DUFF & NONSENSE!

It's all in yer serotonin transporter gene, innit!

I don't quite know what to make of Joan Chiao, from the department of psychology at Northwestern University.  As far as I am concerned anyone from a psychology department anywhere must have a beard and constantly play with a yo-yo as they babble mostly nonsense.  Ms. Chiao being a female of the species might find the beard bit tricky!  On the other hand, I am full of admiration for the lady in publishing in an American university a piece of research that is blatantly racist.  How she has escaped tarring and feathering by the ever-vigilant 'thought police' and 'language commissars' , I do not know.  Anyway, according to The Mail, she and her colleagues have been investigating cultural sterotypes (SHLOCK-HORROR - don't tell the 'Graun'!) and they have paid particular attention to the differences between "British individualism and Chinese conformity".  Actually, I suspect the "British" slant is emphasised by The Mail because, well, because it's The Mail, innit!  I think Ms. Chiao and her learn-ed colleagues were comparing western culture with the Chinese and other Asians.

Racial, or even national, traits are a very complex and slippery subject.  For a start, much belongs in the eye of the beholder.  Even so, it is Marxist nonsense to suggest that such traits do not exist at all.  In a way investigating such things is similar to the study of gases which are measured not by the individual actions of each and every molecule but by mathematical averaging.  The difference, of course, is that in gases the molecules never alter but people are forever changing to the intense irritation of politicians. 

Even so, Ms. Chiao maintains that the individuality she observes in western people should be compared with the conformity of the Chinese.  Oddly enough this chimes with some thoughts attributed to the late Mr. Jobs of Apple fame who maintained that the whole computer revolution of recent times could not have occurred anywhere else but the free-living, free-wheeling and free-dealing society of California in the last three decades.  By implication he was saying that the Chinese were only good for copying not inventing.  Ms. Chiao, in effect, confirms that opinion by telling us of their investigations into the genetic differences:

Chiao and her colleagues combined data from global genetic surveys, looking at variations in the prevalence of various genes. The findings were matched with other research which ranked nations by levels of individualism and collectivism.

 So which little genetic 'critter' was to blame, if indeed, blame is involved:

The team focused their attentions on the gene that controls levels of serotonin, a chemical in the brain which regulates mood and emotions.

Their studies found that one version of the gene was far more common in western populations which, they said, was associated with individualistic and free-thinking behaviour.

Another version of the same gene, which was prevalent in Asian populations, they said was associated with collectivism and a greater willingness to put the common good first.

Why is it, I wonder, when I read articles like that the one word which keeps drumming away at the back of mind is - bollocks!  I don't know but perhaps it's something to do with my serotonin level!

 

"Joy shall be in heaven . . .

. . . over one sinner that repenteth" and all that sort of thing.  Well, I know the quote is not a precise fit for the event but it was the one that leapt to mind when I heard the news.  According to The Telegraph a few days ago, 'Archbishop' Richard Dawkins engaged in a long debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the course of which he admitted that he was not entirely, absolutely, completely, convinced that there was no God:

There was surprise when Prof Dawkins acknowledged that he was less than 100 per cent certain of his conviction that there is no creator.

Prof Dawkins said that he was “6.9 out of seven” sure of his beliefs, referencing the seven point scale of belief that he sets out in his book The God Delusion.

The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, who chaired the discussion, interjected: “Why don’t you call yourself an agnostic?” Prof Dawkins answered that he did.

It was not reported at the time but I have it on good authority that Canterbury's beard shot out horizontal to the floor, and that several members of the Humanist Society required first aid!  When challenged as to why, therefore, he did not call himself an agnostic, he replied that he did.  At this point, I am led to believe, the scene resembled a Bateman cartoon with devout atheists rocking back on their heels with eyeballs threatening to burst from their sockets!

You see, that's one the very few advantages of living long - you get to see sundry chumps change their minds.  Even if, in this case, it is only 0.1 of his mind!

 

I try to cheer them up but do I get a thank you . . . ?

I have been exasperating the excitable kiddies over at Deltoid.  This is an 'Ultra-Warming' site and needs to be approached with care!  They are in a fair old strop over 'Climategate II' and despite my efforts to be, er, helpful they show no gratitude.  If you have nothing else to do you can start at Comment #90 in which I reply to an earlier comment.  You can then jump to Comment #102 in which Jeff, a true believer, takes me to task.  I reprint my reply to him below because it sums up, in rather blunt terms, much of my re-action to 'Greenery' in all its forms.  I should point out that in the original, somehow Jeff's name mutated to Jeremy, another contributer to Deltoid, but I have corrected it here.  Also to aid your understanding, my first paragraph refers to the not too surprising story that two years ago the 'scientific experts' all agreed that the Canadian caribou had disappeared and, natch!, it was all the fault of Man/global warming/oil exploration or whatever.  None of these experts bothered to ask the local natives who would have told them that the caribou always went off to some other place at certain times.  Anyway, lo and behold, they're back and hopefully Sarah Palin will have plenty of targets if any of them are foolish enough to wander into Alaska.

Well done, Jeff, exasperated, of course, but sticking to the point, by and large. I'm just a little hurt that you failed to thank me for the good news on the missing mooses, or caribous, or whatever you call those great hairy things that have the temerity to shit all over Canada. They're safe and sound!

As to your first main paragraph, are you telling me that my description of bird species as waxing and waning and then, perhaps, waxing again is not an accurate description of their history? And are you also denying that there is some controversy over the fact that those giant windmills are damaging birds?

