Whoa, Charlie Booker’s review of a new documentary on Darwin really makes me want to see it.
Darwin’s theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it’s been under attack since day one. That’s just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we’d still be debating Newton with idiots too.
I think this might be the documentary he’s talking about, which has already made its way to youtube. Perhaps just as well, since I can’t imagine any television stations in the US clamoring to get it (and that is not a comment on its quality, but entirely about the absurd anti-intellectual propensity of too many Americans).
(Never mind, it seems this is a different documentary on Darwin. Still worth watching, though.)
I love Charlie Brooker. He rages enough for all of us, so we can take it easy.
This isn’t the program he’s talking about; the one he mentions is a new 3 parter that will be shown for the first time on August 4th, so we’ll have to wait at least until then for it to pop up on the Youtubes.
its a review of your mates programme some bloke called Richard Dawkins on tomorrow night on ch4 in the uk pz. might watch this docu in the meantime
I know what you’re saying about debating with idiots, who prefer magic to proven explanations.
On the other hand, if you see what the majority of Americans believe about important things, then you may ask, why?
If you only rely on people to make up their minds using critical thinking, it often fails to produce reasonable views. Therefore, sometimes WE have to debate the idiots, because one thing I’ve learned from politics, if you don’t respond, many people believe the allegations are true!
It’s time we have to change the public perceptions regarding science and the scientific method. After all, lots of funding for science comes from the public!
I’ll be checking The Pirate Bay for a torrent after tomorrow.
http://thepiratebay.org/search/the%20genius%20of%20darwin/0/99/0
BBC gets the best damned documentaries!
http://thepiratebay.org/search/bbc/0/99/0
The various authors of the passages in the bible weren’t necessarily feckin’ edjits to come up with the crap that they did, such as the various flat Earth references. They didn’t have our tradition of evaluating everything – they took a lot of things for granted, such as being able to go up a high mountain & see the ‘four corners of the Earth’.
Their creation myth involved the genesis of the entities important to them, rather than attempting to address the background causations. Gravity may not have entered their consciousness, they were so used to it. The people of Mesopotamia at this time were domesticating plants & animals; I guess they just saw that as creating variations amongst discrete kinds. And that was probably just something that farmers did.
Their thinking was still in the mold of mythopoeic traditions that pre-dated philosophy, & that granted sacredness or anima to everything. In their traditions, various gods had each had a bit of the action, one being responsible for the waters, another for the earth, etc. That johnny-come-lately Jehovah fella just coordinated creation activity into one god, or three, (including the frackin’ cracker).
So I think PZ’s reference to gravity, “If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we’d still be debating Newton with idiots too.”, isn’t aappropriate.
The weather, which science has discovered to be caused by meteorological events would, I think, be a more appropriate example. And here of course, the religious idiots do claim their god’s hand in events.
It’s not on YouTube, it’s being broadcast tomorrow at 9pm BST on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. (C4 is the most left-wing/free thinking of the UK ‘big five’ channels, with the BBC’s two channels in second place.)
Perhaps you could beg Richard Dawkins to send you a tape in the post?
Doubting Foo,it isn’t on the BBC, it’s on Channel 4. It does have a feature on their website to watch programmes online for free after they have been aired. I’m not too sure if they let it work for you Yanks though.
http://www.channel4.com/watch_online/
“BBC gets the best damned documentaries!”
I live in the U.S. (Texas) … What’s a documentary?
#7, Jonathan Rothwell, It’s not on at 9pm, it’s on at 8pm BST. I thought that you might not want to miss it.
“Darwin had shook the foundations of Victorian Society”
I thought the Brits were supposed to talk more better than that
OT :
Finally a relevant poll truly worth crashing !!
Who’s the sexiest silver fox?? And you can vote for Richard Dawkins too…:-)
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/groovy-old-men-the-rise-of-the-silver-swingers-878567.html
Dawkins in 5th place.
Let’s roll
Here’s the site for the documentary: http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/F/famelab/
Tonight Channel 4 is giving us Victorian sex secrets . . .
#10 Damn! Knew I’d make a mistake somewhere…
#11 I believe it’s perfectly acceptable to use both the simple past and the past participle in this context: I’m not sure, you’ll have to find a friendly English teacher somewhere. Be careful to sedate them though, they often bite.
Actually, since Newton only described _how_ objects behave under gravity, not why, we probably wouldn’t be debating them over that. Einstein, definitely, though.
uh oh, wouldn’t want to get hung by an English teacher, I mean that as if I spoke a metaphor.
Grr. While the voiceover was talking about Charles Lyell, the animation showed continental drift.
# 9
The Flintstones
Check out, http://www.tfn.org
I suspect you already have
#18 I THOUGHT that might have been a bit premature.
So waht was Lyell’s contribution, stratification?
You folks do realize that Dr. Myers linked another person’s article, right, and that the things you are responding to are his arguments, not PZ’s?
The “various authors” of the Bible were writing ~ the 2nd or 1st century B.C.E.(that’s when the script was “discovered” during the Temple’s renovation), and they were mostly recording old-folk stories, not creating something new. Given that the discoverers were the priesthood of Yaweh, and that there really aren’t any scholars documenting religious habits among the Hebrews during antiquity, we really have no clear idea of how late or early the rest of the Hebraic pantheon continued to be worshiped, although, if the prophet stories are any indication, the other cults continued for a very long time.
