The following is an exchange between my brother and I concerning Intelligent Design VS Evolution, which spread into the areas of Religion VS Science. I think it’s an important exchange because it illustrates:
1. There is more than one version of Intelligent Design, and allowing one requires allowing them all. ID proponents need to consider that my brother’s philosophy carries equal weight to theirs’.
2. The difference between empirically derived knowledge and the intuitively derived.
Comments from my other siblings and friends are also included for comic relief and relevant perspectives. The players are:
 Ryan |
Ryan – Your’s Trully. Aspiring author, exponent of science, and member mensa.
 Darin |
Darin/Para – My yoga-teaching, perpetually-meditating, quasi-hindu brother who lives in Washington DC.
 Jason |
Jason – My dancer, photographer, director brother in New York.
 Joanna |
Joanna – Friend of the family, also photographer and intelligent contributor to this discussion.
 Rachelle |
Rachelle – My graphics designer sister in New York.
Enjoy!
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Darin |
Bumper Sticker: “The theory of evolution was intelligently designed.”
God made man in His own image afterall 🙂
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Ryan |
Some more bumperstickers. I plan on ordering a few of these:
“Fossils Not Gospels”
“Intelligent Design is Stupid”
“Can I teach Evolution at your Church?”
Also, I’d like to warn people away from the “Flying Spaghetti
Monster” argument. Although it’s silliness is the same as Intelligent Design’s silliness, the ID’ers don’t see their own silliness.
A much better argument is if reality is so incredibly complex that it could only have been designed, then who designed the designer? This
is known as the “Intelligent Design of Intelligent Designers” argument and it is supported by the Mormon religion… So it’s an actual belief that would also have to be given time in schools should ID win.
Peace,
ry
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Joanna |
duh!
ok, so sure, so you believe in god.
then therefor he is.
i don’t, therefor he isnt’.
if you belive that god created, then he did.
if you believe in evolution, then that’s how it happened.
if you believe that god CREATED evolution, then there you have it.
teach kids that this thing called life HAPPENS and this is the
systematic way that it occurs and some of us think that god made it this way, and some of us
don’t believe in god, and some of us think that god just pooped us out seven days after he
ate too much mud – which is FINE, but you should know that darwin had some pretty good ideas
too – that way you won’t be THAT guy at the party…
really, just remind them to look both ways when they cross the street.
what brought this all up?
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Darin |
What brought it up is that I’m being interviewed by the Washington post for my ‘unique’ views on the intelligent design/evolution debate, which somehow they found on some internet survey I don’t remember filling out.
The idea for the bumper sticker hit me as the perfect summation of my
views on the subject, and I was curious to see how the older bro would re-act to it 🙂
Duh, I agree with you totally Joanna (especially about being THAT guy
at the party 🙂 ), and I think Ryan does to but he’s reacting more to the narrow-minded bigotry of religious zealouts who wouldn’t dare look at evolution as a valid theory; which is not my point at all (my point would be probably be to look out for the flip side of scientific bigotry). My point is that evolution is so perfect an answer to everything perceived by objective science, that it doesn’t by any means exclude the existence of an overarching intelligence guiding the grand scheme of things, if anything I think it strengthens the case for it.
There’s an interesting concept in Yoga called “Kundalini Shakti”,
literally the ‘coiled-force’, it represents the union of subjective and objective realities that creates the perceived universe. Implicit in this concept is that our subjective reality is far more real, and made of actual ‘stuff’, then we could begin to fathom until She awakens from Her slumber coiled at the base of our spine. Objective science is the attempted calcification of objective reality by getting all subjective realities to agree, but the force of Kundalini is such that it can bend and even break all objective rules because She is all-powerful, but She does so in a way that leaves everyone’s safely-guarded objective reality in tact. This is why whenever miracles occur, there must always be
some measure of doubt allowed to prevent the objective verification of the miracle– if there was ever ‘objective’ evidence that objective reality had been totally breached, all of our Kundalini shakti’s would wake up from our slumber of self-identification with a small limited reality into the Truth of our limitless reality when we self-identify with the all Universal One, or God. The result would be pure chaos and disintegration of the fabric of the universe as we know it. The Goddess, being too wise for that and too caring for Her children who aren’t ready for that shock to their egos, always allows room for doubt whenever miracles are claimed to have happened so that people can remain identified with their limited selves if they choose to.
Even the ancient Egyptians recognized the power, and danger, of
Kundalini rising pre-maturely– on the holiest of holy days, a priest
would be selected to enter the inner sanctum sanctorum of the temple in order to have the direct vision of God. The priest would be sent in through the doors with a rope tied around his ankle and covered in
bells. The other priests would listen, and if they heard the bells
ring, they would know he had fallen dead from the vision and would pull him back out by the rope.
The subjective reality is just as profound as the objective when you
realize that you really are the Divine One that has chosen to limit
Itself into a small personality in order to experience this play of
worldly existence. But just imagine if even one person suddenly
realized this fully and had the ability to project her thoughts
immediately into reality! This is why I say ‘evolution was
intelligently designed’, you have a group of people out there, God
bless the scientists, who are trying to establish exactly what is truth through objective measuring. Never realizing, of course, that as the Supreme One, they are creating the very explanations which will simultaneously strengthen their resolve of ‘accurate perception’ of the universe and leave just enough mystery and questions open so that the matter will never be satisfactorily explained away (so that a lucky few scientists can go on to the more important questions of
self-realization, “who am I?”).
I tend, based on my personal experience, to agree with the ancient
Rishis who claim that Truth can only be known by looking within.
Looking within is the only real way to accelerate one’s own evolution.
Love you all
p
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Joanna |
ah ha!
just ask jason and my roommate alan about “the haunting of emily rose” or ask your moma about the book “the spirit catches you and you fall down”…
the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if you were possesed by the
devil or suffer from epilepsy OR if you were blessed by spirits – sometimes you NEED scientific medicine to stay alive, but since life for a lot of us is defined by our acknowledgement of spirituality, then staying alive in the “scientific sense” isn’t really staying alive at all…
i have a head cold so i don’t know if this makes sense.
basically i think half of everyone is crazy, abortion should remain
legal and they should never have made terry schivo’s (?) death suck a fucking media circus…
may we agree to never agree,
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Ryan |
My thoughts:
1. Yes, there is definately a scientific bigotry at work in the
Intelligent Design VS Evolution debate. That’s because science deals
with Empirical reality, logical conjecture based on overwhellming
evidence.
2. Intelligent Design and that stuff the Darin/Para entity are talking about are neither falsifiable nor provable. Therefore they have absolutely no place in Scientific debate. Science has a moral obligation to reject such ideas.
3. ID and Darin/Para’s stuff are PHILOSOPHY. They belong in a humanities classroom, not a science class. On a personal level, I believe in reincarnation and the basic spiritualities common to all religions, but on a social level I keep those purely speculatory beliefs out of equation because they do no good.
4. Everyone I know who’s right always agrees with me.
So Thpppt on you!
ry
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Darin |
Science as a “view of no view” has an obligation to reject ideas that
are neither falsifiable nor provable. Tell me where this view exists
or occurs anywhere in the universe and I’ll agree then that ID shouldn’t even be discussed. But because this view of no view DOESN’T exist anywhere in nature but only in the imagination of scientists trying to objectify the un-objectifiable, it’s actually reflecting an overwhelming resistance to ground one’s scientific inquiry into subjective relevance.