Also, let me assure you that we have no disagreement that climate change has an effect on different species of both animal and plant life. That, in fact, is the entire history of this planet - it was ever thus. Also, I did not suggest that the "dustbowl" [of the '30s] was the same as the conditions current in Texas, my point was that if it isn't 'one damn thing' it's another! By and large, central areas of big land masses suffer big weather and geological effects. Again, it was ever thus.

Finally, and at this point I must urge you to sit down with a large scotch to hand, let me spell something else out to you. You are quite correct to maintain that human activity has had an effect on living things. Some of it has been deleterious and at this point you can reel off the names of several cuddly animals to weep over but let me tell you bluntly that I, personally, couldn't give a stuff! Even worse, I don't give a stuff about polar bears! What I do see is that through human efforts more and more humans are living longer and longer because they are healthier and healthier. And, this will come as a bit of shock to you, Jeff, I actually think people are far more important than, say Natterjack Toads, or, some flower that lives in a desert and comes up once every ten years. I cannot stress this too much, people are more important than anything else! (How are you feeling? Have a sip of scotch, it'll help.)

Don't misunderstand, I don't wish other living things to be destroyed; if there are sensible ways to preserve them (which increasingly there are) then by all means do it. But, if it comes down to a straight choice then polar bears don't even get a look in!

Now you may suggest that such wanton behaviour will lead to the destruction of people as well. I would suggest that you are wrong. Because as well as causing harm, people also do good. Just two silly/simple examples, dogs and cats thrive because of Man. New types of crops, some bio-engineered, are now feeding more and more people. I could go on but you take my point.

So, I hope that positive ending has cheered you up, Jeff, because I do think you are a tad too dismal - no, no, don't thank me!

'Archbishop' Dawkins trips over his own cassock!

I am obliged to my e-pal, 'Whyaxeye' (which is hereby immediately reduced to 'W' for the simple reason that it takes me three goes to spell his 'name' correctly!), who in a comment thread below drew my attention to 'the mysterious affair of the William Lane Craig debate', or, to be precise with reference to 'Archbishop' Dawkins, the William Lane Craig non-debate.  That exactitude is necessary because no debate between these men ever took place except, I suppose, via the infinite world of Blogdom where-in all hell was let loose!

You see, Mr. Lane Craig is a devout Christian philosopher and scholar - and one need go no further than that to recognise instantly that he stands for everything that Dawkins finds abominable.  But it gets worse, in Dawkins's eyes, because Lane Craig at some stage in his career sought to defend the word of God as recorded in Deuteronomy 20: 13-15 and in which apparently, He commanded that all the men, women and children of Canaan be put to the sword.  Those of you interested enough to read Mr. Lane Craig's defence of ethnic cleansing may do so via Google - me? I can't be bothered at the moment. 

What does interest me is that on the basis of his disgust at Mr. Lane Craig's words, 'Archbishop' Dawkins, standing on a stack of Bibles copies of his book The Selfish Gene, pronounced from on high that he would never, not ever, debate with such a self-evidently evil man.  But why?  Surely Mr. Lane Craig was only describing an act on the part of the Israelites of the time that was absolutely and entirely in compliance with the genetic code which Dawkins maintains over and over again drives men to be selfish, that is, to do anything and everything in their power to ensure the success of their own gene pool.  Massacring an entire tribe of hostile neighbours seems to me to be exactly what, in Dawkins's world, is to be expected, after all, such an act definitely increases the chances of success for your own genes, anything less puts them at risk .  Thus, like every street corner thug who sticks a knife into the guts of a member of an opposition gang, the Israelites can shrug and say, "Wasn't my fault, guv, it was me genes, wannit?"

It is worth quoting Dawkins in order to fully appreciate what a complete bugger's muddle this 'first class brain' gets into when he seeks to explain the all-powerful, er, well, sort of all-powerful-ish, selfish genes that makes us what we are, er, selfish:

The argument of this book [The Selfish Gene] is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. [...]  This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes.  I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. (My emphasis)

OK?  Alright?  Got that, have you? I mean, it's clear enough, pelucid, one might almost call it.  Ah, but hang on, there's all those awkward events in which people risk, and often lose, their own lives trying to save others.  Not very selfish, is it, 'your Grace'?  "No, no", the 'Archbishop' would cry, "it only looks altruistic because the people they are saving are their relatives and thus the carriers of the same, or very similar, genes to the rescuer, so, in  a sense, he or she is still being driven by those rascally, selfish genes."  But what about the people who are saved by rescuers who are not relatives?  Well, mutters Dawkins, as he shuffles uneasily on the spot:

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism,because we are born selfish.  Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to. (His emphasis)

Yeeeeeeeees, quite, as Mr. Paxman might sigh!  Given that Dawkins has told us in one paragraph that we are merely machines governed by our genes, where are the genes that order us to "teach generosity and altruism"?  They, obviously, are not "selfish" genes by definition, just the opposite, they are altruistic genes.  Yet in his book Dawkins barely gives them a passing nod, almost, one might think because, like poor relations, he is slightly ashamed of them!  What they are, from whence they came and how they arrived, is neither asked not answered.

I have no opinion on Mr. Lane Craig.  However, I do view with considerable suspicion anyone who takes the words of the Old Testament literally, especially any words alleged by a writer several hundred years after the event to be the words of God. Happily, if that is quite the word, we have 'Archbishop' Dawkins with us here and now and consequently we can apply Duff's Law which states that when faced by a prat on a soap box the only course of action is to shout, "SHOW US YOUR WILLY!"

You can read Dawkins's defence of his refusal to debate, here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/richard-dawkins-william-lane-craig

And in a comment thread below 'W' offers this link to a enjoyable example of the 'unspeakable in pursuit of the equally unspeakable', in which Dawkins is beaten up by a gang of feminastis - my dears, simply too, too, delicious but one just doesn't know which side to cheer for!

