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#2,861
However, in another thread I even saw our old cynic, SY, work in a reference to the Kansas school board decision that "creation science" be taught in the science classrooms as a theory equal to evolution. Well, that was a political decision made by an elected school board, as was the eventual decision to rescind it. SY obviously cared enough to mention it.
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And by the way, thanks for a fine example. In the last presidential go-round, both Bush and Gore supported the notion of allowing the teaching of creation "science" side-by-side with natural selection in the biology classroom.

So, what was my choice again?
 
#2,862
SY said:


And by the way, thanks for a fine example. In the last presidential go-round, both Bush and Gore supported the notion of allowing the teaching of creation "science" side-by-side with natural selection in the biology classroom.

So, what was my choice again?
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yuo know sy, i reckon it is self-evident, and can be shown from first principals, that life as we know it is the handiwork of an intellect, and that we didn't, for instance, merely develop eyes over billions of years, at the optimal location on our physiology, merely because we were 'desperate to see'.

Further thoughts on the subject welcome 🙂
 
#2,864
pinkmouse said:


Hmm, I see exactly the opposite, the fact that the eyes are placed in the optimal position is pretty good proof that the theory of evolution is correct. 😉
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i reckon the 'theory' of evolution shall resolutely remain just that...for the elementary reason that the proverbial 'missing' link betwixt man and beast remains illusive to say the least.

it is difficult to conceive of a high tech japanese camera, (eg Canons EOS 1DS), merely 'evolving' without intellectual input...

The human eye, an infinitely superior system, of vastly advanced construction, could likewise hardly be accused of sponteneously 'evolving' from 'organic soup'.......methinks..:scratch2:
 
#2,867
mikek said:
...for the elementary reason that the proverbial 'missing' link betwixt man and beast remains illusive to say the least.
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Not really, when you consider how rare fossils really are.

The human eye, an infinitely superior system, of vastly advanced construction, could likewise hardly be accused of sponteneously 'evolving' from 'organic soup'...
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A research team, ( sorry, I can't give references, all my books are currently packed away for an impending house move), has actually used computer simulations of the development of the eye, from a mere light sensitive cell, to the full vertibrate eye, and shown that each has a survival advantage.

Your example of a camera is actually quite good proof for evolution, if you can bear with me for one leap of faith. 😉

Assume cameras are a living organism, with the same urges to reproduce as other organisms. Naturally, they cannot do this by themselves, as they have no reproductive organs. Therefore, as is very common in nature, they have formed a symbiotic relationship with man, of benefit to both parties, more cameras get made and spread into the market, and humans get the benefits of owning a camera.

So, if we assume that, like most animals, evolutionary success is how many of that type of camera get produced, then the evolutionary pressures driving market penetration are paramount.

Therefore to get a share of the market, each generation of camera must be better or cheaper than the last, thus driving change. Note, (and this is important), I don't say improvement. If a new camera that may be more basic than it's rivals in the market is introduced, it may still gain a bigger market share just by being cheaper, and therefore better suited to it's environment.

This last point is important, and is what some people miss in the theory of evolution. 😉
 
#2,868
i reckon the most dangerous thing about Darwinian theory is not what's wrong with it, but that which is on carefull reflection, plainly wrong, but is now taken for granted...as fact. There apears to be an almost universal acceptance of the man's theory in its entirety, without much consideration of the contrary view. ...or line by line critical examination of his 'findings'....

Heresy some might say...
 
#2,869
pinkmouse said:



Your example of a camera is actually quite good proof for evolution, if you can bear with me for one leap of faith. 😉

Assume cameras are a living organism, with the same urges to reproduce as other organisms. Naturally, they cannot do this by themselves, as they have no reproductive organs. Therefore, as is very common in nature, they have formed a symbiotic relationship with man, of benefit to both parties, more cameras get made and spread into the market, and humans get the benefits of owning a camera.

So, if we assume that, like most animals, evolutionary success is how many of that type of camera get produced, then the evolutionary pressures driving market penetration are paramount.

Therefore to get a share of the market, each generation of camera must be better or cheaper than the last, thus driving change. Note, (and this is important), I don't say improvement. If a new camera that may be more basic than it's rivals in the market is introduced, it may still gain a bigger market share just by being cheaper, and therefore better suited to it's environment.