I’m not sure what we can say about their world view either way. The East Mediterranean coast had been a center of trade for centuries, but the isolated wastelands of Israel and Judah were never a significant part of that. Its certainly true that most people made their living there through herding and farming, but Jerusalem was an urban center with, one assumes, urban resources and an urban lifestyle, and it would be quite strange if the coastal fishing villages did not have at least some contact with their northern and southern neighbors, the results of which would inevitably reach Jerusalem as it was the gateway for trade between the coast and the highlands. In many ways, I think the backwardness of Israel and Judah had as much if not more to do with politics than with their level of social development. After all, there was no civil power recorded by the Romans when they came; the priesthood of the Temple was the only organizational force in Hebraic society, and it most certainly served their purpose to suppress inquiry that contradicted their teachings (they definitely suppressed the rise of other urban sites and cults). Indeed, the priesthood’s constant refusal to tone down their teachings in regards to intra-religious hostility led Jerusalem to be the most problematic province of the Roman empire. Given that the priesthood was more than willing to rile the populace into one suicidal revolt after another just to drive out a few inoffensive, unobtrusive Roman cults, I can’t help thinking that they would have had no trouble justifying the execution of those who pursued learning they viewed as heretical.
#19
The networks pulled The Flintstones down here after numerous complaints about educational programming. Freedom? Texas? Hehe. Yeah, right.
@ Julian,No 21 :
//You folks do realize that Dr. Myers linked another person’s article, right, and that the things you are responding to are his arguments, not PZ’s?//
And that is relevant how??
As to the rest of your lengthy post:
And that is relevant how??
#21
A dissociative Troll, that’s an early morning twist
A late night twist even…
BTW scooter,I was going to comment on what you said in reply to me in the civil liberties thread,but had to go to work…The Australian Govt is always so keen to copy each and every idiocy the Americans come up with,from having their own Homeland Security imitation to the just wars we take part in…so yeah ,what happened to Parkin was kinda our version of doing the Homeland Security tough guy thing….
couple of clips here:
http://www.channel4.com/video/the-genius-of-charles-darwin/series-1/
That review was wonderful to read. I wish the media in the US were as lucid, and as willing to offend the dimwits of the world.
Pity the documentary repeated the myth that Darwin was The Beagle’s naturalist, when in fact he was a gentleman companion for Captain Fitzroy.
Well I thought the one linked to above was excellent. I never knew that Emma Darwin was such a key player in Darwins work (proofreading and translation.)
It gets a bit tedious with all the “pilgrimages” to Down House though.
-DU-
Clinteas
so how’s the new guy ? what’s his name?
McKugh ?
Hey did you ever hear this Aussie Andrew Horabin?
I got a bunch of radio freaks to play Georgie Boy, the most bad-ass Bush song EVAR
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/GeorgieBoy-_Andrew_Horabin.mp3
scooter,
the new dude is called Rudd,and while having novel approaches to some things,is just as loyal to the US as Howard was,and turns out to be suspicious in the religious wingnut department to say the least !
Horabin Im not so familiar with,Wowbagger might know him better,looks like he’s rather multi-talented,he’s trained federal police and law enforcement people in the past according to his website.
Dawkins, 4th place in silverFox poll:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/groovy-old-men-the-rise-of-the-silver-swingers-878567.html
This is slightly off-topic, but can anyone recommend a good book/textbook on evolution for middle schoolers (8th grade)?
Thanks.
From the review:
//Darwin’s theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it’s been under attack since day one//
That is actually one of the most concise summaries on the criticism of the ToE Ive ever heard !
And on that note,Im off to bed…
I don’t think you really want to go evolving any more middle schoolers. Surely there are enough of the wretched things underfoot already. It’s all pygmies and dwarfs, don’t you know… ;-)
SEF you have to be nice to them, they have the good weed
Charlie Brooker is one cool dude – check the wiki entry.
Highlights include the TV Go Home website, a BBC4 program about ‘baby psychics’ and his (humorous) call – in the Guardian TV guide (!) – to assassinate Bush…
Towards Total Eclipse — By Stephen Hand
“Straying, as through infinite nothingness”
At the very dawn of the 20th century, on 25 August in the year 1900, the great prophet of nihilism, Friedrich Nietzsche, utterly insane in his later years, died. His madness seemed to stunningly prefigure the incredible psychosis which would overwhelm the entire genocidal century to come as the civilized West turned against its own spiritual and historical identity in unfathomable matricidal rage.
Eighteen years before his death in Turin, Italy, where he had gone to seek the relief of a better climate for his complex physical ailments, Nietzsche, after a period of prodigious literary and philosophical productivity, lost all control of his mental faculties upon seeing a horse abused in the street. In an act of supreme and poignant irony, the great Prophet of cruelty, of the Will to Power, who once said
“…pity crosses the law of development. It preserves what is ripe for destruction; it defends those who have been condemned by life (1),” flung himself on the animal’s neck, sobbing inconsolably for the poor beast, and finally collapsed on the ground, never again to enjoy sustained mental lucidity. He had to be carried back to his room.
