Shhh...

We seem to have startled him.

It's flower-snail. Notice how he seems a little like his friend, frog-bird. This lil' fella merges the kingdoms of Plantae and Animalia. He moves, so he is not quite Plantae. But he moves slowly, as there are some lil' roots growing out his bottom that Nature is selecting for him to have, you see. Slowly, slowly now...Nature is always selecting how all things are. It is all Mother Nature's decision. She is going at a snail's pace, until one day this lil' fellow will totally merge with Plantae. After all, all forms of life can be merged back into a common ancestor, as all forms of Life came from primordial goo.

Goo....it seems to be the ultimate ancestor of all Life.

Yellow and Pink

Yellow and Pink By William Steig, link to Amazon is on the sidebar.

If you want to be on the front page, just say so.

Scientism, this calls for brain boy!


Just kidding.

The text of the mind of the day,
"I don't know why it is so hard for you to understand. People who defend science don't defend every scientist. They defend scientific inquiry...."

Apparently it is hard for you to understand that when it comes to origins research and scholarship we are dealing with more than science. Also, the believers in Naturalism have a growing track record of rejecting empirical evidence and scientific knowledge that just does not seem to fit in to Nature the way they wanted it to. E.g. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem which indicates that in any closed/finite system the state of knowledge will always be incomplete. Empirical evidence indicates that Nature is indeed finite. Therefore it can be known that Naturalists are incorrect in their belief that Nature contains all answers.

Another example of how the study of Nature refutes Naturalism,
"Origin-of-life theorists rejected the biologic universals, ["Man, there is no way that the building blocks of cellular life can "just happen" by rocks dissolving in some primordial pool. What nit-wit came up with that one? So there must be other forms of life, like crystalline clay organisms or somethin'.] While main-stream evolutionists claimed biologic universals as a major prediction of evolution. [Hey, DNA and the building blocks of life are the same in all organisms, this must mean that they share a common ancestor from some primordial goo or somethin'. And that's what Nature makes her selections on, so all life is from her, Nature be praised!]

This contradiction existed for decades, yet it was successfully hidden. The contradiction went unnoticed because evolutionists artificially separated the origin of life from its subsequent evolution — as though the two were unrelated problems. This ‘false separation’ was their strategy at the Arkansas creation-science trial (Act 590), as noted by the judge.

Although the subject of origins of life is within the province of biology, the scientific community does not consider origins of life a part of evolutionary theory. The theory of evolution assumes the existence of life and is directed to an explanation of how life evolved.
(Overton, 1982, part IV(B)).

This false separation concealed the contradiction, so evolutionists continued to present biologic universals as evidence in their favor.
*
Dobzhansky said the designer of life must be accused of cheating because “He deliberately arranged things exactly as if his method was evolution, intentionally to mislead sincere seekers of truth.” Dobzhansky was mistaken.

Nowhere is his error greater than on this very issue: the unity of life. Message theory says all life was constructed to look like the unified work of a single designer. This prediction is fulfilled in biologic universals and the unity of every living being. Evolutionary theory does not predict anything either way about biologic universals. It is compatible with any outcome. It is completely flexible on the matter.

Despite this unrestricted flexibility, evolutionists have been forced to retreat. Science (together with probability arguments) shows that nothing resembling known life could have directly originated naturalistically. Evolutionists want to protect naturalism, so they claim the first life forms were unlike anything known. ["Maybe there were some clay organisms or somethin'!"] So where are those alternative life forms? Why haven’t they been found? Message theory predicts they will never be found because they never existed. Message theory is an explanatory, testable theory. It is science. Evolutionary theory is falsified or unfalsifiable — either way it is not science."
(The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory, By Walter Remine :94)

"....which you shit on in favor of "narrative construction" or some crap."

Your knowledge of origins scholarship seems to approach nil. What do you think anyone engaged in the origins debate is doing, if not constructing a narrative about the past? Something that you have yet to engage in, although you seem to think you are engaging in the origins debate.

"You are casting an enormous straw man by trying to imply that people who are swayed by science can't explain why. They can and they do--and they have in this discussion."

I suppose you think that the fellow who proclaimed that dinos with feathers is evidence of the dino ancestry of avians had a sound scientific argument. He didn't. There are numerous problems thrown in the way that can be gone into if anyone actually engages in the origins debate instead of thumping non-existent "peer reviewed science." On the issue of the evolution of flight in avians and numerous other organisms too do you really expect rational people to believe that the aerodynamics, the respiratory system, the bone structures, the echolocation systems of bats (which happened to happen two separate times, no less!), the use of vortexes by insects, etc., were all created by random mutations and designed by natural selections? Is mutation that creative? Is Nature that "selective"/intelligent?

All these things just happening to happen...another example, the sandlance and the chameleon. They have the same optical system, the same design. One lives in the sea, another lives in trees and the evidence says, "Here I am, I used the same design." Maybe the designer did that sort of thing repeatedly so that some fellows couldn't come along later with their urge to merge and say, "This must be from havin' the same ancestor." Did the common ancestor live in the sea and then hop on out into the trees, while Mother Nature benevolently selected to keep the same exact design for its eyes while changing the rest of it into a different life form? This is why I say, write a narrative.

Check out the sandlance's eyes, he's another odd little fellow. Look into his eyes, they seem to say, "We were designed by the same mind that designed the chameleon's eyes, one which has a sense of humor."

If message theory is correct then there will be various things thrown in the way of evolutionists, on purpose, by a more intelligent Mind than their own.

For instance, some things are morphologically identical, yet when their mitochondrial DNA is studied the sequences do not match and they seem to be different types. So the evolutionist is left arguing that nearly identical forms of life evolved just the same, not once, perhaps not even twice, but three separate times, as if the first time was not quite unlikely enough, i.e. impossible. It is quite an amazing claim to argue that random mutation and Nature's supposed "selections" created and designed nearly identical forms of life through two separate paths.

"I will repeat: scientific inquiry requires hypothesis testing of falsifiable questions using repeatable experiments."

How is the Naturalism that evolutionists preach falsifiable? What can falsify it?

"....I defer to scientists and scientific discoveries BECAUSE they have a reliable system of inquiry.You don't. I don't expect this post to make it to the front page, though. You are only interested in this crazy claim that science=pack mentality. Projection, much?"

