Yeah, this grou is dead. But tou raise interesting questions ... unfortunately
to answer them we'd probably first have to define "intelligence" and that will
get us nowhere fast.

I am also interested in colonial life forms ... does a human society act
intelligently? For that matter - does an individual human? (as a colony of cells
and single-celled organisms)









----- Original Message ----
From: dale4sans <Majordale@...>
To: Cap-Q@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 11:06:14 AM
Subject: [Cap-Q] Self Introduction & a Question or Two

It appears this is not an active group, but perhaps many of you have been
members for a long time and have become jaded or lost interest. I did not take
the time to review past posts, so if the questions I pose are not appropriate,
tell me and I'll go elsewhere.

I'm a senior, white, male, retired, and married. I have no formal education in
philosophy, religion or what I consider to be the 'soft' sciences.  Although
raised as a Catholic, I have come to the atheistic point of view. I am
interested in SETI, the nature of conscientiousness, and the basis for deciding
what's good or bad.

My reason for joining this group was to get some feedback on some ideas I have
regarding the future evolution of our species. Some of these ideas come from Ray
Kurzweil's writings as described on Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Raymond_Kurzweil

For starters . . .  I have wondered whether we would recognize if and when a
machine or computer network became self-aware. Does an entity or group of
entities need to be self-aware to be intelligent?  Does a bee or ant colony act
intelligently?



