This is another wonderful example of the sloppy scholarship of the creationists. The always pretentious Berlinski made the interesting claim that John Von Neumann, the deservedly famous mathematician, thought that Darwinian theory was ridiculous. Douglas Theobald crushes that claim. Von Neumann was clearly on the side of evolutionary theory … but of course, whether he was or wasn’t is actually irrelevant, since we don’t judge ideas in modern biology by the authority of mathematicians from 50 years ago.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Yeah…but… he was REALLY good at math!
The ID community has all the frauds, poseurs, and lightweights they need. To add some geniuses to their ranks, they go grave robbing. Earlier this year Dembski tried to claim the late Stan Ulam (Edward Teller’s nemesis) as an evolution skeptic. He failed miserably. (Dembski must be used to that by now.) Now Berlinski thinks he can co-opt John Von Neumann, Ulam’s friend and colleague. He fails, too, of course.
What sad clowns.
Egads! I just got back from the local bookstore only to find a ton of new books discussing the compatibility of evolution and religion. WTF??
I don’t know why we are talking about religion. If we are honest–and scientists have to be–we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can’t for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards–in heaven if not on earth–all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.
From what I know about math and computer science, I would think Von Neumann would love the concept of the evolutionary process. I hope someone here can add to that. Turing machines, DNA, ribosomes anyone?
That was a pretty brutal takedown, but then again, they usually are.
When one side of the debate uses the (fraudulent) beliefs of a dead mathematician to make a point about biology, you know the well is pretty dry.
Hard times for IDers?
Actually, if Von Neumann were still with us, he’d slap Berlinski on the ass and tell him to make some coffee while he built a nuke.
Michael Dowd is one of the authors. He claims that he did not write his book “Thank God for Evolution: How the marriage of science and religion will transform your life and our world.” On the last page Dowd says God wrote the book and that it would be arrogant to say otherwise. Well, why in the fuck is the name Michael Dowd on the cover of the book?
I suppose God is being really generous and insisting that his royalties go to Dowd as well.
Well, they seem to get away with the claim of god authorship for the bible. Can’t blame him for trying.
Von Neumann is a hero of mine, given my field. His understanding of the mind/body connection was instrumental in today’s hardware architecture.
To see him used in any way by cretenists [sic] pisses me off to no end.
“Anyone using mathematically means to derive random numbers is living in a state of sin.”…I’m sure I’m butchering the quote.
Quote-mining keeps popping up everywhere I look at creationist propaganda. I can’t think of a more vile and deceitful way to push your own views than to twist the words of others, often those with some authority or with the opposite views, especially those that are dead and can no longer defend themselves.
Even worse is those that make up their own quotes…
You are.
It’s, “Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.”
He was joking about how computers behave predictably, and it’s hard to force them to be unpredictable. He was also a non-practicing Catholic if that helps.
I hope this doesn’t become a regular occurrance: me taking you to task for something or other. Maybe I just need some sleep.
I read in Abraham Pais’ book “The Genius of Science” that Von Neumann, a lifelong agnostic, had a Catholic priest come to his bedside when he was dying of brain cancer.
@Ryan F Stello, #14
I wouldn’t mind that at all; I would, in fact, appreciate it (re: my response(s) to your last comment on the Conscience thread). Seems I’ve a bit of unlearning to do.
*********************
To the OP, Re: statement 1 of the linked document.
I’m reminded of the frequent Franklin misquote:
“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”
becomes
“They who would give up liberty for security, deserve neither liberty or security.”
The former is specific, and requires both that the liberty in question be an essential one, and the security provide be temporary, whereas the later version is broad enough to support opposition to any restriction placed on society at large.
@hexag1, #15
I’ve heard too many versions of that meme to credit it. Not saying you are incorrect, just saying it’s such a popular Catholic meme that significant doubt can be cast on its veracity.
TSC @ #3 wrote:
They’re as compatible as heliocentrism and religion, but some fundamentalists still need convincing. When creationism goes the way of geocentrism, I’m sure religion will continue, just with less attacks on science from certain corners.