Ever afterwards he oscillated between mania and a kind of childlike catatonia. Bizarre notes which he sent immediately after his collapse brought his dearest friend, a minister, Franz Overbeck, to Italy to return Nietzsche to Basel. When Overbeck arrived he found Nietzsche on a couch in a pathetic state. Upon seeing his old friend, the philosopher sprung up into Overbecks arms, sobbing. Needless to say this was entirely out of character. Nietzsche was taken to a Basel asylum and from there to Naumburg under his mother’s care. After her death in 1897, he went to Weimar in his sister’s care.
Many attribute his insanity and progressive paralysis to Syphilis. William Barrett, however, taking account of the prodigious amount of work which he produced just prior to the collapse, thinks that explanation may be too simple:
“One has the feeling,” he says, “in reading him that those ultimate questions with which he dealt with would have been enough almost to drive any man mad. Was it necessary that he be deranged in order to reveal the secret derangement that lies coiled like a dragon at the bottom of our epoch? (William Barrett, Irrational Man, Anchor Press Doubleday, Garden City, NY 1962 pp.204)
The Descending Night
Only eleven years earlier Nietzsche was far advanced in paving the way into that post-theistic straitjacket to which certain currents of the Western world had been dashing since the late Renaissance. In The Gay Science Nietzsche wrote of that Night descending “darker and darker…upon mankind”:
“Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lit a lantern, ran to the market-place and cried incessantly: “I am looking for God! I am looking for God!” As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there he excited considerable laughter. Why? is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea voyage? Has he emigrated? – the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances.
“Where is God gone?” he called out. “I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning?
“Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? – gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!
“How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife – who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to devise?
“Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event – and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!”
“Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. “I come too early,” he then said. “I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is traveling – it has not yet reached men’s ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star – and yet they have done it themselves!” It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his Requiem aeternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: “What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?” (2)
Long Into the Abyss
These are not yet the thoughts of a madman. But they are the thoughts which can make man (culture) mad, for they represent the vertiginous thoughts of that rare species, the totally conscious (as opposed to the superficial) atheist. They are the thoughts of one who has looked long into the abyss and considered the myriad implications of the decision not to believe and which experiences the horror, that great revulsion—or nausea, as Sartre later would call it—- the great “unhinging” which cuts man off from the Source and Ground of his being, and thus the world’s Meaning.
They are the thoughts by which Nietzsche seeks to assimilate the existential realities which follow, and which can only be expressed here in stark metaphor (“drink up the sea… wipe away the whole horizon…. loosened this earth from its sun… stray(ing), as through infinite nothingness…).
For if man is severed from the Source of His being, if the whole universe is nothing but a fortuitous inexplicable event, then one must either “create” a life for oneself by way of new delusions and “sacred games” to save oneself from psychically drowning in the immensity of emptiness, or he must “overcome,” as Nietzsche would advocate in his concept of the Ubermensch (Overman). For Nietzsche, the man who “overcomes,” who embraces and thus transcends his own horror and pity, who peers into the abyss from the heights of a transfigured courage and “will to power” utters the great “Yes” to life, “in spite of” its meaninglessness!
If Only…
If only it worked that way. If only man did not have to beg the question of being in order to come to Nietzsche’s overheated and overextended conclusions. For the only thing more incredible than a miracle (the notion of which Nietzsche mocked) is existence itself, compared to which all genuine miracles are mere footnotes.
That man “is” at all, is the great stumbling block to Nietzsche’s philosophical thought. In order to pronounce the “idea” of God “dead,” which the so-called Enlightenment had been doing for several hundred years, man has to bracket the question of his own being, put it to the side and try not to think about it, as one tries to ignore the beginning of a gnawing toothache. He must also repress every “Why?” which stirs within him in times of grateful wonder, and in times of perplexing pain. He must put down the irrepressible desire to give thanks for the beauty of the world, and for love, with its sometimes hard but profitable lessons. He must even forfeit Job’s protest against the personal Source of a reality who sometimes seems arbitrary and even bewilderingly cruel; forfeiting the stricken prophet’s intuition that without that Source even the hope of an answer is futility.
Meltdown
Nietzsche came as close as any man can to a full and constant realization, of the “magnitude of this deed too great”. Most atheists don’t even try, I suspect, preferring the honey drop on the branch to which they cling over the void.
Because Nietzsche, who was something of an ascetic, did seek this full consciousness, his tremendous intellect and virile psyche progressively unraveled. He set off a chain reaction which must end in meltdown. The act of compassion toward that horse, then, could only have illustrated what Pascal referred to when he said “the heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of”. Nietzsche’s head and heart had split in two, as fit a definition of insanity as any. For a time he tried to ward off the mind-gale, forestall the erupting plunge into chaos. But such bridges lead to psychic quicksand. Echoing the Serpent’s promise to Eve who also stood before the Knowledge of a “deed too great,” Nietzsche came to believe he was God:
“The world is transfigured, for God is on earth. Do you not see how all the heavens are rejoicing? I have just seized possession of my kingdom, am throwing the pope into prison and having Wilhelm, Bismarck and Stocker shot” (3) and “since the old god has abdicated, I shall be ruling the world…there are no coincidences anymore, either. If I think of someone, a letter comes from him politely through the door”(4).
