=id10a Edit of =id7ar < =id4b Intelligent Design / Article 4 / Save 1 Prevous ID articles are: =id5d31a.txt -- General polemic on ID =idsf1 -- ID sci_fi parody -- focuses mostly on highlight the oddity of the notion of 'an unnnamed creator' =idsf2c.txt -- This is really just an introduction, with enough whimsy but not much substance yet -- though it does, I'm sure, review a few of the ponts This doc will be notes an an article in National Georgraphic, November '04, 'Was Darwin Wrong' ---------------------------------------------------------------- It will be compiled from (=id4b + =id5c + =id6a ) , as those are rechopped into (=id7ar + =id8b * =id9b ) CAVEAT: Those articles are very very rough drafat, and after this edit they will still be very rough draft. They are filled with digressions, most of which are irrelevant. I will try to tidy that up some in this Edit, using my block_indent system, which I detail below. In general, only .L1 and .L2 remarks attempt to be relevant to the topic of intelligent design, the rest are apt to be personal digressions. In a subsequent edit, if I do it, I will try to drop that latter down into Footnotes. But not now. That was your CAVEAT. OK, before I forget. One more CAVEAT. This_here's a CAVEAT TABBYCAT. That means, some of what follows get pretty raucous and raunchy -- I mean, writing about evolution does lead one perilously close to thiking of copulation, at least if one ain't done one's fair sharae of attempted procreation, sad to say. And I do not really want to hurt anyone's -- 'religious sensibilities', as they call it in Israel. And some of the best work in a critique of what i later term 'Darwinism' has been done by the JW's, who, like the orthodox Jewish community, and the 'fundamentalist' Christians too, and for that matter the observant Islamic community -- and the observant Hindu community too, from what I read -- adhere to quite a strict , family_oriented sexual lifestyle. And as I say, these are all decent people doing their best to lead decent lives, if a bit bland for my taste -- and it's surely not my place to make any waves for them. Like we used to do in the bathtub. So -- that was a warning, an apology, a CAVEAT, TABBYCAT. Or it might better say -- this is really many essays in one, and only the principle essay is on intelligent design -- #L2 -- a secondary essay is some scattered autoobiographic remarks and pseudo_autobiographical fantasies that are rather -- what was the word they used if hailing Bellow's first and only good book, 'The Adventures of Augie March' -- picaresque -- Rabelelais_ian is a bit too much, though some of my remarks do go that far -- #L3 "Waiter, this noodle soup is much too sour." "That's onion soup Sir.2 "Oh well, for onion soup it's quite all right." (Jewish Treasury of Folklore, ca. 1950) #L1 Details of my block_indent system follow: Optially, those should neatly grouop points and sub_points and sub_sub__points in logical order. Wittgesnstein did that in Tractatus. Bit "I ain't him" #L2 (Jewel said to me, after Steve Keyes flipped out on acid at Antioch ca. '64, after I walked out on the NYC SPU after the SDS took over the Peace Movement with their March on Washington So here's another apology: A lot of my use of these block_indents is a lot more muddled than I'd intended, and i don't want to make the time to try to tidy it up. What I've got might help some, or might not. Or both. I ain't getting paid for this, you know. ------------------------------------------------------------------- NOW BEFORE I FORGET: I input everything in EinsteinWriter, which is W.EXE (I use Version 8.2, but that ain't significant), and which runs only under DOS, though it fits nicely in a Windows window, it does (in DOS, of course). Then to post 'em on a Website, or send 'em as Attatchmewnts, I take my files from EinsteinWriter, which is W.EXE , to ASCII via T.EXE And I have flagged the block indents with #L1 ... #L7 Each of these block_indents resets the right margin 5 chars to the right of the previous one. So with .L1 ( notes as #L1 ) at Flush_Left , if Flush_Let = 0, then .L2 (noted as #L2 ) is at LM=5, .L3 is at LM=10, .L4 is at LM=15, .L6 is at LM_20, .L7 is at .LM=25 When I got in and then back out, or partially back out, of subpoints, and sub_sub_points, etc., this system of block_indents is necessary to follow the lines of my thought. So to reconstitute the EinsteinWriter format, you must global_replace all the #L's with #.L 's -- and all those cut li'l' .L'S MUST BE BOTH PRECEEDED AND FOLLOWED BY A CR, which maybe you can only do manually or by going into Word and then back out again, and then back into EinsteinWriter But what I want to say here now is -- T.EXE puts required CR's in -- and I think uses a 65 char Line_Lenght rregardless of the LL of the original. I haven't checked yet to see if ETRANS is any better. But of course you want to take out all those required CR's that were not in the original, when you go back into W.EXE And the way to do that is only through ETRANS.EXE And the format for ETRANS is: ETRANS /E inputfile outpufile to go from EinsteinWriter to ASCII , on an English document ETRANS /E /R inputfile outputfile to go on an English ASCII document back to EinsteinWriter, taking out the required CR's, or at least the required CR's that were put in. I'll try to pack all this into =tools4.zip and put that on my Website, et al. ------------------------------------------------------------------- OK, SportsFans, let's start the Edit of =id7ar: ================================================================= ------------------------------------------------------------------ Start Edit of text of =id7ar ---------------------------------------------------------------- This seems to be an anti__intelligent_design article, but on a much more scientific level that the IHT Editorial and article, which I note in an Appendix to =idsf1 However, my first impression is that its motivation is polemical, not disinterestedly scientific. So is my last impression. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Of course, this whole discussion falls into 'philosophy of science'. The primary topic is 'the nature of scientific theory'. To review the basic schoolboy points: As the Dover School Board tried to tell their 9th grade students - #L2 and one can't quite regard that as 'corrupting the youth' (the charge for which Sokrates was executed); #L3 students starting 9th grade who would be about age 14 (in the private school system of my youth) or 13 (in the public school system of that time, which was the early 1950's), the age of manhood (bar mitzva) in traditional Judaism -- and a year past the age of womanhood (in modern times termed, 'bat mitzva') #L1 -- a theory is not a fact. And the 'Theory of Evolution' is generally regarded as a theory. A theory is generally regarded as a hypothesis, and a hypothesis is generally regarded as the postulation of a set of facts. So a theory may be confirmed, but never conclusively proven. That is, however great the aggregate of confirming observations, there always remains the logical possibility, if not a realistic nor reasonable possibility, that some event may occur which will disconfirm the theory. A theory is conclusively proved by a set of facts that approach infinity as the limit. Which is another way of saying that a theory is never conclusively proved. However, a single fact that contradicts the predictions of the theory disconfirms and hence disproves the theory. #L2 For example, if Sam the Village Idiot runs into the office of the Head