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/07/richard-dawkins-draws-feminist-wrath-over-sexual-harassment-comments/39637/

NB: All quotes from The Selfish Gene, chapter one.

 

Watch out next April - academic warfare is likely to break out!

I have, and enjoy, the occasional equivalent of a Saturday night punch-up over at the 'Trot-lot' and 'Warmer' sites but they are nothing compared to the unrestricted warfare that breaks out when academics fall out.  And a fall out of almost nuclear proportions can definitely be expected next April when the eminent biologist, E. O. Wilson, publishes his next book. Wilson, as some of you may know, was the 'father of sociobiology' which sought to explain evolution in terms of group behavior - Wilson was an expert on ants and their highly specialised and successful social model - whilst agreeing that the unit of evolution was the gene.

However, as I explained in a post last June, Wilson is no respecter of persons and reputations, particularly if the person and reputation concerned is 'Archbishop' Richard Dawkins!  Thus, in his forthcoming book, which follows a highly technical paper written for Nature in concert with two big-brained maths swots, he intends to press home his view that altruism, such a thorn in the side of Dawkins, is not confined to kin selection but arises from group selection.  Well, I could have told him that but who the hell listens to me?

Anyway, watch out next April for a mammoth, academic hissy-fit and a  barrage of deliciously vicious book reviews in which old scores might be settled but new ones will spring up to take their place.  Such fun!

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/e-o-wilson-rsquo-s-theory-of-everything/8686/?single_page=true

 

'Krugmania': we all suffer with it to a greater or lesser extent

Two fascinating essays over at the Cafe Hayek by Russ Roberts, in order, here and here.  Economic buffs can skip the rest of this paragraph but for the benefit of those who happily avoid economics on the sensible basis that not only is it the "dismal science" but also the incomprehensible science, let me tell you that Paul Krugman is a distinguished economist and Nobel prize winner who writes for the NYT, and that Mr. Roberts is a terrific economics swot at various universities who also writes for the MSM.  I should also add the critical information that Mr. Krugman is a Keynesian who believes that governments hold the key to all macro-economic problems.  (Just to confuse matters, well this is economics, there are those who would maintain that Keynes's views were rather more nuanced than that.)  On the other hand, Mr. Roberts is an 'Austrian' - no, no, not by nationality, he is a follower of the 'Austrian school' of economic philosophy which is exemplified in the works of Friedrich Hayek and which can be (very) roughly summed up as 'almost everything a government does in the economic field is "A Bad Thing"', to use the old Sellars & Yeatman phrase. Thus, you can see that Messrs. Roberts and Krugman approach our current economic woes from directly opposite directions.  Well, it was ever thus in economics!

However, Mr. Roberts's two articles have a very much wider scope than just mere economics.  In them he suggests that the differences between himself and Mr. Krugman are ideological, that is, that they stem not so much from a strictly analytical and scientific basis but from their differing 'worldviews'.  He doesn't say this but I will, economics is like a number of other subjects which pretend to be scientific but are really only what I call 'semi-science'.  In other words, the conclusions you come to depend to a great extent on where you started from.  As Mr. Roberts puts it:

But the key point I was trying to make when invoking ideology, is that Krugman and I and most economists have a worldview. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not an indictment or a criticism. It’s simply true. That worldview may be based on casual observation, various principles that make sense to us about how the world works, facts of various kinds, and more statistically sophisticated forms of evidence.

That, I believe, is absolutely spot on and can be applied to any number of other 'semi-sciences' such as global warming, Darwinism and so forth.  Mr. Roberts goes on:

We come to these views in various ways. They are part of our experience, our upbringing, our education, our thinking, and our observations of the world around us. They are inevitably philosophical and ideological at least in part and often in whole. We use these worldviews to filter and understand new information and process that information accordingly. That is not the way most economists or social scientists or even plain scientists think of themselves. They think of themselves as truth-seekers. (Journalists, by the way, have a very similar disconnect between how they view themselves and how I suspect they actually behave.) Truth-seekers look at the facts, allegedly uninfluenced by prior biases, philosophies, theories, and ideologies.

My emphasis above, and examples of what Roberts says can be seen on any of the global warming sites.  He continues:

My claim is that this image of ourselves as pure truth-seekers is a fantasy. Facts don’t speak for themselves. We have to have some kind of worldview to interpret the facts, to filter them, to process them, to organize them. We all suffer from confirmation bias. Facts that challenge our worldview tend to be ignored, minimized, or dismissed as irrelevant.

Ouch!  That certainly applies to me.  It also, I think, applies outside of 'semi-science' even, or especially, into the world of politics.  I have remarked before, in considering the various candidates for the Republican nomination, that so-called intellectual knowledge, or experience in high government office, is not the criteria by which they should be judged.  It is their underlying 'worldview' which is critical, all else flows from that.  We have, according to the (dim) lights of MSM commentary a university-educated intellectual in the White House today and bar a small minority he is generally reckoned to be an outstanding failure as a president.  The reason, in my opinion, is obvious, his entire 'worldview' is skewed in the wrong direction, and therefore, as sure as night follows day, his actions will prove to be disasterous.  It is also why I instinctively draw towards the likes of Sarah Palin and Herman Cain, because their 'worldview' is, in my opinion, clear-eyed and, on the whole, accurate and on that fairly firm base of relative reality they can be trusted to operate and re-act to 'unknown unknowns' in a sensible manner.  Mitt Romney (and also I suspect Rick Perry), of course, has no 'worldview' beyond getting his arse into the Oval Office armchair.  That is not to disqualify him from the job but one cannot do other than harbour considerable doubts.