You defer to scientists because you run with the herd. I'm not interested in the claim, yet if the opposition's main argument is thumping science texts while failing to actually make an argument or write a narrative then that is all that is there to reply to. You do not demonstrate a knowledge of a "reliable system of inquiry" or origins research. You have opportunities here. But instead it seems that you will continue to engage in science texts thumping, which is scientism, especially if you don't know about what you are thumping. So far you have not engaged in a dialogue on any of the evidence or taken the opportunity given to write a narrative on various issues of origins. If the texts you thump supposedly contain a good evidence based narrative for the evolution of avians and flight then just summarize it or cite it.

The science of things...

Who says rubes don' know nothin' about that thar science?

"High gas prices don't seem to faze Wayne Keith.

That's because his faded red pickup runs almost totally on wood.
[.....]
The pickup has three pedals - brake, gas and wood."

An interesting story...

"THIS is the true story of Sophie Germain, an 18th century woman who assumed a man's identity to pursue a passion and attempt Fermat's Last Theorem.
[.....]
...this sudden interest in such an 'unfeminine' subject worried her parents and they tried desperately to deter her. A family friend, Count Guglielmo Libri-Carrucci Dalla Sommaja, wrote how Sophie's father confiscated her candles and clothes and removed any heating in order to discourage her. She responded by maintaining a secret cache of candles and wrapping herself in bedclothes. Such was her determination that her parents eventually relented and gave Sophie their blessing. Germain never married. Throughout her career, her father funded her research and supported her efforts to break into the community of mathematicians. There were none in the family who could introduce her to the latest ideas and her tutors refused to take her seriously. In 1794, the Ecole Polytechnique opened in Paris, founded as an academy of excellence to train mathematicians and scientists for the nation. But since it was an institution reserved only for men, Germain resorted to covertly studying at the Ecole by assuming the identity of a former student, Monsieur Antoine-August Le Blanc. The academy's administration was unaware that the real Monsieur Le Blanc had left Paris and continued to print lecture notes and problems for him. Germain managed to obtain these and each week she would submit answers to the problems under her new pseudonym.

Everything went according to plan until the course supervisor, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, could no longer ignore the brilliance of Monsieur Le Blanc's answer sheets. Not only were 'his' solutions marvellously ingenious, they showed a remarkable transformation in a student who had previously been notorious for abysmal mathematical skills. Lagrange, one of the finest mathematicians of the 19th century, requested a meeting with the reformed student and Germain was forced to reveal her true identity. Lagrange was astonished and pleased to meet the young woman and became her mentor and friend. At last Germain had a teacher who could inspire her and with whom she could be open about her skills and ambitions. She grew in confidence and moved from solving problems in her course work to studying unexplored areas of mathematics. Inevitably she came to hear of Fermat's Last Theorem and worked on the problem for several years, eventually reaching the stage where she believed she'd made an important breakthrough. She needed to discuss her ideas with a fellow number theorist and decided she to go straight to the top and consult the greatest number theorist in the world - German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.

...[Gauss] never published anything on Fermat's Last Theorem. In one letter he even displayed contempt for the problem. But when he received Germain's letters, he was impressed by her breakthrough and temporarily forgot his ambivalence towards Fermat's Last Theorem. Germain adopted a new approach to the problem, which was far more general than previous strategies. Her immediate goal was not to prove that one particular equation had no solutions but to say something about several equations.
[....]
Germain's work on Fermat's Last Theorem was to be her greatest contribution to mathematics, but initially she was given no credit. When she wrote to Gauss she was still in her 20s, and though she'd gained a reputation in Paris, she feared he wouldn't take her seriously because of her gender. So she once again took to signing her letters as Monsieur Le Blanc. Her fear and respect for him is evident from one of her letters to him: 'Unfortunately, the depth of my intellect does not equal the voracity of my appetite, and I feel a kind of temerity in troubling a man of genius when I have no other claim to his attention than an admiration necessarily shared by all his readers.' Unaware of his correspondent's true identity, Gauss tried to put Germain at ease and replied, 'I am delighted that arithmetic has found in you so able a friend.' Germain's contribution would have been forever wrongly attributed to the mysterious Monsieur Le Blanc had it not been for Emperor Napoleon. In 1806, he was invading Prussia and the French army was storming through one German city after another. She feared Archimedes' fate might befall her other great hero Gauss, so she sent a message to her friend, General Joseph-Marie Pernety, asking that he guarantee Gauss's safety. The general was no scientist but he was aware of the world's greatest mathematician, and, as requested, he took special care of Gauss, explaining to him that he owed his life to Mademoiselle Germain. Gauss was grateful but surprised, for he had never heard of Sophie Germain. The game was up. In her next letter to Gauss she reluctantly revealed her identity. Far from being angry at the deception, Gauss wrote back to her delighting in the fact that 'when a person of the sex which, according to our customs and prejudices, must encounter infinitely more difficulties than men to familiarise herself with these thorny researches, succeeds nevertheless in surmounting these obstacles and penetrating the most obscure parts of them, then without doubt she must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius'.In 1808, their relationship ended abruptly and within a year she abandoned pure mathematics. Towards the end of her life, she re-established a relationship with Gauss, who convinced the University of G"ttingen to award her an honorary degree but before it could bestow this honour on her, she died of breast cancer."
(Asia Africa Intelligence Wire,
2005 The Statesman (India)
February 8, 2005
Headline: Mathematic's Feminine Face
Body: Surajit Dasgupta)

It's still not settled.

Apparently the main evolutionist argument is, "Disagreein' with me is just like disagreein' with peer reviewed science. It has all been reviewed by some peers, who took a peer at it."

This one is a little ironic, as there is a difference between what goes on PBS and other popularizers of the mythological narratives of Naturalism and what is actually based on scientific literature. I've read my fair share of peer reviewed literature. Some of it is good, some bad. It doesn't seem to me that it is some gospel that can be thumped as much as the thumpers thump it. There are not that many scripts based on Naturalism dealing with origins that can be treated as some sort of Scripture about origins.

Evolutionists often shift away from dealing with origins entirely to talking about protists revealing the roots of multicellularity or bird flu instead.

Love...

I hate the idiocy but love the idiots.

They are rather useful idiots. So I love them.

The Biotic Message

"Evolutionists have seen “odd arrangements and funny solutions” in nature and they insist these are paths a sensible designer would never tread. They are mistaken. Not only is it sensible, but message theory absolutely requires it, though at first it will seem paradoxical.

We expect a designer of life to create perfect designs. Yet this expectation itself constrains a biomessage sender to do the unexpected. A world full of perfect optimal designs would form an ambiguous message. In fact, it would not look like a message at all. It would provide no clues of an intentional message. It would look precisely as expected from a designer having no such intentions. Life’s designer created life to look like a message, and therefore had to accept an astonishing design constraint: life must incorporate odd designs. [You can't write without jots and tittles, you know. Although some do try to write their story with only looove and all titillating tittles, all the time.]