of the Department of Physics at MIT one morning and says, 'Duh, the apples is falling up, not down', the Department Head will immediately call a Press Conference and announce that Newton's Theory of Gravitation has been disproved. #L3 Department Heads are selected less for administrative ability than for scientific ineptitude. #L4 Of course, all the preceeding is simplistic; which is why I contrived an example to push it past its limit of applicability and over the cliff of a redluctio ad absurdum. #L5 *%For starters, a theory is not necessarily an hypothesis. #L6 That is a reasonable and understandable misunderstanding, for which rather a number of people, I suppose, were burnt at the stake, and will, one may presume, eventually receive ecclesiatiastic apologies, which will fix everything. #L5 For starters, the Copernican Revolution. #L6 It is much simpler to say that the earth goes around the sun than to continue with the primitive belief that the sun goes around the earth. #L7 But of course any fool can plainly see that the sun does go around the earth. From east to west- So if you find it too upsetting to try to imagine the contrary, you don't have to. Though you will need quite a lot of heli_cyles, whatever helicyles are. #L5 And for many applications, it is indeed simpler, and hence more 'elegant', in the scientific sense of therm, to suppose that the sun goes around the earth. For example, determination of the optimal time at whifch to stop pitching hay and go sit by the barn with a jug of cold water. Or making sundials. So you can't quite say that it is a 'fact' that the earth goes areund the sun. It is just, for most applications, the simplest and most convenient -- 'perspective', really. #L1 Which brings us to the obvious question: Is light really a wave or a particle. Because obviously -- common sense assures us --it's got to be one or the other. Obviously it can't be both at the same time. #L2 And of course if it's a wave, it has to be a wave IN something -- #L3 I mean, it makes no sense to speak of a wave in_and_of_itself -- #L4 "Gosh, the ocean sure is wavy tonigh. Isn't it romantic." "But there's no water -- just a great deep trench. Bushie must have been at it again. And please take your hand away." "Who needs water, just admire the waves. Water is a distraction from the purity of waves. #L5 You have lovely kneecaps. And the fallout isn't due for a least a few hours, according to Cheney News." #L2 I read somewhere that there's some chick at Harvard who makes a pretty good living, enough to pay her bar bill the Faculty Club anyhow, by not ever worrying about whether her theories are true or not. If she has 8 facts, and can fit 5 of them into one theory and the other theory into a contradictory theory, she just does it and tells her secretary that she'll be back from lunch when the martini's run dry and the pimento wilts. Or take that relativity jive. Special or General, whatever, I can't keep them straight most days. I mean, what is this nonsense about saying that the universe is curved or closed or both. OK ok, it does seem to be a fact that the world is not flat. And moreover that it's a closed surface. But the notion of space as a closed something_or_other is unintelligible. I mean, space is space, by definition it is rectilinear and infinite. #L3 I mean, like Kant said, there are some things you can't even imagine, so don't even try, and stop bothering simple honest folk with meaningless questions. #L2 I mean, what's all the fuss about Mercury looking a little bit out of place during a solar eclipse. We none of use look our best when the lighting is a bit off. I mean, there's no need to say that light moves in straight geodesic lines through a straight universe; let's just be scientific and take the simplest available explanation -- space ain't curved, it's just tht light gets a little bit bent by massive objects. #L3 Ok, that was my warmup exercises. Now maybe I'd better read the article. Or make some more coffee and start breakfast. I never can remeber which comes first, the salt or the lemon. So I do the first sip with the salt first, and then start the next sip with the lemon. Same as with the wave/particle theory of light, if you can't decide which is right, use them both. #L4 Anything is reasonable until they catch you. Philosophy of science consists in spinning recent scientific reserch until it makes sense to Joe Sixpack. #L2 Wittgenstein said, "Philosophy leaves everything as it is." And the Wittgensteinians said of his work, It was a Copernican revolution. #L3 That is, the Wittgensteinian perspective -- -- and it was a new perspective, so the Wittgenstians -- #L4 I'm thinking of C.D. Rollins at Oberlin in 1960 -- #L3 spoke of a 'conversion' -- #L2 -- it found no new facts, it just offered aa more 'elegant' way of re_saying the same old stuff. Just like Hume never really showed that we can never know that the sun will rise tomorrow -- #L3 so don't book that tour to Teneriffe unless they give you a good cancellationclause -- #L2 all Hume showed was: Empiricist epistemology presented in linear logic leads to paradox. #L3 Kant said that first, but he was so tangled up in all his Teutonic architectonic #L4 (that's a riff off James Joyece, Finnegan's Wake, 'hierarchetechtonic'. $ #L5 Or my words to the closing phrase of Diabelli Variation 2: "an architechtonic of Teutonic goo" #L4 Most likely page 1 or 2, I never got farther. #L3 that nobody took the old kaker seriously. #L4 Yes yes, that's Herr Professor Kant out for his morning Spatziergangenmachen, Gute Morgen Herr Professor, #L5 he's been doing the same thing for 60 years and sure eats up a lot of mutton when honest folk could use the bones with a bit of meat left on 'em. #L4 Ja ja Herr Professor, ein shoenes Tag, #L5 and who knows if the sun will rise in Konigsburg before the Summer Solstice. E.B. Doctorow ain't got nothing on this lad. #L6 Post_modernism means Never having to say I stole it. #L7 (That's a play off Erich Seagal's line , in his Weepy Movie, 'Love Story' "Love means never having to say you're sorry." *%Though PVK says, quite the opposite. KIT 004 if I recall. And he says, do not go to bed before you have talked out any misunderstandings. But then, PVK used to say, Don't you dare die until you have achieved Englightenment. Or maybe he said, 'Awakening'. But I think it was Englightenment, because Awakening without Englightenment is enough to drive a man down to the Bar without stopping off for a preliminary piss. PVK always did set quite a fast pace. #L2 Time to pour more water in the coffee pot, especially if I can do that without making a skating rink on my porch. -------------------------------------------------------------- #L1 ----------------------------------------------------------------- RESUME =id7ar Page 5 -------------------------------------------------------------- Ok ok Jose, National Geographic cover story, November '04, titled; "Was Darwin Wrong." Title is repeated on page 3 with a 2_page picture of a duckling in a muckluck. Article starts on page 4 with the subtitle in headline_sized type: 'No'. Followied by the explanation, in darned big type: 'The evidence for evolution is overwhelming.' #L2 So this article sure starts out as a glossy snow_job. More pictures than text. Written by David Quammen. No note of his qualifications. Looks like he ain't got none. Just a journalist. #L1 OK, a few points. First of all, the evidence for any accepted theory must be overwhelming, otherwise it ain't a theory, just a false start. Second of all, there ain't no need to be overwhelmed by the overhelming. I mean, are we surfers or are we surfers. #L2 Take your time answering that one. #L1 Third of all: Qhat's the antithesis, the possibility of which this overwhelming evidence has just overwhelmed. I mean, you ain't proved nothing until you've disproved its contrary. #L3 A snow_job is a captive avalanche. #L4 Stop into my Restorante to buy my breakfast, or I'll call down my avalanche on you before you get back form the privy. #L1 Like I say; "Kulturkampf." #L2 The facing illustration is of a rather ugly little lizard with what looks at first glance like a phallus longer than his body, trapped in a lab retort. #L3 Which seems to say something about survival of the fittest, but I'm not quite clear what. #L1 The article begins: ***%%% Zowie for Howie. "Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theroy about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures." Well, apparently the first point made in the statement by the Dover School Board, was that the theory of evolution is a theory, not a fact. 