The scientific mind doesn’t have to be limited to objective inquiry,
and just because something isn’t falsifiable or provable objectively
doesn’t mean that it’s not falsifiable or provable subjectively. It’s precisely this absolute terror Western “scientists” have of studying subjective realities with the same tools we use to study objective reality that causes Western science to ignore the whole while examining the part.
Medicine is the biggest and most gut-wrenching example of this, but
what you’re claiming to be “philosophy” is simply science applied inward. It’s a simple matter of ego and master. A western scientists proudly claims, “the human mind has made up God to explain the universe, but see here! I can explain all without the need of God! All experienced aberrations to my one and only reality must be proven beyond a doubt to have occurred before I will let go of my model of the universe and I will absolutely and starkly oppose anyone that propones the concept of multiplicity of reality.” A subjective scientist observes, “I have no evidence besides my society’s pre-disposition to believe that observer and observed are different, indeed all that I perceive could in fact be nothing more than a reflection of my own mind. Is it really that these perceived laws of physical reality exist independent of me, or is that because my mind has made up these laws in the first place that it is my own mind that can bend and change these laws according to my will?
Only my testing within can tell me, and what I find for myself cannot
possibly convince anyone else until they do the same inward testing
because there can be no objective trail to my subjective science, but
should I let that stop me?”
All science was created to fill some purpose, without purpose guiding
it, science becomes nothing more than philosophy. The theory of
evolution is such a case, and why it’s such a hot spot for debate is
because practically the only reason that evolution is espoused is to
try and impose some philosophical rhetoric about how either God doesn’t exist or how because evolution is the ‘natural’ way of things (remember the danger involved in writing down what is Nature’s law) that we should try to conform to Nature and act in the name of evolution (which is basically creating a god out of evolution).
So yes, to waylay the danger of some evangelical scientist espousing
evolution as the one and only truth and therefore we need to engineer
our species to create a super-race of humans in order to best further
propagation of the species, I damn well think we need to teach
Intelligent Design side long with evolution, and I maintain my view
that the two are not mutually exclusive at all.
The Ryan/Minister of Evolution entity is getting awfully re-active and defensive about this, no?
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Ryan |
You know Darin, you sound more like a Republican every day. Espousing your “How do you know?” post-modernist nonsense regarding science.
Evolution makes absolutely no philosophical claims whatsoever and you
are manufacturing a straw-man by saying that Evolutionary Theory is
some fascist school of thought meant to deprive all the spiritualists
of their god(s). Evolution is a process infered from empirical
observations of the fossil record and experimentation.
That’s all. If you choose to believe some invisible and otherwise
completely undetectable entity guided that process, then fine, but
keep it out of our science textbooks. To force the Scientific community to give equal weight to every silly unprovable bit of religious ideology would grind scientific progress to a halt.
Yes, I know it’s unfair that Biology Professors aren’t including
footnotes about your Moon-Goddess-Kundilini-Thingy hypothesis in
their textbooks, but that’s because it is, as you have noted, a complete fabrication of your imagination–pardon me, “inward testing.” I find completely different hypotheses when I look inward. So what criteria are we going to use to determine who’s inwardly-originating spirituality is the right one? I just imagined my god kicking your god’s ass, prove it didn’t happen.
There is philosophy and there is science, and they can coexist for
the very reason that they are mutually exclusive. You’re fantasy world can exist in your head right next to the empirical reality we all share. I won’t dispute the validity of your personal hallucinations. You can have them.
Yes, reality is subjective. GET OVER IT!!! We’re not going to invest
millions of dollars into Government studies on how to harness the
kundilinininy energy of your yoga-students to procure the
Earth-Mother’s favor. We ARE going to spend millions researching how bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics to produce more effective
medicines.
That’s because Science works for EVERYONE. Gravity might possibly be
something I’ve completely made up in my head, but then it’s also
something EVERYONE has made up in their heads. Christian, Hindu,
Athiest, Para-Worshipper, and “other” must all deal with the same
law.
Gravity may be a harsh, oppressive mistress, but no amount of “inward
testing” is going to let you escape it. It’s sad, I know, there’s
nothing romantic about worshipping the “Theory of Gravity.”
It’s like Carl Sagan said, “When you are sick, you can pray or take
medicine.”
Evolution has weeded out all those who chose to pray… well…
almost… You might be on the list. : )
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Ryan |
BOO-YAH!!! Do you hear that deafening silence??? That’s the sound of
Ryan, Supreme Pundit of Scientific Rationality having just
ideologically spanked Para/Darin’s wussy-little-make-believe
spirituality!!! BAM!!! KA-BAM!!!
Gimmie an “R”! Gimmie a “Y”! Gimmie an “A”! Gimmie an “N”! What’s that spell? RY-AN!!! RY-AN!!! RY-AN!!! WOO-HOO!!!
Score one more for Scientific Progress baby!!! BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!
Ryan
PS – Can someone (Para) forward my comments back to me? I want to bask in my own glory–Umm… I mean, review them for logical consistency.
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Jason |
Do you jerk off while reading your own emails that are sent back to
you. Or no, let me guess you make whatever chick your banging wear a paper bag over their head and you tape a xerox picture of your face to it, or no!, wait I know, you hit all day on 16 year old chicks who think your extensive knowledge of Star Trek is just sooo sexy. Let me warn you about something, your excessive geek nature might make people question your validity in scientific debate. And besides, you may have won the debate Ryan but when Darin and I are at the Gates of Heaven I really wonder who’s going to be welcomed through that door. You might have math and science and star trek but we got Allah and ain’t nobody who can touch dat. Tonight I’m going
to pray for you.
-Nation of Islam
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Darin |
Sorry about the silence, I actually have a life that sometimes takes
me away from the debate circle.
Let me put it this way, you remember the 100 monkeys phenomenon that
Mom told us all about growing up? So one monkey learns that if she washes her mango before eating it that it tastes much better, she gets less parasites etc. She teaches another monkey, and by the time the 100th monkey learnes it suddenly ALL the monkeys on the island KNOW this. That WASN’T just natural selection that taught all those monkeys to wash their mangoes at once, it was reflective of a COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS which guided their EVOLUTION. I don’t question the fundamental tenets of evolution because it’s just simple reasoning– things die when stresses are placed on their system and then they refine their traits to survive. I do however question anyone that says that’s all there is to it, because we have no way of establishing how long the evolution process takes, science says millions of years in order for the right RANDOM differences in genetic code– mutations– to appear in the gene pool and to provide the select genes necessary to survive. The calculations are beyond modern technology’s capabilities to determine what the chances are that the world turned out the way it did based on RANDOM mutation alone, but I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around the question of how, if these mutations occur so rarely, and sometimes changes in the survival demands of the environment can occur quite rapidly, how on earth do species make the changes to their genetic code fast enough in order to keep pace? It doesn’t make sense, my guess is that the chances of it, if we could calculate it, would be astronomical.
The hundred monkey phenomenon gives us at least an external objective clue that there’s more to the story than dumb genetics without intelligence motivating the changes in those genetics. AND everyone who does the INWARD testing I was talking about DISCOVERS THE SAME THING. Only flippant asses who haven’t done that inward self-testing are able to say things like “my god just beat up yours” but those who KNOW, KNOW that that person is just full of shit. Those who KNOW also KNOW when someone else has done that testing and that inward work, because there is an OBJECTIVE quality to the world within.