This last point is important, and is what some people miss in the theory of evolution. 😉
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:scratch2: It is possible that, like me, you'll find the urgument you've presented is fataly flawed...(then again mybe not..😉 )

Your intial assumption is invalid for obvious reasons, and cannot therefore be used to justify the urgument you've presented.

You missed one vital point: that the hypothetical camera you've presented, like the eye, cannot 'think', as it were, and requires a designer, are marketing department...etc...to make the supply-demand decisions affecting its viability in the market.
 
#2,870
mikek said:
You missed one vital point: that the hypothetical camera you've presented, like the eye, cannot 'think', as it were, and requires a designer, are marketing department...etc...to make the supply-demand decisions affecting its viability in the market.
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Ah, but it's a symbiotic relationship. The camera does not need to think, or waste it's time or energy developing a reproductive system, because it has influenced us to do it for it. Have you heard of Memes?

As for marketing/product development, just think how often they get it wrong. 😉
 
#2,871
mikek said:
There apears to be an almost universal acceptance of the man's theory in its entirety, without much consideration of the contrary view. ..
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If you believe that, then you are living in the stone-age... the theory of evolution as it exists today is only superficially similar to Darwin's evolution.

Evolution is very much a fact of life, this is clear... whether it has its roots in intelligent panspermia is a different question.

dave
 
#2,872
Common conflation- things like panspermia are directed toward the origin of life, not the origin of species. Darwin did not consider how life began, merely how it developed once it was here. Stanley Miller, Harold Urey, and Cyril Ponnaparuma (sp?) came along much, much later.

Have you read Dennet's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea"? Wonderful book.
 
#2,873
planet10 said:
... the theory of evolution as it exists today is only superficially similar to Darwin's evolution.
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I have to disagree Dave, "The Origin of the Species" actually contains every major concept of modern evolutionary theory, the problem is, we just didn't appreciate them until now. The only thing modern science has done is pin down the genetic mechanisms. Darwin's book was way ahead of its time.

I would also recommend reading his books on evolution, rather than the more modern pop-sci commentaries. How a man who was so chronically ill could write anything that lucid I find absolutely amazing. His books are well written, a little wordy perhaps, but certainly not as difficult as people seem to imagine. Definately a lot better than, say, the Loudspeaker Cookbook! 😉
 
#2,876
planet10 said:


If you believe that, then you are living in the stone-age... the theory of evolution as it exists today is only superficially similar to Darwin's evolution.


dave
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i disagree...

SY said:
Common conflation- things like panspermia are directed toward the origin of life, not the origin of species. Darwin did not consider how life began, merely how it developed once it was here.
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i agree..
 
#2,877
pinkmouse said:


Ah, but it's a symbiotic relationship. The camera does not need to think, or waste it's time or energy developing a reproductive system, because it has influenced us to do it for it. Have you heard of Memes?

As for marketing/product development, just think how often they get it wrong. 😉
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Hi Pinkmouse, 🙂

Something not quite right here....how could a species, over any amount of time, and entirely without external support, exert 'influence' in order to design, and/or otherwise develop eyes?
 
#2,878
the truth..the whole truth...and nothing but...

Originally by Arundahti Roy
In the aftermath of the unconscionable September 11 suicide attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, an American newscaster said: "Good and evil rarely manifest themselves as clearly as they did last Tuesday. People who we don't know massacred people who we do. And they did so with contemptuous glee." Then he broke down and wept.
Here's the rub: America is at war against people it doesn't know, because they don't appear much on TV. Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an "international coalition against terror", mobilised its army, its air force, its navy and its media, and committed them to battle.

The trouble is that once Amer ica goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place.

What we're witnessing here is the spectacle of the world's most powerful country reaching reflexively, angrily, for an old instinct to fight a new kind of war. Suddenly, when it comes to defending itself, America's streamlined warships, cruise missiles and F-16 jets look like obsolete, lumbering things. As deterrence, its arsenal of nuclear bombs is no longer worth its weight in scrap. Box-cutters, penknives, and cold anger are the weapons with which the wars of the new century will be waged. Anger is the lock pick. It slips through customs unnoticed. Doesn't show up in baggage checks.

Who is America fighting? On September 20, the FBI said that it had doubts about the identities of some of the hijackers. On the same day President George Bush said, "We know exactly who these people are and which governments are supporting them." It sounds as though the president knows something that the FBI and the American public don't.