'adaptation, complexity, and diversity' seems to cover just about everything, except extinction. Now a theory that covers just about everything tends to approach the meaninglessness of a truism. The author then disparages the notion that evolution is 'just' a theory -- putting 'just' in scare_quotes. But a thoery IS 'just' a theory. It is not a fact. (Though that's simplisitic -- and the the 'theory'/'fact' dichomtomy does not fit very well. For we do not want to say that a theory is a fact, but we do want to say that a theory is 'true'. And also that is may be 'disproven' -- although a theory is not a proof.) The author is rather naive in his choice of examples -- "the notion that the Earth orbits areound the sun rather than vica_versa" . But as I suggest above, the orbits of the planets can be graphed either as helio_centric -- which is the simplest solution -- or as terra_centric. The author takes another example that he seems to assume is self_evident: "Continental drift is a theory." But here I want to say, yes, it is a theory, and it is also generally accepted as a fact. So I want to say: Some 'theories', but not all, do predict, not merely observations, but also facts -- past or future -- in addition to enabling deduction of present observations. The author adds; "The existence, structure and dynamics of atoms- - Atomic theory." But that is a very problematic example. Here I want to say: Atoms are unobserveable; hence their "existence, structure and dynamics" are not facts, but only sufficient -- and not necessary -- explanatory schema. The author correctly adds, and incorrectly supposes that it supports his faith in the -- factuality, one might say -- of the 'theory of evolution': "Even electrcity is a theoretic construct, invovling electrons, whch are tiny units of change that on one has ever seen." Or one might more precisly say: that cannot be seen. So like most of the crypto_Manichean dichotomies of pop_intellectuality, that is, of pop_culture, the 'theory'/fact dichomoy will likely be revealed as simplistic. And that was Wittgenstein's main point -- that reality is amorophous, and rarely fits our dualistic simplificitons. (I suggest that the motivation for such dichotomization is the childish wish to simplify the world into good/bad -- expressed theologically as Manicheanism. And that may be a function of the Me/Other infantile Weltanschauung. The author adds: "Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowlegable experts accpt it as a fact." Well, that takes us away from philosophic discussion and into propaganda. And one might ask why our Establishment has felt it necessary to go to so much time trouble and expense to do so. #L2 I suggest below that this attack on 'intelligent design' is the latest thrust of the abortionist conspiracy. If the good LORD put the little brat there a_borning, what mere human dare throw it away. But if we're all here -- or the rest of you anyhow -- by just one more whirl of the old one_armed bandit -- the last jerkoff -- ( two wheels rather than the traditional three will do a bit better here for the metaphor ) -- then an embryo is like a pimple or a temporary tumour that won't go home, and it's back to "I own my own body" and "a woman's right to choose" and "the right to privacy" #L3 Like Freud said -- and why should such a distinguished old Vietneese gentleman have had to think upon, not sex, which is quite clean enough, but all those underground running sewers of the mind -- You want ugly, I'll show you ugly. #L4 Actucally the Fugs said that first #L5 ( Zsa_zsa__Zsa_zsa Gabor met Norman Mailer and said, Oh yes, you're the young man who can't spell 'fuck'.") #L6 For Mailer coined that pseudo_word in 'The Naked and the Dead', and then really did go on to conceptually map in paycho_sociologic pserspective some of these underground sewers of the USA subconscious -- eg in 'An American Dream' #L7 I don't know who else has ever attempted that branch of philosophy, that is, of conceptual analysis, except for Wilhelm Reich in 'The Psychopathology of Facism' #L4 'What is the ugliest part of your body -- I think it's your mind." #L1 What the writer does is to take a useful conceptual distinction, between theory and fact, and elide it, in order to claim the higher_value status of 'fact' for one particular theory. The giveawy phrase is the loaded one, 'knowlegable experts'. It imputes an unspecified authority on unspecified grounds to unspecified people for whom the author claims to speak. One might start by asking: what observations and what experiments confirmed the Copernican theory that the solar system is helio_centric. (And as a matter of fact it ain't; that is, the sun is not a fixed center, but is itself in motion .) The Copernican view became established because it is mathematically far simpler than the terra_centric perspective. More precisely, the terra_centric view is the simplest for describing the motion of the sun relative to the earth, but the helio_centric view is the simplest in mapping all the motions of the planets. Popularly, the terra_centric view is still used for some things -- how to position the windows in a house to get the most winter sun, or the least summer sun; where to look for the stars. The problem with prehistoric man is that he is largely undocumented. #L2 (That's a Yogi_Berra__ism -- eg 'It's deja vu all over again.' or 'It ain't over 'till it's over.' ) @L1 Which means that man does indeed appear on the world stage in something close to his present form. And so that does support the ancient myth of creation. Because people could not have created those myths, and preserved them -- by oral tradition, of course; written tradition is very recent -- until they were in something similar to the form of present_day man. But then again, one wants to ask -- should there not have been intermediate stages of civilization -- apes who wrote occasional poems or at least grew a few potatoes and formed small villages. Nor does it make much sense that the only species to develop a civilization should be the hominoids. Although it begins to appear that the porpoises have done so too. #L2 But now ask yourself #L3 (as Wittgenstein, or anyhow the Wittgensteinians, would say 3L4 as a set_up for a methodologic long_shot) -- #L2 -- what form would civilization take for a species that not merely migrates, but never stays in the same place. #L1 It is really piling a lot on evolution to suppose, not merely that man is the most developed phase of evolution, but