The only difference between external and internal science is that external science validates with tools that measure the external world, internal science validates with EXPERIENCE and so there will naturally be a split that occurs in understanding of the universe between those that have done the testing and those that haven’t. This is why there’s the tradition of respect for sages and rishis who have achieved such a great level of understanding, because their understanding is unknowable until we too reach their level of spiritual achievement. Now I’ve been debating the issue of evolution vs. ID, if the question is what we should teach in schools, I agree with what Joanna said at the beginning of this– you teach evolution, teach that there are people that think there is more to the story than this, and teach your kids to look both ways when crossing the street. Because evolution, if you understand it as a true scientist, has absolutely nothing to do with fate/free-will, nothing to do with the existence of God, and nothing to do with philosophy. It’s a simple observation of a natural process, and it’s not even that USEFUL an observation on the practical level at that, but the problem is that the temptation to extrapolate that rather simple and mundane theory onto larger philosophical issues is SO GREAT that we end up having to deal with dogmatic assholes that say their science-god is supreme and evolution is just the sword needed to cut down all faith.
But the theory of evolution is not the whole picture, and in fact, if you want to know the truth of it, it’s only one small part of the Law of Karma which is the real reason anything ever happens. Unfortunately, the split between the people that have done the inward testing and those that haven’t is still so large that we’ll never get the Western world to understand this law. But just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean that it’s not law, and the Law of Karma is one part ID, one part evolution. If you want to continue to play devil’s advocate then yes that split in our understanding of the universe will continue this debate indefinitely, if you want to know the TRUTH again I suggest to look within. And if it weren’t for those that are praying constantly, we all would have perished long ago.
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Ryan |
Believing in the “100th Monkey” phenomenon requires overlooking one
very important fact: NOT ALL OF THE MONKEYS ADOPTED THE BEHAVIOR!
According to Keyes, the scientist who observed the phenomenon in the
1950s, monkeys above a certain age did not aquire the habit of washing their sweet potatoes:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC09/Myers.htm
BAM!!! Once again we find religious nuts like Para the Christ will
willfully ignore empirical reality so they can go live in the land of
make-believe with Mr. Rogers. Ha! Ha! What a dip!
What bothers me about this willful ignorance is that you are snubbing
your nose at a much more incredible phenomenon: A Paradigm Shift in a
Non-Human Species. It’s proof that these apes have culture! Isn’t that amazing??? Doesn’t that make you want to preserve their species from extinction so we can learn more about how their culture evolved into our culture???
To me, this is a hundred thousand times more fascinating a process than your explanation that it was just magic. Magic’s appeal lies in its romanticism and its laziness. The “100th Monkey” phenomneon promises a shortcut to enlightenment; in contrast, a substansive paradigm shift across a species takes time and effort. Convincing our fellow humans requires effort and they often don’t cooperate… it’s easier to believe you can imagine all the world’s problems away in your head… Like sleeping for two days while your siblings rebuild mom’s house.
It wasn’t “dumb genetics” or “random mutations alone” that produced the paradigm shift in the ape-culture. A few monkeys developed a useful meme, washing potatoes, and that meme propagated. Memes propagate faster than genes, that’s why humans evolved so quickly. Medicine, cars, and other empirically developed concepts are good ideas and succeed in our culture.
If all we have to do is dream of a better world to make it happen, then why hasn’t that happened? If it’s really so simple, then why hasn’t some culture somewhere discovered and exploited this fact? A culture capable of harnessing the COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE would dominate the world! Apes could figure out how to wash potatoes, but they can’t imagine the potatoes washing themselves? What gives?
If the universe is the result of some collective culture, then why do
the planets orbit the sun in elliptical paths? Two hundred years ago,
all astronomers believed they orbited in perfect circles. Why didn’t
the universe change to fit their beliefs?
If we are directing our own evolution then why do we have appendixes?
Why are our teeth too many and too big for our mouths? Why do we have
so many back problems? Evolution explains all of these things. What’s
your excuse? “God’s mysterious plan”???
I will keep repeating this fact: There is NOTHING OBJECTIVE about the
world inside your head. Your thoughts and perceptions are SUBJECTIVE.
In an entire world of people who have looked inside themselves for the answers in some way or another, you have the audacity to say that you are the only one who has figured it out.
That’s called a messiah complex. It’s the same load of crap Born-Again Christians push on us. “How do you know Jesus is Lord and I’ll burn for eternity if I don’t accept him as my savior?” “Because you need to accept him as your lord and savior and then you’ll see!” Thanks, but I’ll pass on that kool-aid.
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Darin |
I’m sorry I couldn’t catch what your point was in the middle of the
over-reactions, personal attacks, and religion bashing. Let me see if I can break it down:
1. You should have read that link more carefully, the author didn’t
explain how that washing-technology meme JUMPED to the other islands,
did the monkeys learn to swim? Your author writes it off to “other
cultural studies” to illumine, but it seems to me that that was the
biggest part of the miracle our Ken Keyes was fortunate enough to bear witness to in those islands of Japan.
2. If I want to learn about how my culture evolved from land than I’ll look to the scriptures of my ancestors and not to a bunch of apes. Not that you couldn’t, I just think it would take a hell of a lot longer to catch up to the past six thousand years where everything interesting has happened than from millions of years ago. Yes, it is amazing about the apes, not surprising though that we underestimate them– that’s what scientists do best is think everything is stupider than them.
3. You are basing your belief on the theory of evolution on nothing
more than faith:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f01/web3/baird.html
This article does a really good job of breaking down the probability of Neo-Darwinism being accurate and to summarize it’s NOT a very likely theory statistically. There have been all kinds of attempts to patch it up, but nothing substantial has been established. Now I’ve said from the beginning that I think the *process* of evolution is undebatable, of course Nature works on survival of the fittest. I just don’t believe for a second that our world’s history is anywhere near as simple and banal as what the collective group of scientists believe. I’ll pass on that Darwinism kool-aid, thanks 🙂
4. If you want to know the truth, in the beginning was the WORD. It’s the word that is all-powerful, and in cases of debate the universe bases it’s decision on which of the two speakers possess the most MERIT.
This is why science has never been able to disprove the events told in the Ramayana (which is said to have taken place 1.8 million years ago when a race of half-monkeys appeared out of nowhere on Earth to herald the coming of Lord Rama, in that story these half-monkeys built a bridge from India to Lanka using boulders and mountains, which we’ve since located using satellite imagery!
http://india.krishna.org/Articles/2002/10/002.html ) and why when
Buddha said, “the smallest unit of time is called a kalapa, and there are one billion kalapas in the blink of an eye”, we scientists think he must be just being poetic, but then we discover OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS LATER the smallest unit of time is about one billion per second! The universe bends to accommodate the words of the Rishis and the sages, it often shits on scientists just to knock them down a couple of notches on the ego pole. THAT was why we had to have the Copernican revolution. THAT was also why relativistic physics had to come about– before the photo-electric phenomenon scientists thought that they had everything in physics figured out!! THEN BAM, the universe tells them that not only does your unique perspective on a situation CREATE A PHYSICS RELATIVE TO YOUR REALITY but also that among all these realities ONLY LIGHT REMAINS ABSOLUTE. But we’ll never ever suffer a Copernican revolution if we look to the words of the Rishis, because the universe respects them too much to prove them wrong ever.
