11.24.07
On relevance, circular reasoning, and climbing pigs
Today in the RichardDawkins.net chat, a user whose name began with Spartan (insert obligatory “300″ reference here) started something of a discussion. Unfortunately, it was a rather one sided discussion; he repeatedly insisted that math and science are nearly useless because they can give only “estimations”. Before going through this with a fine toothed Comb of Ockham, though, it would help to know where he was coming from.
His argument is one typical of “New Agers”, or post – modernists. He insisted that it is absolutely impossible to know anything, in terms which would confuse even the best theologian. This makes a bit of sense at first, because it’s logical. If you want to absolutely prove that something is true in all frames in all situations at all times, you need to be omnipresent (to borrow a term), and able to measure the states of these many, many frames all at once, and at all times. We can’t do this at the moment, so for the time being we have to make due with a lack of absolutes.
Gosh, this is hard. We can’t know anything for sure! Whatever are we to do? Wait a minute. What changed? Absolutely nothing. That’s right – we can go on living without knowing things to 100% certainty. Ninety – nine percent is good enough for me.
His argument might have made a bit of sense if it weren’t more circular than a twelve dimensional hypersphere on LSD. Often, his speech followed the lines of “how do you know that’s why you know what you know? You don’t know you know that, and neither do I, so we don’t know what we know is actually what we know, you know?”. Yes, he actually said that (paraphrased, but the order of the words doesn’t matter much). The problem with what he’s saying is that it doesn’t matter.
Whether or not we “know” anything for sure doesn’t matter for the world we live in. What does matter is figuring out how this world works, how we can improve it, and what to do with it. Filling this world of ours with hours of tripe, while potentially good served with sugar coating, is not the way to go about doing anything useful.
I lost blood today. I suspect my brain is still bleeding. IQ points are seeping out my ears, and various other orifices. Have a very nice day.
Bunnymuffins.
11.23.07
Mutant fish arrive from ocean depths
No, this isn’t the latest monster movie, and it doesn’t feature Tom Cruise either, though his resemblance to a fish is arguable. Rather, this is about evolution, and the mistreatment it receives in society. What are normally focused on in debates about teaching evolution or creationism are not the consequences (positive or negative) of each, but the place of each with respect to science. The verdict is quite clear: evolution is science, and while creationism makes scientific claims, it is not scientific.
When creationism is taught, people may tend to take things for granted. After all, God gave us this planet, didn’t he? When much of the population is busy celebrating Earth’s 6 000th birthday, issues like global warming, deforestation, peak oil, and artificially imbalanced ecosystems tend to be ignored. This would be all well and good if the world were ending any time soon. (Un?)fortunately, barring a post – Cold War ending to the Cold War, the world will not be ending any time soon, and certainly not in our lifetimes.
This is not just an issue of educational rights and wrongs; it’s about consequences. The consequences of religion and religious style thinking affects people everywhere in ways they usually fail to recognize. Stories such as the one seen here pop up because of failures to plan ahead.
The plight of these fish is due almost entirely due to a failure to apply science – in this case evolution – to real world situations. This has caused the depletion of certain fish stocks, and we will reap the consequences until natural selection manages to sort things out again.
By teaching evolution, and more importantly, the scientific method, we can prevent at least some of these disasters of – in the eyes of the average citizen – insignificant proportions. As Darwin said, “there is a grandeur in this view of life.” Let’s teach the grandeur.
Bunnymuffins
11.22.07
The Dangers of Ethnicity: Teaser
The following is a preview of a rough version of the introduction of an essay I’ve been working on for a few days, which will be published here once completed:
Most people living in developed countries are familiar with, or have at least heard of the concept of “ethnicity”, or “ethnic origins”. It is my stance that this concept is based on highly flawed reasoning at best, or sheer ignorance at the worst. Most importantly, it is dangerous.
Stay tuned for updates to the essay, and expect daily blog updates from now on.
Bunnymuffins.
PS. All commas harmed in the making of this post have received settlements for their injuries.
11.21.07
How to regrow organs from dandruff
People of a scientistical nature have recently managed to create embryonic stem cells from skin cells. From the Reuters article:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers have transformed ordinary human skin cells into batches of cells that look and act like embryonic stem cells — but without using cloning technology and without making embryos.
For those unfamiliar with the biology of the matter, embryonic stem cells are the precursors to the specialised cells found in fully developed human bodies. These cells are present during the beginning stages of pregnancy, and later branch off to perform different roles in the developing baby (though not a “baby” in the normal sense, only in relation to the end stage of development). Before now, it was impossible to (legally in the U.S.) use these cells for any productive purpose.
In the United States, the issue of Stem Cell Research has been a controversial one at best. The “right wing” (though in the U.S., it’s more like “right wing, and “righter wing”) argues that using embryonic stem cells is murder because extracting the cells will often (if not always), kill the embryo. I won’t go into the problems with this argument- believe me, there are many – but will rather focus on the implications of this discovery.
Assuming President Betch does not choose to use his veto crayon, these cells could be used in numerous fields related to biology, particularly medicine. Combined with sufficiently advanced cloning technology, the ability to regrow organs shouldn’t be far away, bypassing the dangers of rejection associated with transplants. At the moment, a person in need of a new organ can expect to wait months – if not years for a compatible organ to be found. If a new organ can be grown with the swab of a cheek, or other “verb, of a, noun” expression, the only issue is growing and implanting the new, fully functional organ.