that all other species were merely precursors to man. Next (Nationl Georgraphic November '04, page 6, column 1), the author notes that some sort of exception to what is popularly perceived as 'evolutionary theory' is taken by: : "Many fundamentalist Christians and ultra_orthodox Jews ... Islamic creationists ... [ and] Srila Prabhupaada, of the Hare Kirshna movement [ ISKON, International Society for Krishna Consciousness]. Again, I would say that most persons associated with religious and/or spiritual movements are sympathetic to some sort of notion of 'intelligent design'. PVK, as I have briefly indicated, suggests that physical 'manifestation', which one might term 'creation', is but the last stage -- if not precisely chronologically, then surely logically. And Plato's Ideon ( usually translated 'Forms'), Aristotle's 'Final Cause' ( 'Telos', if I'm not now muddling it up a bit) , and Whitehead's 'Eternal objects' are not chronologic causes, since their existence is 'eternal', or one might better say, 'a_temporal' PVK suggests a logical sequence of manifestations, from potentiality to actuality. The sequence runs from 'template' through 'aura' to 'magnetic field' and then to the physical manifestation. Of course each 'template' -- #L2 one is tempted to say, each 'viable template' , but PVK does not mention any such 'false starts' -- #L1 manifests a highly commplex, coherent, and functional design, which in that sense may be termed an 'intelligent design'. ---------- Now as to my own ulterior motivation in writing all this stuff in defense of the notion of 'intelligent design'; One of the 'projects' which I have undertaken is to stand ready to attempt to defend PVK's thought against intellectually fashionable but methodologically weak contradictions of it. And I would take the kulturkampf against the intellectual admissability of the notion of 'intelligent design' to entail such a contradiction. OK, that was my 'Disclosure' , as all fashionably minimally honest journalists say nowadays. ----------- Now back to this National Geographic November '04 article 'Was Darwin Wrong' -- an article so padded out with large glossy but rather uninformative pictures -- (compared, eg, to the National Geographic ca. December '99 map of the universe, which is arguably the most informative illustration ever published -- #L2 and I would very much like a copy of it if anyone, if anyone, who ever reads this can send one to me, i.e. 'sa'='Steve Amdur, Campra, CH-6718 Olivone, Switzerland' -- send it c/o Zewnith Camp if you mail it after May '06 ) #L1 -- that one may not unreasonably suspect thhat the 'ulterior motive' in this published article is to try to push into pop_culture__consensus a refusal even to consider the notion of 'intelligent design'. And maybe that worked, too, because that fuddy_duddy Pennsylvania Appellate Court judge Mr. Jones, in December '05, made just such a ruling against the Dover District School Board. (Cf. the Appendix to my doc =idsf1.txt , to be posted to this Website www.geocities.com/sa73122c ) And surely a fuddy_duddy judge would have subscribed to National Geographic -- #L3 I mean, it's what arriviste goyim put on their coffee tables like frumies put an unread set of Talmud on their bookshelves. #L1 Of course, any sophisticated religious anmd/or spiritual position, -- or one might better say, any sophisitcatted person holding such a position -- does not take, or at least is is not intellecutally bound, to a literalistic interpretation of whichever version of 'intelligent design' their group endorses -- Genesis Chapter I for most of us. And that is merely to acknowlege that traditional religious and spiritual texts were written in the pre_scientific, and indeed the pre_historic, era, and so used the intellectual concepts of their time. And those concepts would be predominantly anthropomorphic, mythologic, and quaisi_historical. So, for example, one can read take the term 'day', as used in Genesis 1:1, not in the sense of a 24_hour day as measured by our present time_keeping devices -- and even as measured by the 'atomic clock' -- #L2 (and indeed, a methodologic critique, taking operational analysis' into account, would find little sense in speaking of 'days', if not 'time', at the earliest stages of creation #L3 -- and particularly in the 'start_up' phasee of creation, which I suppose we associate with the 'Big Bang' -- #L4 although it is the case that reputatable scientists, writing popular accounts, do speak of the 'the first three seconds of creation' and the lack. #L1 -- but in the sense of eons, geologic eras and the like. And indeed, a sophisticated religous position allows and even affirms that Divine Creation occurred through scientifically analyzed processes. #L2 There was a charming T_shirt worn by students at MIT and Harvard during the 1970's , that read --in biblical Hebrew if I recall 'And G_d said -- and then follows a very complex equationn from physics, maybe Maxwell's wave_tranformation phantasmagoria -- 'and there was light'. #L1 So too, a religious person can say that Divine Creation of man occurred through the medium of evolution -- although to say that does not commit one to the -- opinion, or better, hypothesis -- that evolution occurred through random variation subjected to survival of the fittest. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Resume at =id7ar Page 10, first complete paragraph. ---------------------------------------------------------------- #L2 Well, I've never read Darwin, nor even anything much about the Dude; up to this point in this essay I'm still 'winging it', or one might better say, 'faking it'. #L1 The author, citing various polls, since 1982, notes: "The creationist conviction -- that G_d alone, and not evolution, produced humans --has never drawn less than 44 percent." #L2 Well, that does add a dash of honest to a number of recent articles and editorials in supposedly normative mass_media -- notably the IHT -- #L3 which lead one to assume that creationism is a position held only by a few nuts in the boondocks, and you surely don't won't to be grouped with THEM do you, Gentle Reader, you Joe Schmoe you cow I didn't say that. #L4 Or to put it much more gently: "You're a Square, and you're really nowhere." (USA pop song, 1950's, "(You gotta wear a) Big Name Button" #L2 The essence of mass media is media_bias, and the essence of media_bias is subliminal insinuation, not via mini_second images, but in careful choice of words not primarily for their precise denotation, nor even (as artistic writers do) for their connottion, but rather (as only undeclared propagandists do -- though of course a propagandist is by definition undeclared -- ) for their culturally, or rather sub_culturally refined 'insinuation'. The notion 'insinuation' as a parameter of language is the crux of an epistemological, -- or rather, a theory_of_meaning -- theory of media bias that I have tried tto sketch, in one of the docs on www.geocities.com/sa73122a -- the docname would be something like =mbias.zip or =mbtheory.