5. I don’t remember claiming to have it all figured out. In fact, I
was just claiming that evolution doesn’t have it all figured out either and that was why we need to leave the debate open. And when thousands of years of my ancestors’ work on themselves has been RECORDED and PASSED DOWN as LIVING KNOWLEDGE, you can bet I’m going to make every effort to receive that knowledge. The fact that these practices and techniques have stayed alive for so long belies the simple dismissal that it’s just rumor or misperception. Miracles are commonplace in India, they’re rarely questioned because there are so many stories of what happen to people who question them with scientific pomp! But whether or not they’re ‘real’ doesn’t change the fact that for thousands of years people have been replicating the science of that knowledge and producing the same results. It’s unscientific to dismiss that.
6. Why hasn’t some culture somewhere discovered and exploited this
fact? How do you think India got her independence from the British?
Or how it stays relatively unharmed from Pakistan? Just think: in the last war seventeen Sabre jets were shot down by ONE anti-aircraft gun. Is that really possible? Or the sinking of the submarine Ghazi in Vishakhpatnam harbor– random intelligence leaked the presence of the submarine in the area, but they had no idea where the damn thing was but with RANDOM depth charges (try to conceive how large the sea is) they sunk it! A formation of Patton tanks crossing the Pakistani border get stuck in mud (by a fortuitous and unusually hard rain the week before) and were ruined by iron bars locals jammed into their treads– iron bars taking out tanks! Nature is very kind to India because she harbors the worlds greatest saints, but all of these events are described in the scriptures as being possible through a yogic technique called Prakriti Siddhi.
Now all this said and done, the last question I want to address is why we have so many back problems– it’s because we’re not doing yoga. THAT’s a meme that will never die. 🙂
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Jason |
You wanna hear somethin?
I have bad news for the two of you.
And I swear to god this is the truth (Darin I have faith and Ryan I
have empirical evidence).
You remember that 8 car pile up that Ryan caused when driving home from Salem Highschool?
Well you guys didn’t survive that accident.
Nope.
Instead mom and I decided to hook your brains up to a matrix database
similar to the realm in which you were living before. Then we
literally rented out your asses for the gay pride parade in Chelsea NY, and that’s how mom paid for mine and Rachelle’s tuition.
So while this may be bad news for you, I would like to thank you (and
your asses) for paying for my tuition.
You guys were great brothers for the most part, and Ryan I’m sorry I
pissed on your face when you were playing atari but Darin was being a total dick and was trying to force putanjilies down my throat. Darin sorry I destroyed your intricate geometry project but I was trying to teach you a lesson in impermanence not to mention Ryan told me to do it, he said something about having empirical evidence about the fourth episode of star trek and it’s relation to how Papa Smurf **explicative deleted** “My Little Pony” and that it in fact gave birth to Gargamel. Go figure.
However Mom and I would like for the two of you to continue on as we
are now cashing in on a new reality series entitled “Brothers Brains Battle to the Boney Bottom of Beligerent Berievity” and it’s a huge hit on Fox.
The even more sad truth is that…well….Ryan I made the word
“empirical” up and planted it in your brain. The truth is that was the name of my Level 10 Fighter in Dungeons and Dragons. I just thought it sounded cool, I never thought you would go so far with it….but you know what? It’s kind of a metaphor becuase now he’s a god. Isn’t life deep sometimes.
And Darin……well….”Para” was a glitch when mom was trying to
upgrade your mainframe. You see, Tinky Winky jumped on the keyboard when it was downloading and that’s where you got your name. In some ways it is “divine” because it was, afterall your mother who made you and it was the world giving you a new name (which by the way she still cries herself to sleep every night thinking that you renounced the name you were meant to have).
This made her so upset that she and I generated a fake religion based
on monkies and how they created the universe.
However to spark some interest in each one of your otherwise vegatative being, they did uproot some lost scrolls and found out that “Alien VS. Predator” is actually the true story of how the earth began.
Go figure.
Oh, well.
I’ll let you guys go back to your arguing, and make up some more
cockamany shit for the two of you. Right now I’m planning Darin’s trip to India. As it stands it involves a shit flinging mongoose, four pints of hennesey, and lots and lots of parasites.But don’t worry Para it’s all fun in the end and one parasite grows big
and becomes your best friend, besides I think I might plant another 58 year old woman who’s twat is looser than Elizabeth Taylor’s in a small town known as “Elizabeth City” only she’s going to be twice as hot, thrice as dorky, and Ryan is going to fall in love with her only to find out she’s a “he”.
ciao, I have run to a press conference.
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Ryan |
Religious attacks? What’s wrong with religious attacks? Why is it when someone says they believe in Evolution it’s okay to call them bigots, as you did, but when someone says they want their hindu gods forced on school children, we’re supposed to respect that because your beliefs are sacred? If you want to force your beliefs on others through governmental mandates then we should have an open debate concerning the merit your beliefs.
You’re the one who didn’t read the article. Keyes’ “proof” was
spurrious at best (and why didn’t all the monkeys learn the
behavior???). Why is it whenever people can’t explain something
logically they always resort to “magic?” How incredibly egocentric of
him, because he didn’t see the apes learn the behavior, it must be
magic.
Darin: “We don’t know where humans came from, so it must be Magic!”
Scientist: “Actually, we have a fossil record dating back 3.5 billion
years showing how life evolved to become us.”
Darin: “But you’re missing a fossil here. So it must be magic!”
Scientist: “Okay, we found that fossil.”
Darin: “But you’re missing a fossil here. So it must be magic!”
(Repeat infinitely)
Scientists underestimate the animal kingdom? Scientists are the only
ones arguing that humans are part of the animal kingdom. While
religious zealots are constantly pushing the idea that humans are
something other, Scientists aren’t just telling us we evolved from
apes, they are telling us WE ARE APES. Meanwhile, religious nuts are pushing
this anthropodenial meme, arguing for human exceptionalism that isn’t
there. You are a species of ape. Get over it.
In the beginning there was no WORD. Time began at the Big Bang. 6,000
years of scripture? Is that all you’ve got? I’ve got 15 BILLION years
worth. 250,000 years of that includes the human race and it’s epic
journey across the entire Earth. India? Is that all you’ve got? I’ve
got from here to the edge of the Universe, which Science has shown us
and now speculates on other Universes out there.
How did the Indians eject the British occupation? Through passive
resistance and you disrespect Ghandi’s magnificent accomplishments by
claiming it was magic. What protects India from Pakistan? The United
Nations, which has argued a growing peace between the two nations. Not magic. Rational people, not god, was the solution to these dilemmas.
I would be a lot more impressed with India’s gods if they didn’t have
to kill so many people to get their way. You know what would be more
impressive than shooting down fighter jets and mining the oceans with
bombs? If they were able to avoid conflict altogether. Every military
regime claims to have god on their side. Suicide bombers, terrorists,
the IRA, and Indians who slaughter hundreds muslims all have a god who guides their hands.
Why are you still slaughtering entire villages of Muslims? Because of
your gods. We don’t see scientists going to war over competing
hypotheses of evolution. We see scientists arguing for world peace,
environmental sustainability, and forward thinking. Science has
demonstrated empirically that it has the moral high ground over
religion’s violence and insanity.