I urge you all to read Mr. Roberts's two articles and then apply them to a wider 'worldview'!

 

Contrarian or crank?

Looking at his photo you would find it hard to choose, he could be either.  However, given that he takes to wearing a red fedora you might think he was a comedian!

Raymond Tallis by Felix Clay, Eyevine

Actually, I think 'contrarian' is his best description given that he is a former clinical neuroscientist by the name of Raymond Tallis and that he spends most of his time at war with his fellow neuroscientists.  I am obliged to The Chronicle of Higher Education - and, no, don't ask what an ignoramus like me is doing in such high-falutin' company - for an interesting article on the man by Mr. Marc Parry in which he suggests that perhaps a better job description for Dr. Tallis is 'dustman' on the grounds that he describes most of the theories put forward by his fellow specialists as "neuro trash" which he is all too eager to deposit on the nearest dump!

Happily, on this occasion, given that I know nothing of the subject I do not have to offer an opinion (wadd'ya mean that never stopped me before?!) I can simply carry their coats whilst they set to.  On the one side we have, according to Mr. Parry, those who support:

[...] a rash of pseudo brain science that purports to explain behavior as varied as believing in God and falling in love.

In the other corner we have the redoubtable, and probably very irritating, Dr. Tallis, who:

In 2006, Tallis gave up hospital-ward rounds for a full-time writing life that unfolds in morning and afternoon rounds of two local pubs. In these "offices," the atheist-humanist nurses his animosity toward thinkers who reduce human beings to animals "acting out a biological script inscribed in our brains by evolutionary forces." He takes aim at their exaggerated claims in a new book, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (McGill-Queen's University Press).

I like his working routine, it reminds me of the old three-martini lunches so beloved and missed of yesteryear.  I think I would pay good money to attend one of his lectures:

In a cheerful voice, turned out in a magenta tie and a blue boating blazer with broad white stripes, Tallis informs 60 people gathered in a Kent lecture hall that his talk will demolish two "pillars of unwisdom." The first, "neuromania," is the notion that to understand people you must peer into the "intracranial darkness" of their skulls with brain-scanning technology. The second, "Darwinitis," is the idea that Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory can explain not just the origin of the human species—a claim Tallis enthusiastically accepts—but also the nature of human behavior and institutions.

As I confessed above, I have no knowledge of the arcane details of neuroscience but I instinctively side with Dr. Tallis, not, I hasten to add, for religious reasons but simply because I am by nature a 'Bolshie bugger' and I do not care for the notion that anyone tells me what to do - whether it's God or Darwin!

It's a good article well worth reading not least because it makes you wish you knew more.

 

Luke 15:x

No, no, don't go dashing off trying to find your bible which you probably haven't looked at in years and will have forgotten where in hell you put it; here is the King James version:

[...] there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

I am provoked to this bible-punching by a recent story in the Boston Globe by Leon Neyfakh, one of their staff writers.  He describes what must have been a Bateman-like(*) scene in Darwinian circles when, in March this year, Nature magazine published a paper by E. O. Wilson (or God, as he is known in biological circles!) and a couple of maths swots by the name of Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita.  In it they crucified (sorry, but this biblical stuff is catching) the long and dearly cherished notion of neo-Darwinists that altruism stems from kin relationships, that is, the closer you are related to someone the more likely you are to risk your life for them because they share your microscopically tiny bits of protein 'goo' called genes and which, according to 'Archbishop' Richard Dawkins, entirely rule our lives and behaviours - well, if you believe that, you'll believe anything!  But neo-Darwinists do believe it, indeed, they cling to it like ship-wreck survivors on a raft because, of course, according to them we are all entirely slaves to rule by 'gene-goo' which is, as Dawkins insists with eye-ball swivelling intensity, entirely selfish and thus, there is, there can be, no such thing as altruism.  What we assume is altruism, is in fact, selfishness because by helping our kin who, depending on how closely bred they are to us, also carry our 'selfish' genes, we are really helping ourselves, er, even as we drown, get run over, shot, perish in a fire, or whatever we do to save our brothers, cousins, second-cousins and so on.

The fact that a skim through the papers, made so much easier today via the internet, produces a steady stream of stories of incredible acts of bravery, sometimes terminal, by complete strangers on behalf of others is a fact not allowed to disturb the priestly serenity of 'Archbishop' Dawkins and his acolytes.  But now, E. O. Wilson, hitherto one of the most highly emminent members of the priesthood, a sort of papal figure in the neo-Darwinist sect, has arisen and claimed that all this kin altruism is wrong, and he goes on to make use of his two maths wizards to prove it!  The fact that it was Wilson, himself, who years ago first discovered William Hamilton's obscure paper proposing kin selection and made it famous and accepted by biologists across the world, makes his recantation all the more explosive.

What Wilson now proposes, some 30 years later, is what he calls 'group altruism', in other words, members of the same group will sacrifice themselves for other members of the group irrespective of any kinship, and apparently his mathematical assistants have proved it.  Under heavy bombardment from his erstwhile friends, Wilson, with sardonic humour:

paraphrases Arthur Schopenhauer to explain his current standing in his field. “All new ideas go through three phases,” Wilson said, with some happy mischief in his voice. “They’re first ridiculed or ignored. Then they meet outrage. Then they are said to have been obvious all along.”

(*) For the benefit of my foreign readers, H. M. Bateman was an English cartoonist famous and well-loved in the early part of the 20th century, particularly for a stream of cartoons with the catchphrase beginning "The man who  . . ." and followed by some dreadful faux pas committed by some poor sucker who didn't know the rules.