* To the old denotation / connotation distinction -- -- which Austin refined to locutionary forcce / illocutionary force / perlocutionary force -- I add 'insinuation' -- a sub_text not declared in the explicit text, and often contrary to it. #L3 For a nice, and essentially innocent, example of that: I recall a talk that Jane Fonda gave at Sanders Theatre at Harvard College, that would be in the early 1970's. One of the more callow of young lefties in the audience was pressing her to be more militant on some point, and she remarked, something like: "Well go ahead, organize the workers" --- (and then with a slight pause and a slight emphasis that only a professional actress could command, she added) -- "students." It was a neat put_down by a professional activist , of a dilettante. That was a rather gentle example of 'insinuation'. I recall a rather cruel example, from an article about Jacqueline Kennedy, I think in TIME Magazine in the late 1980's : I quote , and roughly, from memory: ] "And then there was the man problem. David Halberstam tore off to Cambodia #L4 [ it could not have been 'Laos', that would have been too crude even for TIME ] #L3 with her as " -- and here there is a line break and on the next line the text continues: "did [ Mr. XY ] #L4 [ I forget the second denominated gentleman fingered by the cad what wrote that rot ] #L3 So you see, what the reader, skimming as fast as the format allows, #L4 Because of course nobody uncomatose will spend an instant longer reading TIME Magazine than is absolutely necessary -- especially without an air_sickness bag at jamd #L3 sees as a unit is "tore off ... her, as" -- --which evokes the vulgar colloquialism forr what is wishfully termed making love, "tore off a piece of ass". The insinuation, of course, is that Jackie Kennedy used those junkets for a tryst or two, which is something nice girls simply do not do", or rather or asked to admit to. #L4 I mean, it is from compassion or at least residual gallantry that we treat woman as ladies, for they are often so vulnerable #L5 amd one who does not do so would better kick little puppy_dogs into the gutter on his way to the office, where he can straighten his tie and be accounted a gentleman fit to make witty repartee with his pipi #L3 The USA did then long to make Jackie Kennedy their Madonna. For JFK's Presidency, "take him all in all" (Hamlet) was one of the few in USA history -- #L4 Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt (and Teddy too, if you can get nostalgic about imperialsim) , and a few say, Harry Truman, were others, maybe the only ones -- Reagon was Charlie McCarthy, the Bush's are Goofus and Doofus, Jimmy_the_Grin was a Georgia Cracker out of Faulkener, and Clinton was a brilliant hard_working liberal who blew it all by being a Horny Bozo married to what Klein called the Ice Princess and then made to live in 3_ring circus with the spotlight always on him -- #L5 (Newsweek lately quotes Clinton as having said, 'The Presidency is the crown jewel of the US Prison system' -- #L6 though if he'd had any character he would have married that dumb naive Jewish girl, instead of just pushing her into the pantry for a quickie -- I mean even the U.S. President could and certainly should have arranged a civilized affair, even -- and indeed, all the more so -- with an exploitable intern -- and I think it was for his caddishness, not his lechery, that Clinton was impeached and disgraced which may be why now, in a real crisis in U.S. history, when he is one of few public figures who might try to change that course, he just rolls around like a broken jelly donut and that may be why they darned near destroyed him for something almost everyone does, and almost always without notice -- -- to ensure that he would not bring liberal forces to bear on U.S. history after his term ended -- #L3 So no doubt those opposed to the intelligent and sceptical -- ironic, more precisely -- liberalism exemplified by JFK, were out to scotch any possibility of a comeback of that ideology in the USA kulturkampf of the day. So that was my second example of insinuation: now back to work. #L4 Or maybe one lap around the privy, in the hope of waking up enough to confront the day on something approaching, however distantly, equal terms. ------------------------------------------------- #L1 The article is developing into a polemic, not a scientific article: (National Geographic, November '04 (Quammen) page 6 column 2: "Why are there so many anti_evolutionists. Scriptural literalism can be only part of the answer. #L2 [ Well, I'm not that clear what 'scriptural literalism' is. In orthodox Judaism, the Chumash is taken as true in every statement and every detail. And a very extensive body of commentary is based on just that principle. One might call it theologic apologetics, except for the unacknowleged principle that conclusions must not only support halacha, but must also accord with acceptd spiritual and ethical insights. #L3 Nechama Leibowitz, zl'b and R. Shlomo Riskin are notable exponents of this approach. Both are modern orthodox, not ultra_orthodox, both quite intelligent -- especially Leibowitz -- and comfortable in the modern world. Somewhat at Haverat Shalom in Somerville Massachusetts - - in the 1970s Haverat Shlaom was the vanguuard in New Age neo_traditional Judaism -- said, Nechama Leibowitz concerned herself only with the pshat. But I'm not sure that that's correct. Riskin seems to call in the other dimensions of meaning -- Resh, Drash, and maybe even a bit of Sodd. That is, Jewish orthodoxy is essentially literalistic, but also non_literalistic as well, for it distinguishes four levels of meaning, including: derivation of moral and ethical teachings (I think that's what's called Remez, and I think the Christian word for it is 'homily', #L4 unless that's soemthing you serves up with grits to the familly), #L3 interpeative literary embellishment (Midrash), and mystic insight (Sod). But I think that almost all modern_orthodox, and most ultra_orthodox, feel no need to repudiate scientific insight. On the contrary, they take it as a challenge to conceputally reconcile scientific insight with a re_intrepretation of scripture. That brilliant Russian phyicist at Ben Gurion University is a noteable example. This is also the approach of the JW's in their publication 'Awake'. They quite accurately, or so it seems to me, present recent discoveries from various branches of science, and take them as inidications of the marvel and glory of Divine creation. And of course it was very much the approach of PVK, who would often use cutting_edge scientific ideas to -- not merely illustrate, I think, as if they were analogic, but also I think to substantiate -- for PVK was surely a monist, not a dualist -- his (also cutting_edge) spiritual insights. #L1 Well, let us slog on through this article. I begin to see what the author's academic qualifications are not stated. #L2 A Junior College diploma from the Dogpatch School of Taxidermy perhaps, #L3 with luck and a bottle of booze to the Registrar. ----------------------------------------------- The article continues: (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 6, Column 2, last paragiraffe:) "Creationsist prselytizers and political activists, working hard to interfere with the teachings of evoluntionary biology in publfc schools, are another part [ of the answer to "why are there so man anti_evolutions" #L2 -- although no doubt procreation, if not neecessarily evolution, had something to do with it too -- #L3 all those hot summer nights in Georgia, with even the crickets languidly fornicating -- gives even a church_going man ideas, and then next thing you know, it's one more for the Southern Baptist water_polo team ] #L2 Well, that is an unexpected conspiracy theory to have to encounter before breakfast. #L2 [ And now it is another day, Sunday 7 Jan '06, as I rewrite this, and I still have enough coins to buy 3 rubber croissantes at Honest George's if ever they open the door, otherwise there's not much to eat in this shack