In his September 20 address to the US Congress, President Bush called the enemies of America "enemies of freedom". "Americans are asking, 'Why do they hate us?' " he said. "They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." People are being asked to make two leaps of faith here. First, to assume that The Enemy is who the US government says it is, even though it has no substantial evidence to support that claim. And second, to assume that The Enemy's motives are what the US government says they are, and there's nothing to support that either.

For strategic, military and economic reasons, it is vital for the US government to persuade its public that their commitment to freedom and democracy and the American Way of Life is under attack. In the current atmosphere of grief, outrage and anger, it's an easy notion to peddle. However, if that were true, it's reasonable to wonder why the symbols of America's economic and military dominance - the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - were chosen as the targets of the attacks. Why not the Statue of Liberty? Could it be that the stygian anger that led to the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US government's record of commitment and support to exactly the opposite things - to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocide (outside America)? It must be hard for ordinary Americans, so recently bereaved, to look up at the world with their eyes full of tears and encounter what might appear to them to be indifference. It isn't indifference. It's just augury. An absence of surprise. The tired wisdom of knowing that what goes around eventually comes around. American people ought to know that it is not them but their government's policies that are so hated. They can't possibly doubt that they themselves, their extraordinary musicians, their writers, their actors, their spectacular sportsmen and their cinema, are universally welcomed. All of us have been moved by the courage and grace shown by firefighters, rescue workers and ordinary office staff in the days since the attacks.

America's grief at what happened has been immense and immensely public. It would be grotesque to expect it to calibrate or modulate its anguish. However, it will be a pity if, instead of using this as an opportunity to try to understand why September 11 happened, Americans use it as an opportunity to usurp the whole world's sorrow to mourn and avenge only their own. Because then it falls to the rest of us to ask the hard questions and say the harsh things. And for our pains, for our bad timing, we will be disliked, ignored and perhaps eventually silenced.

The world will probably never know what motivated those particular hijackers who flew planes into those particular American buildings. They were not glory boys. They left no suicide notes, no political messages; no organisation has claimed credit for the attacks. All we know is that their belief in what they were doing outstripped the natural human instinct for survival, or any desire to be remembered. It's almost as though they could not scale down the enormity of their rage to anything smaller than their deeds. And what they did has blown a hole in the world as we knew it. In the absence of information, politicians, political commentators and writers (like myself) will invest the act with their own politics, with their own interpretations. This speculation, this analysis of the political climate in which the attacks took place, can only be a good thing.

But war is looming large. Whatever remains to be said must be said quickly. Before America places itself at the helm of the "international coalition against terror", before it invites (and coerces) countries to actively participate in its almost godlike mission - called Operation Infinite Justice until it was pointed out that this could be seen as an insult to Muslims, who believe that only Allah can mete out infinite justice, and was renamed Operation Enduring Freedom- it would help if some small clarifications are made. For example, Infinite Justice/Enduring Freedom for whom? Is this America's war against terror in America or against terror in general? What exactly is being avenged here? Is it the tragic loss of almost 7,000 lives, the gutting of five million square feet of office space in Manhattan, the destruction of a section of the Pentagon, the loss of several hundreds of thousands of jobs, the bankruptcy of some airline companies and the dip in the New York Stock Exchange? Or is it more than that? In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the US secretary of state, was asked on national television what she felt about the fact that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of US economic sanctions. She replied that it was "a very hard choice", but that, all things considered, "we think the price is worth it". Albright never lost her job for saying this. She continued to travel the world representing the views and aspirations of the US government. More pertinently, the sanctions against Iraq remain in place. Children continue to die.

So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, "a clash of civilisations" and "collateral damage". The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice. How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better place? How many dead Afghans for every dead American? How many dead women and children for every dead man? How many dead mojahedin for each dead investment banker? As we watch mesmerised, Operation Enduring Freedom unfolds on TV monitors across the world. A coalition of the world's superpowers is closing in on Afghanistan, one of the poorest, most ravaged, war-torn countries in the world, whose ruling Taliban government is sheltering Osama bin Laden, the man being held responsible for the September 11 attacks.

The only thing in Afghanistan that could possibly count as collateral value is its citizenry. (Among them, half a million maimed orphans.There are accounts of hobbling stampedes that occur when artificial limbs are airdropped into remote, inaccessible villages.) Afghanistan's economy is in a shambles. In fact, the problem for an invading army is that Afghanistan has no conventional coordinates or signposts to plot on a military map - no big cities, no highways, no industrial complexes, no water treatment plants. Farms have been turned into mass graves. The countryside is littered with land mines - 10 million is the most recent estimate. The American army would first have to clear the mines and build roads in order to take its soldiers in.