 

 

The morality of killing!

I promised to return to the tricky subject raised by the late Leonard Read in his essay Conscience on the Battlefield which I posted on yesterday.  Not being a great thinker I might have to take two or three bites at it but I would like to begin by pondering on the general subject of morality and from whence it draws its authority.  Theists, in this respect at least, have it easy because they simply point to God.  Non-theists, like me, then enjoy pointing out that there appear to be a plethora of Gods each with a slightly different take on morality and one is therefore left wondering who is, so to speak, the God of Gods?  Theists, of course, then enjoy coming back with the undoubted fact that the concept of morality, albeit a tad fuzzy around the edges, does exist and so they, too, ask us upon what authority we base our sense of morality?

I would suggest that morality, and here I want to concentrate on the particular morality of killing, has arisen as part of the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest.  The higher animals, or at least, those that have survived, do so on the basis of living in a 'society'.  I use that in the widest possible sense of the word including, in the case of animals, herding and flocking and so forth.  In other words, all the higher animals, even in a very loose way, still recognise their own kind and conduct themselves in a way which has proved successful over the generations particularly in regard to feeding and breeding, activities which are the most likely to cause dissension and trouble.  Indeed, even the most ferocious animals, ruthless in their pursuit of prey, rarely kill each other unless there is good reason.  A species which goes in for wanton killing would not survive for long.  But even when there are good grounds for fighting, again, even the most ferocious rarely take the fight to the point of death, flight always being an option.  Perhaps the greatest contribution made by Darwinists in recent years is the way oin which they have clarified the meaning of survival of the fittest which dummies like Adolph Hitler took to mean the strongest killing the weakest.  The great truth that 'he who fights and runs away lives to breed another day' has finally been spelled out for all to understand.

Man is, for most intents and purposes, just another higher animal.  Our societies frown on wanton killing because, of course, it is a personal danger but also because it is self-destructive to the whole notion of a society, and we are all aware, even if only dimly, that it is the 'invention' of society which has provided us with the benefits we enjoy.  If society breaks down then we return to a state of savagery which is likely to bring about a rapid end not only to our own lives but also to our species.  Thus, killing must be controlled and, at some time in our remote history, probably amongst the earliest tribes, custom (and common-sense) became codified and, lo, the first lawyer was created - Dread Thought!  Ayn Rand might be a somewhat derided figure in these semi-socialist days but she was surely right in her analysis of the mutuality between priests and kings in our early times.  It seems to be part of human nature to yearn for a higher authority and a king, who was instantly recognisable as just another human being, albeit an exalted one, was just not enough.  At which point, enter the priest who claims to speak to, and on behalf of, an all-powerful, all-knowing entity called God.  Between priest and king it was love at first sight, although, as we all know, love doesn't always last!

Anyway, to end this first rather amateurish effort, let me conclude by saying that I do believe morality, in the general sense, does exist and that it includes a particular morality over killing.  I believe the authority for this derives from Darwinian principles of survival of the fittest.  In my next try I will attempt to spell out my thoughts on how the morality of killing is applied to war and the individual. 

Don't mention . . . oh dear, too late!

In my blogging experience I have learned, the hard way, to avoid two thorny subjects - abortion and natural selection.  They frequently create spontaneous heat but rarely much light.  However, alas and alack, today I am prompted to return to Darwin's contentious theory but the blame lies entirely with Kevin Myers in The Irish Independent.  He drew my attention to an item in David Attenborough's recent TV series on animal life which was shot on location in a particularly ferocious desert in Madagascar:

This desert is a brutally unforgiving place, in which an ordinary spider would simply be desiccated, even in shelter. So one variety of spider has developed a technique by which it lassoes an empty snail-shell, and by a careful geometric arrangement of its web, is able to hoist the shell off the ground and suspend it from a branch in shade, safe from the heat and from ground predators, with the hole pointing vertically downwards, away from both the sun and intrusion by birds.

[...]

what magical circuitry did the spider possess that enabled it to create an entirely new home, involving complex suspensory trapezoids and a careful positioning of a crustacean shell, millions of years after it had emerged in entirely different ecological circumstances?

Now let me confess immediately - I was a believer!  Years ago I read some of Richard Dawkins's books and I swallowed them whole with barely a gulp.  Although, and I mention this in mitigation, reading him I did realise for the first time that the Darwinists were a divided camp, some believing that natural selection operates at the level of species, whilst others say it is at the level of individual organisms, whilst yet others, including Dawkins, insist that natural selection operates at the level of genes within organisms.  When faced with anyone doubtful of the whole Darwinian concept, of course, these 'little' differences are quickly swept away and a united front is presented.

So there I was, warm and comfy, chanting along with all the others, "I believe, I believe!" when suddenly I was confronted by a big, bullying Aussie who, so to speak, picked up a 10lb sledge hammer and hit Dawkins smack over the head with it!  I was shocked, shocked, I tell you!  This subversive Aussie was the late, and in my opinion very great, David Stove and his 'sledge hammer' was his book Darwinian Fairytales.  Whilst Stove had some sympathy with Darwin he had none whatsoever for Dawkins and his silly notion that we're all controlled and programmed by little itty-bits of protein called genes.  (I blush to remember how I believed all that crap!)  But once the worm of doubt enters your consciousness there is no escape from its insidious burrowing and so the next book I read was Darwin's Black Box by Michael J. Behe.  Unfortunately, Behe rather spoiled his case by proposing the existence of an 'Intelligent Designer' to replace the notion of God and this was free ammo for the devout atheists like Dawkins.  But both Behe and Dawkins, and Darwin for that matter, believed that life was purposeful, not with any particular end result in view but driven above and beyond all other imperatives by the need to reproduce - and the most succesful reproducers win the game!  It's an enticing theory but as Stove points out, it is a fallacy because it does not extend to all living things, and indeed, the biggest exception to this so-called 'Law' are human beings, themselves.  As we can see from our own experience, the richer and more bountiful our societies become the less we breed!  Falling birth rates in the west are becoming a real problem.  So much for those pesky little genes that the absurd 'Archbishop' Dawkins would have us believe control and drive us helpless humans along in the direction they insist upon.