but a bit of leftover red sauerkraut and a half_bottle of ketchup -- ] #L1 And I can't even fry up an omlette because the hot_plate froze up. Can't use it inside this shack, nor the steam_cooker neither maybe, because when things cool down a bit the icicle stalactices and stalagmites make it hard to walk through all the trogylytes. #L2 I tell them, you're obsolete, Mate, we're the New Testament, so go extinct, and they say, whatever you want O Dominant Species, We quits this 'cause you is the Fittest, only please don't rush us, we've been around a few hundred million years longer than you and so sometimes we move slow, Moe. #L3 I mean it's like, there we were in Belmont Junior High School 9th Grade Science Class watching the LetterMen throwispitballs at the Debutantes' decoltees while the teacher was trying to disect an eye of Newt , when suddenly a hundred scriptural literalists rush in and start baptizing everybody in Diet Coca_Cola Light, Mate. #L4 This is just another instance of that dread religious coercision which the Tel Aviv Trendies drink their sidewalk cafe lattes in dread of. #L5 I mean it's like, every summer Shabat noontime after shul I bunch of us go out from Mevo Modi'in #L6 ('cause we's where the info comes from) #L5 roller blade it down Sharon's Freeway #L6 Ok, so the fat old get is dying now, may he go quick and easy, but he did much in his life that was not good, and not so much that was -- well, winning the 1973 War by encircling the Egyptian Army maybe -- #L5 down to Shenkin Street, tackle one or two of them as they leave the Cafe, and force cholent down their throats. Religious coerecion, man. #L6 Most fun since the USA banned deer_hunting with a Magnum. #L7 But I digress. #L1 With what in a lesser man might be true Christian charity, the author continues: (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 6, Column 2, last paragiraffe:) "Honest confusion and ignorance, among millions of adult Americans, must be still another [ reason why they don't buy Darwin whole_hog ] #L2 zowie for howie Got 3 rubber croissantes and two Mars Bars for breakfasst from Honest George's. They been here since the glaciers receeded, and they still ain't figured out to serve hash_browns , fried eggs, toast and a solid cup of black cofee for breakfast. Heck, I'd even overlook a sausage or two on a cold wet grey morning like today. Big local ski meet today, trail runs right past my front door, so I'd better not piss on the piste. If the tequilla runs dry before lunchtime, I might die from lack of salt. But I don't suppose that was really what you wanted to read about intelligent design. Heck, let's have a little bit of intelligent re_design of Swiss cusine before we worry about all that theology. #L1 Well, without deigning to have taken notice of that slur on kids, I would remark only that something which constitutes the unconceptulaized WeltanSchauung #L2 [ and an oxymoron is an 8_sided__idiot ] #L1 of millions of people -- eg, that the sun rises to the east of the earth, and sets to its west -- can't precisely be termed 'ignorance', #L2 however ignorant it may some day be shown to have been, Jim. #L1 Past a certain -- 'tipping point' if not ' critical mass' -- it becomes part of our pre_conceptual sub_strata, #L2 whatever gunk it is that underlies and supports what Wittgenstein termed our 'forms of life'. #L3 (In Wittgenstein's PI, he hints in passing that 'certain very general facts of our natural history' may also fill that role. #L1 #L2 zowie for howie Amazing how many times you can re_use a filter paper if you really try. Seems to work better by the 3rd or fourth cup, too. Cold bread with butter and jelly, that's what they feed them before the ski meet. With maybe a sliver of chees. And I can't even buy that. The Swiss are fixed in their way. Put a few of these rubber croissantes under the floor of a tank and the boys would all fall asleep on the way to battle. #L1 But what I consider here is not that, it's more nearly a Kantian notion --- -- concepts, like time and space (Kant's Trranscendental Aesthetic) or again , those Hume_ian old clunkers like Substance and Causality (Kant's Transcendental Dialectic, if memory serves) that apparaently we can't not have in mind, so you might as well say they exist, since you can't even think that they don't. Much less look and see if they do or don't exist (Kant's noumena) because even if they weren't there, you couldn't even imagine much less see that they weren't. #L2 Rather a tragic sense of life (to steal Unanumo's phrase for a minute), or of epistemology anyhow . #L1 The author adds, with barely veiled pity for the moity: (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 6, Column 2, last paragiraffe:) "Many people have never taken a biology course that dealt with evolution nor read a book in which the theory was lucidly explained." #L2 Well, that's me, so read no more here, for that's why I'm so anti_. #L3 But enough of my excessive humility. I did once take a Botany class -- #L4 it was at the University of California at Berkeley, #L5 from which I graduated with honors in philosophy in 1963 -- #L6 I matched wits with my Faculty Advisor on a day when he came in thoroughly under the 'flu, and so he signed the requisite certification as quick as can be, before he forgot ny name again. #L3 -- and got a grade in it too. #L4 The grade happened to have been a F, which don't stand for 'Fine', but that was just because the class was at 8 in morning and I had to ride my bike 2 miles up from the mudflats to get to it, which was quite enough to ask of anyone for the day. There were about a thousand people in the class, since Botany was a requirement for graduation -- this was in 1962 or so, when they knew that the 60's were fast approaching -- #L5 they got to planet earth a few years later -- #L4 and so the Regents in their infinite omniscience foresaw that we would soon matriculate and drop out, if the draft didn't nab us, to become flower children, and so they insisted that we know at least the basics of Botanic taxonomy. #L5 And also the teacher was a little prick of a martinet who knew none of us had come freely to his class, #L6 and so he "met as half way" (USA colloquialism, 20th century) -- , #L7 like an armoured knight with a lance at a joust, doing warm_up excercises against a superfluous serf on a donkey -- #L6 by filling each class with as much detail as it could possibly hold. #L3 That was, as I recall, the only Biology class which I have ever taken, #L4 with the possible exception of sex education, #L5 in which I did not get a very good grade, #L6 except from a few. #L2 Nor have I ever "read a book in which the theory [ of evolution ] was lucidly explained. " Nor a comic book neither. Nor even a partial article. #L3 And I don't reckon that this is gonna be that. #L1 The next page (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 67) is given over entirely to a glossy sepia photo of a skeleton of something large with 3 or 4 legs confronting in the backbround, much smaller in perspective, the skeleton of a less than fully erect, pardon the expression, biped who looks like like a kaker on a walker at the Super before supper. #L2 Which reminds me, #L3 (As you have read above that it did #L4 (for in writing this second draft I don't edit , I just punctuate with block_indents, and interject subsequent but asynchornous witty quips ) #L5 I mean, if I took out everything irrelevant, I'd be down to a haiku or two. #L2 if I don't buy more filter papers today I will likely have to conceed this debate. "Me and my monkey" (John Lennon: #L3 "Everybody has somthing to hide, except me and my monkey." Not one of his more well_turned aphorisms. #L1 In any event, the hominoid looks to have gotten the worst of that evolutionary interchange. But truth to tell, neither the biped nor the quadraped look like they're about to walk off the page and arrest Georgie Bush for War Crimes. Or even throw a rotten egg at President Cheney's motorcade. #L2 But that's only because they're skeletons, and on a hot summer day even the skeleton of a hominoid finds it darned hard to drink down a cool lemonade. 