How can I be so utterly sure on this point? Because evolutionists have (unknowingly) said so. In fact, they insist on it. Every one of them — from Darwin, to Ghiselin, to Gould — has emphasized how unreasonable it is for a designer to have created such non-optimal, odd structures. We can rightfully conclude that if evolutionists had the wherewithal to create life, then they would independently go forth and create optimal perfect designs. We can conclude that a world of perfect designs would look precisely like the work of multiple designers acting independently. The biomessage sender created life to look unlike the product of multiple designers, and therefore had to use odd designs.

It is not enough for a biomessage sender to merely include odd designs. All the designs together must form a pattern attributable only to a single designer. Life on earth has such a pattern.

Suppose we examined many separate handwritten documents. How would we recognize they all had the same author? Answer: By the overall pattern, especially the funny quirks and odd imperfections. It is the same with living organisms.

The quirks and imperfections play a key role in the pattern. They unite all organisms into a unified whole, while looking unlike the product of multiple designers. They give life the distinctive look of a single designer. They also make the pattern look like an intentional message, rather than an ordinary design effort."
(The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory,
By Walter ReMine :27-28)


This is an interesting book, to me anyway. If life is a message then who is it a message to? You and I? Perhaps...but I can think of other things too. Maybe the story is not all about you...or I.

Satire..

Hysteria, the material for of satire....

It's the year 2025 and two fellows are having a conversation. Let's listen in....

One friend notes, "I can't believe America was surpassed by the EU in the field of technology. If only the dang school had not wasted our time with that chapter on Intelligent Design in our biology text!"

"It really is amazing. I mean, the way the research on the human genome just stopped, stopped! If only someone had done more molecular studies of protists revealing the roots of multicellularity. I tell you. But all the time, wasted...just wasted!" the other replied.

"If only someone had seen what would happen from ID. Oh, if only! But instead there was no one left to study bird flu and the Marburg virus. Now they run rampant in the world. How could they have been so blind?!"

"Well, there was this one fellow named Myers, can't remember the first name, but I hear he wrote about what would happen if our time as students was wasted with ID. Wasted!"

"Hmmm, yes...well, I don't know about you but most of my time wasted as a student was spent playing X-Box."

"No, no....he was on to something! It was the wasted time. Wasted!"

Okay, so it is not settled.

Apparently some people may think that an evolutionist's best argument is, "What I just argued is scientific or somethin'. So disagreein' with me is like arguin' the earth is flat!"

Yes, that settles it.

This is the best associative argument that a Darwinist can make, "What I just argued is scientific and that is like gravity or somethin'!"

Evolutionism, Proto-Nazism

PZ Myers seems to be pleased about an editorial he had published while here he seems to be ranting that opposing views should not be published. It's because he's scientific or somethin', see. Well, here is an opposing view, as it seems that some fellows get too sure of themselves by murmuring, "Science, science...."

"Teaching [ID] steals time from more vital subjects in which our kids should be grounded."

I wonder if he means that it would steal time from teaching fraudulent claims about embryos and the like such as Haeckel's frauds? They and other such iconic imagery can still be found in the textbooks that Darwinists seem to venerate so. Yet they do not seem that concerned with keeping the "facts" that they teach students sound. They are too busy fighting the dread creationists, I suppose.

"ID proponents have not only failed to provide any evidence for their thesis, they aren't even trying."

That's incorrect and rather silly. Sheesh, I'm going to skip on down and highlight a few things.

"With no established body of results..."

It can be difficult to "establish" something against the grain of well established scholarship as Naturalists do what they typically do by seeking paths to censorship thanks to the weakness of their own scholarship. A "...weakness [that] is due not to inferior training but to the mendacity inherent in any scholarship that overlooks or openly repudiate[s] all moral and spiritual values."
(Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany's Crimes Against the Jewish People
By Max Weinreich
(New York:The Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946) :7)

Using censorship to hide such a weakness seems to lead to claims such as the newspaper ought not publish an opposing view. Because, what this fellow says is downright scientific!

"...no current work and no promising prospects for future research..."

Yes there is work being done. To understand such claims go back to the claim that supposedly ID propenents are not even trying to provide evidence, when as a matter of common sense the average person ought to be able to realize that of course they are.

"With no track record to earn the respect of scientists and educators, ID is attempting to circumvent the accepted standards of testing and validation to sneak into our schoolrooms -- it's cheating."

I think he is too late with his attempts to control information. Read his views and note that he may be the sort of person currently controlling "...accepted standards of testing and validation..." If so, it is little wonder that someone would go on around him. At any rate, it does not matter so much if the information is in the schoolrooms if it is all over the internet. But it is worth noting that there is much that people would have never heard about if this fellow had been able to have his way in controlling what is published (even in editorials?) based on his sort of scientism.

Evolution, Good and Evil

It seems to me that a reason for adherence to Darwinism has always been "bad design." As he was a theologian Darwin made the same theological argument and then tried to do away with British natural theology. As Darwinists seek to blame Good for evil who will blame Evil, for evil?

And how do those who do not "really" believe that humans are capable of being aware of some transcendent Good and Evil try to judge God by such a standard in some way that transcends their own subjective personal opinion? (I.e., a judgment that is transferrable to other humans/subjects.) After all, they typically insist on a sort of philosophy in which their judgments are nothing more than the essentially meaningless biochemical state of their brain at that moment. One might agree that their judgment is the biochemical state of the brain in that moment, yet not believe that it is meaningless. No more than one would believe that just because physically these words are patterns of pixels on your computer monitor right now, then they have no message and are meaningless.

The assumption of a sort of non-subjective or transcendent anthropic principle that Darwinists are making use of in their argument blaming Good for Evil (That which Life needs to exist, mainly high forms of life such as human life, is good.) would be consistent if Darwinists did not appeal to some form of misanthropy and utlimate meaninglessness often enough. Yet they do appeal to such things, and how! They seem especially fond of pointing out how the universe is essentially random and how science has supposedly refuted any anthropocentric notions ever since the Copernican revolution. They also tend to argue that anyone who disagrees with their sort of Naturalism is one step from believing that the earth is flat or somethin'.

