Week 6, post 4 (Darwin's DNA)

Part One: A new and effective way to begin a demonstration when in a situation of explaining your view of Evo vs. Design. It is one that is relate-able and seemingly harmless. In particular, explaining the miracle of your (our) own existence is incredibly relevant, but most of all my favorite example in all this deals with the binary code, or four letter alphabet of the human genome. This is what finally, after all these years got me interested in Biology.

Part Two: Why? That is the question, the universal question for all of man-kind. The delving into the justification of man inventing religion, especially and potentially at the Neanderthal level, although, I realize that my prior wording is part of a misconception which we'll delve into the next paragraph. I DO NOT disagree with the anyone DECLARING that one scientist is "wrong", without stating "in my opinion" especially when their isn't sufficient evidence suggesting so, and especially when that figure is so highly accomplished. I am speaking of the author declaring that "Edelman rightly discounts Freud's psychodynamic theory". That notion is furthered in a quote from Gould who states that sociobiology or evolutionary psychology justifies acts such as murder, rape, etc. No, it does not! It aides in helping us to understand "why" it occurs. To make such a claim that Freud is wrong based on these claims is no better than a fundamentalist Christian denying evolution because it interferes with their belief in God! Freudian psychology, if taken into account, would solve many our issues in society including those named injustices. However, political correctness lives on!

Part three: This portion translates the blueprint that is DNA, which also serves as a true "Book of the Dead". Much of our history is revealed, as well as our more distant ancestry. It is here that archeology, anthropology and the work of Biological DNA work together in spelling out more of our history. Misconceptions are brought to attention and spelled out correctly such as the fact that we did not evolve "from" chimps, but we do share a common ancestor. Another interesting fact being that some evidence may exist suggesting that Neanderthal might have believed in the "after life".

-Jeremy Watkins (M.G.)

Week 6, post 3 (Fundamentalism/Flame on!).

Week 6, post 3 (Fundamentalism/Flame on!):

Fundamentalism is a disease: I have often come to such a conclusion while in Yahoo message boards! In all seriousness, I have! I cannot help, but to think that fundamentalists such as conservatives are just so full of “fodder” to even form a clear concise thought, thus inducing their brand of conservatism. Let us drop political correctness for a minute, while not all church goers are conservative, all conservatives are/or claim to be as such. Conservatism, to me, is nothing more than a blanketed excuse for being bias, prejudice and irrational, and all without any substantial reasoning! My point is that just as this film elaborates its namesake, fundamentalism is a self-induced form of mental disease! A disease that limits one in their scope! What was my favorite part of the film? “Well, he has a lot of explaining to do.” –Robert DeNiro.

Flame on! : I decided to piece this together with Fundamentalism is a Disease since there is a definite link between the two. I was already previously aware of the great homosexuals in history over many facets of human achievement and their plight. I was hoping that the film would have touched upon the myth that homosexual isn’t “natural”. I was hoping for the prospective mention of the various animals within the animal kingdom that commonly display homosexual behavior from the common fence lizard to mammals such as the bottle-nosed dolphin to the African elephant. I did like the mention of Proust and his guilt pertaining to his sexual orientation, as it is a major obstacle among men and women who face having this identity. A sexual orientation is not just limited to “which sex” it also pertains from sexual acts (kinks) to objects/parts (fetishes). Any desire that is sexual is deeply embedded within ones’ psyche, so whether it is genetic or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that it is PURELY PHYSIOLOGICAL!! No one chooses their sexual desires or vices. Therefore, it is only reasonable that society begin to approach, both the harmful and harmless orientations with this in mind. My point is not belittle the fetishist, segregate all pedophiles and savages to a special island and away from the general public, and to respect out homosexual brothers and sisters and their basic human right to live their lives and contribute alongside the rest of us without guilt and without plight!

-Mircelous Grimm (Jeremy Watkins)

Week 6, post 2 (Fallacy files).

Fallacy is exactly what drew me to take a philosophy class in the first place, specifically this class Critical Thinking. The concept of argument as an art form based on correct reasoning and logic felt not interesting, but essential in mine and any ones journey to a higher education. One who achieves such a feat immediately has a higher expectation placed on them, and reasonably so.

