miles away remain unexplained.  Their ability to create farms of aphids, harvesting secretions in return for food is impossible to imagine as having arrived by chance experiments on the part of the ant.

Specialised design: soldier turtle ant.  Body segments are toughened, and the head protected by a massive face plate with gutters to shield against sprayed venom and spikes to discourage assailants; the head has also been widened to maintain vision, with additional armour along its sides

As Jurgen Paul and Wulfila Gronenberg (Theodor Boveri Institute, Wurzburg) have pointed out, the muscular structures inside the heads of ants, powering oversized mandibles, are an example of optimised trade-offs between force and speed.  Ants requiring rapid slicing actions have long heads with long “fast muscle” fibres which attach at low angles to maximise speed; those requiring forceful mandible movements (as in seed cracking) rely on many short parallel muscle fibres: studies of filament-attachment angles show they generate the largest power output from the available head capsule volume.  These are hugely complex engineering issues with a large number of parameters, as the calculations show (http://jeb.biologists.org/content/202/7/797.full.pdf).

Cephalotes rohweri: tTurtle ant uses abandoned nests made by beetles: its massive head shape is used as a living door to precisely seal the hole, preventing its many competitors from entering the nest (photo: Alex Wild)

One must also keep in mind that the ant has around 15,000 genes, of which several hundred are devoted to olfactory purposes.  But as in humans, these muscle fibres are also comprised of the protein connectin (titin); in humans this protein contains 26,926 amino acid components, and a staggering 35,000 in mice.  Tests on connectin have shown that applied force is not absorbed by the protein in its entirety but section by section, with each section fully extending before passing the remaining force to the next, giving both a huge mechanical stability to the muscular structure (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299971/pdf/9826620.pdf) and an elasticity over a very large range of forces.

Just pronouncing the full 189,819 letter chemical name of connectin, even at very high speed, takes eight minutes and twenty seconds (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx0kMizIioI) and a fascinating animation showing how motor proteins activate muscle movements can be seen here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HROJU0X1YdQ).

Pheidole Rosae: insect joints usually work by cartilege hinges which can be compressed and expanded extremely quickly. But to power these ferocious mandibles, huge muscles are contained inside the head.  Other species of ants with equally large muscular structure have mandibles designed not for aggression but for milling seeds (photo: Alex Wild)

All of which shows that these humble creatures are not simple constructions at all: even their mitochondria is as complex as in humans, with their fantastic ATP-recycling engines working flat out so these cretaures can carry out their intriguing plans.  With such a complex organism, how can the neural structures be so precisely matched to the biology, and how can the DNA replication be so accurate that hundreds of millions of years have produced such consistent individual and group behaviour?

Blind termites build mounds incorporating air conditioning, ventilation, waste storage, farming and a design allowing for a complete social structure.  These creatures do not think in terms of individual survival: they live or die only as part of a group.  In examples of the animal world in which we clearly see a single consciousness enacted by many parts and carrying engineering and architectural skill which none of the members individually could possibly account for, we can put it down to some kind of chemical signals and leave it at that.  The problem is that the amount of focused mental energy required to absorb such complexities in their entirety – so far, an impossibility – is an indication of the amount required to produce them, and the combined research of more than a century has been insufficient to simulate these mechanical wonders.

Ant nest organization parallels the neuronal interactions of our brains:  “As a cell biologist  I experience the same kind of awe and reverence when I contemplate the structure of an enzyme or the flowing of a signal-transduction cascade as when I watch the moon rise or stand in front of a Mayan temple. Same rush, same rapture.” Biologist Ursula Goodenough (http://liology.wordpress.com)

The emotion most suitable when witnessing this combination of co-ordinated assemblies from the atomic to the biological end product, is awe.  How exactly does this awe differ from the awe of the spiritual-minded?  It does not: it is the same emotion, stimulated by a different route.  Therefore the intellectual scientist can be as devout as the man of simple faith, without it demeaning in the least his status or worth as an intelligent researcher.  It can even be evidence of an enlarged mental scope.

The habit of writing off complexity as a product of chance persists even when examining the human world, as for example cases of twins who seem to share a single consciousness, whose uncannioly similar life experiences, even when raised separately, are declared to be coincidences.  Often more effort is devoted to establishing a case for fraud than in earnestly seeking a satisfying explanation.  Thus in all apparent cases of psychic activity, telekinesis, precognition or precognitive dreams, shared consciousness, or the “zeitgeist” which even Richard Dawkins describes as an undeniable phenomenon, the only acceptable explanations are those which do not change an essential worldview: that consciouness is the freak byproduct and matter the only worthwhile reality.  In fact all the evidence from Earth’s lifeforms points the other way.