------------------------------------

~~~CAP-Q~~~
"Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom."
                  - Lao Tzu
(Un-)subscription info - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cap-Q/
Yahoo! Groups Links

It appears this is not an active group, but perhaps many of you have been
members for a long time and have become jaded or lost interest. I did not take
the time to review past posts, so if the questions I pose are not appropriate,
tell me and I'll go elsewhere.

I'm a senior, white, male, retired, and married. I have no formal education in
philosophy, religion or what I consider to be the 'soft' sciences.  Although
raised as a Catholic, I have come to the atheistic point of view. I am
interested in SETI, the nature of conscientiousness, and the basis for deciding
what's good or bad.

My reason for joining this group was to get some feedback on some ideas I have
regarding the future evolution of our species. Some of these ideas come from Ray
Kurzweil's writings as described on Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Raymond_Kurzweil

For starters . . .  I have wondered whether we would recognize if and when a
machine or computer network became self-aware. Does an entity or group of
entities need to be self-aware to be intelligent?  Does a bee or ant colony act
intelligently?

The evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright appeared on Bill Moyers' weekly PBS
show this past weekend and discussed his new book "The Evolution of God".  I
found him rather interesting and plan to read his book soon (currently on
library hold).  As a serious philosophical writer myself, I wonder how this
Yahoo group would respond to a particular assertion Wright made on the show
about how he believes in the divine and in universal moral order.  He also
referred to Buddhism as helping him gain mystical insight, or at least
philosophical clarity.

I personally believe that no divine force exists and no universal moral order
exists either.  As a human culture arising out of survivalism, most humans
condition their minds to externalize phenomena which are actually internal, that
is, inside the human mind.  Moral order is something for the mind to create, not
to "find."  And Perfection and supreme magnificence are also things for the mind
to create, not find.  The book I'm currently writing deals heavily with human
nature, human potential and the importance of taking full responsibility for the
realities we create with our own minds.  If progress is to be meaningful, we
have to acknowledge and embrace our own mental complexity and social natures. 
We are all beings of identification and my ideas take identity theory into new,
challenging areas for progress.

As for mysticism, I don't really have any certainty about other forms of
paranormality, but intellectual mysticism does exist, even though it might be
"just" a semantic spin on extensive, practical progressive mental vision.  I
keep hearing about more and more philosophers and psychologists "finding
themselves" through Buddhist practices, but it's not clear to me that they're
getting any more than what I think of as rudimentary self-awareness with those
techniques.  Specific, clear vision provides communicational access, and none of
these Buddhism promoters seem to have that, in my opinion.  Granted, real vision
has to start as a feeling but real vision then has to become much more than that
too.  I'm very much a relativist and profundity itself is also relative.  Just
because some ideas are new, refreshing and inspiring, that doesn't also mean
their scope is far-reaching enough to stimulate the kind of progress humanity
actually needs.  The ideas in my book are designed to show people how to think
big enough to see the whole human condition and to respond with comprehensive
nurturance for mutual empowerment and sound, healthy societal restructuring for
society to work with individuals instead of against them.

Your thoughts?

LJ

As a special surprise, the hit parody song
"The Little Bummer Boy"

http://www.soundlift.com/band/music.php?song_id=82930

)))((((((
(*)...(*)
....U....
..[___]..

Stay on groovin' safari,
Tor

For years I have researched several subjects in which progress
has otherwise been halted due to human bias and controversy. In said
subjects I have made many enlightening discoveries. Such subjects
include cosmology, psychology of fundamental intent, evolutionary
psychology, and others.

For the most part I research these things for the sake of my own
knowledge, but I occasionally publicize this knowledge (as I am doing
now) for anyone else that wants it.

The information is stored at:
http://www.cotse.net/users/t3nj/

Dear Cap-Q Kids,

I should apologize in advance for using this list for blatant shilling,
but there it is.

As you may know, after 10 years of writing and hustling I had my first
novel, The Manuscript, published in the UK; and after a year of not doing
too disastrously over here, it has now been published in the U.S.

As it happens, the story centers around some existentially-afflicted young
people who just happen to discover the actual verifiable answers to just
the kinds of questions (Capital-Q ones) we (used to) debate in this space:
the nature of consciousness, free will vs determinism, absolute morality,
existence of God, &c. &c. Along the way, they also get in a lot of
gunfights. Really over-the-top gunfights. It's also occasionally funny,
I'm told.

Anyway, being published in the U.S. isn't the same as have any kind of
marketing budget in the U.S. (I seem not to), so I'm riding the
Word-of-Mouth Train - and I'd be enormously grateful if you'd consider
sending the following two links on to everyone you know who, well, reads.

	 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0230007430

	 http://www.the-manuscript.com/

If you were kind enough to have read it, and happen to have liked it, a
personal recommendation wouldn't go amiss either.

And I should stress that word-of-mouth can actually be enormously
powerful: even in a soulless, bestseller-driven publishing industry, first
novels by unknowns still occasionally come out of nowhere and take the
world by storm - simply because they're good books, and people like them,
and they tell their friends. Hope you will like this one, and think it's
fun, and tell your friends.

Many thanks indeed.

Michael


--
Michael Stephen Fuchs  |  msf@...  |  www.michaelfuchs.org

         Author of THE MANUSCRIPT: www.the-manuscript.com

    Now in paperback in the U.S.! http://www.amazon.com/dp/0230007430

What the critics say: "Breathless cyber-techno thriller - a great novel!"
"High philosophical ambitions."  "Clever and engaging."  "A high-energy,
enthusiastic yarn - a captivating debut."  "Dazzling - a tightly-plotted
thriller, but also a terrific literary chronicle of our Electronic Age."

You are all invited to a new discussion group called "Abstractions in
Motion"! This is a very casual group where hopefully we can have some
civil discourse and exchange of ideas, and is of particular interest
to people who like psychology, philosophy, or technology. You do not
have to write anything if you do not want to, it is fun just to read
what other people have to say. However, participating in the
discussions is also fun! ;) The link for the group is:

  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/abstractionsinmotion/join