You sort of answered my one question about elliptical versus circular
orbits. You said, “the universe bases it’s decision on which of the two speakers possess the most MERIT” Apparently the Universe thinks
scientists possess the most merit because we’re the ones now
controlling all knowledge. Maybe you should meditate on what you might have done to fall out of favor with the Universe considering how inneffectual your faith has become in the world. It might have
something to do with all those muslims you guys slaughter.
The satelite picture was very cool; although, I found the article’s
comment about archeologists not being interested in the bridge kind of odd. Do you believe archeologists are not interested in archeology?
Why must science disprove the events told in the Ramayana? Science has no obligation to disprove anything. When someone makes the outrageous claim that an invicible being existed a long time ago, the onus is on that person to PROOVE their hypothesis, not for the rest of the world to disprove it. That was my point about my god beating up yours, PROOVE IT, don’t tell me to disprove it.
The myth of the monkey race was very cool also and probably reveals
something about our origins. The Indonesians have a long standing myth about a race of little people who live on their island, and now we know they did exist. Scientists are always looking to myths for explanations of things. Consider their ongoing attempts to recreate Archimedes Death Ray, but we have to remember that
these myths were orally-traditioned down many generations and begun by people who had very little understanding of their world–people who could easily find “magic” in everything.
You say that evolution is useless, but it explains all the oddities of human “design.” Your religion couldn’t do that. You don’t know why our bodies are imperfect… that’s useless.
That article you posted was pretty funny in the sense that’s it’s the
same Neo-Creationist arguments that more reveals the author’s ignorance of Evolutionary theory than disproves anything. First let’s refute his ignorance of eye evolution.
…and that’s just one tiny part of it!
Secondly, let’s consider 3.5 billion years. That’s not enough time for life to evolve??? 3.5 BILLION YEARS!?!? You don’t have enough time to bother understanding evolution because you’re already swamped with the last 6,000 years of history and yet you’re arguing that evolution couldn’t happen in 583,333 times that amount of time??? Wow. It must take a lot of faith to believe that.
What this all boils down to is where you think perfection lies.
Religionists believe that perfection belongs with ancient masters,
invincible beings who had it all figured out (but somehow went
extinct?), and we must adhere to what they discovered to attain
perfection. Religionists believe we must go backward to find the
answers.
Scientists believe perfection lies in the future. That it is
something we must discover, a big picture we are tasked with trying to comprehend. Science is a voyage of constant discovery that believes things will always improve with progress. Science sees a better world ahead of us, not behind. Otherwise what are we living for?
Ryan “Super Science Ninja Squad” Somma
|
Rachelle |
i completely agree with jason.
|
Joanna |
ok,
usually i follow jason’s example and attempt to debaucherize the
conversation, however this isn’t the time for that…
i think this is a great debate and conversation about the place of
religion in education, but some of you have been saying (in my opinon) some rather disturbing things.
let me first say that i believe religion and specifically, the
discussion of the creation myth (term coined by socialogists, anthropologists, scientists, etc.) should be introduced and discussed in education. it belongs in the context of history, social studdies, etc… not in the science classroom. i am not claiming that one (religion or science) is more important than the other, i am of the opinion (and don’t feel the need to explain) that they are two different discussions – interelated in some cases, and not in
others. there is, however, a cross-over when you are discussing
psychology and medicine and the relation of the two – i think linda would certainly agree with this – this is a great place to bring religon, spirituality, and science to the table together.
secondly, i have to say that darin’s reasoning for why he believes that the creation myth of hinduism to be absolute and true are upsetting to me. (don’t worry para-chop, you’ve still got great hair)
first of all, hinduism is just as destructive as any other major
religion. just like in the US, hinduism and indian society are inter-related. i am unable to go into details here, but there have been just as many examples of wars fought with muslims (read up on the history of india and the ottoman empire). hinduism is also the facilitator of one of the most intense caste system – it’s far outlasted most other social systems of it’s kind. remember old Ghandi? the poverty issue in india is HUGE – they are well on their way to becoming industrialized (see american technological outsourcing) but the gap between the rich and poor is not closing. (sounds a little like america, huh?) i will say that unlike the nation of islam or judiasm or christianity, hinduism does allow for some very positive opportuinities for women (they are recognized as spiritual leaders) but it also one of the most oppressive societies as well. i just had a very long, and unrelated conversation with my mother – who’s work at the moment is specifically about this very subject – and she had a lot to say about the treatment of woman in Indian/hindu society. it’s not pretty. want to read up on it? go to the World Bank’s website or she also suggested looking at USAID – you can see examples of real projects and real issues. she’s been especially concerned with the issue of child marriage – she had some statistic about how 60% of girls are married before they reach sexual maturity. hmmn.
secondly, i have issues with the blind appropriation of another
religoin and culture. (darin, i’m not suggesting that this is the case with you, i think it’s just an important discussion) american’s did this with native american culture. all of us have owned dream catchers or a poster quoting chief big bear and his spiritual beliefs. but how many of us really know or are educated about those belief systems. how many americans understand the vast differences between tribes and their own spiritual beliefs? what about the negative sides? does this fascination with cultural icons really mean that americans were aware or cared about the current living conditions of these people? again, something to discuss with my dear mother, she spent the better part of a year working with the cheyenne (?) tribes in the canyon deshay – new mexico/arizona – and this cultural/spiritual appropriation was a big topic. i think this a good refrence for what is happening with the westernization of yoga and hinduism.
finally, i think it’s a little condescending to take another religion
or culture and profess it’s greatness and truth when there is no such
thing as a utopian society or religion. show me a working example of one, and i’ll take it all back. by doing this, you are taking only the parts you agree with and leaving the rest behind – this does not allow for change, for growth, for evolution nor, in my opinion, for enlightenment.
i respect fully the adoption of religious and spiritual practises -but this respect comes from the knowledge that this adoption is one born of critical thought, acceptance of subtle interpretation, utmost respect for OTHER beliefs and disagreements, and the knowledge that no belief or practise comes without it’s own crisis and therefor should never be thought of
as absolute truth.
(this email is full of holes, but i think you get my point)
darin, when in india, i hope you can maintain the gift of an
“outsider’s eye” – it is a gift…
|
Ryan |
Oh! Snap! Damn! Even the Dali Lama agrees with me!!!
That’s right the Dali “14th Mother-Fuckin’ Incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion” Lama says that when Science and Religion conflict, go with science!!! BAM!
Gee, why didn’t his “inward testing” find what Darin found? Mr. Lama
would totally open a can of spiritual whup-ass on Darin in a battle of enlightenment and piledrive his beginner-level divinity ass into the ground! Why didn’t he say anything about magical monkeys and invincible indians? Because he defers to science!
Of course, the Dali Lama still has much to learn. He doesn’t fully
grasp science, and appears to admit the failings of Buddhist thought
against Science’s supreme wisdom. After all, he’s only been alive a
mere 14 lifetimes as a single person, science has the collective
intelligence of the entire human race for all time.
Spanked!!!
Ryan “Super Science Ninja Squad” Somma
|
Darin |
Let me set some things straight:
I am NOT a Hindu, and, like most Hindus, HATE the word Hindu. The
Vedas have never once said that other forms of belief are wrong, if anything the Vedas categorize the many types of belief in scientific structure and tell you what to expect by following different beliefs.