Von Neumann? I remember a silly article in Answers Research Journal by one Werner Gitt claiming that Shannon’s information theory can be used to “prove” Intelligent Design. Well, the “logic” sucks, but it’s arguably still better than dumb old quote-mining…
Off-topic: Everyone please sign the “Sue Us” Petition to urge global warming denialists to sue James Hansen and Al Gore! Thank you!
A little while ago I made the mistake of watching a Berlinski YouTube video. Then I came here to help my brain recover from Berlinski’s stupidity, and I find this thread about him quote mining a mathematician. In the YouTube video Berlinski was trying to disprove evolution using mathematics.
Berlinski seemed to be saying “Evolution is impossible”, but he didn’t suggest any alternatives. I guess he assumed his brain-dead audience knows the alternative is MAGIC.
It would be a great tribute if the proposed four-ring successor to the LHC is named the “Tetra-Gamow-Tron”.
#18:
I think you may be being too optimistic. They’ll find something else in science to attack. Perhaps some theory that hasn’t even been developed yet.
In my field, a Von Neumann machine is a self-replicating machine, really cool because it is capable of being a starting point for evolution.
(Some CS folks apparently use the term to describe a particular computer architecture… but I believe the self-replicating machine idea came first.)
Von Neumann very much ‘got’ evolution.
PS: Lots of people think of Von Neumann as a nuclear war-monger. He certainly acted like one at times… but I think at least a lot of that was an ‘act’. After all, Von Neumann did the game theory that led to MAD, and one of the key constraints for stability is that the ‘other side’ thinks you really do want to blow them out of existence. No hard evidence, just a though, but one that does actually fit.
Is there any way to file charges against quote miners, for purjory or defamation of character?
wrote: I read in Abraham Pais’ book “The Genius of Science” that Von Neumann, a lifelong agnostic, had a Catholic priest come to his bedside when he was dying of brain cancer.
If I were dying and a Catholic priest came to my bedside, I’d probably yell, “Who the hell let the priest in? Didn’t I tell you absolutely, positively NO PRIESTS?! Why
@travc, #23
Personally, I objected to (and still object to) MAD on moral grounds (re: civilian populous held hostage in the intrest of stability), yet I worked within that framework for a time.
I recall a time when a peer commented that he’d “never push that button”, to which I replied “then why are you here? It only works if you’re willing to push the button”.
Although, I admit (years later) that “It only works if they *think* you’re willing to do it.” is more accurate.
I also recall a panel with Jerry Pournelle at BayCon a few years back, in which he related sending a satellite photo of a politburo member’s child with crosshairs marked over her to the child’s father, just to make the point. The audience was horrified.
“Those were the times we lived in.”, he said, or something to that effect.
OK. Let’s try this again. (Sorry about #25, I hit “post” before I was ready to “post”).
At #15, hexag1 wrote:
I read in Abraham Pais’ book “The Genius of Science” that Von Neumann, a lifelong agnostic, had a Catholic priest come to his bedside when he was dying of brain cancer.
If I were dying and a Catholic priest came to my bedside, I’d probably yell, “WTF! Who the hell let the annoying priest in? Didn’t I tell you absolutely, positively NO PRIESTS?! Why are you doing this to me, making my last moments on earth so excruciatingly disagreeable?!!! Don’t you think I have anything better to do with my time right now than have this priest visit?!!!
The last time I was in the hospital, I made it very clear that although I had been admitted to a Catholic hospital, no priest or nun was to enter my room, let alone pray with or for me, or attempt to give me any type of sacrament.
Bad enough I had to have a crucifix hanging over my bed. Nothing like having a depiction of a tortured-to-death guy hanging over you while you are in the hospital.
Paper Hand, #22, wrote:
Indeed. There are numerous posts here on Pharyngula, just over the last few months, where theist-types are claiming quantum mechanics and/or string theory is evidence for god.
There’s never going to be a gap too small for them to try and jam their ever-shrinking and increasingly nebulous ooga-booga-sky-daddy into.