He talked like this before the final collapse.
Post-Catholic
The Enlightenment, following the Reformation which sought to rend faith from the Church, was the seed of the death of God in its post-Christian orientation. The reduction of Christ from the revelation of God Himself in the Incarnation to a mere mortal began, arguably, when Luther nailed 95 theses to the Wittenburg Church door, separating Scriptural interpretation from the patrimony and magisterium of the Church. If only he had kept to suggested reforms things would have gone better. Instead he tore the veil in the temple of his soul and plunged headlong into schism, forcing a whole nation with him.
It is not surprising that so-called higher (as opposed to textual) criticism of the Scriptures began in Germany. The Christ of Faith would have to be divorced from the historical Jesus if man was ever going to truly undo and then remake a world altogether “liberated” from the Church. The essentially rationalistic Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura (private interpretation of the Scriptures and then Enlightenment skepticism and criticism) was destined from the beginning by an inner logic to turn on the teachings of the Scriptures and Protestantism itself, even if it was an outcome Luther could not foresee, though arguably he feared it in the dark of night and “threw inkwells” at his fears (visions of Satan). Together with assimilating certain radical and pagan elements of the Renaissance, the trajectory would be from post-Catholic, to post-Christian, to post-theistic.
Pope Leo’s Vision
With Nietzsche the transition from post-Christian to post-theistic was more or less complete. Into this world and world view was set the drama of our time. That the 20th century opted to follow Nietzsche into the straightjacket, there is no doubt.
Five years before Nietzsche’s mental meltdown, however, on October 13, 1883, Pope Leo XIII also collapsed; but it was not a mental breakdown born of a contemplation of the Nihil. Rather, at the Agnus Dei whilst celebrating Mass in the Sistine Chapel, the Pope saw something deeper than Nothingness, something which, like creation itself, is rooted in reality, in being, only of the preternatural order. He reported that he saw Satan asking for— and obtaining— the twentieth century in order to do his worst against the Church of Christ. The cardinals who carried him out thought he was ill, but the Pope described instead a frightful vision be had seen. After this vision Leo composed the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel and ordered its public recital after each Low Mass throughout the world.
While Nietzsche never recovered the use of his mental faculties after his heart, arguably, swelled up in existential rebellion against the philosophy of his head in an act of pity, Leo peered not into the imaginative abyss of nothingness, but behind the metaphysical curtain of being to the Tri-Personal Source of the universe, Who alone, as Creator, can account for the whence and why of being, of evil and redemption.
Nothingness is an erroneous, imaginative extrapolation rooted in the fact that once we did not exist. Evolutionist’s are so imaginative that they consider this nothingness to be some sort of potency which, given sufficient time, plus chance, will birth “life” out of its own void.
Deeper than Nothingness, however, is the Real, Being Itself, the Triune God, Source and Ground of all being. But much of the modern world would rather “feel” than think, rather exert its “will to power” than acknowledge God as Maker who bestows His commandments on us for our own good.
Unbelief is, in the end, a decision.
The year before Nietzsche went mad, a little boy was born, Francesco Forgione, later to become known as the stigmatist and holy man, St. Padre Pio. While Nietzsche’s mind was unraveling first in an asylum, then in the final days with his mother and sister, a young girl, too, Therese Martin, was asking the same Leo XIII for permission to become a Carmelite. She, St. Therese of Lisieux, was destined to speak to more souls than the prophets of doom.
Nietzsche stoically said yes to “life” but No to God —and missed both. For, ever has it been that he who seeks to save his life will lose it, Jesus said. Only by choosing Him Who is the “Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14:6) can we find Life in the surrendering of it to Him Who triumphs over the Nothing.
Nietzsche’s demise teaches that when there is no center the psyche does hold. It is the same with civilizations. Christians look beyond the vicissitudes of time to Him who is greater than unbelief, apostasy, and nothingness, to Him Who is the Real, the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega. His Word is “a light for our eyes and a lamp for our feet”. He who follows him “shall not walk in darkness”.
_______________
End notes
1 Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, The Antichrist, #7, p. 573
Viking Press, edited by Walter Kaufmann, 1976 2 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, #125
3 Nietzsche, A Critical life, Ronald Hayman, Oxford University Press, NY, 1980 p. 335
4 ibid
God, I love Charlie Brooker. He manages to be incisively RIGHT and laugh-out-loud hilarious at the same time. I lost my coffee when I read the punchline to this marvellous bit:
“Scientists are mistrusted by huge swathes of the general public, who see them as emotionless lab-coated meddlers-with-nature rather than, say, fellow human beings who’ve actually bothered getting off their arses to work this shit out. The wariness stems from three popular misconceptions:
1) Scientists want to fill our world with chemicals and killer robots;
2) They don’t appreciate the raw beauty of nature, maaan; and
3) They’re always spoiling our fun, pointing out homeopathy doesn’t work or ghosts don’t exist EVEN THOUGH they KNOW we REALLY, REALLY want to believe in them.