The “Hindus” that go to war with Muslims are ignoramus’s acting under their own pretentions and nowhere are they backed by scripture or sagacious testimony. THE single most quoted passage of the Vedas is “TRUTH IS ONE BUT SAGES CALL IT BY DIFFERENT NAMES”. Any idiot who claims his god is telling him to go to war to destroy someone else’s god has obviously missed the central teachings of their ancestors. The Vedas extol the Goddess/Divine Mother as the highest form of
Divinity. The caste system was a system that naturally evolved out of millions of years of living in a society that understood the deep
complexities of the Law of Karma. The sexism and classism you’re
referring to are perversions of these institutions and I totally agree that they should be ended. The Vedas come down to us from a time of Utopia, known as Sat Yuga, the age of Truth over 2 million years ago. Gradually, though, the purity of this society eroded with corruption until we have the awful mess that we have today. We can’t go backward, I agree, but we need to know where we come from before deciding how to move forward.
As for appropriating cultures, many many Indians have told me that I
know more about the Vedas than they do, many Desi’s (American born
Indians) have told me that I know more about their culture than they do even though I’ve never been to India. I’m not saying I’m an expert, but what I’m saying is that with animism (the view that everything is spirit, that everything is alive and conscious with a tangible personality or self-quality) there are certain EMPIRICAL truths about the world of spirit when you turn your third eye to it. But only those who have cultivated the VISION needed to see and interact with this world are privy to have access to those empirical observations. This is why two entirely different people with different socio-cultural backgrounds can perform the same ritual and get the same result. This is how medicine men cultivated herbal remedies by learning the empirical character of spirit of the many plants. If I seem to be favoring the knowledge from this region of the world over others, well it’s because it’s the OLDEST in the world and the most STRUCTURED and TESTED (well, maybe Tibetans have done a better job structuring and organizing it, but even they derive their religious sources from the Vedas). It’s not that I’m appropriating culture, I’m interested in Truth and followed the well-spring back to the SOURCE.
Creation myth of Hinduism???????????? This was RYAN’S CREATION, where did I talk about the Hindu myth of creation??????? When we look to the stars, the universe tells us that they all seem to have come from a single point and are on trajectories away from that point, the universe tells us that it started with a BIG BANG. The oldest book in the world, the Rig Veda, starts with “OM I meditate on fire”, every moment starts with a big bang, this is the ultimate confirmation of our experience of creation! The Vedas talk about many different events throughout the universe’s history, all of these events are said to have actually happened and they list when they happened in so many millions of years ago, but most importantly these stories are symbolic and LIVING happening every moment. The Vedic view of the universe is actually much grander than this, a single ‘day’ of Brahman being 4.32 billion years.
We obviously can’t teach this in the classroom, that wasn’t my point.
My hope was to try to illumine the validity of the spiritual scientist, and how that view resolves the evolution vs. ID debate because it says they’re BOTH responsible for how creation happens. But unless we accept that free will is a force alongside with fate, will never be able to figure out the Earth’s TRUE history because our limited understanding of possibility will prevent us from doing so.
More to come I want to respond to the rest of Ryan’s email..
|
Darin |
Yes it is these imbeciles who claim religious right and go fight wars
who have eroded the merit of religious identity which gave science
reign of the intellectual world– for now. The universe keeps scientists in check though, don’t forget Copernicus and Einstein, and for your sake I pray you never offend someone with real spiritual power with your un-scientific bull-headedness. And where in this debate did you get the idea that I disagree with evolution? Appendixes, too many teeth, etc. of course they’re the result of evolution, what’s the big fuckin deal? My argument isn’t that evolution is wrong, just too limited to be the
whole story. The fact that the older apes didn’t start washing their potatoes is no surprise nor a contradiction to the 100th monkey phenomenon as evidence for ID. The fact that the technology seemed to leap physical barriers is indicative of a collective consciousness which connects all things. The fact these old farts failed to move with the wave is reflective of how old dogs rarely learn new tricks. We’re slowly approaching a new paradigm shift which will restore the right understanding of why things happen. The Law of Karma is just like physical laws, whether or not you understand it or agree with it, it’s how things happen. At best you can temporarily ignore the effects of Karma with the right spiritual technologies, the same way a plane temporarily allows you too violate gravity’s effect on you, but the plane has to come down eventually and so to will your karmas find you.
Good for the Dalai Lama, you know if you accept that your faith has the power to create, there’s nothing to inhibit the scientific mind from refining and investigating that process. That’s what Tibetan Buddhism and other forms of tantra are all about. AND it’s not about finding the right fossil, it’s about STATISTICS. Chance mutations happen so rarely that the chances of Neo-Darwinism fully explaining the history of the planet’s evolution are DISMAL at best. Find me a website that talks about HARD STATISTICS and then I might give some more credence to your stupid universe view. (note that that should be read “stupid-universe” view, but the double entendre is appro) But the truth is that the Universe is not stupid but She’s WATCHING us test Her and SHE alone determines what we find. She even
gives us EGOS so that we’re free to think that we’re smarter than She
is and free to think our little theories about chemical interactions can explain everything in the universe as mere chance. And for the record, if faith weren’t part of your view then why are you so over-reactive about it?
And if you think the ancient rishis ‘went extinct’, it’s a long way for the puppet to realize who’s pulling his strings.
Finally, I can’t tell anymore, are you just playing devil’s advocate to the extreme or are you really that bought into this view that
Intelligent Design had no bearing on the development of the world?
“Having tested the worlds won by works,
let the seeker of God arrive at detachment.
What is not made is not attained by what is done.” — Mundaka
Upanishad
|
Joanna |
ok, i think i’ve got to get myself back out of this one…
darin,
i felt compelled to write my last email because a number of times you
refered to india being granted some sort of success or advancement
(i.e. the tanks in the mud or the submarine sinking) by a divine presence – and inferred it was due to their spiritual rightousness – or the rightousness of their cause.
to me, that’s treading in a very mucky area – i’m not sure i even want to attempt this one over email, but i personally can’t seperate cultural, political, social aspects of a place (india or the US) from the religious tennants that are part of that place’s history, so when i read arguements that infer rightousness, i start to wonder…
(i would also add that western scientific method – is interconnected
with western – primarily christian – belief systems, both are methods of thought – can’t really back this up, just an intuition from all the ethnographies i’ve read)
also, the discussion of appropriation was just that – a discussion (i
said i wasn’t suggesting it refers to you specifically) and i think one that is interesting in regards to both the westernization of yoga/hinduism AND in regards to the discussion of intelligent design. i brought it up partly because i don’t hear any of us talking about the chrisitan ‘creation myth’ (unless i missed it) and that would first and foremost be the one introuduced into schools in this country…
and like i said “creation myth” is a term coined by socialogists,
anthropologists, (people who study religion, can’t think of what they
would be called), etc… it is NOT a negative term – all it refers to is that there are a number of different (although often parallel) explanations across cultures as to how we came to be.
before i go,
someone tell jason that his mother also plugged his brain in – she felt sorry for his bad luck with girls and had rachelle create me to get him to stop masturbating excessively. that’s right jason, i don’t exist either and you are still a VIRGIN.
|
Jason |
Yeah but Darin….the scientist have “magic beans” and the Vedas don’t.