Feel free to write about whatever interests you. I always enjoy
hearing about other people's ideas. Best Wishes!

Sincerely,
Infinity

The Infinity Home Page http://infinity.00freehost.com/

Fahrenheit  DNA
A YouTube vid, by TOR.

SEE ALL OF EARTH"s RELIGIONS + ATHEISM FLUSHED DOWN THE UNIVERSAL
TOILET.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LubuSAgB5s

Stay on Groovin' Safari,
TOR

At 22:03 13/10/2006, you wrote:

The God Delusion -

Get.This.Book.

Amen! (So to speak!)

I've still got about 100 pages of it left to read. And I think it has some non-trivial flaws: in particular, his occasionally flippant tone, and his occasional tendency to wander off and indulge pet prejudices (such as a low-grade anti-Americanism), both of which I think serve only to weaken the force of his argument.

But, those matters aside, he really is doing God's work (again, so to speak). Shortly after 9/11, he published an infamous piece in the Guardian, pointing out the elephant in the room - that it was religion that created the human guided missiles, and was the root problem:

         http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,,552388,00.html

Now he's basically formed these ideas into a book-length component of a "crusade" - to save the world from religion, or at least allow people to talk about it sensibly. That's heroic in my view. Particularly, since I consider it not unlikely that he's headed for being murdered by some God-bothering fucktard if he stays this course.

This wasn't a totally idle, nor non-self-interested thought: Monday night I shared a packed auditorium in Bloomsbury with about 2000 others to listen to Dawkins read from the book, and answer questions - and, I couldn't help but notice, security was pretty much non-existent. Would have been a great opportunity to take out a lot of heathens, and their ringleader, in one place. Dawkins was totally charming and funny and erudite and compelling, by the way. (Favourite quote of the evening: "Some of my best friends are bishops.")

And, in the event, we all did survive. And my copy of The God Delusion? On the title page it's got a lovely urbane squiggle, which I watched the man put there himself, while we exchanged a few hurried words about selection pressures being unable to account for the ubiquity of religion . . . Muahahaha . . . Pardon my typical gloating.

Oh, and here's one picture

         http://www.michaelfuchs.org/schtuff/dawkins/dawkins.jpg

and two crappy videos I shot

         http://www.michaelfuchs.org/schtuff/dawkins/dawkins1.rm

         http://www.michaelfuchs.org/schtuff/dawkins/dawkins2.rm


but which I gave up on pretty quickly because of total failure to predict when the really clever bits were coming along, and because I looked like a twat watching the whole thing through my camera.

Cheers!
Michael

Michael Stephen Fuchs  |  msf@michaelfuchs.org  |  www.michaelfuchs.org

        Author of THE MANUSCRIPT: www.the-manuscript.com

What the critics say: "Breathless cyber-techno thriller - a great novel!"
"High philosophical ambitions."  "Clever and engaging."  "A high-energy,
enthusiastic yarn - a captivating debut."  "Dazzling - a tightly-plotted
thriller, but also a terrific literary chronicle of our Electronic Age."

The God Delusion -

Get.This.Book.

The God Delusion -

Get.This.Book.

Couple it with Dennett's "Breaking the Spell" and you've got yourself
THE definitive tag-team of God-Busters. Reads like a comfortable old
novel. Had to share :)

I just finished reading Religion as a Natural Phenomenon for the second time.  Dennett is absolutely at the very top of his game here.  What an enjoyable read, and a great filler-of-time between a Cap-Q sabbatical and the frenzied crossing of fingers, hoping The Manuscript will soon be released in the U.S.

Any updates?

--- In Cap-Q@yahoogroups.com, michael stephen fuchs <msf@...> wrote:

> > Okay, as long as I'm posting again, here are a couple of things of perhaps more legitimate interest. First, I saw (in the Independent last night) that Daniel Dennett has a new book out.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article350262.ece

I just finished reading Religion as a Natural Phenomenon for the second time.  Dennett is absolutely at the very top of his game here.  What an enjoyable read, and a great filler-of-time between a Cap-Q sabbatical and the frenzied crossing of fingers, hoping The Manuscript will soon be released in the U.S.

Any updates?

AngryFemme <angryfemme@...> wrote :

> I'm assuming it will be available from U.S. Amazon as well.

Alack, erm, not right this minute. While, somewhat inexplicably, you can buy it
on amazon.fr, amazon.de, amazon.ca, amazon.jp, and some South African online
bookstore, you can't yet buy it on amazon.com. So, for Americans, it's a matter
of a little international shipping (which I think is less than the 34% discount
Amazon is offering on the book itself).

A future US publication deal looks pretty likely - but they're sort of waiting
to see if I bomb in the UK first, I think. So on the one hand I'm loathe to ask
anyone in the US to buy it from overseas when it may soon-ish be available
locally . . . however, if I don't try to shift as many copies as I can -
including in the US, where most of the people I know are - then it may NOT ever
be available in the US. Bit of a Catch-22.


Okay, as long as I'm posting again, here are a couple of things of perhaps more
legitimate interest. First, I saw (in the Independent last night) that Daniel
Dennett has a new book out.

   http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article350262.ece

I'm interested to note that he is tackling in this one the provenance of (and
future of, and what to do about) religious belief. It seems to me a bit as if
Dennett's method (or ambition) is to pick a Cap-Q question, and then attempt to
sort it in a book (or two): the enigma of consciousness ("Consciousness
Explained"), the paradox of free will ("Elbow Room", "Freedom Evolves") - and
now the pervasiveness of "palpably untrue beliefs" (religious dogma), which
presumably would have been heavily selected against.

As regards that, if I'm not tooting my horn here, and maybe I've even tooted
this one before, I don't recall, but I decided a few years back that Pinker's
"How the Mind Works" (which was my personal eye-opener regarding most of the
Cap-Q stuff) failed to account for religious belief convincingly, and I decided
in a moment of vainglory that I had an original insight, and I made so bold to
write him (Steve Pinker himself) to explain my ideas in detail:

   http://www.michaelfuchs.org/life/words/pinker.html

and even more amazingly, he was so extraordinarily gracious and indulgent as to
respond:

   http://www.michaelfuchs.org/life/words/pinker2.html


In other, somewhat relevant, new book news: my favorite fiction writer of all
time (by some margin) has a new volume of essays out:

   http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316156116

One of the essays is a review of a new book of English usage, which sprawls into
a major-ish treatise on linguistics/philosophy of language. (It's kind of
amazing how technical DFW can be when he decides he's interested in something.)
Anyway, in one section he talks a lot about Pinker, particularly his 1994 book
THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT ( 