3L1 Well, let me continue with the philosophic critique of the what I term 'Darwinism'. Ah, and here it comes now. "Nymph in thy orisons be all my sins remembered." #L2 (Hamlet. Dam'd if I know what if anything Shakespeare meant with that line, but he does have a nice ring, so who cares. #L3 William Buckley once wrote a book, 'Marco Polo if you can'. Someone asked him, why did you choose a title so difficult to comprehend. He replied, I needed the extra syllable. ) #L1 The author, now affecting the common touch with his jovial colloquialisms -- him and Tom E. Friedman -- continues: (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 6, Column 2, last paragiraffe , continued on page 8) "Sure, we've all heard of Charles Darwin, and of a vague, somber notion -- #L2 [ oh, those somber notions. Chiriscauro. Beige and browns and fog in towns. #L3 I suppose a somber lotion is one to be mixed with an exubeerant notion -- #L4 you know, the ones they sell to teenage girls to mix with their vanilla_flavoured cocaine snuff in the schoolgirl halls -- -- all bright pinks and dayglo greens -- ]] #L1 "[ a vague somber notion] about struggle and survival that sometimes goes by the catchall label 'Darwinism'." #L2 So there it is folks: The term 'Darwinism' is here. Official. So don't blame me. Maybe it's only a notion with a "catch_all label" but I can still use it can't I. #L3 Especially if I change the price_sticker before I get to the checkout counter #L4 if I don't stick and slip on somebody's recycled chewing gum and break my cranium on the linoleum -- #L5 *%I mean, three hundred million years of evolution and this is the best they can do for a brain_case -- #L6 heck, even the dinosaurs kept a backup in their tail -- #L7 I mean, in a properly run evolutionary survival of the fittest dinosaurs would now be the dominant species, and we'd all be confined to a game preserve in the swamps growing giant ferns . If it wasn't for that ruddy meteorite that came down in Arizona. But I digress. #L2 OK, I've finally figured it out. When I open a DOS window under Windows 2000 , I get plenty of space to type whatever I want. But as soon as I close the Window and ask permission from Microsoft to shut down their operating system for a little while so I can get some sleep, Windows tidies up everything and takes back almost all the allocated filespace that I didn't use. #L3 Like, all those gigabytes and Windows 2000 thinks it has to save space by chopping by trimming about 50 Kilos off each maxium 65K text_file. #L2 So then when I later turn the system back on and re_open that document to add to it, I soon run out of space, and have to to in_effect create a new document by Save_ing my old one under a new name. And then, since I didn't use very much space on my first draft, Windows doens't give me much more than that for my second draft, #L3 because everyone knows that 2nd drafts are only for revisions, #L4 since the first draft always goes to the boss for his ok, and since a boss always makes some changes #L5 otherwise it looks like he's not doing anything and so they'll fire him. #L6 Like, there are no novelists in a modern business office. Charles Dickens would have cancelled his contract with the Journal, and gone out in the street to sell herring. @L1 The author begins, on the middle of the 5th page of the article as published: (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 8, Column 2) "Two big ideas, not just one are at issue: the evolution of all species, as a historical phenomenon, and natural selection, as the main mechanism causing that phenomenon to happen. The first is questeion of what happend. The second is a question of how. " Well, let's see what might be made of that. There is no distinction yet made between inter_species evolution, and intra_species evolution. No doubt we are a slight improvement upon the Neanderthals, #L2 except when it comes to pushing an auto out of a snowbank, or gaining admission to a relatively selective disco of course. #L1 On the other hand, we do seem rather an evolutionary step down from Cro Magnon, as anyone who has attended a conceptual art exhibition would agree. But it is the question of intra_species evolution which serves as Spanish Fly to the religious literalists: Am I or I am not descended from an ape: #L2 apologize for even insinuating that posssibility, or I'll take away your bananna. #L3 Even if you did see my father watching the football game on Saturday afternoon in his underwear, or at least saw it depicted in a million cartoons of the 1950's. #L1 Mazaltov. Now as to the second big idea -- #L2 as if saying "I'll be a monkey's uncle" -- #L3 a childhood expression of the USA 1950's, my cultural upbringing -- #L2 were not enough big idea for one day -- #L1 By 'natural selection' the author seems to designate the idea I term 'survival of the fittest'. #L2 Now it ain't obvious what 'natural selection' means, #L3 nor how you can distinguish it from picking the winner at a Miss USA contest -- #L4 disregarding payola of course. #L2 Looks like 'natural selection' means: selection without a Select_er. And it is not clear whether 'natural selection' is to be predicated of inter_species evolution -- #L3 rather like designing next year's Cadillac, or Laptop -- although of course without a Designer, cows defend us -- #L2 or intra_species evolution -- #L3 we were really getting bored chasing minnows all day long, so after a few million years we decided to come ashore and try our luck on the beach, said the turtle. #L4 Shortly therafter someone invented the bikini, so it wasn't half bad after all, #L5 except for the Brits in nesting season -- #L6 theirs as well as ours; one keeps slipping on the condoms. #L2 Or maybe 'natural selection' just applies to the extinction of species -- #L3 if they don't open a soda fountain darned soon I'm just going to lay down and die, said the dinosaur. (That's a riff off Walt Disney's Fantasia, as I recall.) #L1 Well, here we go at last: the author just drops in the extraordinary idea that "all species are descended from common ancestors". (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 8, Column 2:) Now that's a pretty astounding idea indeed, and it ain't at all clear what it means. I mean, there's a bit of a self_contradiction here: 'species' are by definition distinct. #L2 I mean, what's the point of speaking of different species if you then say, out of the other side of your mouth, 'of course they're all basically variants on one species'. #L3 I mean, when the first spaceship lands on Planet PooPoo. and we find intelligent silicone_based life_forms -- #L4 our modern motherboards are actually their distant descendents; #L5 originally a flying saucer crash_landed in Palo Alto but the authorities hushed it all up and took the debris to the Smithsonian -- #L6 this was in the 1950's, when governments could get away with things like that by crying Witchhunt -- #L5 and of course the aliens then went undergound -- literally, as a matter of fact -- and diid not emerge until the 1960's -- that was the hippy era, when nobody noticed one more freak -- and so one day this stoned math dropout from Berekeley was trying to invent a Touring machine, #L6 He though it was someething like a red MG but cheaper, with which you could go breezing up and down the hillls of San Francisco and pick up chicks -- #L5 and in walked one of the alienos looking for a nice piece of granite for desert, and the rest is history. The young man's name was IBM. Or rather, those were all his initials, which is all we know him by. 3L6 OK ok, you read the National Geographic and you'll talk like this too. Or else join the NRA, which is what most readers do. Someething to put on the polyethylene lace antimasscarar, next to the shotgun shells and a cold glass of Coca_Cola. But I digress. -------------------------------------- #L1 So anywhow, now that they're mapping the genome in that underground lab in Zurich, one can give more sense to this notion of 'descent from a common ancestor'. Me and the amoeba; I just happen to have picked up a few more genes than him. #L2 I mean, it was about 1998 that Newsweek ran a cover story saying, we're all descended from one nigger chick in Africa - - handsome looking young woman she was, tooo. #L3 I mean, forget the monkeys, now you're really pushing the Fundies buttons. #L2 Anyhow, that was based on statistical analysis of mitochondria, whatever mitochondria is, and for that matter I have no idea what sort of analysis it was. #L3 I once got stoned and had a great discussion with Cave Dave in the New Buffalo kitchen about relativity , a subject of which neither of us knew a darned thing. #L1 I mean, this National Geographic article is really revealing itself as pompous pop shlock. OK, on we go Joe: Darwin's 'The Origin of Species' "offered a rational explanation of how evolution must occur" (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 6, Column 2, paragiraffe number one) #L2 Oy, pass the pretzels. Or should I say, Pass the protezoa. I can't decide, so I'd better take a break soon. A 'rational explanation' ain't necessry so. Just might be. And then again, might not. Or both. And so it is an explanation of how evolution might occur, not of how it must occur. #L1 And on we go: The author continues: (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 6, Column 2, paragiraffe too:) "The gist of the concept [ of 'natural selection' ] is that small, random inheritable differences among individuals result in differnt chances of survival and reproduction -- sucess for some, death without offsprng for others -- and that this natural culling #L2 [ 'culling' it ain't; that's what you do to breed a better sturgeon or pink petunia -- "kill it before it multiplies" -- ] #L1 "leads to significant changes in shape, size, color, bio_chmistry amd behavior (!) among the descendents. Excess population growth #>L2 [ but for most species over_population is an uncommon phenomenon, except for mankind in modern times ] #L1 "drives the competitive struggle. Because less successful competitors produce fewer surviving off_spring," (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 8, Column 2, paragiraffe 2:) #L2 [ but that is not self_evident: #L3 Richard Farina , zl'b, olav b'shalom #L4 for everyone knows, though who die before their time, especially unjustifiably (murder, execution) or unnecessarily (suidide) have a hard time moving on -- #L3 (he wrote 'Been down so Long it looks like up to me' -- #L4 he died in a motorcyle accident in Big Sur on his way back from the publication party -- his bike went off a cliff -- #L5 so I really did write a short novel, the only one I've ever written, titled 'The further adventures of Knossos Poppadoulius', who was the protagonist of Richard Farina's book -- #L6 Joyce Bashein, zl'b, did 2 pages of incredible illustrations for it, #L7 thoroughly outrageous from someone who made Emily Dickenson look like a hussy -- #L5 but all that's lost now -- my novel for sure, but maybe I can recover the copies of her pictures I left at Kibutz HaOn) #L3 wrote a song, 'Hard_Loving Loser' about a guy who is a complete klutz in everything he does, except for bedding the ladies -- #L4 and when some fool was trying to make a sperm bank of the sperm of Nobel Laureates, George Wald wrote, #L5 -- maybe in the Cambridge 'Real Paper', #L6 meaning that it was the real 'Phoenix' weekly whose name was bought out -- #L4 so he wrote, 'If they want a genetic bank for supposed geniuses they really should have collected my father's sperm, not mine, for all I have sired are two guitar players.' #L1 [ the qutotation from (National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 8, Column 2, last paragiraffe 2 continues: "the useless or negative variations tend to disappers, whereas the useful variations tend to be perpetuated and graudally magnified (?) throughout a population." #L2 Well, that was the sort of reasoning which led barbarian peoples, notably the Romans, to kill the children of convicted criminals. The Torah explicitly forbids it -- "The children shall not be put to death for the fathers, nor the fathers for the children, but [ on the contrary ] each man shall be put to death [ only ] for his own sin." #L1 Oy, sasparella. I mean, if this is all that there is to Darwinism, then maybe it really is bullshit. Not that Darwinism is simply insufficient to fully explain the ohserved species -- which is the worst I would have though of it until I began reflecting on a it and reading this article to see what its apologists have to say -- but that Darwinism projects upon whatever we happen to have today, a few crude scenario's of pseudo_causality. And if it's that great a fraud, no wonder the establishment is defending it so belligerantly. The author continues: (page 9): "So much for one part of the eveolutinary process, known as anagenesis, during which a single species is tranformed." #L2 [ So much? How much. I've so far read nothing here approaching a detailed explanation of how a species changes, except for the the vague statement that the cause is "small random heritable differences among individuals result in different chances of survival and reproduction" [ as if those two parameters were preportional ] The author continues (loc cit supra): "But there's also a second part, known as speciation. Genetic changes sometimes acumulate within an isolated segment of a species, but not through the whole, as that iolated population #L2 [ slow down Charlie. Except for a few South Sea islands, there have been few completely isolated populations of any species ] #L1 "adapts to its local comditons." #L2 [ But in general, adaptation is merely bahvioral, not genetic. ] #L1 "Gradually it goes its own way, seizing a new ecological niche." #L2 [ But there me be an infinite number of unseized ecological niches -- #L3 I mean, we do not yet have a dung beetle that lives on carbon monoxide with a dash of vinegar when the moon is full. And in general, a variant of a viable species ain't going to find an ecologic niche to seize. I mean, how often can a newlywed bettle find vinegar in a traffic gridlock. So for every viable new species, probability would seem to be that there were thousands of unviable new speices. And we have no evidence of that. ] #L1 ======================================================= ==== === OUT OF SPACE SO CUT AND POST TO BE CONTINUED AS =id11*.* Resume at =id7ar page 15, first full sentence =================================================================