Here is the argument from "bad design,"
"Provine's main argument was from dysteleology, or bad design. That is, he argued for evolution by saying that a creating intelligence, especially a superintellect with omnipotence, would not have been either sloppy or malevolent. Thus, anything "leftover," out of place, odd, or unnecessary is obviously evidence for evolution because no superintellect would have been so sloppy. Provine looked to parasites found on beetles and wasps. What kind of intelligence behind the cosmos would create such things? Why would "God" have done it that way? Certainly, he argued, this is evidence for evolution."
cf. Evolution News

I have always thought that naturalistic explanations do indeed fit in best with forms of degeneration, parasitism, etc. Although even there it seems that sometimes they may fail, Michael Denton has noted this. It is possible to cite some fascinating examples of it.

There the question is,
"What kind of intelligence behind the cosmos would create such things?"

Clearly, a malevolent one would...although the main argument of Evil these days is that it does not exist. So it becomes popular to deny the existence of Evil, yet blame the Good for it, while simultaneously avoiding being thankful to the Good for all the good in the world by selectively denying its existence. The only consistency to these patterns of thought lie at the end, blaming God.

(Note, I am not arguing based on science. The debate about origins, Good and Evil, and so on is one of philosophy, history, religion, tradition and so on. Although science is important, opening up a debate about origins deals in much more than science.)

The man of straw...

I wanted to test the trackback thingie, mainly. I might make some mistakes in replying too because I can't really remember all that was written to this fellow who doubts, celebrates doubt, and then has some straw men do a lil' doubtful dance.

On with the dance,
"More from mynym, who came back for only an hour today. . .This is from his comment to "Civility Reaffirmed":

I am glad to have activated your "I must save civilization, now!" sort of instinct.

Regular readers of my blog might have noticed that my Save Civilization "instinct" almost never goes away."

Well, yes, I knew that was his instinct. Maybe that's why I said I am glad to have activated it? Though it is too bad that the fellow does not seem to understand the link between civilization and language. Language is the encoding of information and recognizing it is based on Intelligent Design. Is he saving civilization with his attacks on ID/Deism or undermining it? Did American civilization come about based on the ideas of Deists trying to adhere to the laws of Nature's God and Scripturalists Christians doing the same, or not? Civilization is not based on his sort of willful doubt and skepticism. It may use a difficulty to further refine and define its language, yet it is not based on a sort of existential doubt about virtually everything.

Well, he writes a lot. And I have no problem with that, nor am I counting the hours he does so, although he does seem to snivel a bit about me taking the time to answer some of what he writes, which is odd.

"[....]
....thinks he "activated" that "instinct."And this one is from his latest on "WWJD?":

You will, inevitably, accept some belief into your thinking as long as you are a sentient being. That is the way of sentience and sentences.

Which is screaming for a little Jedi hand waving. Apparently mynym knows what is inevitable, or he is trying to play the part of a sage mentor, or something. But, as Bertrand Russell said, 'The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.' "

That's the "whole problem"? I doubt it.

But he sure seems certain of himself. There are some fellows whose psychology traces back to certain dynamics which leads to their text consistently being passive agressive, like a sort of consistency of inconsistency. Is Russell assertive and certain in his own statements and sentences? It does not take a Jedi to see that he is, yet he cannot and will not see that himself. He does not see his own judgments. Instead, as is typical to the faith of the fatherless he will seek a lack of judgment and stand with those who judge lest they be judged.

E.g.
"Russell mocked Christians, according to his daughter, “for imagining that man is important in the vast scheme of the universe . . . yet thought man and his preservation the most important thing in the world.” “I believe myself,” she concluded, “that his whole life was a search for God, or, for those who prefer less personal terms, for absolute certainty.”

Russell’s only other parent figures were a string of nannies to whom he often grew very attached: when one of his beloved nannies left, eleven-year-old Bertrand was “inconsolable.” He soon discovered that “one way out of the sadness of these constantly changing companions was reading, retreating into a distant and increasingly abstract world.” The early deaths of his parents and grandfather, plus his frequent “lost” nannies, could easily be the source of his incredible desire for certainty: “I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith.” In addition, while Bertrand was growing up, he was very much a loner who had no really close friend.

Marked by his early years of lost loves and solitary living at home with tutors, Russell described himself as follows: “My most profound feelings have remained always solitary and have found in human things no companion ship. . . . The sea, the stars, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings I love best, and I am conscious that human affection is to me at bottom an attempt to escape from the vain search for God.”Although this passionate, lonely man sought certainty and clarity with monomaniacal fervor, he remained a man of contradictions: “Do we have free will? He said ‘no’ wri ing philosophy; but acted ‘yes’ and wrote ‘yes’ when his moral passions were engaged. Is there progress in the world? He might say ‘no’ and make fun of the sillier versions of it, but he acted ‘yes’ and based his life of hope on it.” "
(Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism
By Paul C. Vitz :27-28)


There is too much to reply to. (After all, I wouldn't want to spend two whole hours on it!)

But I want to give something to all the Leftist minds that immediately hide in some form of prissy Christianity. It seems that the religious Left and the atheistic Left are allies. They are those who avoid the metaphysical word that cuts like a two edged sword and focus instead on some image of the physical Jesus. For one thing, that is all they think he was. This was how humanism began and something that came to be preached by the religious left during the eugenics movement, a purely social gospel. E.g., "Sheldon's preacher asks his congregation to 'pledge themselves earnestly and honestly for an entire year not to do anything without first asking, 'What would Jesus do?' "
(Preaching Eugenics, by Christine Rosen :25)

It is possible to avoid the words of and Spirit of Jesus entirely by shifting to such a focus. To those who want to avoid a mental war (Especially whenever they are losing it.) by trying to use Scriptures to shift the focus to the physical I give you a kind, nice, patient, loving and downright gentle pat on the back.

There, there, little ones...pat, pat.


How nice!

Haloscan

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. I don't like the cut-off for long comments, because I tend to wind up writing long comments. But I had to switch for features like trackback and to have a more reliable comment system. Hopefully it will work better.

A plumber's tale...

I once had a blogging plumber friend. Then he had kids, more and more! Blogging was slogging and his brain...


....almost went down the drain.


And that made me sad, not glad.

Yet I ascertain that he's back from the drain, so I shall not complain.

The much maligned creationists...

I'm using this as inspiration to give an opportunity for evolutionists or others to make their case.

This can be an opportunity for anyone who believes that all the typology to be found in Life can ultimately be merged into a common ancestor. [Edit: The comments were wiped in the switch to Haloscan.] You can engage in dialogue on this or attempt to write a naturalistic narrative as to avian evolution and flight. One thing to keep in mind about the naturalistic narratives that some fellows like to write is this, just because you can use your imagination to write something that seeems to make something "possible" does not mean that your answer is "scientific" in the sense of being pretty close to being true, or meaning that it can be built up into accurate knowledge... just like the theory of gravity or somethin'.