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Get the book!!

[/B]'The algebra Of Infinite Justice'
By
Arundhati Roy
 
#2,879
part 2....

Originally by Arundhati Roy

India, thanks in part to its geography, and in part to the vision of Operation Enduring Freedom is ostensibly being fought to uphold the American Way of Life. It'll probably end up undermining it completely. It will spawn more anger and more terror across the world. For ordinary people in America, it will mean lives lived in a climate of sickening uncertainty: will my child be safe in school? Will there be nerve gas in the subway? A bomb in the cinema hall? Will my love come home tonight? There have been warnings about the possibility of biological warfare - smallpox, bubonic plague, anthrax - the deadly payload of innocuous crop-duster aircraft. Being picked off a few at a time may end up being worse than being annihilated all at once by a nuclear bomb.

The US government, and no doubt governments all over the world, will use the climate of war as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, deny free speech, lay off workers, harass ethnic and religious minorities, cut back on public spending and divert huge amounts of money to the defence industry. To what purpose? President Bush can no more "rid the world of evil-doers" than he can stock it with saints. It's absurd for the US government to even toy with the notion that it can stamp out terrorism with more violence and oppression. Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease. Terrorism has no country. It's transnational, as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull up stakes and move their "factories" from country to country in search of a better deal. Just like the multi-nationals.

Terrorism as a phenomenon may never go away. But if it is to be contained, the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the planet with other nations, with other human beings who, even if they are not on TV, have loves and griefs and stories and songs and sorrows and, for heaven's sake, rights. Instead, when Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, was asked what he would call a victory in America's new war, he said that if he could convince the world that Americans must be allowed to continue with their way of life, he would consider it a victory.

The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Bin Laden (who knows?) and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been signed by the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars. The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when Israel - backed by the US - invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Desert Storm, the thousands of Palestinians who have died fighting Israel's occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Panama, at the hands of all the terrorists, dictators and genocidists whom the American government supported, trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms. And this is far from being a comprehensive list.

For a country involved in so much warfare and conflict, the American people have been extremely fortunate. The strikes on September 11 were only the second on American soil in over a century. The first was Pearl Harbour. The reprisal for this took a long route, but ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This time the world waits with bated breath for the horrors to come.

Someone recently said that if Osama bin Laden didn't exist, America would have had to invent him. But, in a way, America did invent him. He was among the jihadis who moved to Afghanistan in 1979 when the CIA commenced its operations there. Bin Laden has the distinction of being created by the CIA and wanted by the FBI. In the course of a fortnight he has been promoted from suspect to prime suspect and then, despite the lack of any real evidence, straight up the charts to being "wanted dead or alive".

From all accounts, it will be impossible to produce evidence (of the sort that would stand scrutiny in a court of law) to link Bin Laden to the September 11 attacks. So far, it appears that the most incriminating piece of evidence against him is the fact that he has not condemned them.

From what is known about the location of Bin Laden and the living conditions in which he operates, it's entirely possible that he did not personally plan and carry out the attacks - that he is the inspirational figure, "the CEO of the holding company". The Taliban's response to US demands for the extradition of Bin Laden has been uncharacteristically reasonable: produce the evidence, then we'll hand him over. President Bush's response is that the demand is "non-negotiable".

(While talks are on for the extradition of CEOs - can India put in a side request for the extradition of Warren Anderson of the US? He was the chairman of Union Carbide, responsible for the Bhopal gas leak that killed 16,000 people in 1984. We have collated the necessary evidence. It's all in the files. Could we have him, please?)

But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full-spectrum dominance", its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America's drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a "war on drugs"....)

Now Bush and Bin Laden have even begun to borrow each other's rhetoric. Each refers to the other as "the head of the snake". Both invoke God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless. The fireball and the ice pick. The bludgeon and the axe. The important thing to keep in mind is that neither is an acceptable alternative to the other.

President Bush's ultimatum to the people of the world - "If you're not with us, you're against us" - is a piece of presumptuous arrogance. It's not a choice that people want to, need to, or should have to make.

© Arundhati Roy 2001
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