http://www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge/?story=2005-11-07 ), as a standard-bearer
of the "descriptivist" school. I think he did him justice and, moreover, it was
just kind of really thrilling to hear the author of my favorite novel (
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316921173 ) take on the author of my favorite
non-fiction book ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393318486 ).

Cheers,
Michael

---------------------------------------------------------------------
                 Two million dollars in a black bag.
        The meaning of life on a deviously encrypted web site.
And several dozen heavily armed guys with serious existential issues.
                  The hunt is on for THE MANUSCRIPT.
                    http://www.the-manuscript.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Congratulations michael,  I'll look out for it.

Wade

michael stephen fuchs wrote:
> Howdy Cap-Qers.
>
> As has been pretty inescapably obvious, the list has been pretty much
completely quiescent for, oh, well, it's been years now, I think. I've sort of
been holding out hope that it will experience another renaissance at some point
in the cycle and, who know, maybe it will. Meanwhile, I suppose I may as well
use it to shill for my new book.  8^)
>
> Yes, that's right - after nearly 10 years of writing, hustling, and collecting
rejection letters in lawn-and-leaf bags - I was finally picked up by Macmillan.
My first novel (which is called THE MANUSCRIPT) is being published, in a bit
less than a month:
>
>     http://www.the-manuscript.com/
>
> I might not bother you about (well, okay, I probably would) if it didn't
partake of a lot of the same themes that this list was always about:
evolutionary psychology, consciousness, the meaning of life, etc. As it happens,
my protagonists actually discover a document which authoritatively answers
pretty much every single one of these nagging Cap-Q questions. Cool, huh?
Unfortunately, they get chased and shot at an awful lot for their trouble. Good
fun for the whole philosophically-inclined family.
>
> As it happens, all of my literary efforts are focused on bringing to bear the
insights of these very new sciences and technologies we like nattering on about
(evo-psycho, cognitive neuro-sci, genetics/genomics, etc.) on the prodigiously
enduring (and conspicuously unsolved) problems of philosophy and religion. All
these stunning new insights need to be popularised - and worked into a
social/cultural context. So my plan is to be the Dickens of the
Information/Biotech Age (minus the getting paid by the word bit). THE MANUSCRIPT
is my first published stab at this.
>
> And anyway so but of course, I'd be very, very, very grateful indeed if you
were to do me the extraordinary kindness of sending these two links:
>
>     http://www.the-manuscript.com/
>
>     http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0230000096
>
> on to pretty much everyone you've ever even remotely heard about. If I can
shift a few copies of this one, I can probably get subsequent ones published.
Any and all kind assistance in getting the word out would be awesome. I mean,
come on - who will support techosophical utopian tracts if not you?!  8^)
>
> Hope everyone is very well and happy out there in Cap-Q Land.  8^)
>
> Yours as ever,
> Michael
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>                 Two million dollars in a black bag.
>        The meaning of life on a deviously encrypted web site.
> And several dozen heavily armed guys with serious existential issues.
>                  The hunt is on for THE MANUSCRIPT.
>                    http://www.the-manuscript.com/
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ~~~CAP-Q~~~
> "Just realize where you come from:
>  this is the essence of wisdom."
>                  - Lao Tzu
> (Un-)subscription info - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cap-Q/
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Howdy Cap-Qers.

As has been pretty inescapably obvious, the list has been pretty much completely
quiescent for, oh, well, it's been years now, I think. I've sort of been holding
out hope that it will experience another renaissance at some point in the cycle
and, who know, maybe it will. Meanwhile, I suppose I may as well use it to shill
for my new book.  8^)

Yes, that's right - after nearly 10 years of writing, hustling, and collecting
rejection letters in lawn-and-leaf bags - I was finally picked up by Macmillan.
My first novel (which is called THE MANUSCRIPT) is being published, in a bit
less than a month:

     http://www.the-manuscript.com/

I might not bother you about (well, okay, I probably would) if it didn't partake
of a lot of the same themes that this list was always about: evolutionary
psychology, consciousness, the meaning of life, etc. As it happens, my
protagonists actually discover a document which authoritatively answers pretty
much every single one of these nagging Cap-Q questions. Cool, huh?
Unfortunately, they get chased and shot at an awful lot for their trouble. Good
fun for the whole philosophically-inclined family.

As it happens, all of my literary efforts are focused on bringing to bear the
insights of these very new sciences and technologies we like nattering on about
(evo-psycho, cognitive neuro-sci, genetics/genomics, etc.) on the prodigiously
enduring (and conspicuously unsolved) problems of philosophy and religion. All
these stunning new insights need to be popularised - and worked into a
social/cultural context. So my plan is to be the Dickens of the
Information/Biotech Age (minus the getting paid by the word bit). THE MANUSCRIPT
is my first published stab at this.

And anyway so but of course, I'd be very, very, very grateful indeed if you were
to do me the extraordinary kindness of sending these two links:

     http://www.the-manuscript.com/

     http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0230000096

on to pretty much everyone you've ever even remotely heard about. If I can shift
a few copies of this one, I can probably get subsequent ones published. Any and
all kind assistance in getting the word out would be awesome. I mean, come on -
who will support techosophical utopian tracts if not you?!  8^)

Hope everyone is very well and happy out there in Cap-Q Land.  8^)

Yours as ever,
Michael

---------------------------------------------------------------------
                 Two million dollars in a black bag.
        The meaning of life on a deviously encrypted web site.
And several dozen heavily armed guys with serious existential issues.
                  The hunt is on for THE MANUSCRIPT.
                    http://www.the-manuscript.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

dear monitor
i have re-registed under as pieiphi at pieiphi@...
i will terminate my membership on this site.
len

Show me one good reason to possess a dogmatic outlook, and I'll show
you a woman who could consider Patheism as a possibility.

There is only one belief that "logically" combines science with
theology/religion, it's called Christian Pantheism. There is evidence
that Jesus was a Pantheist, believing God and the Universe are one in
the same. To find out more, click on the following link...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Introduction_to_Christian_Pantheism/