-Jason
p.s. Why does it feel even though we’re all pretty spread out over a
few hundred miles that I’m still sitting at the dinner table with you guys, and I’m still playing the role we all reach by the time dad is tired with his hands folded blinking at us with an empty glass of wine, Mom is looking down at her nails playing with her hands ignoring the whole conversation (to avoid taking sides), Rachelle has her shoulders all tensed up and head slunk back saying “can we talk about something else” while sticking a fork in Darins arm, and Ryan is all bright eyed making fast movements with his head talking about how stupid we all are, and I’m banging on wine glasses making
fart noises every now and then interjecting my own commentary?
Technology is an amazing thing.
|
Ryan |
Question: If the Hindu’s recognized the “Law” of Karma, which is
supposed to be a natural law. Then why do the Hindus need to ENFORCE IT through a caste system??? Karmic Law is an emergent system, something the Universe just does automatically, so the Hindus, in their infinite wisdom decided to impose a TOP DOWN social heirarchy on the Universe? Shouldn’t Karmic Law simply work by itself? WTF???
Defend that. No. Seriously, defend you’re argument that Hindus are
smarter than the Universe. Because, for all its problems, America is
100,000 times better than India’s poverty-ridden, muslim-murdering,
women-oppressing insanity. America enjoys its measurably higher
standard of living because we value equality and human rights, we let
Karmic Law run its natural course. We are the fruitbasket of the world because of our love of equality. India is a slum. What’s your karmic explanation for that?
RE: Hundreth Monkey.
Let’s look at Keyes methodology and maybe you’ll understand why I think it’s flawed:
1. Scientists gave monkeys sweet potatoes. A few of the younger ones
figured out that washing the potatoes made them taste better.
2. These monkeys taught other monkeys in the clan this technique and it quickly became the dominant meme on that island.
3. Scientists gave monkeys on another island sweet potatoes. A few of
the younger ones figured out that washing the potatoes made them taste better.
How did the monkeys on other islands figure out washing the potatoes
made them taste better? Keyes thinks its a psychic phenomenon, but then how did the monkeys on the first island figure out the same thing? Where did they get the telepathically-transmitted meme from?
Nowhere. A few monkeys will always figure out the meme of washing sweet potatoes on each island and transfer that learning to the others in their clan. That’s what data supports. It requires a leap of logic to support Keyes’ hypothesis.
Appendixes, too many teeth,etc. of course they’re the result of
evolution, what’s the big fuckin deal?
YES!!! I have reduced you to the “So what?” argument. In my last e-mail I phrased these points in a larger context. Go back and understand that context and you’ll know so what.
AND it’s not about finding the right fossil, it’s about STATISTICS.
Chance mutations happen so rarely that the chances of Neo-Darwinism
fully explaining the history of the planet’s evolution are DISMAL at best. Find me a website that talks about HARD STATISTICS and then I might give some more credence to your stupid universe view.
You tried earlier to refute specific aspects of evolution before. First it was the eye. I provided research on the eye’s evolution in response. You challenged the amount of time it took for evolution to occur. I provided the fact that 3.5 billion years was a really really really really long time. Now you are saying I must prove the frequency of mutation can meet some undefined timeframe. Remember my little joke about “What about this fossil?” You obviously didn’t get it.
But I’ll play. Let’s take AIDS to begin with. Did you know Europeans
have a higher resistance to AIDS infection? It’s because the plague
evolved European Immune systems!
And that only took 400 years, but let’s not forget those wonderful
Peppered Moths in England. That evolutionary leap from white to black
moths only took a few decades.
Mutations don’t occur with enough frequency? Ask your mother about
mutations. How many babies are born extra fingers, missing muscles,
brain abnormalities, hearts on the outside, deaf or blind? Mutations
are all around you.
Of course, you’re talking about USEFUL mutations. So we have to look a little closer. Human beings are getting taller. Natural selection is favoring taller and taller genes. Some estimate we’ve grown a foot in average height since the dark ages.
You want a frequency, but what mutation frequency do you need? It’s
funny that you demand more and more hard data from evolutionary
theorists, but have to rely on the vaguest of criteria to refute them. That’s why you’re beliefs are so lazy. All you do is ask questions and criticize, but you don’t contribute anything to understanding.
Tell you what, give me a hard figure, like “1 mutation per minute,”
define every type of mutation you will accept as benefiting a species, and tell me how many millions of years a time frame we are talking about this occuring in, and we can work from there. Okay? Now here’s the thing: You have to explain to me thoroughly and in detail your reasoning for each of your criteria. That should take you several encyclopedia-sized books of extrapolation.
In the meantime, I’ll continue reading the thousands of books, essays, and other tombs of data already gathered on evolution. Stuff you don’t know anything about because you haven’t bothered to even try and understand any of it. Go read the complete works of Stephen J. Gould and Richard Dawkins so you can at least understand 1% of what Evolution is about. You’ll find it really expands your understanding of the world and how you fit into the grand scheme of things.
don’t forget Copernicus and Einstein
I’m sorry. What about Copernicus and Einstein?
I pray you never offend someone with real spiritual power with your
un-scientific bull-headedness.
And thus you resort to the “argument from fear” logical fallacy. The
last refuge of a scoundrel. In your e-mail before you argued the
Indians were superior for their ability to kill with supernatural
frequency and now you tell me I better change my beliefs or some hindu spiritual leader is gonna get me.
You’re arguments have grown weaker and weaker throughout this debate.
You didn’t even bother to try and refute most of my last e-mail. That’s what religionists do, you ignore facts inconvenient to your beliefs. First you tried rationality, but your visions couldn’t stand up to the collective human rationality summed up in scientific reasoning and now you are reduced to fear-mongering.
Rope A Dope!!! Rope A Dope!!!
Ryan “Super Science Ninja Squad” Somma
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Rachelle |
well, can we talk about something else?
ryan- no one is reading these long extensive emails anymore. you won.
let it go. stop rubbing it in our faces that you are a computer geek therefore you have all of this time to do the research in order to have these “great” comebacks. is that seriously the only thing to do in elizabeth city, city while you hit on 16 year old girls that like star trek?
what a dicker lick.
|
Ryan |
Rachelle – I’m well aware of the fact that you aren’t reading these
e-mails. For one thing, they aren’t on DVD, for another, they don’t
star Antonio Banderas.
As for all “this time to do the research.” It takes me no time to do
anything because it’s all in my head. I keep abreast of current events and science news. That really helps when it comes to beating down religious and political extremists. I already knew why the 100th
Monkey was BS, European resistance to AIDS, etc, etc because I take a little bit of time each day to learn these things. Then it just takes me a second to look up the link on Google when I need to put the smack down.
You know, maybe if you watched 30 minutes of CNN each day, you might
be able to hold your own in a political argument instead of having to
call other people up to think for you.
|
Jason |
Yeah but Ryan…I mean come on. I think you missed one valid point
Rachelle had and you seemed to ignore it.
You ARE a dicker lick.
|
Joanna |
yeah.
rachelle doesn’t like antonio,
it’s chrisitan bale who really gets her panties in a knot…
|
Darin |
What’s amazing Ryan is that you seem to define your own terms of the
debate, making points where they weren’t warranted, ignoring the other explanation as possible, and turning answers to your own questions into claims of self-righteous indignation.
Points in case: 1. I never said evolution was wrong, yet you claim
thatmy “yeah, so what?” reply to the appendix, teeth, etc. thing was a victory for you.