@Wowbagger, #28, and the other posts in this sub-thread.
Isn’t it a necessity? Just as authoritarian/imperialistic states *need* an external enemy, don’t authoritarian social views (e.g. fundamentalist religion) *need* an external social view to stay coherent?
I’d love an anthropologist’s or historian’s comment on this…though perhaps I’m screwing up the relevant fields.
My money’s on some possible theory of consciousness. Especially if it allows for the creation of human-equivalent robots or something.
PZ, if I were you I’d delete #31 – it’s just some idiot trying to win a search engine optimisation competition by linking to his site from a popular blog.
I don’t know about this math guy but its absurd for posters here or anyone to dent that the most important men who advanced what is called science werefrom and in consent to the very protestant peoples they come from. No beating it.
Even if not biblical creationists they believed in god as creater of all. Trying to say the men of Science high or low, known or obscure, in the British world and other protestant countries and the lesser achieving Catholic ones were atheists is just dumb wishful thinking. In fact ICR or AIG, (I forget) has had a series on the men of science and how they saw God involved. All the top ones are on Gods side. Only in the 29th century did some science folk start to question God. Science came from the very protestant Christian minority of Northern Europe. In other words those closest to the true faith were blessed by God more and more intelligent.
For people claiming to know science you don’t measure well things.
You know what, you’re right Robert. I bet a lot of these people also were human beings and probably male!
I wonder why that could have happened. Let us ponder the social status at the time and mayhap we can find an answer.
“were blessed by God”
“In fact ICR or AIG”
Robert Byers, you’re a shit-for-brains creationist, aren’t you?
Damn Brainiac 5 and those other New New Atheists!
@ Anton Mates, #36:
Don’t forget about about the atheists from New Secularis, and their ongoing struggle against the ID dogs of Berlinskipse.
Seriously, Robert, # 33, are you a Poe? If yes, that is a fantastically amusing piece of gibberish.
If not, I’m sure every one here will try hard not to dent the important men of science, especially as many of them are quite dead and I imagine that would upset their families. “Lesser achieving Catholic” countries? What does that even mean?
Robert “Self-Godwinning” Byers wrote:
Nope. There’s nothing at all racist there. Nothing racist at all.
There’s an old story about Von Neumann that a coworker asked him the math question:
If a train leaves point A at 30 m/h and another train leaves point B at 20 m/h. The moment both trains start moving a bird starts flying at 60 m/h from train A to train B and back and forth until the two trains collide. If the trains start 100 miles apart how far did the bird fly?
He thinks for a little bit and comes back with the answer. His coworker said that he thought that since Von Neumann was a mathematician and not an engineer that he would have done it the hard way, because engineers always look for the easy way out.
Von Neumann replied, “There was an easy way?”
I think we will see more and more of this “prove me wrong” type of arguments from the creationist side since it put the burden of disproving the argument on us and put us momentarely on the defensive side. This looks pretty good in a debate: in this attention economy, by the moment we formally refute the argument, they would have gotten the desired effect on the audience which will have move to something else. This is an easy tactic with apparent short-term winning flavour. A quite dishonest one but it is not the first, and it won’t be the last.
Berlinski! Can’t Berlinski just leave the real mathematicians alone? Not content with writing astonishingly florid (*) and bad prose about Newton, we now have to put up with him misrepresenting von Neumann.
(*) He should enter the Bulwer-Lytton competition since he would win it by a wide margin. Even if Bulwer-Lytton came back from the dead.
Best explanation: Robert Byers has been huffing paint again.
You might as well say that today’s scientists should wear hats because, back in the day, all the scientists wore hats; therefore, it must have been the wearing of hats that made them creative/insightful.
Von Neumann: Today’s organisms are phylogenetically descended from others which were vastly simpler than they are, so much simpler, in fact, that it’s inconceivable how any kind of description of the later, complex organisms could have existed in the earlier one.
I rather like that. It really blasts this ID notion of “frontloading”, where simple organisms might somehow be pre-programmed to unfold into something more elaborate.
