Evolution, obesity....and the mental flabbiness typical to journalists

Evolution and the environment, not just gluttony, has led to a global obesity pandemic, with an estimated 1.5 billion people overweight -- more than the number of undernourished people -- an obesity conference was told on Monday.

"The mounting epidemic of obesity in children would see many die before their parents," said Kate Steinbeck..."This is the first generation in history where children may die before their parents," Steinbeck told the conference.

(Anna Venger citing journalists, uncritically)

Journalists never seem to question experts or report knowledge as such, apparently they're usually too flabby intellectually to do anything other than repeat what they're told. (Except when it comes to Republicans, then there is usually a comment, contrast, or the ubiquitous "critics say" interwoven in every other bit of text.)

In this instance why not report some relevant facts? Perhaps reporting: "She said that this is the first generation in history where children may die before their parents. Critics note that children often died before their parents throughout history thanks to malnutrition and infant mortality. I also found this one critic who argues that scientists often engage in fearmongering for funding."

Or: "Evolution and the environment, not just gluttony, are now said to be leading to a global pandemic of obesity. Critics expect a new 'War on Obesity' and argue that a state of fear keeps some types of journalists and many scientists that work for the State in business. Some critics note that Darwinian and Malthusian versions of evolution were always said to predict vast famine and starvation, yet now evolution predicts obesity. This has led some critics to question what falsifiable predictions the so-called 'theory of evolution' makes."

You would never read that because journalists never find "some critics" to quote when it comes to a modern bugaboo like evolution, so no matter how contradictory and moronic Darwinian hypothesizing becomes there is almost no criticism of it to be found in the Old Press. Ironically, if there is, then it is combined with plenty of "critics say" or "scientists say" and so on.

Evolution = the Platonic ether
Evolution = phlogiston

And so on. Evolution is the modern form that hypothetical goo has taken. Like all forms of hypothetical goo it "explains" one set of empirical facts as well as their exact opposite equally well, easily overwhelming mental midgets with the illusion of vast explanatory powers. There are always a few scientists (Those who are aquainted with basic logic.) who know that when your hypothesis is capable of explaining all sets of possible facts then there is no way of testing it against the facts and given the history of science explaining all things is most likely an indication that your hypothesizing is pseudo-science.

In colloquial use the vast explanatory powers of "evolution" is an ethereal illusion that has no logical basis in empirical facts, so moderns saying: "Evolution does such and such..." is the equivalent of an ancient Greek saying: "Platonic ether causes this and that." Neither is actually scientia or systematic forms of knowledge encoded in the language of mathematics that is verified or tested against empirical facts, instead people are murmuring some pseudo-scientific terms to pretend that they are not ignorant.

Caveman

It's odd how the caveman evolved into a symbol and a metaphor for the Darwinian creation myth, despite the fact that various lines of evidence refute the ignorant notion that the human brain evolves based on natural selection and random mutation. But at any rate, he's become a common symbol, the caveman. Given that many ancient peoples buried their dead in caves and catacombs one might wonder if their remains should be counted as evidence for "cavemen." For that matter, if modern humans were stripped of civilization as we know it by great natural catastrophies and Great Doom to the point that they had to live in caves would they be cavemen? After all, I'd probably be a caveman if I came to live in a place with nothing but what I could carry away from my former civilization.

So what is true? Apparently those who write the Darwinian creation myths on such topics are reading the evidence based on their own imagination sans logic again:

In a previous chapter, we emphasized that the interfertility test could not be applied to the Neandertals. In his 1989 article in Discover, Jared Diamond thus imposed the false test of culture and found that the Neandertals were not fully human because they had no glue or adhesives for hafting tools; no unequivocal art objects; no boats, canoes, or ships; no bows and arrows; no cave paintings; no domesticated animals or plants; no hooks, nets, or spears for fishing; no lamps; no metallurgy; no mortars and pestles; no musical instruments; no needles or awls for sewing; no ropes for carrying things; no sculpture; and no long-distance overland trade.

Yet in a 1993 article in Discover, this same Jared Diamond recognizes that the Tasmanians were fully human even though they had no glue or adhesives for hafting tools; no unequivocal art objects; canoes that quickly sank; no bows and arrows; no cave paintings; no domesticated animals or plants; no hooks, nets, or spears for fishing; no lamps; no metallurgy; no mortars and pestles; no musical instruments; no needles or awls for sewing; no sculpture; and (being on a rather small island) no long-distance overwater trade.

Why would Diamond consider the Neandertals to be “subhuman” solely on the basis of their alleged limited cultural inventory, when he considers the Tasmanians, having the very same limited cultural inventory, to be fully human? This is one of the most glaring lacks of logic I have ever read in the scientific literature. In a more perfect world, evolutionists would be required to take a course in logic. I cannot explain such an obvious inconsistency on the part of this scientist; I can only report the problem. I know that evolution blinds the soul. I have reason to believe that it also blinds the mind.

(Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils
by Marvin L. Lubenow :214-215)

Unfortunately debate about cavemen isn't really about a reasonable and logical view of the evidence because cavemen serve as an icon of the Darwinian creation myth, that great modern bugaboo.

I watched the movie Rabbit Proof Fence over the weekend. It reminded me of the impact of Darwinian icons and the way that they permeate Western culture and the pseudo-Christianity typical to it. It's a good movie but it can only show a limited view of what was done to the aboriginals. For instance, no hunting of aboriginals or collecting "specimens" and so on is dealt with. I'm not sure there are any movies about such things, just as there seem to be no modern movies about the eugenics movement either.

The whole Darwinian mindset of dealt with in the movie is that in which man shares his ontological status with animals, which thus turns civilization and intelligence into a way of alienating man from animal. If man is not endowed by his Creator with anything that is unalienable as per the ignorant cast of mind typical to Darwinists, then that is what the "emergence" of civilization becomes. If you turn civilization into a way of keeping man and animal distinct because you deny the real basis for that distinction then civilization becomes alienating and uncivilized people become less than human and so on.

This pattern of denying the foundation for being human while trying to prop up the notions of human beings with language and civilization alone reminds me of how it tends to go wrong as far as the distinction between human and animal. E.g., the story of Ota Benga and some original reporting on it:

There was an exhibition at the Zoological Park in the Bronx yesterday which had for many of the visitors something more than a provocation to laughter. There were laughs enough in it, too, but there was something about it which made the serious minded grave. Even those who laughed the most turned away with an expression on their faces such as one sees after a play with a sad ending...
“Something about it that I don’t like,” was the way one man put it.

The exhibition was that of a human being in a monkey cage. The human being happened to be a Bushman, one of a race that scientists do not rate high in the human scale, but to the average non-scientific person in the crowd of sightseers there was somethlng about the display that was unpleasant.
The human being caged was the little black man, Ota Benga, whom Prof. S. P. Verner, the explorer, recently brought to this country from the jungles of Central Africa. Prof. Verner lately handed him over to the New York Zoological Society for care and keeping. When he was permitted yesterday to get out of his cage, a keeper constantly kept his eyes on him.

The news that the pigrny would be on exhibition augmented the Saturday afternoon crowd at the Zoological Park yesterday, which becomes somewhat smaller as the Summer wanes. The monkey—or rather, the primate—house is in the centre of Director Hornaday’s animal family.
[...]
Like his fellow-lodgers, the orang outangs and monkeys, Benga has a room inside the building. It opens, like the rest, into the public cage.
A crowd that fluctuated between 300 and 500 persons watched the little black man amuse himself in his own way yesterday. He doesn’t like crowds, especially the children, who tease him. So he wove at the hammocks and mats which he knows how to make, . jabbered at the parrot which came from the jungles with him, and shot at marks in the ample cage with his bow and arrow. For the latter diversion the Zoological Park managers had macla proviSion by tying bundles of straw against a side of the inclosure. The children got a good deal of fun out of his arrow-shooting when he missed his mark, which was not often. Then he made faces at them.
A little after the noon hour Benga was allowed to go into the woods. A keeper watched him from a distance. It is doubtful if any one has ever seen a happier mortal. Grabbing his bow and arrow, he jumped to the thickest of the underbrush and frisked about.

At liberty Benga seemed to live in Africa again. He peered into every hollow tree and looked at trees and shrubs for birds and squirrels. But the crowd soon found him and he had to move from spot to spot. In the end the keeper had to send him back into the monkey house again.

(BUSHMAN SHARES A CAGE WITH BRONX PARK APES
The New York Times, Sept. 9, 1906; pg. 17)

It sometimes seems that Darwinists would make monkeys of us all if they could.

It's odd how people forget and believe the same old progressive mythology about Scripturalists and conservatives in general taking us back to the Dark Ages and so on. It seems that many believe Leftist scientists engaging in charlatanism. I.e. those who claim that science reveals all knowledge or must be the sole truth which governs the State and man, all of which will inevitably lead society to ages of Enlightenment. (Provided that religious forms of knowledge are private and "separated" from public life. )

Ironically that type of progress has happened before in the West yet instead of grand new ages of truth and light, some rather dark ages followed. After all, by what are we judging "progress"?

Comment...

Comment here, I'm thinking about doing further research on the "magical" roots of science in occult magick because of the level of irony involved in the claim that Christians generally want science to be conflated with magic and so on.

Once again a philosophy rooted in Logos and logico-mathematical thinking is a victim of its own success. E.g., just as people forget that the very reason we have the principle of separation of church and state is because the Founders upheld it on religious grounds based on faith and reason they also forget that the reason that magic was excluded from scientia/knowledge as we know it was also based on faith in a reasonable God subtlely leading people on to reason and progress.

Ironically, there are now Darwinist organizations that seek to support the notion that all progress has come about based on their false philosophy or belief in their utterly absurd creation myths.