~~~Are you a Pantheist??? What is a Pantheist??? Pantheism is the
belief...

that, "God and the Universe are one in the same."
There are good reasons to believe Jesus was a Pantheist. To learn
more, please click on the link to this new Yahoo Group...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Christian_Pantheists_and_Panentheists/

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/whatis/chap16.htm

Why A Community Becomes Senile
by Philip Atkinson

Senility is the gradual decay of understanding, or loss of wisdom.

Community Has A Life Cycle
The evidence of history suggests that a community is a life form as
it shares the same life cycle of any other living creature; it is
born, matures into a prime then declines into senility. The
difficulty is understanding how a thing generated by the minds of
people behaves in this fashion.

Start Of The Community
Like a language, a community arises insensibly from the accidents of
existence. People living similar lives close to each other will
develop a common language that reflects their shared understanding.
This is the start of a communal understanding whose ability and scope
will be determined by the character created by their shared set of
values, as well as the subsequent experiences of the community.

The Personality Of The Community
The shared understanding will be reflected throughout the community
by the way it is organised, its laws, manners and customs. As
experience increases, its wisdom will grow and this must be reflected
in a growing refinement of its organisation, laws, customs and
manners. But all of these improvements must first be made in the
minds of the citizens, who then give them reality by their exertions.
So the nature of a community's institutions must reflect the general
understanding of its citizens. Thus, for example, the relationship
between child and parent must reflect the relationship between
citizen and government, because how a child relates to its parents is
how it understands authority.

Communal Vitality
The vitality of the community will be determined by the general
harshness of their existence, for a strong community to rise it needs
unselfish citizens and these appear to be created by difficult
conditions of living, as selfish citizens readily appear when life is
easy. Though if life is too hard, the communal mind may be stunted
like the social development of the Australian aborigine, which did
not get past the Stone Age.

Rise To A Prime
A vital community must embark upon an ever-improving cycle of gaining
wisdom and strength until it reaches a prime. And that prime will
occur when the citizens start to feel comfortable and safe, relaxed
by the wealth and power enjoyed by their community. Then the
community will start to decline as its citizens enjoy ease and become
self-satisfied and lazy.

Enervated By Wealth And Safety
The perils and dreams that inspired the conditioning of previous
generations of children fades; the need for imbuing offspring with
the founding values of the community, along with a commitment to the
common good, recedes and becomes forgotten. The citizens become
careless and lax, and this shirking of duty pervades the whole
community, and it begins to slide into impotence and dementia —
senility.

The Selfish Spiral
This argument is founded upon the nature of humans. Every infant is
born selfish, believing itself to be the centre of the universe.
Communities can only promote themselves by training their offspring
to overcome their basic urges and become dutiful citizens. This
process must not only educate successive generations in values and
traditions, but also must constantly reverse the children's initial
instinct to be selfish—teach virtue. Achieving this result requires
hard work and restraint from parents; they have to overcome their own
desires to indulge their offspring while using discipline to instil a
code of behaviour. (See "What Decides A Person To Be Moral Or
Immoral") Failure can only create selfish children who become selfish
citizens. And these citizens will have less regard for the good of
the community and less motivation to limit their private desire to
indulge their own offspring, and inevitably rear offspring even more
careless of the community. And these in turn will repeat the lessons
of indulgence to worse effect. Indeed the very traditions and habits
that aid creation of disciplined children will be abandoned and the
structure of the family must insensibly change. The rule of the home
will slowly degenerate from clear and strict, to confused and
indulgent. (An influence that in western civilization has replaced
the rule of a stern autocratic father and his obedient lifetime wife,
with that of an indulgent mother, who shares her bed with a series of
male favourites, none of who can safely assert their authority over
progeny or temporary wife.) And this misrule must be repeated by the
government of the community, who will indulge, instead of command,
its citizens.

The Start Of Communal Senility
When enough spoilt children become citizens, their joint influence
changes the mode of the community from unselfish to selfish, and this
reversal is not hard to ascertain as it is marked by a degeneration
of public morality (see Law Of Reverse Civilization). Denying private
desires for the benefit of others, which is the nature of morality,
is a contradiction of selfishness. Such self-imposed restraints begin
to be discarded immediately the majority becomes selfish.