As noted at the beginning of this page it is stated that the fallacies listed range from obvious to examples that are a bit more obscure in scope. One of my favorite, and perhaps the simplest of them all was an act, or rather trick of reversing ones presented reasoning, or logical fallacy, by one Penn Jillette of the magic/comedy duo Penn & Teller. An excerpt posted on the site (fallacyfiles.org) reveals a scene in which Penn is speaking with a spirit board collector who references “thousands of years” of related paranormal activity to which the collector concludes that if such knowledge is true then, “surely a spirit board can work”; Penn replies “So then if those aren’t true, a spirit board can’t work? Cool!” (Penn & Teller, Ouija Boards/Near Death Experiences, B.S.!). Another clear example of a fallacy or mistake was one taken from Tom Cruise, who had suggested that the Nazi’s had originally named methadone after Adolf Hitler. On the other end of the spectrum, we have an excerpt from The American Prospect (Nicholas Confessore, 1999) where the posted paragraph offers an anecdotal account of a presidential endorsement display inside Madison Square Garden which donned a few athletes and various other celebrity figures. The other went on to express his suggestive disdain for the endorsement suggesting that “If we pick our presidents in much the same way that we pick our underwear, then Michael Jordan's preference for Bill Bradley is precisely as relevant as his preference for Hanes.” I may be branding myself an offender here, but I am under the impression that the fallacy is with society and not Confessores’ reasoning, because I agree with him close to one-hundred percent that irrational factors such as celebrity has and continues to dictate the logical decisions of the masses where it ought not be. One could argue the election of Ronald Reagan was not, however, the election of Schwarzenegger well could have been. Lest we forget, what is a celebrity really? Well, let’s take a look:
-Famous/well-known
-Value of the individual as a person in the eye of their adoring public typically exaggerated.
One could argue that George W. Bush won his 2000 campaign due in large part to his “endorsement” by the Christian savior Jesus. Any political expert will tell you that without his declared faith and his spearheaded endorsement by the Southern Baptist Church who influenced all other fundamentalist branches he was nothing more than a sure-fire runner-up! To such like-minded people it is an endorsement from “the lord”.
-Jeremy Watkins (M.G.)

Week 6, post 1- (Critical thinking film 6).

Not faith but testable avenues of investigation- This is perhaps the best of all the presented logic in this film. As stated it leads to (lest, anyone forgets) to “pragmatic results” such as what we nourish our bodies with, the knowledge to engineer medications and a more in-depth look at the ailments like viruses that that our man-made medicine is specifically tailored to fight. It is through Darwinism’s straight forward opportunity to observe that we learn how to better survive and what we are fighting. A privilege that faith itself could not afford us. Luckily, we have grown beyond a constrictive diet that is just mere faith, and learned how “eat our universe” to survive. And survive we do, long enough, nowadays to better understand our world and the universe for our own curiosity to quench our own thirst for knowledge, and to pass on that learned knowledge to the next generation so that they may pick-up where we left off and pass on their findings to the next, and so on.

“Man would have to invent god, even if such a being didn’t exist”- Voltaire (second hand) - Very fascinating, and another provided way to view faith, especially in more modern terms. Just as the discussion of medicine came up earlier, so does faith or at least the idea of faith in a similar concept. The idea or the concept of “god” is being used as a form medicating ourselves from a reality that may be to real truly grasp. At the same time, one may be able to see a comparison to the virus in the same context just on the other end of its prescribed meaning, or maybe that is just my own perception talking, we shall see.  Prior to its conclusion the film goes on to state one of the more easily overlooked facts, and that is that such a concept of “idiocy” was actually founded by the inner-workings of a larger brain. A brain that perhaps was gazing into the sky and in doing so was pondering our existence and purpose, and perhaps spawned one of our first significant hypotheses.

-Jeremy Watkins (M.G.)

Week 5- post 5 (Friedrich Nietzsche).