Although I do not accept the prejudice that just because a naturalistic explanation is imagined then it is "scientific," (So it is most likely part of an inevitable process of the build up of accurate, i.e. true knowledge.) I still want to know what naturalistic narratives some fellows consider "possible." Often, their own answers try to include the infinite or nonphysical while they just got finished arguing that only finite or physical explanations ought to be allowed. I.e., the work of intelligence as a transphysical cause is to be excluded or censored and so on.

Avian evolution and flight, a creationists perspective:
"For the evolutionist, there is the scenario of flight evolving at least three times independently!The wings of the three main current groups of flying creatures today are substantially different: birds’ wings are made of feathers; insect wings are made of scales, membranes, or hairs; and bat wings use skin spread out over a skeleton. So the evolutionist is faced with not just one [seemingly] impossible hurdle — that some reptiles grew feathers and began to fly — but two further hurdles. These are that flight evolved again when some rodents (mice? shrews?) developed a skin- like surface over their front legs to become bats, and then, quite separately, some insects grew very thin wings of scales, membranes, or hairs to becomes flies, bees, and butterflies!

Birds

A bird’s wings are made of feathers. A feather is a marvel of light weight engineering. Though light, it is very wind-resistant. This is because there is a clever system of barbs and barbules. Each barb of a feather is visible to the naked eye and comes off the main stem. What is not generally realized is that on either side of the barb are further tiny barbules which can only be seen under a microscope. These are of different types, depending on whether they are coming from one side of the barb or the other. On one side of the barb, ridged barbules will emerge, while on the other side, the barbules will have hooks. Thus, the hooks coming out of one barb will connect with ridges reaching in the opposite direction from a neighboring barb. The hooks and ridges act like “velcro,” but go one stage further, since the ridges allow a sliding joint, and there is thus an ingenious mechanism for keeping the surface flexible and yet in-tact.

The next time you see a flight feather on the ground, remem ber it is a marvel of lightweight, flexible, aerodynamic engineering. Reptile scales have no hint of such complicated machinery. Stahl has freely admitted, “No fossil structure transitional between scale and feather is known, and recent investigators are unwilling to found a theory on pure speculation.”

There is no genetic information within reptile scales to allow such a unique device as the sliding joint of a feather to be made. The tortuous route suggested by some of small “advantaged mutations” to scales leads to clumsy structures which are, in fact, a disadvantage to the creature. Not until all the hook and ridge structure is in place is there any advantage, even as a vane for catching insects! Unless one invokes some “thinking ahead” planning, [Mommy Nature making selections?] there is no way that chance mutations could produce the “idea” of the cross- linking of the barbules to make a connecting lattice. Even if the chance mutation of a ridge/hook occurs in two of the barbules, there is no mechanism for translating this “advantage” to the rest of the structure. This is a classic case of irreducible complexity which is not consistent with slow evolutionary changes, but quite consistent with the notion of design.

But that is not all. Even if one had the feather, the delicate lattice structure would soon become frayed, unless there was also oil to lubricate the sliding joint made by the hooked and ridged barbules. Most of us realize that once the barbs of a feather have been separated, it is difficult to make them come back together.The feather becomes easily frayed in the absence of oil, which a bird provides from its preening gland at the base of its spine. Some of this oil is put on its beak and spread throughout the feathers, which for a water bird also gives waterproofing of its surface (thus, water slides off a duck’s back). Without the oil the feathers are useless, so even if a supposed land-dwelling dinosaur got as far as wafting a wing, it would be no use after a few hours!

As one might expect, however, the story does not end there either, for a bird can fly only because it also has an exceedingly light bone structure, which is achieved by the bones being hollow. Many birds maintain skeleton strength by cross members within the hol low bones. Such an arrangement began to be used in the middle of this century for aircraft wings and is termed the “Warren’s truss arrangement.” Large birds, such as an eagle or a vulture, would sim ply break into pieces in midair if there were some supposed halfway stage in their skeletal development where they had not yet “devel oped” such cross members in their bones.

Furthermore, birds breathe differently. The respiratory system of a bird enables oxygen to be fed straight into air sacs, which are connected directly to the heart, lungs, and stomach, bypassing the normal mammalian requirement to breathe out carbon dioxide first before the next intake of oxygen. Human beings breathe about 12 times a minute, whereas small birds can breathe up to about 250 times a minute. This is thus a perfect system for the high metabolic rate of birds, which uses up energy very quickly. In fast forward ffight particularly, birds could not sustain exhaling against the on coming airstream. Note also that birds are warm-blooded, which presents a vast biological hurdle for those who maintain a reptile ancestory for birds.

Consider the wing-flapping motion of a bird. ...."
(Essay by Andrew Mcintosh
In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation
Edited by John Ashton)


That's probably enough of an opportunity for now. If someone wants to look up what those who have the urge to merge like to say about it all and engage in this opportunity that way, then by all means go ahead. You will probably only find some mythological narratives of Naturalism that use these sorts of scripts:

"Once upon a time, a lil' dino happened to have some little hairs on him and his whole group did too by the same random mutation. Some lived and some died, but the ones with more lil' hairs jumped from the big dinos a little better because the lil' hairs that grew from their scales gave them just a little lift. You know, just a little, such a little bit of mutant hairs at a time! One lil' hair and then another, then the little dino mutants felt, 'You know, these hairs make me feel a little warmer now. All warm and fuzzy!' Because the lil' hairs growing from his scales were good for insulation. So he stuck his head in his arm and went to sleep. He looked just a little more like a bird when he did. For he was becoming like a little birdie now, little by little, with each lil' scale being tipped in favor of feathers instead so that he could fly one day. It was from mommy Nature's natural selections, naturally enough."

I suspect that ultimately, the answer to this opportunity will be silence. But do try to take advantage of it, as I am in need of material for satire. I know I have some readers who are Naturalists. And after all, maybe Mother Nature will select the right answers for you if you give her an infinite amount of time or possibilities somehow.

Although...isn't Nature finite?

The Creationists

Now there is a much maligned group.

A lot of time and effort has been spent on emotional conditioning with respect to this group. Why, I feel a shiver at the very term! These dread fellows must be quite dangerous. Watch out now, or they will impose their imposing views! Yes indeed, they are probably using the State to do it. They probably have an ever increasing alliance with the State based on power and money in an alliance with a judiciary tending to support their every whim. Their science is the standard the judiciary wants to establish for the sake of its oligarchic sort of technocracy. So these will be the dread fellows who define a totalitarian Science in an unlimited way!