Gawd, I wish I hadn’t read this post. I had, by considerable effort (and possibly incipient dementia), managed to forget who David Berlinski was, and was prompted to look up you-tube to find one of his clips. I made the mistake of picking the one about how “mathematically improbable” it is for a cow to turn into a whale. He makes so many factual errors, it is laughable. First of all, the whale’s closest cousin is the hippopotamus, not a cow. He then goes onto say that the skin would have to evolve into being impervious to water. Well, wasn’t that step accomplished when “amphibians” evolved into other tetrapods over 300 million years ago? The fact that whales (and dolphins) have the full complement of approximately 1000 smell receptors, but all of which are defective (because anatomically whales can’t use olfaction, and loss carries no disadvantage) proves evolution.
OT
Red State Update tries to hit on Westboro Baptist Church babe, at God Hates Fags protest of soldier’s funeral.
Richard Dawkins from last weeks BBC special, never to be aired on godsucking American Television . Darwin vs Creotards.
Creationist wack-a-loon mix, and righteous Babe, Ani
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/inner193.mp3
or download from
http://acksisofevil.org/innerside.html
KPFT Houston
Pacifica Radio
I translate Robert Byers gibberish to mean protestants are the closest to the true faith, and for that reason God gave them the most intelligence. Isn’t it interesting that people of every religion think they are God’s chosen people.
His “Only in the 29th century did some science folk start to question God” is a thousand years off, but I think he was talking about Darwin.
Since he invoked ICR and AiG, he probably believes the entire universe was magically created 6,000 years ago. In other words Robert Byers is a typical American racist god-soaked idiot.
[Berlinski] “It was a dark and stormy theory; the facts fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of creationist farts which swept up the youtube (for it is in the Public Sphere that our scene lies), rattling along the intertubes, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lampoons that struggled against the science.”
What’s really funny about these guys is that they think that “according to AiG” carries more weight than “according to Daffy Duck”.
Einstein. Born Jew, from a Catholic area, ended up a very vague Spinoza-style pantheist who told people to stop believing in a personal god.
Well, duh. Prior to 1859 no better alternative was available.
Show me the numbers.
This can mean very, very different things — compare Newton and Einstein!
Even if you mean the 19th, you’re wrong if you count philosophers and not just scientists.
France, Italy (da Vinci, Bruno, Galilei), Poland (Copernicus)…? Nothing? What about the Arabic world 1000 years earlier? India? China? What about Mayan astronomy, surpassed no sooner than the 19th century?
Using circular logic to prove that Protestants are closest to the true faith is stupid. Worse yet: you have not even established that there is such a thing as a true faith in the first place!
And if you believe intelligence is the only factor that decides how successful someone can be as a scientist, you should really learn to think more — you seem to be doing it only at special occasions.
Humans are very, very good at seeing patterns — to the point that we often see patterns where none exist. Statistics and science are elaborate attempts to find out which of the patterns we see don’t exist.
The pattern you see doesn’t exist. I think I have demonstrated this clearly enough. Look up the details yourself — Google is your friend.
Why do people stand in line to tell poor Mr Byers he’s a cretinist poopy-head? It’s so easy to refute his silly assertions point-by-point in a very short time!
Neatly coinciding with the first broadcast of Hypnotoad.
I nominate Dirac, Comment #4, for Post Of The Week / Molly Award. Nice work – stay thirsty my friend.
I take umbrage at the statement (in the linked article) that Von Neumann was a “non-biological mathematician”. His photographic memory, prodigious intellect and phenomenal computational skills might have made him seem to be a machine, but I’m pretty sure he was every bit as biological as the author of the linked article!
Adrian
@ Dirac #4,
“If I understand Dirac correctly, his meaning is this: there is no God, and Dirac is his Prophet.” – Wolfgang Pauli
Isn’t it true that if any expert anywhere, with a ph.d. in anything, criticizes Darwin, why then the whole edifice of evolutionism falls apart?
It isn’t?