Christianity destroyed the renaissance. I am not a history buff, and as we all have our one subject that we aren’t particularly interested in, mine is history. History bores me so! That said, I have been unaware as what the Renaissance was conceptually. I know its general sliver in time, and I was familiar with Martin Luther. However, knowing of him from a second (really third) hand knowledge, that is a purely Christian, mostly catholic point of view I hadn’t known Luther from this perceptive. Again, it doesn’t cease to amaze me that at every corner Christianity and the Catholic church especially have more appalling skeletons in their figurative closet. As Nietzsche puts it, what if the renaissance had succeeded? And, in my own delving I wonder what kind of world we’d have been living in for the last four and a half centuries. I’ll refrain from making an anti-logical guess that we’d be living in a virtual utopia, however, I wonder about certain wars, intolerances and injustices we now know in the name of god. Could this have in a manner of influence possibly culled the growth of Islam?  

Getting back on track, Nietzsche recalls a catastrophic crime committed by the Germans in this instance in history which seems to almost rival in comparison to the German occupation waiting to take its place in history some 39 years after Friedrich Nietzsche’s death. To justify my notion, he explains that “If mankind never manages to get rid of Christianity the Germans will be to blame.” One must understand that to Nietzsche’s discussed for the Christian church, “the greatest of all imaginable corruptions,” and “I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race”. From there he goes on to pick a part any notion that the church has done any right, or “humanitarian” favors to the world, and that’s its humanitarianism is just mere partisan of its own behalf that sucks the beauty out of life. When not kept separate from inter-human realties such social aspects and political ones I must second that notion.

-Jeremy Watkins (M.G.)

Week 5- post 4 (film 3).

If there was a sentence to define film three, it could look something like this, science as reason, and reason as science. The film, to me, generated a definitive understanding and a translation to more mythical procedure, in some instances (i.e., “technology is alchemy without the superstition”) and a better overall and simplified understanding for those who don’t as well, or maybe at all.

I find this stuff really romantic in a sense. I love science and the blue-print for life that is mathematics. It is very interesting to the sometimes illusive casings explained to the layman, or those who just aren’t as finely adept as those mentioned or those working in the scientific fields. The film began and concluded with separate, but conceptually similar quotes by both, Feynman and Einstein respectively, as each of them stated a desire to scale physics and its inherent complexity down to a basic set of laws and explanation that everyone can comprehend.

-Jeremy Watkins (M.G.)

Week 5- post 3 (John Polkinghorne).

Polkinghorne states, that the universe in rationally transparent with regard to its function. He continues that the anthropic principle is the “hint” of god in the universe. Polkinghorne furthers this statement with the mention of Sir, Fred Hoyle the late English astronomer and mathematician, who was an opponent of religion. Polkinghorne quotes Hoyle as saying that, “The universe was a put-out job. It wasn’t an accident.” What Hoyle was referring to was the Physical constant, life producing universe, made possible by stars that will burn for a long time for neighboring planets, as well as themselves that require great balance to sustain life. Most specifically, Hoyle was stating the occurrence of the chemistry of carbon made in the nuclear furnace of the stars, a delicate balance of a nuclear chain, says Polkinghorne. Believers in a divine designer giving reference to chaos and anthropy aren’t anything new, however, he does acknowledge a correlative belief in the big bang along with evolution as well, giving way to a discussion of a metaphysical nature, with both light discussions of quantum physics and philosophy.

Polkinghorne states, that “god” isn’t puppeteer, but a force that permits man’s free-will. Not a man in the sky with a beard. Why didn’t god reveal himself in other parts of the world? Robert Wright poses two questions cliché in nature, but more relevant and appropriate to ask a person of Polkinghorne’s stature in both faith and science. Wright asks about the “pain and suffering” in the world and “why god has only made himself known to one part of the world?” He (Polkinghorne) provided deeply philosophical answers one that stemmed directly from biblical philosophy in reference to cancer being price of man’s free-will. He was unable to really give anything more direct, or one that could suffice, he himself even admitted such at the conclusion of one of his answers.

-Jeremy Watkins (M.G.)