The First Symptom Of Communal Senility
The first symptom of communal senility is when the populace start to
abandon traditional mores. Widespread discarding of virtue in favour
of vice marks the change from a vital to a venal society. Comfortable
lies replace harsh truths and egotistical obsession begins to
displace concern for the common good. Communal vigour then starts to
atrophy, creating an ever weakening and deluded society.

Decline Irreversible
The selfish cycle is irreversible because the appearance of a selfish
majority means the community has lost its attachment to its morality;
the source of its strength and understanding has gone. The rational
and disciplined society has become irrational and undisciplined. The
communal understanding has died, only the appearance remains, but
eventually even this will wither. The traditions, habits and laws,
which gave form to the community, will slowly be discarded by each
subsequent generation. The result will be increasing communal
dementia with diminishing communal strength—a society floundering
into increasing senility.

«NEXT» «Two Kinds Of People» «A Study Of Our Decline» «Home»

Creation


The known universe is billions and billions of light-years across.
The entire universe may well be infinite.
In the midst of this incomprehensibly enormous cosmic canvas, there
are galaxies, like jewels in the dark, strung out across the
unknowable void in a latticework of superclusters and cosmic strings,
a glittering spiderweb built on a scale the human mind is incapable
of grasping.
Each of these galaxies, though many orders of magnitude smaller than
the macrocosm itself, is still huge beyond the ability of the mind to
fathom. Each one is made up of millions of stars, from ancient,
swollen red to hot young blue, from the middle-aged yellow of our own
sun to exotic burned-out remnants like unimaginably dense neutron
stars or spinning pulsars that blink like lighthouses against the
cosmic night. Though exponentially smaller than the entire universe,
or even a single galaxy, these too run to scales the human mind
cannot truly comprehend.
Smaller still than stars, we find asteroids, moons, planets, rocky
islands drifting on the infinite sea of nothingness. Most of these -
in fact, as far as we know, all but one of them - are dead places:
cold, barren and frozen, seared continually by deadly chemical rain,
or constantly boiling in the pitiless glare of hard radiation from
too-near suns. Nothing lives there; nothing can.
We have looked out across the totality of creation, but found no one
looking back at us. The radio signals we have transmitted into the
black depths of space have gone unanswered. The robotic probes we
have sent out, containing information and greetings we hope fellow
minds will be able to understand, spin off endlessly out past the
solar system, and as far as we know, not one has ever been found.
In fact, there is only one place in all the cosmos where we know life
exists: our own Earth, a green, blue and white haven, orbiting
peacefully third from its unremarkable yellow sun. By some stroke of
miraculous luck - or perhaps not so miraculous; in the vastness of
the entire universe, it was bound to happen somewhere - our planet
evolved with just the right mix of chemicals, just the right
temperature to allow the existence of liquid water, just the right
type of atmosphere to allow life-giving warmth in and keep dangerous
radiation out.
And in the primordial seas of the young Earth, either at random or
through some process not yet fully understood, the first few organic
molecules linked up. Simple amino acids and proteins combined into
self-replicating substances, growing ever more complex. And finally,
perhaps four or five billion years ago, the first primitive bacteria
came into existence. They gained energy through photosynthesis, they
grew, they lived, they evolved. Ever more complex forms began to
arise. The precursors of fish swam in the young planet's oceans. At
some point, a few primitive creatures developed lungs, crawled onto
land and began to breathe oxygen, and the process accelerated. Life
spread to cover the planet, adapting to fill every ecological niche,
diffusing and spreading out into a broad spectrum of amazing
biological diversity. Sixty-five million years ago, the dinosaurs
dominated the Earth. Then, through some catastrophe, most likely a
meteor hurtling in from outer space to crash into the planet, they
were wiped out at one stroke. Most of the planet's species perished.
But those that survived continued to grow and adapt.
No one knows exactly when the first apes descended from the trees,
when the first creatures that probably bore little resemblance to
modern human beings began to walk upright, to use tools, to talk, to
think. No one knows when early humans first learned to harness the
power of fire. But these things, and many more, they did. Successful
species that came before had various evolutionary advantages: sharper
claws, longer teeth, a better sense of smell or the ability to run
faster. But humankind had something new, something unique: the spark
of intelligence, the ability to innovate. In a geological eyeblink,
the human race spread across the globe, accelerating its own
evolution enormously by using its intelligence to fill the gaps that
the plodding pace of natural selection failed to. And humanity
continued its upward climb, always seeking to improve its condition.
Stone axes gave way to bows and arrows, and technology continued to
advance, each new invention bringing about the next one that much
more quickly. The Iron Age, the Industrial Revolution, the Computer
Age - ages of history came and went, faster and faster, like flipping
the pages of a book. Today, human civilization dominates the globe,
with a population six billion strong and technology that can work
wonders early societies lacked even the ability to dream of. From the
sky at night, our planet is covered by a spiderweb of glowing lights,
testament to our ability to invent and innovate. Today, we are
continuing to advance and grow, continuing to learn. Even today, we
are taking our first tentative steps toward reaching out and
exploring the universe, learning the truth behind those cosmic
mysteries out of which we all emerged.
And yet, at the core, we are not that different from the ultimate
precursor of us all: that single bit of protoplasm, little more than
a collection of complex molecules drifting in the primordial seas of
a young planet circling a yellow star in a remote corner of a spiral
galaxy that is, after all, nothing more than a single gleam against
the immensity of all of creation - a creation so vast that even the
human imagination, possessed of a power unequalled in all the known
universe, fails to grasp its magnitude.
Of course, this view is not shared by everyone.
Some people believe that there never were any primordial seas, indeed
never any evolution. These people believe that the entire enormous
spectrum of living diversity found on the Earth, as well as the Earth
itself just the way it is now, were all created about six thousand
years ago in a series of instantaneous miracles, like a vast magician
waving his wand.
Some people believe that this ridiculously tiny and infinitely
fragile dust mote where we live is the most important place in all of
creation. At various times throughout our history, these people have
tortured each other, killed each other, enslaved each other,
committed every evil act and atrocity the human mind can conceive of
to each other, all to possess miniscule fractions of it.
At this point it is worth noting that, until not too long ago, many
of these same kinds of people believed that the Earth was the center
of the universe around which everything else revolved. It is also
worth noting that these same people attempted to silence, persecute,
and in extreme cases execute anyone who dared to say differently.
In several hundred years, not very much has changed.