But Behe had another argument to support his doubts concerning Darwinian natural selection, and Meyers's mention of that cunning little spider reminded me of it.  It is necessary to understand that most neo-Darwinists insist that natural selection works infinitesimally slowly through almost literally uncountable zillions of tiny 'improvements' passed on from generation to generation.  However, Behe, a micro biologist by 'trade' took a long hard look at the means by which these 'improvements' occurred.  Down at the micro-chemical level, a view not open to Darwin, a whole universe of complexity arises, and even the smallest of changes requires the simultaneous action by several components which must exist before the 'improvement' occurs.  His famous metaphor was the 'simple' mouse trap:

Having a mouse trap confers an advantage because you can rid your environment of a pest.  But in order to use it, it is necessary to have the component parts, a flat wooden base, a metal hammer, a spring (which is fairly complicated in its own right), a pressure-sensitive catch to hold the hammer in place, and finally, a metal bar that connects to the catch and holds the hammer back when it is charged.  Also, of course, you need several staples to hold all these components together.  Now, to have the advantage of this device it is absolutely necessary to have all the components and, moreover, they must be arranged in the 'correct' order.  A failure of any of these strict requirements means the trap will fail and, like Meyers's spider mentioned above, failure means death.  And there is one other critical factor to be taken into consideration.  If our mouse trap was produced by Darwinian evolution, then first, each of those components would have to be slowly evolved seperately over time despite the fact that none of them, on their own, provides the organism with the slightest advantage!  This tricky objection to natural selection Behe called "irreducible complexity".  Reading the occasional efforts by Darwinists to refute, or at least, to wriggle around, Behe's irreducible complexity argument has provided me with some sardonic sniggers over the years.

However, if Darwin's theory of evolution falls how are we to account for the changes over time that we see in living things? For that, somewhat hesitantly, we must turn to mathematics.  I, of course, failed my maths 'O'-level and my ignorance of the subject galls me to this day because, in some obscure way, I think the mysteries of life are probably to be found in mathematics.  I stress the word 'probably' because I suspect that probability plays a large part in the equation.  For a reasonably easy to understood explanation I would urge you to read Chaos and Life by Richard J. Bird.  He treats the multiple exchanges of genes which take place at every act of reproduction as a Turing machine operation working on the same basis as the iterated equations which form the basis of Chaos Theory.  If he is right then it will explain, in a sense, how a 'mouse trap', or at least, a major change of organism can come about almost instantaneously because the iteration of equations over 'zillions' of times does result in sudden and startling changes of outcome which cannot be forseen.  Also, of course, there is no purpose or aim, they just happen, and if they are 'successful' they will remain, and if not - not!  It is perhaps best summed by a phrase much used by 'the cousins' - shit happens, or to be more accurate, sometimes it's shit and sometimes it's peaches and cream, it all depends where and when it happens.  Or, to put yet another way, God, or the Intelligent Designer, does indeed play with dice.

Sorry to bore on at such length but as I wrote up above, it's all the fault of that Kevin Meyers!

 

What goes around comes around

Co-incidence is always odd, and sometimes very slightly disconcerting.  For example, yesterdy I read a book review on the twin subjects of altruism and selfishness, and then this morning, lo and behold, my e-pal Malcolm Pollack , pointing to another book, raises exactly the same subject.  I am pressed for time so I will not bore on for too long, instead I will urge you all to take a look at the two links and think your thoughts.

The first book, The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness, is concerned with the philosophical problems of altruism but also tells the tragic story of George Price, an extraordinary man of whom, hitherto, I had never heard.  He was a brilliant scientist who worled on the Manhatton project during the war and followed that by research in some of the most famous labs in the world.  He became obsessed with the problem of altruism partly because he was a fervent atheist and believer in Darwinian theory, and partly also because he was fascinated by religious belief and the part that it appeared to play in establishing moral codes.  He struggled through most of his life to establish a mathematical equation in order, I suppose, to square the circle of the altruism problem.  In the end he converted to evangelical Christianity and, believing that God had spoken directly to him, he insisted on giving away all of his material possessions to those, like down-and-outs, who had nothing.  He ended up homeless, broke and sick and finally ended his life by cutting his own throat.

Malcolm Pollack points us to a book by Sam Harris (also unknown to me) called The Moral Landscape which covers much of the same landscape as Price inhabited.  Indeed, 'landscape' is the appropriate word because, apparently, Harris views evolution as taking place in an area of peaks and valleys in which the traits of a species might allow it to live comfortably on a peak, but if the water starts to rise it will depend on its ability to swim (or in effect, to just scrape through) and reach a new higher and safer peak.

Two fascinating books by the sound of it.  I am away overnight, back in the morning.