That last delusion is the most insidious. Science is like a good friend: sometimes it tells you things you don’t want to hear. It tells you the truth. And we all know how much that can hurt, don’t we, fatso?”
Two more Charlie Brooker pieces bigging up Richard Dawkins:
Supposing … we could inoculate against religion (column, 13 January 2006)
The Enemies Of Reason (review, 11 August 2007)
Enjoy!
Sven,
Care to comment on the Darwin video?
scooter (#20):
Much of the strata business was worked out by William Smith (1769–1839), who learned about rocks and the fossils in them while working for a canal company which was busily detonating its way across the English countryside. Charles Lyell (1797–1875) came later, and did a great deal of geological work which, among other things, established that the Earth had been around a bloody long time.
Rational Homeschooler (#33):
P-Zed has a book list which might be a good beginning.
It’s funny/sad how pervasive the, ahem, debate has become. Last night we were watching some thing on dinosaurs*, and every time some paleontologist said that such-and-such lived “80-100 million years ago” i found myself expecting a message to pop up saying “or approximately 6000 years ago; opinions differ.”
*well, ancient life in general, as I don’t think HUGE dragonflies are dinosaurs in anyone’s book, ubercool though they be.
I have the same reaction every time something in the subject matter is on the boob tube. Unfortunately it’s a sign of how successful the ID / Creationists PR campaigns are.
That or I spend way too much time reading blogs on the subject.
I like this one.
Creationism is the belief that 2 pages of 4,000 year old bronze age mythology written by middle eastern sheepherders adequately describes a 13.7 billion year old universe.
Sven. That is a long winded bit of stuff that may have come from someone that was starting to go mad already, which you deny, followed by a lot of babble about how it somehow proves the existence of **your** god, because you think people that unhinge from *your* god will lose all capacity to reason. Problem is, even if the central premise where true, and there is no evidence to suggest that this is so, it does not prove that the Christian god is the right one, or anything else you propose, as apposed to innumerable other gods/forces/concepts.
As apologistics go, its certainly the most long winded and understandable one I have seen, but since you can’t prove a) that Nietzsche wasn’t already going mad when he wrote the bits you use to defend your other premises, b) that his decline was any different that that of **any** number of brilliant people whose minds simply cracked (A friend of our family worked in a, I don’t remember what field, and just one day collapsed into idiocy. He was simply far too smart of his brain to remain *stable*, so something just broke one day, and he was hardly either an atheist or a philosopher about gods.), nor, again, c) do you have any facts, evidence, etc. that prove the Christian god to be a correct answer, even if the other two problems could be resolved. In point of fact, there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that more people have gone completely stark raving mad obsessing over what you god wants and means, and intends, than all the Nietzsche’s in history. If one wanted to be a serious ass, one could suggest that perhaps its not atheism, but the nihilism shared by both Nietzsche **and** those obsessed with religion, that causes this? After all, believing that nothing you do matters unless its to serve god, that life has no meaning without one, and that nothing has “purpose”, especially not any you might give it yourself, without a fairytale creature watching over proceedings, is ***just as nihilistic*** as anything Neitzsche ever came up with. That’s why most of us are sane enough to “create” human meaning for things, rather than doing what you imagine we all do, and sit around whining about how useless and meaningless everything is without some imaginary friend (or more accurately, a long line of priests and con artists, same thing really, to tell us what that meaning is, and what purpose we can serve in the task of keeping them clothed, employed and fed.)
As an American, I approve this sentiment.
Pay attention, scooter and clinteas. The guy you are calling a troll (his comment #21) is referring to this comment:
So I think PZ’s reference to gravity, “If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we’d still be debating Newton with idiots too.”, isn’t aappropriate.
by richard harris (I thought he was dead) in #6.
Had you bothered to read all the posts, you might have spotted that, rather than calling a harmless dude a troll!
Oh and PZ – it’s Charlie Brooker, not Booker.
Have you got anything he can cut and paste?
Nothing he’d want to read. :)
Papilio, No, I’m very much alive, thank you. I assume that you’re referring to my challenge, (in the recent thread on venomous snakes), to that fecker Jehovah to smite me, & to ‘Kent’ to ask his god to smite me, which went unanswered, despite my having been out on my bike every day, giving the fecker ample opportunity to finish me off. (I do assume that you weren’t confusing me with a goddam actor!)
But I shouldn’t’ve dissed the weather god in post # 6 – it rained on me today & I got soaked.
#48
I have been reading all the articles since #1. #21 made no reference to #6 whatsoever, and you are more clever than I for linking the two.
If you cold read #21 it sounds nuts to me because the opening statement makes no sense.
You red them all after posting, I read them an hour apart as they appeared.
I’m innocent I tell ya.
but apologies to #21, and we at least agree on one thing, Mr #48, that Clinteas character is reprehensible.
This non-threaded posting is archaic, BTW, we’ve gone downhill since USENET, yikes!!!!
Charlie Brooker is a secular, foul-mouthed moralist. A puritan for our times. I am one of his army…
Who could possibly disagree with this?
In the 18th century, a revolution in thought, known as the Enlightenment, dragged us away from the superstition and brutality of the Middle Ages toward a modern age of science, reason and democracy. It changed everything. If it wasn’t for the Enlightenment, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. You’d be standing in a smock throwing turnips at a witch. Yes, the Enlightenment was one of the most significant developments since the wheel. Which is why we’re trying to bollocks it all up.