[Edit: Some elements of Seeker's list could use a fair bit of definition (e.g. #4), the only problem is that by the time you're done few would understand what you said. That's the problem with portions of creationism, those elements that are structured with ministry to others in mind become dilluted as a matter of precise or accurate knowledge. There's good and bad in all of it I suppose, because on the other hand many scientists tend to structure their representation of knowledge with themselves and perhaps their professional identity as "expert" in mind. So they seem to tend towards technical jargon and charlatanism about as much as creationists tend towards oversimplification or bombast.]

Ernesto

I windsurfed the remains of Ernesto this weekend. Unfortunately by the time it stopped raining it wasn't that windy.

Here's an old post with a video in it. No one takes pictures for me anymore. =(

Interesting title for a book on Bush

(Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media (Hardcover)
by Bill Sammon)

I haven't read it. Despite the hyperbole typical to book titles it seems to me that there is a case to be made for giving Bush at least a little more credit than he generally gets. Perhaps like Reagan, Bush won't be given credit for anything good that he's done by the "mainstream" until he's dead.

That would be interesting.

Pope may embrace intelligent design

Pope Benedict XVI may reportedly embrace the theory of intelligent design, possibly heralding a fundamental shift in the Vatican’s view of evolution.

(Link from Uncommon Descent)

If that happens then expect a wave of anti-Catholic sentiment among Leftist intellectuals, with many invoking the Flat Earth myth or mythic narratives surrounding Galileo. Mythic narrative: "Once upon a time such and such happened, here is the Hero and there is the Villian, and here's the little lesson to be learned from it all." If the pope does embrace ID I'm not even sure it would be a good thing for ID given that most people seem to believe myths about a long benighted, if not downright evil Catholic Church.

The problem with the myths that progressives tend to invoke in editorials and the like about the "war between science and religion" is that they often have little basis in history. For example, historians have traced the Flat Earth myth back to the writings of progressives in the 1800s who apparently invented it for political purposes even when history shows that it was known in the West that the earth was round all the way back to the times of the Greek philosophers.

Why they did it:

There was some hope, Draper felt, that science could live with Protestantism, because liberal Protestantism was yielding its moral authority to the secular state and its epistemological basis to science. But science could never live with Catholicism, which under Pius IX condemned liberal progressivism in the "Syllabus of Errors," opposed the union of Italy into a secular state, and declared the pope's infallibility. [...] Draper saw the secular national state as the protector and steward of liberal progress, and he admired Bismark's "Culture War" (Kulturkampf) against the church in [proto-Nazi] Germany.

(Inventing the Flat Earth: Colombus and Modern Historians
by Jeffrey Burton Russell :38)

It was political, although by the time a political propagandist is done he may actually believe that he's seeking or telling the truth.

It is typical to progressives to lie about or attack the level of intelligence of any who oppose them, while conservatives typically attack the morals of any who oppose them. So it is not surprising to find that their myths are structured to suit their own psychological dynamics. But note the ignorance that the promulgation of progressive myths rely on, in this case they rely on ignorance with respect to basic facts of history that clearly prove that educated people knew the earth was a sphere. On an ironic note, it was the scholastics and monks who learned at the universities of their day who were most likely to have that knowledge and to protect it through the Dark Ages, yet they are the religious people that progressives tried to attack by inventing myths about them.

Generally, there are also bits of knowledge and possible lines of evidence* that go against the entire progressive belief system in which it is believed that human beings were once generally stupid but now progress on towards becoming a New Man based on intelligence and knowledge.
*E.g., the maps of the ancient sea kings (Who seemed to know the shape of the earth.), the Great Pyramid contains many lines of evidence about ancient knowledge in itself and so on and so forth. (E.g. "Reference to any equal-area projection map of the Earth's surface reveals that the chosen site of the Great Pyramid lies on the longest land-contact meridian on the Earth's surface, and is also at the geographical center of its whole land mass, including the Americas and Antarctica.") It may be that some lines of evidence cannot be proven to the same extent as the historical fact that educated people knew the earth was a sphere back in the Dark Ages, yet all it takes is a single instance to puncture the grand myths of Progress that reject the ancient notion of a progression drawn forth by Providence.

The way that Leftists tend to view science and progress is ironic given that chemistry came from alchemy, astronomy from astrology and so on only as the result of changes in religious beliefs and philosophical patterns of thought. Murmuring about science and progress now is ironic because if things were left to the smothering immanence typical to the Leftist mind we'd probably be back in the Dark Ages of the Druids with their Nature based paganisms trying to suck at the teat of Mommy Nature. I.e., we'd be practicing astrology instead of astronomy, alchemy instead of chemistry, the charlatanism of the snake oil salesman instead of medicine, and so on.

Perhaps logocentric forms of thought are a victim of their own progress, thus the apparent cyclic nature of the rise and fall of civilizations. That is to say, when people become fat and happy (or morbidly obese and depressed, for such is progress!) as the result of the systematic forms of thought typical to science and technology they begin feeling that the illogic of Nature based paganism defines progress or has brought them science, technology and "progress" as they know it.