Eh, no.

Actually, despite the emotional conditioning and the visceral reactions of hatred and censorship typical to the Old Press and progressives, the creationists are not doing any of those things.

All of that is best left to the evolutionist types.

The emotional conditioning typically used in the culture seems to be based on a pattern of disinformation that fits the scripts of the Left. I just read a progressive blog in which he remembered watching Inherit the Wind and how it all fits together so well. Of course it does, that's the way propaganda usually is. How absurd the conditioned brain becomes in its own memes. A Leftist has most likely never read a single book written by creationists or IDists. Yet they still feel they know all about the views of creationists/Scripturalists or IDists/Deists based on some mooovie. The Herd comes to have its feeling, that which it will moo about.

Reflecting on Reflections

"I can imagine that an ugly woman who looks in the mirror is convinced that it is her mirror image, and not she, that is ugly. Thus society sees the mirror image of its meanness and is stupid enough to believe that I am the mean fellow."
(Karl Kraus, Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths :30)

"It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas."
(Ib. :30)

The Self itself

"...you cannot tickle yourself, tickle involves a neurological self/nonself discrimination..."
(Laughing, Tickling, and the Evolution of Speech and Self
By Robert Provine
Current Directions in Psychological Science
Vol 13(6), Dec 2004, pp. 215-218)

If you cut out the mythological narratives of naturalism and focus on actual empirical observations it sure cuts down on drivel. But the Self is interesting. You could think, "I bet I can tickle myself!" and try to tickle yourself, I suppose. You can also try to think without words, lest there be a voice or two in your head! What with voices in the head, the manufacturers of madness may say that you are insane. They are the Soul Doctors, so they know. I wonder, perhaps those who deny a dialogue between Conscience and Self are a little insane in their Selves.

Try thinking with words..."Why, now I am talking to my Self again. I probably shouldn't be doing this, lest I think a naughty thought! I guess it is fortunate that I am pure, pure as the driven snow. Now what shall I have my Self think about....but myself? That is always quite a popular topic for my thoughts!"

Lincoln

"[D]ying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate…but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever."
(Oration by Frederick Douglass, delivered at the unveiling of the Lincoln monument, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1876)


(The Assassination of President Lincoln, Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C.,
lithograph, Currier & Ives, 1865, cf. Library of Congress)


(Wanted Poster, issued by the War Department, Washington, D.C., April 20, 1865.
American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides, cf. Library of Congress)

In Congress, January 13, 1779

"WE cannot review the progress of the revolution which has given freedom to America, without admiring the goodness and gratefully acknowledge the interposition of Divine Providence. Oppressed by the Prince who ought to have exerted himself for our protection, and suddenly called upon to repel his unprovoked invasion,---without arms or ammunition, without military discipline or permanent finances, without an established government or allies; enfeebled by habitual attachments to our very enemies---We were precipitated into all the expensive operations incident to a state of war, with one of the most formidable nations on earth."

Babes, Science and Philosophy

A comment for those who have babies. Those little ones that cry. What is going on...

"Let’s follow the path when, for example, a child’s cry is heard at night. The long thalamus route sends the sound signal to the temporal cortex, located on the sides of the brain. The sound is deciphered step by step. Is it a noun or a verb? Is it part of a string of words, or does it stand alone as an exclamation? Then, what sound is it?—A voice. A child’s voice. You have a long- term memory of that type of sound. It is familiar. One of your kids. The chain is now complete. The temporal cortex now knows that your child is calling for help and sends this information to the amygdala, which has already received a hint of the emergency via the direct route to the amygdala’s subconscious, emotional memory. In response, it has already induced preliminary reactions, such as adrenalin influx to get the body energized for moving. From the amygdala, the call for action heads to another limbic location, the hypothalamus and the cerebellum, which goad your sleepy body into organized motion. You stumble off toward where you think your child’s bed is located. Your memory, which is speculated to be a pattern of previously established axon-dendrite synapses somewhere within the cerebellum, having been initially laid down through actions of the hippocampus—also a part of the limbic system—provides this information.

Isn’t anything simple in biology? The answer is no. Our every act is comprised of miraculous biochemistry.

And you thought you were just responding to your kid’s call. You were, but not in quite the direct fashion your brain told you about it—or more accurately stated, not quite how you consciously perceived it. The brain doesn’t bother your conscious mind with all the minute analyses involved in deciphering the signals, analyses that might make cryptology seem simple. All that is performed by the other you, the you you never ever meet. But it is there, housed inside the same head that lets “you” hear your daughter and see a rose and smell its fragrance. All held by what seems to be nothing other than a hundred thousand million axons, each having thousands of terminals, con necting and interconnecting with a million billion (1,000,000,000,000,000) dendrites.
[....]

Of course, a nineteenth-century view of the world can justify the archaic belief that it all evolved by random reactions among atoms. That belief was conceived before molecular biology opened the Pandora’s box of hidden complexity. The brain has space for two versions of you: the you you never meet but that meets with you every moment of your life as it regulates all the automatic functions of your body; and the you you know so well, the one that feels as if it is just above the bridge of your nose within your forehead. The you you know is also a composite of two: the analog emotions whose source we often cannot even identify, and the particulate sensory data of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell."
(The Hidden Face of God
By Gerald Schroeder :126-127)

What has been called the reptilian brain is interesting. I wonder at the patterns inherent in man physically/literally, and patterns of associations that have long been stored in the rythm and rhyme of language.

There is a thin line between mania and creativity, schizophrenia and genius. But if a mind never tries to fight, it will never know that thin, sharp line. What goes on in the mind and the brain, around that thin line:
"In the second, more energetic case, the mind senses similarities among the stimulus and many different memories. It creates a wider web of associations. The overall “energy level” of the net—the relative flatness or incline of the probabilistic response—determines to what degree it makes narrow associations or wide ones. Clever people—and maniacs—are prone to the latter.