 

A useless, trivial (pursuits) fact

I am not very well educated (yes, yes, don't bother!) but I am possessed of some spectacularly useless facts, you know, the sort of thing which if you drop them into the middle of a dinner party conversation it brings the entire thing to a dead stop as people are stumped for anything to say.  I mention this because my golden store of useless facts is about to be enriched further - so best not to invite me to dinner.  The reason is that I have just started a new book and, to paraphrase that awfully brave chap, Oates, who took a walk into the Antarctic night, 'I may be reading for some time'!  You see, this book, even in paperback version, is as big as a house brick.  Including the index it runs to 1,118 pages and it is absolutely cram-jam-packed full of facts.  I have given up going to the gym because just lifting and carrying this tome around gives me all the exercise I need.

It is called IDEAS: A History from Fire to Freud by Peter Watson.  It begins way back when the apes descended from the trees and some of them began to walk upright-ish.  Now, stand by because here comes my piece of useless information: did you know that one of the advantages of standing upright was that it allowed the descent of the larynx to a lower level in the throat which in turn, and over time, made it easier for vowel and consonent sounds to be articulated?  In addition, and as a bonus (presumably from the 'Intelligent Designer'!) the upright stance changed the pattern of breathing and thus the range of possible sounds.  Finally (ahem! not dropping off, are you?) eating meat was easier than chewing on tough, stringy, old plants and thus allowed the formation of new, more delicate, facial muscles which aided a wider range of movements for the tongue and this in turn helped in the formation of sounds which eventually would become speech.

Anything you wish to say?  No, thought not, that sort of useless information does tend to leave one gob-smacked, does it not?  And yet . . . and yet, it excites me enormously!  To think that all those miniscule, accidental(?) occurrences led eventually, over millions of years, to Mankind.  The danger, of course, is to use the 20/20 vision of hindsight and to assume that somehow it was all meant to be.  That is a question for another time but for now I am happy to hold Mr. Watson's comforting hand as he takes me step by faltering step through the history of ideas.  His breadth of knowledge is enormous but he carries it, and dispenses it, with ease bordering on elegance.  He treads carefully but surely through the inumerable squabbles of Academe and where doubt or controversy exist he spells it out. 

It is a terrific book and if you were lucky enough to be given some book vouchers for Christmas you could not do better than spending it on a copy of this - and then, you, too, could become an 'A1 crasher' like me and no-one will invite you to their boring dinner parties ever again so you can stay at home and read more books - hurrah!

"Bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space"

A few posts back I became over-excited by the creation of the universe!  I can't help it, the subject fascinates and enthrals me.  I'm sure many of you have had similar re-actions on a cold, clear night when you gaze at the galaxy and realise that everything you see is but a speck in the great order of the cosmos.  If you go further and take advantage of the many excellent writers who translate the mysteries of cosmologists, physicists and mathematicians into (relatively) plain English, you, too, will be gripped by the mind-boggling story (or, to be acurate, the stories) that unfolds.  It is intensely exciting, and was, until a dozen years ago, the most exciting thing I had ever discovered, er, that is, the most exciting thing after I had stumbled across the other end of the scale, quantum physics, which blew my little mind quite away!  That was about fifteen years ago, but twelve years ago I discovered the living cell - well, I didn't exactly discover it, you understand, but I read a book that told me about it and I wished I had the remnants of my mind back again so that it could be blown away yet again.

Before all of that, had you asked me what a living cell was I would have answered in a sort of paraphrase of the great German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, who described it as a "homogenous globule of protoplasm", or, a blob, as I would have put it! Well, here is a description of just one 'simple' action that takes place in a cell.  Do not try to follow the process in detail, it will make your brain ache, just skim read it and you will get the drift:

An RNA copy (called messenger RNA, or just mRNA) is made of the DNA gene coding for a protein that works in the cell's garbage disposal - the lysome.  We'll call the protein "garbagease".  The mRNA is made in the nucleus, then floats over to a nuclear pore.  Proteins in the pore recognise a signal on the mRNA, the pore opens, and the mRNA floats into the cytoplasm.  In the cytoplasm the cell's "master machines" - ribosomes - begin making garbagease using the information in the mRNA.  The first part of the growing protein chain contains a signal sequence made of amino acids.  As soon as the signal sequence forms, a signal recognition particle (SRP) grabs onto the signal and causes the ribosome to pause.  The SRP and associated molecules then float over to an SRP receptor in the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and stick there.  This simultaneously causes the ribosome to resume synthesis and a protein channel to open in the membrane.  As the protein passes through the channel and into the ER, an enzyme clips off the signal sequence.  Once in the ER, garbagease has a large, complex carbohydrate placed on it.  Coatomer proteins cause a drop of the ER, containing some garbagease plus other proteins, to pinch off, cross over to the Golgi apparatus, and fuse with it.  Some of the proteins are returned to the ER if they contain the proper signal.  This happens two more times as the protein progresses through the several compartments of the Golgi.  Within the Golgi an enzyme recognises the signal patch on the garbagease and places another carbohydrate group on it.  A second enzyme trims the freshly attached carbohydrate, leaving behind mannose-6-phosphate (M6P).  In the final compartment of the Golgi, clathrin proteins gather in a patch and begin to bud.  Within the clathrin  vesicle is a receptor protein that binds to M6P.  The M6P receptor grabs on to the M6P of the Garbagease and pulls it on board before the vesicle buds off.  On the outside of the vesicle is a v-SNARE protein that specifically recognises a t-SNARE on the lysome.  Once  docked, NSF and SNAP proteins fuse the vesicle to the lysome.  Garbagease has now arrived at its destination and can begin the job for which it was made.

Go that?  No, of course, you haven't unless you are a biochemist.  Suffice to say:

Garbagease travels a distance of about one ten-thousandth of an inch on its journey from the cytoplasm to the lysome, yet it requires the services of dozens of different proteins to ensure its safe arrival.