The Sun goes around the Earth
        (by Oliver Ruebenacker)

   (posted on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/truthgarden/message/29)

   Imagine, on a fresh spring day, you step into a space-time fluctuation
and fall through a wormhole and end up in the fourteenth century in
medieval Western Europe.

   You travel from village to village and town to town, passing off as a
Christian. Most people are farmers, poor, simple-minded and uneducated,
but friendly and welcoming. You earn your daily bread as an entertainer
and lodge where you find an open door. Life is not too bad until one
fateful day you make a careless remark.

   It happens that you meet a travelling scholar, and he and you marvel
about the sunset. Your companion finds it amazing how the sun always finds
its path and gets never tired of crossing the entire sky every single day.
You reply, this is because the daily motion of the sun is only appearent,
and in reality the earth revolves around its own axis, while the earth
orbits the sun. Your companion is shocked. Obviously, he says, you are
confusing things: It is the sun that goes around the earth, not the other
way round.

   Of course you insist, and you elaborate and talk about Newton's Laws,
Kepler's Laws and modern astronomy, that the sun is a million times larger
than the earth and an average star, and the other stars are like the sun
but much further away. Your companion is quite in a hurry to get away from
you, and you continue on your way alone.

   Soon after, a group of soldiers and priests catch up with you, and after
a brief interrogation about your opinion regarding the earth and the sun,
they arrest you and take you to the next prison. The group turns out to be
a task force of the holy inquisition, an institution to eliminate all
enemies of the truth.

   In the prison, they torture you until they get a complete confession.
You are more than willing to confess, but they miss that in the beginning,
so you still get some torture. You go back into your cold and dirty prison
cell to wait for your execution scheduled for the next day.

   Then a friendly priest enters your prison cell. He tells you he is here
to help you. He says, if you repent, he could arrange it that you would
get only a reduced amount of torture and a last ointment and if you are
really lucky even a proper burial. He says he could do that for you,
because he is friendly with the inquisition staff. He could help even in
such a severe case of heresy as yours.

   The priest's face becomes full of sadness when he realizes that you are
far away from repenting and instead defend your claim that the earth
orbits around the sun. You tell the priest what you learned in your
undergraduate physics and astronomy classes. Finally the priest ponders
and seems to be delighted. He says you are totally wrong, and he can prove
it to you. He leaves, but promises to be back with the proof as soon as
possible.

   A few hours later, it is already night, the priest comes back with a
load of old books and a few oil lamps. He lights up the lamps, filling the
prison cell with an almost warm atmosphere. He is proud and excited as he
presents his books to you. These, he says, are high quality copies of the
old works of Aristotle, made by the pious and diligent monks of the nearby
monastery, and they carry the seal that proves they are authentic copies,
reliable down to the tiniest detail. There was no doubt that they were
exactly the way Aristotle had written them more than seventeen hundred
years ago.

   The priest says now he could show to you that what you said was wrong,
because it was in contradiction to Aristotle, and he starts flipping
through the pages. Once you had read the relevant pages of Aristotle's
works, you would realize your mistakes and then repent and then he could
help you.

   The priest gets very disappointed when he realizes that somehow you do
not respect Aristotle as an absolute authority. You remind him, that
Aristotle was not a prophet, but merely a great scholar, and therefore
prone to error. No, says the priest, you are wrong, Aristotle is not just
a scholar, he is the stone of the philosophers, and all scholars agree,
and always have agreed, that Aristotle is absolutely correct down to every
detail.