I challenge you to avoid awe when visualising this in its entirety: brilliant comparison image from lcog.net.  The difficulty here is being able to imagine the full range of variation.  If the Earth were the size of a golf ball, a cross-section of Canis Majoris would fill a circular area of London from South Kensington to Tower Hill (based on est. 2100 solar radii).  These unimaginable variations are a routine occurrence in this Universe

It is because of this worldview that the idea of a God seems so impossible.  But the moment one theorises consciousness to be an element in its own right, it becomes a logical possibility if only because all elements of this Universe seem to have microscopic, macroscopic and gargantuan forms.  Time seems a simple enough concept in our daily lives, and yet somehow in gargantuan form, it also dresses the entire Universe from end to end!  The Sun is too strong for man’s eye even from a distance of 93 million miles, but there are stars which outshine ours by millions of times.  Granite seems as dense as we can imagine any solid object to be, but a cubic centimetre of a neutron star weighs 100 million tons, and its core is denser still.

Canis Majoris, the largest known star, around 4900 light years away.  Our Sun’s diameter is more than 90 times that of Earth – a difference comparable to that between a pea and a basketball (Tumblr Science Directory)

In short, if consciousness is a universal element, we cannot be sure what the limits are to its magnitude or concentration, and an entirely new field of investigation is needed to decode the laws covering its influence on biology.  In this light, religion appears to be not superstition at all, but the instinctive beginnings of the world’s first and most important science.

A goggle-eyed Mickey Mouse (without shoes or gloves) wants to imitate ‘Lindy’ (Charles Lindbergh, who in 1927 made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean).

He and some other farm animals build a plane, which unfortunately crashes against a tree. Then Mickey transforms a car into a plane, and asks Minnie to fly along. After a breath taking take-off, the plane flies, and up in the air Mickey forces a kiss from Minnie, with disastrous results.

‘Plane Crazy’ is Mickey’s first cartoon and it hasn’t aged a bit. Yes, it’s a silent cartoon with sound added later. Yes, Mickey looks and behaves rather differently than he would do later, and yes, some of the gags are rather crude. Yet, Plane Crazy is outstanding for its fast-paced gags, its extraordinary rubbery animation, its awesome use of perspectives and its effective pantomime character animation (its only piece of dialogue is Minnie asking “who, me?”).

Ub Iwerks is often praised as a fast animator, but this short shows that he was also an original animator with a distinct style and an excellent sense of comic timing.

Watch ‘Plane Crazy’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This is Mickey Mouse cartoon No. 1
To the next Mickey Mouse cartoon: Gallopin’ Gaucho

I may look into other art at the time of 1928 in order to draw direct comparisons.

An artist who was born the day before steamboat willie, mickey’s debut (18th November, 1928), was Armand Pierre Arman. Arman tended to deal in multiples of the same object as so:

He was also very interested in the deconstruction of objects such as this case in his violin. This kind of reminds me of Braque and the cubists but it may be completely irrelevant.

I believe maybe he was referencing Braque’s work? He liked to reference artists, even the way he signed was reminiscent of Van Gogh’s signature.

Arman signed with his first name as an ode to Vincent Van Gogh who also signed as his first name.

Mickey Mouse’s first appearance was actually in Plane Crazy, but this was a silent film with a soundtrack added in Decmber of that year. It aired on May 15th, 1928 almost six months after Steamboat Willie. Wladyslaw Hasior was born a day before. Supposedly he was a famous Polish sculptor but there isn’t much information on him on the web.

I would maybe research him more, but I really feel he is irrelevant to this project, and I also amn’t intregued by his works.

OH OH OH!! The treachery of images was made by Magritte in this time!! EXCITED

Its a series of paintings depicting several things, the most famous being “ceci n’est pas une pipe” One of Magritte’s most famous paintings:

Beautiful.

So this piece of work was being made around the time of Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy.

Its also the same time as Salvador Dali. Maybe trip down to waxwork museum is necessary.

Yeah thats a nice picture too and it was done in the same time as well.

But what is the relation to money and art? What is the value?

If i take a trip to the modern art gallery and get a picture of me beside a piece of work done in 1928 then I can directly compare it to disney.

Steamboat Willie (notice the bit where mickey plays with the pigs nipples, that was cut out in disneyland.

Plane Crazy

Also my favourite disney cartoon

Producers: Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks

Animator: Ub Iwerks

Year: 1928

Wikipedia article on The Gallopin’ Gaucho

So we here at Comic(s) Relief wish you a happy eightieth birthday Mickey and many happy returns!