When I see comments here disparaging our country’s brave quote miners, I feel disgusted and betrayed. You people have no appreciation for these hard working people, and for the hazardous work they take on every day when they go down into the quote mines. They must steadfastly resolve to ignore context and risk quote-dust explosions on a daily basis, trusting only in their ability to deceive and faith in God. The ultimate fate of most quote miners is one of the worst I can imagine. The loss of credibility and the complete lack of respect for one’s self that comes at the end is certainly more than one person should bear. But even after all that, they continue to lie for the sake of our everlasting souls. They are God’s liars, and for that we should be eternally grateful.
Brain cancer, eh? consider also the cases of Antony Flew (age-related senility) and Terry Pratchett (Alzheimer’s). Why are the theists so eager to associate belief with diminishment of mental capacity?
JRS@56 wins the thread. Very good!
In all fairness to mathematicians, Kurt Godel didn’t believe in evolution… But even though he was a formal logic genius, he was rather creepy, supremely paranoid, and all around just nuts.
Not to mention the risk they run of contracting “ellipsis lung.”
I’m glad that, not only is this claim irrelevant to the argument (which is obvious), but that it’s also bull. Nothing makes me happier than knowing that the minds the Creationist loonies think agree with them actually don’t.
Reginald Selkirk@57,http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4087520.ece
is far from a statement of theism.
I think you’re being rather hard on Pratchett – what
Let us not forget the horror, the horror of a quote-mine cave-in. How many more quote miners must be crushed by context?
More amusing lunacy from the mental patient. Protestants like Einstein, Teller, Oppenheimer, and Gould who were Jewish? Von Neumann was Catholic. The European ones from Catholic countries were all Catholics, Fermi, and so on. Newton was a unitarian heretic who kept his views quiet in fear of death.
Scientists are all religions and all races. None of which has anything to do with whether they are scientists and how famous they were or become.
This is why creos will lose. The only ones left are clowns like Byers who can’t tell the truth from an empty soda can and haven’t had a coherent thought in decades.
IIRC Byers is Canadian and is most likely not allowed out of his institution without a minder and an attached GPS tracker. As to why anyone would care if he got lost, well, the world is a funny place. Maybe the Canadians don’t want to upset the ecology by feeding the wolves and bears a nonnative species.
ROTFL! Then the quote mine canaries of the DI scam cartel can’t be of any help – the elaborate chirping of Berlinski will never croak as he is innately insensitive to context.
[But I rather fancy the idea that they can’t sense quote mine dust and gas due to the steady emissions of creationist farts.]
Ah yes, facts are hard whether they are poisonous to creationists or not. My mistake.
So, does that mean that a creationist is caught between a context and a hard fact?
I looked up pretentious in the dictionary, and it had a picture of Berlinski, laying on his chaise lounge.
Historians and philosophers can put me right, but there seems to me there was another tradition of questioning along the line from Socrates to Epicureans:
AFAIU they were dualists espousing something analogous to buddhism (especially in that they embraced the belief that great excesses lead to great dissatisfaction).
Especially Lucretius is interpreted as refuting superstition:
Wikipedia mentions a diagnosis, “either bone or pancreatic cancer”, but not the cause of death. What gives?
Don’t know anything specific about Von Neumann. But the brain is a common target for metastasis. So one can have a primary tumor somewhere and have it spread to the brain and other organs.
I’ve read (I think in something by Poundstone) that Von Neumann was delirious as death approached, visiting being restricted and an intelligence officer being constantly present in case he babbled secret information.
#28 Wowbagger wrote:
Good points, but the important thing is that in such cases fundamentalism would be marginalized right out of the high school curriculum into college-level concepts, where most teachers and students know better.
Not to mention a the inevitable hideous gasping death from Word Lung disease.
Robert Byers:
We know you told us “no starch on the hood”, but when our pressman saw that bright white linen with its crisp, sharp point, he just couldn’t help himself.