Tricky, or what?  Well, you may mutter to yourself, good job that doesn't have to happen to0 often:

The authentic cellular system is already in place, and every second of every day, this process happens uncounted billions of times in your body.

All of the above quotes are from Michael Behe's controversial book Darwin's Black Box [1] which I cannot recommend highly enough, particularly if you are a total layman like me.  Michael Behe is the man who invented the term irreducible complexity and drove several 'Darwinistas' quite mad, well, 'Archbishop' Dawkins hasn't beeen the same since!  In essence he provides a reductionist argument that certain utterly crucial processes in living things could not have arisen by tiny incremental changes over time because in their early stages none of the required bits offered, in Darwinian terms, any advantage to the creature concerned.  He put forward the hypothesis of an 'Intelligent Designer' and Dr. Dawkins fainted!

I think Behe is on to something with his notion of irreducible complexity which I think points not to an 'Intelligent Designer' but to a process of evolution very different from that which Darwin proposed.  I hardly need point out - again - that all pronouncements here at Duff & Nonsense are made on vestigial particles of knowledge and expertise!  Even so, I tell you one thing, there is not a more exciting, mind-blowing subject than cellular chemistry, er, except quantum physics, of course - oh, and not forgetting cosmology.  What a wondeful world!

[1]  You do not need to accept any of Behe's theories to enjoy and learn from his book.  He is a distinguished biochemist, himself, and he explains the processes in very clear layman's terms but then, in specially marked paragraphs (like the one I quoted above), he does become slightly more technical.  However, having marked these paragraphs he makes it clear that the layman can quite easily skip over them.  I cannot stress how fascinating he is on the micro-processes of the human body - for example, the means by which your finger stops bleeding when you cut it will leave you open-mouthed!

The 'missing link' is, er, still missing!

Our very own nationalised broadcasting company continues to fall for every (not very) cheap huckster in or out of town provided they have a minimal scientific fig leaf to hide their nakedness.  However, just in case, they have also dug up their own fossilised 'people's favourite', David Attenborough, to give the whole farrago a sheen of respectability as they seek to convince us that a skeleton of some rat-like creature is the 'missing link'.  You probably read the headlines to the story in recent weeks as the drip feed of pre-publicity was turned on, and you probably thought this skeleton had only recently been discovered.  Sucker!

"The specimen itself was not, in fact, dug up a couple of years ago. It was instead purchased, for a reported $1 million, from an obscure private collector, who had held it for at least 20 years. From the beginning, the "research program" was an exercise in entrepreneurship, with an investment to be recouped. In the end, direct participants in this circus included the History Channel, the BBC, Little Brown, Hachette Livre, and other mainstream media "content providers."

So says David Warren as he does his best to nip this piece of Darwinist propaganda in the bud.

"Dr. Jorn Hurum, the Norwegian pop paleontologist who is the brains behind this media splash, has been flashing pictures of the Mona Lisa and the Rosetta Stone alongside his Ida  [The cutesy name given to this 47m-years old 'rat']. He calls her, "The Holy Grail of Paleontology!" and "The Lost Ark of Archaeology!""

I call 'her', in Python language, an 'ex-rat' but fit for suckers to swallow whole at their leisure.  OK, OK, it's not a rat but it is not anything special either - except that the skeletal condition is remarkable given its age.  In order to keep just this side of the respectability line, the 'entrepreneurs' (shall we call them?) arranged for a proper scientific paper to be published in an obscure internet site "PLoS One".  According to Warren:

"Actually read that paper, and the hype evaporates. The authors methodically distance themselves from every sensational claim in the fine print:

"Note that Darwinius masillae, and adapoids contemporary with early tarsioids, could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved, but we are not advocating this here, nor do we consider either Darwinius or adapoids to be anthropoids."

This is one of several remarks disowning the very assertions they have associated themselves with by participating in the extravaganza. They want to have it both ways: to pocket the stardust, while protecting their academic reputations."

Well, I sort of admire their cheek, after all, they're only pulling the same sort of strokes I used to pull when I was flogging bits of 'shrapnel' and pretending they were cars!  However, I just wish that for once in a generation the BBC would get off its collective arse and actually do what they boast of doing all the time - investigative reporting.  Heh!  They couldn't investigate a dead rat!

Again (sighs!) I am indebted to the eagle-eyed Alan Sullivan.

That old devil Deogolwulf duffs up the Darwinistas!

Is there a pleasure more exquisite than watching the dim, the dumb and the daft wriggling on a barb of their own making?  Well, I suppose the sight of 'One-eyed Jock' waving to the crowd and then walking into a lampost would produce a much-needed belly laugh but it would lack the delicious cruelty and wit that Deogolwulf deploys to such effect against those buffoons who, whilst despising church-goers, never lose an opportunity to kneel and worship at the shrine of 'St. Charles of Evolution', particularly in this year of his 200th anniversary.  In his wicked, satirical  fable (wicked, that is, in the sense of modern 'youf-speak'), Deogolwulf shows what an awkward, uncomfortable prophet Darwin is to follow in this 'po-mo' age of ludicrous sentimentality and self-delusion. 

Not content with breaking the china at the Darwinistas' dinner party, in his preceding post he aims a kick or three at the furniture in the hallowed sanctuary of Lincoln-worship by pointing up the emptiness of that famous piece of 'Abe-made' codswallop "government of the people, by the people, for the people".  I trust that no-one will be cruel enough to show it to 'Oprah' who might turn a whiter shade of pale black and thus ruin his image.

Anyway, no-one does it better than Deogolwulf - he should fence for Britain with the rapier at the next Olympics - so I urge you all to go and read him!