On false knowledge …
| December 21, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Bruce S. Thornton of the Classics department at Fresno State University in California , author of Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (ISI Books, 1999), certainly spoke for me when he said,
What makes us recognizably human, then, is not what is natural about us but what is unnatural: reason and its projections in language, culture, ritual, and technology, self-awareness, conscious memory, imagination, and the higher emotions; and, most important, values, ethics, morals, and the freedom from nature’s determinism that allows us to choose, whether for good or ill. Nothing else in nature possesses any of these attributes, despite the wishful thinking of those who believe they are teaching chimps to “talk,” or who consider a monkey digging up termites with a stick to be “using tools,” or who label baboon rump-submission a “social practice,” or who subjectively interpret the behavior of animals to indicate the presence of “self-awareness” ore higher human emotions such as love, grief, regret, guilt, shame, or loyalty. For every dog that howls over the body of its dead master there is another that, if necessary, will happily eat his corpse.
Ah yes, … happily eat his corpse.
The meticulously tailored attendants at the funeral parlour down the street from my home are not, typically, told what to do when the bereaved open the coffin and start to …
In those few human civilizations when the bereaved serve the dear departed at the funeral feast, no mere animal hunger drives them. They want to absorb the merits of the departed. A misguided idea to be sure, but a distinctly human one.
Sadly, there is no easy path to virtue.
So what to make of the frantic project of the evolutionary psychologists who pretend that all these human qualities are regularly found among the creatures that squeak, howl, and shuffle in the night – warring over boiled-out soup bones in the dumpsters behind apartment buildings?
Just this: There is no going back on being human. You can be a good or a bad human. You can be a stupid or a wise human. But there is no going back on being human.
Get over looking for advisors among lemurs and chimps. They cannot tell you anything you cannot learn from your own life experiences.
36 Responses to On false knowledge …
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bfast and avocationist,
I would agree with avocationist that “A transfer of existing information is not the creation of new information”
please realize that genes do not just plunk right over from a prokaryote to a eukaryote- they have to be assimilated into the genome and get promoter and terminator sequences to become active. think of it this way- you can not put a piston from an Edsel straight into a an ’09 Camry and expect it to work (there are many flaws w this analogy,including being far too generous about the degree of similarity btwn prok and euk genomes; but it was helpful to me). the mechanisms by which this occurs are fairly well-known, and can be ascribed to chance events (illegitimate repair, alternative splicing). thus the analogy breaks down further in that there is no mechanic doing this. additionally, sometimes these genes acquire entirely new functions in the host genome.
so while on a superficial level this appears to be a “mere” transfer of information it is actually a massive addition of information in the form of new genes, new promoter and terminator regions and sometimes new functions in the eukaryotic host.
even neater, this happens at a very high rate and can be observed happening in the lab. here’s decent summary of some recent work:
http://www.plantcell.org/cgi/c.....18/11/2865
“This may be the first time I’ve seen someone reference this book with respect to evolution. I haven’t looked at it in years…but perhaps I shall pick up it again.”
I know it has nothing to do with biology so if you want to reread it as you know its not drected toward Darwinism.
However this is how it went down. I was sckeptical of the empirical evidence for Darwinism however every scientist I read assured me it was the gospel truth. Who was I to argue otherwise. My thinking was that if the vast maority of scientists were that confident it was probably true. I mean I would say to myself ” all these scientists cannot be wrong”.
I read the book because I was interested in its history of manias as they relate to economic affairs. Some of the insanity described blew my mind. I mean how could so many people be so wrong and so deluded? When I finally finished the book it hit me square between the eyes that delusions and manias are a common part of all societies. Just because we were and are in the “modern age” was no guarantee that our society is immune. So I started thinking “what delusions are going on now”?
That freed me from bowing down to the idea that all the scientists could not be wrong. They very much could be wrong. After all they operate in a closed society professionally speaking, they all read the same thing and say the same thing. All are some of the prequisites of crowd psychology ( read Lebon on crowd behavior) and until I see some empirical evidence of the incredible powers attributed to Darwinism I am quite content to ascribe much of their statements as a perfect example of at least one popular delusion.
Vivid
FatherJay,
So where do I get one of these soul meters? How do you know Neanderthals didn’t (don’t) have souls? I just did a word search and did not find “Neanderthal” in the Bible. “Erth” and “thal” were the closest.
I think there’s plenty of Neanderthals around. For one thing they play hockey. In rock bands they’re called “drummers.” If I should begrudge them souls (or not) that says more about my soul than theirs.
Re: All non-human creatures are subject to man:
Tell that to Acinetobacter baumannii
Re: “Art, science, and culture are the product of spiritual man…”
Art, science, and culture are products of intellect. While they reflect our unique birthright they are not intrinsically spiritual. Each can become every bit as much a mask as your typical voodoo doll.
Re: Adam and Eve possessed a genetic diversity greater than that possessed by anyone who lives physically today.
Interesting proposition given the tendency of systems toward entropy. However, isn’t “lives physically” redundant?
Yours, pmob1
bFast
If fish can’t think, why do we have to change presentation all the time? Like other critters, they can sense, remember and think about things just fine, but only real things (sensible). Whereas we can think about non-real things as well, which Adler liked to talk about (see Turrell above).
Given this, it seems to me that animals are capable of apprehending God to the degree God is sensible.
I will admit that some northern pike can’t think.
Yours, pmob1
Vividbleau, well said.
pmob1, reguarding changing presentations, you make my point.
However, pmob1,
How do you know that fish only think about “real things”? We can measure some of what fish think about, and we can confirm that they think. However, we don’t have any way of measuring whether fish think about “non-real things” or not, so any statement about their ability in that reguard, pro or con, is conjecture. Alas, this is my point.
ps, I ain’t found a smart pike either.
bFast,
Re: However, we don’t have any way of measuring whether fish think about “non-real things”
We can draw an inference and we can also propose testable correlations based upon that which we do know and can measure.
First the inference: the ability to apprehend the non-real, (in universals, for instance), appears inseparable from the ability to communicate same. We therefore infer that any beings that can not communicate abstractions (or show evidence of having understood such communication) are incapable. The inference may also be tested on humans in their developmental stages and in cases of impairment. Fish don’t pass the test.
Second, the measurable correlation: beings known to apprehend the non-real do also regularly bring into being the non-real: intellect regularly invents and deploys new realities seemingly out of nothing. In animal science terms, we might call this behavioral confirmation of non-real thinking. We easily recognize such distinctive behavior informally but we may also ascribe to it a more formal distinguishing property. In any case, we can indeed see and measure the effects of behavior associated with non-real thinking.
Yours, pmob1