   You reject this. You mention a long list of people, from the ancient
Greek to Medieval Europe, who disagreed with Aristotle and suggested that
the earth goes around the sun and not the sun around the earth. The priest
replies, that he never heard of all these people, except for three of
them, and those three were heretics executed by the holy inquisition
exactly because they propagated their view that the earth goes around the
sun. Anyway, he says, Aristotle is always right, and every scholar agrees
on this. Some one who doubts in Aristotle therefore can not be a scholar,
an on top of that is a heretic.

   No, you reply forcefully. Aristotle was wrong in several points, not
only in physics and astronomy. Aristotle wrote that men had more teeth
than women, that flies had eight legs, that objects made out of steel
could never float on water and that heavy bodies fall faster than light
bodies.  Each of these, you insist, could be tested easily, and it could
be demonstrated easily that Aristotle was wrong.

   The priest sighs and shakes his head. Do you really think, he says, that
in more than fifteen thousand years, all the great scholars could have
missed it, if there were any errors in the work of Aristotle? On the
contrary, one and a half millenia of great scholarly work could not
produce a single shred of doubt in Aristotle. How could you dare to attack
Aristotle, if you had the testimony of all scholars ever lived after him
in support of him?

   Of course, you are not convinced. The priest gives up in frustration and
begins to pack his books and lamps and is getting ready to leave. You make
one final attempt.

   Even if Aristotle was right about everything, you ask the priest, why is
it necessary to force people to believe in him? Why not let each person
believe what they like, and trust that most people will choose the truth
and let the rest go astray for their own harm?

   The priest turns to go, but not without a final reply: If people would
start questioning Aristotle, they would start questioning everything, and
then everything would become unclear and society would sink into chaos.
Therefore it was vital to make sure everybody was convinced of the correct
beliefs and doubt would be rooted out from the beginning.

   (posted on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/truthgarden/message/29)

>~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~<

	 Take care
	 Oliver

--
>~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~<
>  Oliver A Ruebenacker, Physicist (PhD)         Oliver@...  <
>  Theoretical Biological Physics Group             www.ruebenacker.de  <
>  Center for Cell Analysis and Modelling                               <
>  University of Connecticut Health Center                              <
>~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~<
>   "You will not go to Paradise until you believe;                     <
>    you will not believe until you love." --- Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)  <
>~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~<
>  Searching for truth in religion and science? Join Truth Garden,      <
>  the interfaith interdisciplinary forum for religion and science      <
>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/truthgarden/                           <
>~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~<





Yahoo! Groups Links

in the Harvard Crimson:

CRIMSON: Were President Summers’ remarks within the pale of legitimate academic
discourse?

PINKER: Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate
academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor? That’s
the difference between a university and a madrassa.

     http://www.thecrimson.com/today/article505366.html

--
michael stephen fuchs
  msf@...
  www.michaelfuchs.org

I've recently become very interested in Evolutionary Psychology.  I
was told that Evolutionary Psychology had been refuted, and was
referred to "Not in Our Genes".  I was asked how one could possibly
prove that a particular behavior is an evolved adaptation, and also
how can one collect enough information about an ancestral
environment.  The arguments did not convince me, but the
prestigiousness of the opponents to Evolutionary Psychology struck a
chord.  I am curious about anyone's take on the ongoing debate, and
how to answer the opponents' criticisms.

Mike

So, I was reading this Slate article reviewing a book about potential
planet-wide catastrophes:

   http://slate.msn.com/id/2109600/

- and it made reference to "the possibility that atomic particles, colliding in
a powerful accelerator such as Brookhaven Lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider,
could reassemble themselves into a compressed object called a stranglet that
would destroy the world."

I thought that sounded really interesting, and decided to try and learn more
about strangelets and how they might destroy the Earth. And, in my searches, I
came across this:

   How to Destroy the Earth
   "Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe."
   http://www.geocities.com/samdhughes/misc/destroy.html

As entertaining as Scott's original "Creative Methods of Suicide" - and much
more useful! Highly recommended!

mf

--
michael stephen fuchs
  msf@...
  www.michaelfuchs.org

Returning for once to evolutionary psychology, I've vbeen reading
Geoffrey Miller's book The Mating Mind, which I find very inspirational.

I know its been out for a few years now so some of you may already have
read it.  If so I would be interested in your views.  For those who haven't
read it, I would stronly recommend getting hold of a copy.

For those not familiar, the book makes a to my mind very strong case
that Darwin's second major theory, That of Sexual Selection has played a
far more
pervasive role in human physical and mental evolution than is commonly
supposed.

I'll post more when I've finished the book.

Wade

The offending bot has been removed. Sorry for being off-the-ball
about this.

Michael