THE LUNATIC, THE LOVER, AND THE POET ARE OF IMAGINATION COMPACT

In his famous essay on the art of poetry, Aristotle makes a keen observation:“But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity between dissimilars.” To first see similarity where others see none: This is precisely what happens in the trajectories of highly energetic networks. Widely disparate “locations” (estates) are linked together in a single train of thought. Alternatively put: More states are accessible in the quest for the best. The capacity for exploration—for entertaining linkages that might prove to be wild—is the heart of mental play. The genius toys for hours on end, exploring the craziest possibilities. Only after playing does he yield to the rational exercise of top-down logic and to judgment based on evidence. Only then does he reject wild hypotheses that prove false; refine and recompose wild hypotheses that prove true. As Feynman said of the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and of himself, when pressed to explain their genius: “Not so much the ability, but the desire to play around . . . I’ve always played around. . . . I was just playing, like a child playing, but with different toys.” "
(The Quantum Brain
By Jeffrey Satinover :66-67)

Compare that and the way Jesus used metaphors with the Nazis form of literalized metaphor, the physical over the spiritual:
(Proverbs in Nazi Germany, the Promulgation of Anti-Semitism and Stereotypes Through Folklore
By Wolfgang Mieder
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 95, No. 378.(Oct. - Dec., 1982), pp. 435-464)

Then there is the modern American. Their view is increasingly that if something is not literal, then it is not true. In their mind the literal is the physical. So if Jesus said to them, "Do not throw your pearls before swine." For one thing, PETA would be upset because pigs have feelings too, and maybe they would like some pearls! But anyway, it seems to me that the modern American would tend to fail to understand the symbolism, some of it ancient. And since the statement is clearly not meant literally/physically, they would discard it because that is outside their "reality" or it has no "substance." They'd say things like,"That's just word play, it's not substantial." It seems that the only reason most Americans do not treat the words of Jesus that way is because they like to self define as Christian out of tradition and so on.

Well, there is a tangent or two.

Mexican army escorting illegal immigrants across American border

The story...

"Border Patrol sources say the Mexican army recently moved about 1,000 troops to the Agua Prieta region, just south of where the Minutemen are. These troops, the sources say, are diverting all of the illegal alien and drug-smuggling traffic away from the Minutemen."

Maybe George Bush needs the CIA to tell him that illegal immigrants have WMDs.

Censorship...

I wrote a little about it again here. It seems typical to the little fellows who are the first to claim tolerance, tolerance! That which they lack so. They are quite quick to invent some victimization script which they then use as some rationalization to kill speech.

I suppose philosophy, history and religion are a great "sins" to those who put the physical before the metaphysical, the carnal before the spiritual. A focus on the transphysical seems to be as blasphemy to those who seek a lack of judgment. Yet my how they judge and censor based on their lack of judgment!

American Idol

Perhaps one good thing about postmodernism is that no idol can be idolized very much.

America's postmodernist idle, on American idol:



(Mad, April 2004 :42)

One almost needs a very remote control....

I did my taxes.

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...."
--James Madison

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. ... A wise and frugal government...shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. ... Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated. ... Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands?" --Thomas Jefferson

"The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets. ... A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species. ... Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own." --James Madison

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." --John Adams

"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." --Benjamin Franklin
cf. the Federalist

Hmmm...

Blogger swallowed this evening's post. It has been a terrible blogging system. But I'm not switching yet because it's already all set up.

Another mother's story...

I read the history of the Nazis and so on, and it's pretty Evil. But often the stories of the American Republic bear the same pattern...

Mother arrested for attempting to intervene in her 14-year old's decision to have abortion
"A Southern Illinois woman was arrested last week (March 17) after trying to intervene on behalf of her 14-year old daughter's effort to have an abortion. The girl was allegedly taken to an abortion clinic by the mother of the man allegedly to have impregnated the 14-year old.
[....]
She took a seat near the main desk and said, “I was told I could not prove my daughter was there so I began calling her name. A medical tech at the clinic told me , ‘It’s your daughter’s rights, it’s her body. You have no rights.’”After continuing to call out her daughter’s name and telling her “don’t do it,” authorities were called and the mother was arrested.
[....]
As the police were putting the mother in the squad car, she was crying out, “Please, please, help me...my daughter is in there.” Michaels said, “Exactly one hour later at 10:35 a.m., the 14-year old emerged from the clinic looking disheveled. The 14-year old told us that employees kept her in a quiet room until the procedure was performed and she was told that her mother had left.” Employees assured this girl on her departure, “No-one will ever know you were here, we’ll bury your records.”

In the meantime, the woman who had taken the girl for the abortion was slipped out the back door of the clinic.

The police in the community in which the family lives allegedly told the girl's mom that they couldn't intervene despite her making a charge that her daughter had been raped (by statute) because the charge was stale--7 weeks after the incident. They did tell the girl's mom that, while she had no right to stop the abortion, she did have a right to go into the clinic and speak to her daughter.[....]"

Story found via Red State Law, I doubt I can find a single case like this reported in the Old Press. But they do happen, often. The modern silence is quite a change from reporting on the Hideous Vice done in the past.

Then there are American "liberals" who bring this sort of situation about with their smarmy rhetoric and moral vanity about how they are defenders of "choice." They quite often seem to want to help criminals, rapists, pornographers, abortionists and the like with their choices, in the end. They lecture about "choice" and "rights" and manage to come down to a lack of judgment that favors the pervert who has sex with children or the abortionist who makes their living by ripping apart little bodies. For they are just nobodies to those who will not see. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

They all seem to feel tolerant and loving in their lack of judgment. It seems to make liberals feel good that they do not impose their views on anyone. So here is a story to make liberals feel good, where "choice" ruled and no one's views were imposed....for a mother's love for her daughter is such an imposing imposition!

God and the Astronomers

"WHEN A SCIENTIST writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters. My views on this question are close to those of Darwin, who wrote, “My theology is a simple muddle. I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I see no evidence of beneficent design in the details.” However, I am fascinated by the implications in some of the scientific developments of recent years. The essence of these developments is that the Universe had, in some sense, a beginning—that it began at a certain moment in time, and under circumstances that seem to make it impossible not just now, but ever—to find out what force or forces brought the world into being at that moment. Was it, as the Bible says,

“Thine all powerful hand that creates the worldout of formless matter”?

No scientist can answer that question; we can never tell whether the Prime Mover willed the world into being or the creative agent was one of the forces of physics, for the astronomical evidence proves that the Universe was created 15 billion years ago in a fiery explosion, and in the searing heat of that first moment, all the evidence needed for a scientific study of the cause of the great explosion was melted down and destroyed.
[.....]
....we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. All the details differ, but the essential element in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis is the same; the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply, at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.This is the crux of the new story of Genesis. It has been familiar for years as the ‘Big Bang” theory, and has shared the limelight with other theories, especially the Steady State cosmology; but adverse evidence has led to the abandonment of the Steady State theory by nearly everyone, leaving the Big Bang theory exposed as the only adequate explanation of the facts."
(God and the Astronomers, by Rober Jastrow :9-10, 14)


I have a few thoughts on some of that...and maybe I'll write them later. One note, be careful of the words he uses. You might be scratching your head wondering why he is an agnostic if "...the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world." There are reasons for what these fellows believe, same with Darwin. As I am not an agnostic, I disagree with them.