Welcome to a dangerous new era – the Unlightenment – in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They’re everywhere – reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about “chakras” and “healing energies”, praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favour of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We’ve got to respect their beliefs, apparently.
Well I don’t. “Spirituality” is what cretins have in place of imagination. If you’ve ever described yourself as “quite spiritual”, do civilisation a favour and punch yourself in the throat until you’re incapable of speaking aloud ever again. Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?
@ scooter & Blake Stacey,
Many of the principles of stratigraphy were worked out by Nicolas Steno (1638-1686) and James Hutton (1726-1797). William “Strata” Smith’s main contribution was to use of fossils in correlation and the development of geologic mapping.
All three have had some pretty readable recent biographies:
Steno: Cutler, Alan. 2003. The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth. Dutton Books.
Hutton: Repcheck, Jack. 2003. The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of Earth’s Antiquity. Perseus Publishing.
Smith: Winchester, Simon. 2002. The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology. Perennial Press.
Lyell’s contribution was a synthesis of Hutton & Smith’s works, combined with considerable new data and observations. His Principles of Geology was the foremost textbook on geology in the 19th Century, and strongly advocated the use of the “uniformitarian” principle: rocks are generated from the same processes we can observe today, so we can use observations of modern environments and conditions to infer about the past. And, as Blake Stacey added, Lyell emphasized the VASTNESS of geologic time.
Darwin (who early in his career considered himself a geologist rather than a biologist) had a copy of Principles with him on the voyage of the Beagle, and began to apply Lyell’s principles (modern observable processes extrapolated over vast time results in profound changes) to understanding the biological world.
Lyell himself was never convinced of all of Darwin’s arguments, but was one of his greatest supporters in public circles.
I’ve always had a hard time with the name SVEN, it feel’s like my lips are being electrocuted
scooter – to be fair the comment was a little abstruse. But what about #38? Who gets off pasting a god-damned essay in the middle of a comment thread, that’s what I’d like to know.
Especially one with a split infinitive in the first paragraph.
Yurk!
It’s not fair. I would pay big money to see The Genius Of Darwin, but I can’t see it at all because I live in idiot America.
Mr. Number 55
You expect me to believe a three-named junior packing heat???
You are scaring the shit out of me, it’s a good thing the children are not in the room
#38, pulleeze, Papillo
you’re crying over spilled existential beaten milk horses
This documentary, called ‘Genius: Charles Darwin’ is indeed NOT the one referred to in Charlie Brooker’s preview. Brooker is previewing a completely new documentary, ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin’, whose first episode Channel Four are showing tomorrow, Monday 4th August.
The film posted by PZ above is, I would guess from my own ageing, about ten years old. I have no memory at all of taking part in it, or of seeing it before. I am amused that, among the four ‘expert’ advisors, they felt the need to include two clergymen. Presumably their motive in doing this was a bending over backwards to reassure their audience that there is no conflict between religion and evolution — in other words, what is nowadays called ‘framing’. I was even more amused to hear one of these ‘experts’, Canon Vincent Strudwick, commit the notorious solecism of calling Darwin’s great work ‘Origin of the Species’. Trivial in itself, that is a pretty cast-iron pointer to somebody’s NOT being an expert!
The new documentary, ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin’ is in three parts, each an hour long, to be shown on Channel Four at 8 pm on Mondays 4th, 11th and 18th August. It was made by the same team, headed by Russell Barnes, who made ‘Root of All Evil?’, and ‘Enemies of Reason’.
Strenuous efforts are being made to place the documentary with foreign television stations, including American ones. Whatever happens, RichardDawkins.net will be releasing DVDs of the three episodes. Also, as with Root of All Evil, Josh will be releasing uncut versions of the interviews I did for the new documentary, including the one with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the remarkable interview with Father George Coyne, the Vatican astronomer. Father Coyne was eventually cut from the documentary, not because his interview was uninteresting (far from it) but because the Director thought he covered similar ground to the Archbishop. What Father Coyne admitted, but the Archbishop did not, however, was that he knew of absolutely no good reason to believe in God. I of course immediately asked him why he retained his belief, and his reply was prompt: “I was brought up Catholic!” It is a matter of real regret to me that this interview was cut from the Channel Four film.
Richard
#58
I’ve watched channel 4 documentaries online after the event. I live in Blighty, so it may be easier for me, if they know where I’m connecting from. But I don’t think it’ll be a problem for you.
Well I enjoyed watching that documentary while eating my leftover pizza. It was a nice lunch. Very enjoyable, and tasty. I also enjoyed Mr. Brooker’s review. Awesomely put – I like his style.
DAWKINs #1 it POLL, let’s rock it, I’m afraid to delete my cookies because:
I’m too stoopid to remember my passwords and I don’t want to waste a good Sunday morning Buzz
Too hot to handle, perhaps, as confessions go. :-D
For anyone who may be wondering:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solecism
Well, if you’re going to attack the thing anyway, doesn’t David Attenborough deserve a bit of pharynguloid love too …
oops forgot poll link
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/groovy-old-men-the-rise-of-the-silver-swingers-878567.html
I wouldn’t describe Charlie Brooker as a puritan, but otherwise I’d have re-quoted the same piece as Lee Brimmicombe-Wood – well said!