We apologize for the mix-up and are sending you a coupon good for a free clean and press your robes special.
from P.R. Halmos (1973) “The Legend of John Von Neumann”. The American Mathematical Monthly. 80(4):382-394
#38 – Tatarize,
Because I hate an unsolved math problem, here ya go. The trains crashed 2 hours after departure. Train A had traveled 60 miles, Train B 40 miles. The bird, flying from when the trains started till they crashed, would have flown 120 miles (60 mph for 2 hrs). And yes, that was the easy way. Now back to caving in quote mines :)
Just to finish up since my comments hit a nerve (As usual the biting truth does).
I insist that intelligence and one of its offspring science is the product of the rise of the true faith impact on humanity by God’s blessing and intelligence. First Christianity raising civilization higher (from out of pagan invasions and long time unrest) was then shot very high by the protestant reformation. This was due to God blessing where the true Christians, now called evangelical (but back then different names to segregate from other protestants) although a minority had the influence, for centuries to come, to influence society in intellect and morality. This especially successful among the English and Scottish peoples.
Catholic and non-evangelical protestant nations fell behind. Yes they contribute a little but pound for pound there was a great chasm between achievement levels. The modern world is a very Evangelical/puritan Protestant British world led by the American division.
Other peoples only achieve upon immigrating to this civilization and being brought up.
They achieve only as individuals of the group and not related to their biology or heritage whether Hungarian or Cherokee or Korean.
Theres no beating it.
It is the Christian faith as most accurately believed and applied that has raised modern man. Science is just another element from the rise of Christian knowledge.
The vast majority of major or minor characters in science insisted on a God, a Christian God, and a lesser but respectable number , Genesis as essential to understanding origins.
Only in the late 19th and 20th century did there become a greater denial of Genesis, and the Christian God. Yet a creater still was accepted.
This is the history of opinion of science which is just carefully applied knowledge.
Which origin subjects are not open too.
If this is contentious about the credit for modern science then someone as this Myers fella to start a thread, with his own opinion first, on whether science is a trickle down thing from a few to the many or rather a result of a rising tide of a greater percentage, even a majority, of intelligence with a few who crystalize it in small circles at the top?
Lets collect, measure, and analysis data before everyone hardens their stance.
Robert Byers,
You can insist all you want but none of us is under any obligation to agree with you.
Few here are likely to consider agreeing with you for the following reasons – your grasp of the history of the world is partial and incomplete, your grasp of the history of science is inadequate and shows evidence of bias, your explanation of the history of religion sounds more like a party line than a fact-based analysis and your treatment of peoples who do not, I presume, share your own genetic heritage is racist.
Rather than dismissing this as an ad hominem attack, which it is not, I invite you to explain why it is that those who according to you have the right genes and the right brand of religion are most visible not for their exemplary conduct but in their resistance to the competent teaching of science.
Ah, yeah. The usual “logic” of cdesign proponentsists: If we respond, it must be because we’re afraid, proving we’re wrong (and — next unjustified leap of logic — proving that you are therefore right). If we don’t respond, it must be because we don’t have any answers, also proving that we’re wrong (and, again, that you’re right).
Have you ever considered the possibility that you might be wrong?
Evidence, please.
Not evidence that you insist, mind. Not even evidence that it could be the way you insist. Evidence that it actually is that way.
By what measures?
You see, if nobody can reproduce your measurements, they are utterly worthless.
Never mind the destruction of books, buildings and people that Christianity brought about around the end of the Western Roman Empire, never mind what an incredible antirationalist Luther was…
Please quantify that.
If you can’t, your assertion is (again) utterly worthless.
By what measures?
The world is much more secular today than it has ever been.
Evidence, please.
Unsurprising!
Then why does science contradict Christian “knowledge” so much? Why does science not even allow revelation as a way to knowledge?
See above. Einstein was mentioned twice, and he wasn’t that much of an exception.
That’s because biology and physics hadn’t yet advanced to the point where the assumption of the existence of a creator became unnecessary as an explanation.
No, science is the method to get knowledge.
Please explain.
All of this is nonsense. Science is a cooperative effort. Look at how many authors the average paper has. Perhaps start with the table of contents of this week’s Nature.