All there is to do now is sit back, and wonder how the various governments will manage to screw this up.
Bunnymuffins.
11.19.07
YOU can be a Guardian Angel too!
Today I received a letter from the Roman Catholic Church, or at least what I can only assume is an organization related to it. Within this wonderful letter, formatted to appear as though they’d taken the time to use a typewriter, is a plea for money. That’s right – a plea for the one thing the Church has most – money. Money collected through tithes, pillaging, extorting helpless peasants, and other questionable practises, but money nonetheless.
What they fail to mention in this wonderful piece of emotional blackmail is their religious nature. Soup Nun says: accept Jesus, or no soup for you! Of course, bringing Jesus into the lives of these emotionally troubled, disturbed, and otherwise perturbed teens’ lives can’t possibly do any harm, right?
I’ll refrain from mocking the grammar of the letter itself; I’ll let you judge for yourself. Here’s the full text, reproduced verbatim:
Dear Friend,
I’m writing you today to let you know that you can be a wonderful and precious angel of mercy – a Guardian Angel – to a scared homeless child.
That’s why I’m sending you this angel necklace – in the hope that it will be a silent reminder to you of God’s love and our children’s need for love.
My name is Sister Patricia Cruise and I run a place called Covenant House – an emergency crisis shelter for abused, abandoned and homeless youth.
Kids come to our shelter desperately needing food, clean cloths and a safe place to sleep. They come to us because they have no place else to go.
Our “covenant”, our promise to the kids, is that our doors are always open, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Any kid – of any faith – is welcome to safety, hot meals, a warm bed and lots of love.
We take this promise very seriously.
You see, the kids who come to us by the hundreds every week have already been let down in so many ways that we have to be the one thing they can count on.
So often they need counselling to help them handle the physical and emotional abuse they have survived.
Many, many kids have been molested by relatives and other adults they loved and trusted.
Some have been kicked out of their homes by families who just didn’t want them – or because their families had too many problems of their own.
But, when these kid flee to the streets, they don’t find the peace they hope for and they don’t escape from their problems. In fact, it’s just the opposite. They find pimps, drug pushers and con artists.
These predators take innocent, scared, hungry kids, and lure them with food and shelter into doing things the kids will regret forever.
Covenant House stands as a beacon against this darkness. We offer kids God’s love and acceptance.
When a child reaches out his or her hand for help, we take is – more than 4,000 kids this year alone.
We feed them, clothe them, protect them and give them medical care. We help them find a home, get an education, a job – we give them a second chance to be kids.
But, we can’t do it alone.
That’s why, I’m hoping you’ll accept my invitation to become a Guardian Angel to a homeless and exploited kid by sending a gift of $35, $50 or even $100, if you can.
It doesn’t take much to be a Guardian Angel for our kids. Their needs are really very simple – a hot meal, clean cloths, a warm bed … and lots of love.
Please help us now. While they’re still young. While they’re still alive. While we can still help them.
God be with you,
Sister Patricia A. Cruise
PresidentP.S. Any gift you send will help. It doesn’t matter how much you give, because when we combine your gift with hundreds of others it becomes a wonderful source of love and support to help our kids.
Take a moment to let it sink in, then look back. How many times did they describe the plight of these poor, helpless, defenceless, beaten, abused, hurt, homeless children without love in their lives? Whatever the number, and emotional blackmail aside, they want your money so they can take care of these poor, helpless, defenceless, beaten, abused, hurt, homeless children. What the letter fails to mention is the fact that they’re a religious organization, and asking nuns to stop frothing over Jesus is like asking a Priest not to touch the altar boys.
Don’t get me wrong – I love charities. What I despise is religious charity – organizations which take advantage of these poor, helpless, defenceless, beaten, abused, hurt, homeless children to inject religion into their lives. If you want to help someone going through a traumatic experience, you don’t give them more emotional baggage to carry.
If you want to give to charities, by all means, do so, but at the very least, donate to a secular charity. You don’t need Jesus to help the children.
At least the necklace is pretty.
Bunnymuffins.
11.17.07
Introduction
I’m ashamed of myself. Why? Is it because of the deep, panging sadness the state of the world can cause when you look at it, your heart sinking as your thoughts wander? No, and no, I’m not your average depressed teen with no life, nothing to do, and a few complexes thrown in for good measure. What I am is /me.
Yes, I am a tag. /me is what I shall call myself for now, until I think of something better to use. While I do appear to be going off on a tangent of sorts, at least I didn’t include the definition of /me. That would be boring. The point I’m trying to make is that I used a one word title, and that is a bad thing.
Immanuel Kant was one to propose a system of morality, according to which the morality of an action is dependant on what would result if society as a whole were to perform that action, or something like that. One word titles are bad because, if everyone used them, society would inevitably collapse, leading to mass starvation, war, and disease. Clearly this is not a good thing. We must always avoid one word titles, at all costs.
Bullshit statistics made up on the spot show that 69% of the adverse effects of one word titles can be avoided by using two words. Three word titles further reduce the effects to 42%, and longer titles have almost no consequences worth noting.
The problem is this: very few people understand the dangers of one word titles, and are using them on a regular basis. Star Trek: Voyager demonstrates this phenomenon in greusome detail. If the human race is to go anywhere, we must eliminate one word titles, and religion. Religion is also bad.
Bunnymuffins.