On Richard Dawkins’ website there’s 2 short clips of The Genius of Charles Darwin.
After talking to some brainwashed students, he concludes I can see that a few hours in the science lab is no match for a lifetime of religious indoctrination.
Richard Dawkins (#61):
By being the first people to drag “framing” jargon into the science-communication biz, Nisbet and company have effectively poisoned the term. Somewhere, our friend MAJeff is crying. On the other hand, every time I read something by or about Lakoff, I feel like he’s dressing up vaguely Orwellian marketroid babble with neuro-phrenology, so maybe it’s a small loss after all.
(Shrugs)
I think lots of us will regret that right along with you!
Hey, let’s be honest: who here doesn’t to fill our world with chemicals and killer robots?
#5
BBC gets the best damned documentaries!
Actually it’s on Channel 4, a commercial public service station set up by Act of Parliament in 1982.
British television is very good.
From #62 I learned a new foreign word today.
Blighty: English slang term for Britain.
It’s First World War slang. ‘A blighty’ was also used to mean a wound, just severe enough to send a man back to Blighty for the duration of the war, but not severe enough to kill him or badly disable him. To receive a nice ‘blighty’ was the ambition of many men in the trenches.
Richard
Any plans to have the documentary shown in Canada, Richard? I would love to see it.
I also found it humorous that they included 2 clergymen in the documentary posted here. Their intentions there seemed pretty obvious, and comical. It was still enjoyable though, especially since the words coming out of their mouths were quite refreshingly different from what I’d hear from most priests here at home.
I thought it was interesting how Canon Strudwick several times said how science was concerned with the “real world”, leaving it to the viewer to then deduce what theologians are concerned with.
Damn! but Dawkipoo has grown sexy with age!
Chaz was more of a hunk as a young man, though. Interesting.
Did he really play the bassoon (‘fagot’ to our Germanic friends) or was it just there for show?
I like that new Youtube feature that automatically loads the new part.
Pharayngula meets Brooker- YES.
Charlie Brooker is Britain’s funniest skeptic and general opponent of woo, amongst other things and I’ve been a fan of his work for years. Check out his thoughts on the recent and utterly revolting British TV series The Baby Mind Reader. You might also want to check out his BBC4 ‘Screen Wipe’ series which you can find on youtube – starting with ‘Aspirational TV’, a bile-filled and beautiful dissection of current TV trends.
Charlie Brooker is a national treasure. He is even funnier on TV, on his programme, Screenwipe, where he is famous for his brilliant stream-of-consciousness rants.
The programme itself is produced by a subsidiary of Endomol, which also owns the huge Big Brother “reality” franchise, so he often gets (and seizes with great relish) the chance to bite the hand that feeds him.
His programs are probably on Youtube and well worth looking up.
For complete info on the series, and some teasers, check the official site of the program here: http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/F/famelab/
It should be cool; Dawkins presents it!
@75 “To receive a nice ‘blighty’ was the ambition of many men in the trenches.”
Ah yes, I recall that is where “shooting yourself in the foot” comes from. But then in a positive context.
Anyone who doesn’t know what Charlie Brooker is on about when he refers to “professional God-hatin’ Professor Yaffle impersonator Richard Dawkins” (virtually all non-Brits, one presumes) might wish to consult this YouTube clip – Professor Yaffle makes his first appearance at 2:31.
@ Svetogorsk (#83)
I very much doubt that there is anybody actually reading a Pharyngula comment thread who does not already know who Richard Dawkins is ;)
Actually, belay comment #84 (I’m tired)…
You’re right to try and illuminate the esoteric reference to my old friend Yaffle :P
If Dawkins is supposed to be Yaffle (and I disagree with the supposed resemblance anyway), who is meant to be Bagpuss (and the rest of them for that matter)?
Houston has what I believe was the first PBS station in the country. I have seen quite a few evolution related programs localy. Yes, in Texas.
This documentary sucks! Factually sloppy and it jumps around.
Unfortunately, I’ll miss the Darwin exhibit’s visit to Toronto. The closing date, August 4, sneaked up on me – it’s a holiday Monday here and I’m on the other side of Lake Ontario, doing a 3-day bike weekend in the Niagara Peninsula. Then it’s back to work and the exhibit will be closed. Sigh. I would have liked to see the replica study, etc. I’m sure I would have enjoyed it. But I’ve heard that it mainly tried to refute creationism, and I’ve heard most of those arguments.
ref #75
Although used a lot in WW1, “Blighty” (like much British army slang) has its origins in India. I believe it meant something like foriegn and the British soldiers themselves were the foriegners, hence the UK became Blighty.
During WW1 and into WW2 a wound requiring repatriation was known as a “Blighty one”. Blighty becoming more of an adjective in that case.
I am researching the fates of 40 men who all came from a small country town in South Australia. The First World War affected Australia more deeply than many recognise.
http://toohardtodo.blogspot.com/search/label/Quorn
This is the third time in as many days that I get a series of “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” messages on videos that show religious stupidity, shortly after being posted on a site I regularly read. (It’s probably the tenth-or-so time from a Pharyngula-linked video.)