You haven’t even started with the collecting yet, let alone with the measuring.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
You haven’t noticed how much knowledge there is out there, which you never suspected existed.
And just for completeness, the hard way is to solve the infinite series adding up each segment of the bird’s flight between turnarounds. Von Neumann answered the question so quickly the asker remarked that he had expected him to solve the series instead of taking the “shortcut”. Von Neumann responded that he did solve the infinite series.
While this is a cute story and I believe that he probably could have solved the series that quickly, I also can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have instantly seen the “easy way” and solved it that way.
Modern science, (biology, astronomy, geology, paleontology, history, archaeology etc.) contradicts virtually all of your Death Cult mythology. Evolution is a fact, the Big Bang happened, the earth is 4.5 billion years old, the universe is 13.7 billion years old, the Big Boat event is impossible and never happened. The ancient Jews didn’t keep dinosaurs as pets.
Sort of a contradiction here. You claim the one true faith invented science. Which proved a century ago that the 2 pages of bronze age mythology were just that, mythology.
Oh well, the ability to believe 2 contradictory things before breakfast is the mark of a lunatic. Where is your residential mental hospital located? IIRC, you claimed it was in Canada.
And BTW, science and the knowledge oriented way of looking at the world was started by the pagan Greeks and Romans before Xianity even existed. The early Xians destroyed the pagans and presided over a millenial period known as the “Dark Ages.” Science only recovered during the enlightenment when secular forces started breaking down the power of the religion to kill anyone they wanted any time they wanted.
Poster 77
I present the clear score results, like in the Olympics, of achievement. It is so true that science is from only the last few hundred years and patented by the Protestant peoples with the British on top. We’re speaking English now.
Its just not true that science in its greatest results is from all peoples equal contributions.
Just look up the history of science and the names beside it. Pound for pound its been 905 plus has come from the protestant nations. This because they were closer to the true faith. Blessing and intelligence being the result.
the ancients did little of merit relative to the last few centuries.
One should expect the more intelligent people to do the most progress in science.
Therefore the most intelligent people are quicker to the truth and slower to accept error. So in north America is evolution most rejected or doubted as one would predict if it was not true and so not persuasive.
science is just another form of intelligence of a populace. The most achievement in science therefore has come from the most intelligent. This is the British civilization. This is because it was more evangelical/puritan in numbers and consistency then the other protestant countries. The defining difference in intellect of the anglo-English world has been the unique divisions in protestantism. This division is what is the origin for superiority and the great advancement in the last 400 years. No it was not a continuence of old ancient pagans. In fact i would say they were not needed and only added a bit in entry level.
If folks believe that ancient China or Greece or sub-Saharan africa is where science flourished most then say so.
I say look at the last names of the actual achievers in science and its from a tiny minority of North western protestant people with the rest way back in the race. I’m talking about the many thousands or tens of thousands of folk who get their name in books of recognition on science. Only in the last century has Catholic and non european folks started making noticable contributions. Of coarse it doesn’t count if people immigrate since they just achieve as individuals of the group they immigrated too.
I still think that it would be usefull on this blog to settle what has motivated science to achieve. I say its the true Christian faith. Everyone else just copies us after the fact.
since science must have its patents it shouldn’t be too hard to score .
Gold to the Evangelical Protestant British civilization. Silver to the other Protestant nations. Bronze to Roman Catholic nations. That is all.
I repeat – the rant @ 80 is not only bollocks it is racist.
You have provided no facts; you have failed to address a single one of the legitimate criticisms of your thesis, if we can call it that.
I think it was Dennis Healey who said if you find yourself in a hole then stop digging.
So in north America is evolution most rejected or doubted as one would predict if it was not true and so not persuasive. – Robert Byers
Way to undermine your own argument! Byers, you twerp, it is among the less educated portions of the North American population that you find high levels of rejection of the fact of evolution. Among practising scientists of every nationality, including North Americans, it is of course accepted by the overwhelming majority.
we don’t judge ideas in modern biology by the authority of mathematicians from 50 years ago.
cough***Fisher***cough