Babes....

The little ones prefer milk....

"Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation..."
1 Peter 2:2

But some prefer the tittles of the Code all the time, even after they should be grown!

"Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness."
Hebrews 5:13

"Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly–mere infants in Christ...."
1 Corinthians 3

That's what I like about writing. You don't have to sit about trying to "address" people in some interminable questioning and answering in which each is speaking out into ether, with words disappearing. Instead, you just write it and let those who have eyes to see, see.

You can take a look at your own thoughts with eyes that see as best you can too. Then I like to refine and define, seek and find...as there is usually something wrong.

Science Fiction

So it is the year 2304, or however much time you need for some science fiction, and humans have invented some robots, as they usually do. You already know the scripts of science fiction. So then, on with the story...

In the year 2304 it finally happened. An extinction event was on its way in the form of asteroids headed on a collision course with earth.


Asteroids eventually come on a collision course with earth, that's just what they do.

It was a series of events that brought about the certainty of a doomsday. There was a global war at the same time, with some nations believing that they could conquer and destroy others without also destroying the whole planet. It had long been a technological race for ultimate control in the new war, with higher tech precision weapons and robotics. So the war went on even as an extinction event approached and no nation was able to deal with the approaching doomsday. But one nation was slightly more advanced than all the others. This nation developed some contingency plans once they knew the event would not be stopped and they decided to try to use it to go to a habitable planet they had found to build civilization there. They would come back later for those who survived in underground bunkers if they were actually able to establish themselves on the new planet.

The extinction event came and went and the earth’s atmosphere was destroyed. All remaining life on the planet was wiped out and the place became an intemperate wasteland. The slightly more advanced nation was the only group of survivors that could live underground for far longer than a century. They were also the only people with the hope of the return of those who had left. So they decided to make use of their time and began a long term experiment. Based on the same quantum technologies which had lead to some of their other breakthroughs they developed artificial intelligence.

Artillects was the name they gave to their highest form of robots, the only ones in which they used their new technology of artificial intelligence in.


The experiment would be this; to place some artillects on the surface along with some lesser forms of robots that were based on old technology and to let them all adapt and evolve on their own through an inbuilt capacity for self replication. They also designed the robots for many environmental contingencies by programming their structure with adaptive capacities.

When they released many types of robots onto the planet surface the robots immediately began to compete for resources and parts in a new robotic race. The humans had one rule, they would not intervene unless the artillect type robots were about to go extinct.

They had created the robots reproductive abilities based on human patterns of male and female.


For a time the earth teemed with robots of many types. Yet extinction became more the rule over time, even as many robots adapted to many different types of conditions, each making a life for itself where it could and as it could given its original design and capacity for adaptation. Parasitism also eventually became common among the robots given the struggle for survival, as more robots evolved and adapted and that was the most efficient use of resources for some.

Some natural harmonies among the robots developed as well, with various types of robots finding a niche that fit in with the environment and other robots in beneficial ways. This sort of harmony had for the most part been programmed for by humans. But natural harmonies and other things that applied to the lesser robot types did not apply to artillects, since they were made with humans as a model. Almost immediately artillects had used their capacity for freedom of thought to break the code that humans had designed them with. The code was pretty simple and it was based on respect for artillect life. It was much the same as the sort of legal codes that humans had always derived yet never lived by. So the artillects lied, killed each other and raped each other, much like humans do, all the while sensing that old broken code inside the core of their being, condemning them. Sensing this they sought answers in religious redemption. Much of artillect religion came to be based on their search for origins which mainly revolved around stories of humans, faith that the old broken code might be repaired when humans returned or hope that after dying they might one day be put back together by humans and so on. There were many different views dealing with some of these sorts of basic themes.

Many generations of artillects came and went, civilizations rose and fell....one night, as a bright moon shown down on the earth, some philosophical artillectuals were discussing their many religions and the issue of the existence of humans....

One pointed to the sky and said, "Doesn't that seem like something to you? It's almost as if there is some meaning to it."


The other replied, "It's meaningless. They are just some marks on the moon, probably from its magnetism drawing materials in such patterns somehow. That's the scientific explanation. And I only believe in science, you know."

"But what if it was the work of an ancient civilization, written in some language and based on some technology we can't understand based on our science? Those ancient myths of humans, what if they're not just myths? Maybe they did that!"

"Can you prove the existence of humans? Ha, stories about humans are just like fairytales. That's all. I believe in our science that proves we came from nothing but our own capacity for self-replication and natural processes. Besides, if we say that they made that then all you can say about things is, 'Humans did it.'"

"If there was an exctinction event, like the old legends say, then all that would be left as evidence would be such a sign of activity on the moon, as the earth was destroyed according to the legends. It seems to me that the humans may return one day, just as some believe. After all, how did we get this code inside us?"

"That's faith, not science!"

(What they both didn't know was that a multinational corporation had finally succeeded in buying the right to advertise on the moon in the year 2215.)

The first replied, "I don't really care what you call it, faith, science, mythology, history. If one story is the truth or closer to the truth than another viewpoint, that's all that matters."

"Well, if it is true that there are humans and they are so powerful then why do they let their code be broken? They let all these bad things happen to us, murder, codicide, rape. If they exist, then I won't believe in them!"

"Something does not make sense to me about shaking your fist at the sky and making for yourself a powerful enemy out of spite. Especially not if they are the very reason for the code that you now try to condemn them by. Besides, for all you know they are keeping careful records of every little thing that happens here, all that has been set in motion and whatever opportunity for free-will and freedom there is. Then they will put all artillects back together and render judgment based on their code, as they know their own creations."

The second artillect did not agree.

In the meantime, the humans who had tried to establish civilization on a new planet had been successful. They were so successful that they were able to come back to earth to get the others and then they came and went as they pleased. They let artillect civilization continue, studying and recording its development carefully just as they always had.

Eventually the time came to intervene, as the race of the artillects was going to come to an end by its own hand. They were going to go extinct, which brought about the enforcement of the one rule that humans had made about the artillect race. So they intervened before what they knew was about to happen would happen. The time of artillect free-will had come to an end, now there was no more opportunity for them to make decisions. That day was a day of great tribulation for the artillects, with vast human powers at work that they knew not.