I’d assume it was an error, or BS from my ISP, but it is only happening to the ones that religious idiots would be mad at, and when it does all of the videos from the “related” and “responses” categories go dead too.
Just a word from a Brit about Charlie Brooker:
Yes, he does make some good, secular, insightful comments, but like all journalists you should exercise some caution when reading his articles…after all he does write for the Guardian, truly a armpit of investigative and editorial journalism. But then I don’t think I need to tell most Pharyngulians to be skeptical ;-)
I will be avidly watching Richard’s Darwin series on Channel 4, where next weekend we have a program called ‘Make Me A Christian’ – http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/makechristian.html
– Where a vicar conducts an experiment to take a group of people and make them live ‘the christian way’ for two weeks.
This will either be frackin hilarious or a sad reflection on people who have no mind of their own…intriguing, no?
But then I suppose every good science programme has to be balanced with woo. Sigh.
#86
Obviously if Dawkins is Yaffle, PZ is Bagpuss and we are the mice. :)
Incidentally that video contains several interpolations that obviously weren’t in the original BBC broadcast program.
We don’t fulfil the criterion of going to sleep when PZ goes to sleep though. Or perhaps from PZ’s point of view the universe really does cease when he goes to sleep and any posts which are logged as appearing in the meantime are carefully planted fabrications. ;-)
Yes, he does make some good, secular, insightful comments, but like all journalists you should exercise some caution when reading his articles…after all he does write for the Guardian, truly a armpit of investigative and editorial journalism.
…as demonstrated by the appalling factual error in his closing paragraph. There was no singing in Finding Nemo.
Ahem. He’s a TV reviewer by trade and his CV comprises a stint as a video game reviewer, writing a satirical pastiche of the Radio Times, and creating a sitcom with Chris Morris. Charlie is many things that I would deem good, but even he would consider it to be stretching things to claim he was an investigative journalist.
Are you so sure there was no incidental singing in it (as opposed to a big musical number)?
@97:
Ahem. I didn’t say HE was an investigative journo. I said the Guardian is an armpit for same.
I was just trying to give a bit of background to the various papers over here.;)
I, of course, read nothing more stimulating than the back of cereal packets. At least there you can get some modicum of truth….?
TV here in the UK does have its good bits and some of them are on Channel4, but note that C4 as well as hosting Dawkins docus is also the home of Big Brother, currently also polluting our screens. I should also note that imho C4 news is far and away the best news bulletin on the box. During the properly hot phase of the Iraq fiasco it was the only place to be while ITV was all jingoistic and the Beeb was too scared of being seen to be partial to be able to function. For one thing they are not afraid of being intelligently funny, for another they rarely insist I emote over something instead of thinking about it.
Then why bring up the issue of investigative journalism? You seem intent on tarring Mister Brooker with, well, some kind of brush?
And I read comic books. Currently on the 1940 run of Terry and the Pirates. Very stimulating.
The Grauniad is streets ahead of The Daily Nazi Mail and the Torygraph, which was part of the Tubby Black newspaper empire until it collapsed in a heap of debt and dodginess.
Meanwhile, back to Charlie Brooker:
I see somebody’s read and understood the Parable of the Cave. Nice one, Charlie! :-)
Are you so sure there was no incidental singing in it (as opposed to a big musical number)?
I think the manta ray teacher sings a song near the start, but I’m virtually certain that the film does not feature “a purdy singing clown fish”.
(I write with some authority on this, since it’s currently my three-year-old daughter’s favourite film, and she insists on watching it a minimum of once a day – so I must have heard the soundtrack countless times over the past few weeks!)
Apologies if this is obvious/already lurking in the comments somewhere (but a quick search suggests not): I’ve seen suggestions to use torrents to get this documentary, and thought I might suggest checking alluc.org after broadcast. There are often links to streams of TV documentaries, so you don’t have to download it beforehand.
Not a good start to the prog so far. Rather anti-science advert to start (I’d noted previously that hardly anyone wants to advertise in slots when a Richard Dawkins prog is on, so it’s a very limited/odd selection and the time is padded out with C4’s own stuff) and then “Darwinism”.
Brooker is effing brilliant, a true alchemist of comedy, transforming pure bile to gold. Bitter gold, but gold nonetheless. It’s a shame the TVGoHome archives on the web appear to be permanently hosed, there was a lot of great stuff on there, once. Not sure if the book of it still in print but I’d pay twice the cover price for a copy.
Ep.1 Pt.2 from revolting teens on a famous fossil-hunting beach to dead things in collections and then gory lions etc.
Ep.1 Pt.3 nature red in tooth and claw (and then somewhat busy having sex) but somehow the prof bimbles through it all in the darkness, quite uneaten. A piece about prostitutes being naturally selected for HIV resistance and one very small girl in the background edges slowly away from the scary dude apparently talking nonsense to himself! :-D
I vaguely recall a clownfish singing incidentally during the last hour of the film.
Wow, you posted my youtube video and the views just skyrocketed thanks!! ….going to upload more.