2. You say I ignored most of your last email, yet that’s what you’ve
been doing to my replies from the beginning! Have you once
acknowledged that I have actually made a strong case for an alternative explanation? Instead of belittling my points by reducing it to a “magic did it!” view, try really thinking about everything I’ve said and you’ll see it’s not only cohesive but compelling.
My point that evolution doesn’t happen fast enough was based on the
change of environmental conditions relative to the rate of mutation
change. Sometimes environmental changes can happen quite rapidly, as
with islands being wiped out by rise in sea levels, but change by
mutation requires millions of years. As for the human eye, that
article you sent was a bunch of hot air as far as its relevance on this debate, where did that article once address the statistical likelihood of genetic mutations creating the eye? It did a lot of tracing the likely history of its development, but again it’s forced, like all evolution theory, to say, “well, there’s a gap here and here, but obviously that’s taken care of by random chance”. Re-read that article I first sent to you, it talked about the Moth thing and said, “The example of the moths that switch color over a few generations to adapt to their surroundings and the example of viruses developing resistance to previously effective antibiotics, are both actually instances of organisms not in fact developing completely new genes, but rather utilizing existing, ‘latent’ genes already present in the genome.” So how does evolution theory accommodate for the fact that there can be more genetic difference between two species of frogs than between a bat and a blue whale?
Your complete dismissal of the points raised in this article are an
example of the criticism you lay on me here: ignoring evidence contrary to your thesis. That’s what most scientists do when asked about the statistical chances of evolution theory corresponding with empirical evidence, they show that it’s statistically incredibly unlikely but then reason around the unlikelihood with all manner of explanations, which true might be valid points and help buffer this unlikelihood, but the simple truth is: SCIENTISTS CANNOT KNOW THAT EVOLUTION IS THE WHOLE STORY, IT’S SIMPLY THEIR BEST GUESS. You should agree with that statement as should all scientists because it’s the essence of scientific attitude. My point here has been that there’s an entire other world of empirical data from which to draw theory from that’s IGNORED because ‘subjective’ is equated with ‘unverifiable’. But if you draw data from this world, the “best guess” is not dumb evolution but intelligent evolution. The sad part is this ‘unverifiable’ aspect is really just scientists’ laziness about exploring meditation for themselves. If you read the scriptures and practice meditation, you can see for yourself their validity and ultimate profundity. Who’s being lazy? I’ve got degrees in MATH, PHYSICS, PSYCHOLOGY, and PHILOSOPHY, I’ve seen the best Western science has to offer and moved beyond it.
But your best response to my referencing a deeper understanding has
been “my god just beat up yours, prove it didn’t happen”. Science has always been COMPLETELY UNABLE to explain how ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians and the Mayans had such amazingly accurate scientific portraits of the universe, yet the subjective scientist knows this is a simple trick of many available to the world within.
Finally, my listing of tanks and airplanes things etc. was in RESPONSE to your question of why hasn’t any society used the knowledge of the internal world to advance themselves. It wasn’t the whole country that earned the karmic merit for these incidents to happen, it was the beneficent act probably of a handful of powerful sages using prakriti siddhi to protect the country. And I’m sure those sages are paying for that karma through their ass, but they know how to meter out the effects of karma to minimize the damage.
As for the caste system being enforced, like I said this was a
PERVERSION of the institution. The Dharma Shastras, which lists the
rules of caste and attitude towards women that gets India into trouble with modern critics, were written a good six thousand years after the Vedas were first written down, and they were written by a class of priests who were protecting their livelihood and $$ flow.
If you want to know why America is at the karmic forefront, I can give you an explanation, which you will inevitably IGNORE and go back to your little science world, but if you want to really know here it is:
When Lord Rama, God incarnate as a King and the perfection of action in accordance with Dharma or duty, lived nearly two million years ago, he granted THREE powerful blessings. First, to the eagle Jatayu, who fought to rescue Rama’s wife and queen Sita from the evil demon Ravana without knowing who she was or why she was being abducted. For this incredibly noble act which cost Jatayu his life, Rama blessed Jatayu, that he shall be remembered in Kali Yuga (this age) as humane and beneficient– despite the fact that eagles are predatory killers by nature. Who’s symbol is the Eagle? America’s. America, when it rose to power, could have been a tyranny easily. But what did it to with its power? It chose to eliminate imperialism, to provide humane relief to other parts of the world, and to work for world peace by sheltering all under its wings. That was the power of Lord Rama’s first blessing, which America is quickly eroding by it’s recent unmeritorious deeds.
The second blessing was to the race of monkeys that helped Rama rescue Sita. He blessed them that in Kali Yuga (again, modern times) that they would be great innovators and scientists and would revolutionize the world with their technology. THIS blessing is why you and the other scientific community believe you descended from monkeys, because you did! It’s these monkeys that advance America’s technology and have helped ensure America’s supremacy in the world. But America’s scientific testing on monkeys is quickly eroding this blessing as well.
The third blessing was to Sita, that in Kali Yuga women would come
forward, and who is responsible for making that blessing become
reality? America! Rama also blessed the bear, Jambavant, but not with the force that He blessed the eagle (He took Jatayu’s head into His own lap when he died, something he didn’t even do for Hid own father, Dasharastha), which is why Russia never ascended over America.
Copernicus and Einstein both delivered to the scientific community the crushing blow to their egos that THEY DON’T HAVE SHIT FIGURED OUT NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY THINK THEY DO. Western science has done a lot of good by objectifying evidence and eliminating superstition, don’t get me wrong. We needed this hard analytical understanding desperately in the world to help balance out some of the mystical mayhem that was going on.
But again, they will be proven wrong again and again so long as their
egos rise to think they’ve understood it all, and only the Rishis and
Mahatmas who the universe respects above all else for their austerities and virtue will never be proven false. The universe IS intelligent.
If you want to know why science hasn’t discovered THAT, it’s because they haven’t asked. Why they haven’t asked is exactly the attitude you espouse here, what could be smarter than scientists? Again, ego and master, ASK the universe to show you that She is intelligent and
all-knowing and She’ll not only answer, but She’ll answer in a way
that’s MOST MEANINGUL TO YOU. The ironic part is I’ve told so many
people that that’s the most simple proof for the existence of God.
Just ask. But very very few people take the advice despite it’s scientific and rational nature. If the universe is intelligent, it should know how to demonstrate its intelligence to you in a way that keeps you growing and evolving. And She does! I ask every day. Again, who’s being lazy?
Super Spiritual Ninja-squad psychic attack!
 Mom |
Meditate on the Self.
One without two,
Exalted awareness.
Give up the illusion
Of the separate self.
Give up the feeling,
Within or without,
That you are this or that.
-Ashtavakra Gita 1:13
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Darin |
Arguing can be good for figuring out how to articulate your own views, thereby refining them, heck that’s why I teach because articulation is such a powerful way to deepen your understanding of things. But, really, how many times have things ever been solved by talking them out?
I’ve been working with this a lot, because the rational thing when
there are problems is to ‘talk things out’, but the truth is that the problem is usually an energetic thing that just ends up manifesting as verbal tension when things are attempted to be discussed. A more efficient means of conflict resolution, I’ve found, is to *turn it inward*.
When you start really watching your thoughts, you realize that everyone is tuned in all the time to the subtle world, just that their conscious minds aren’t aware of it. So every thought you have is essentially *known* by everyone, so what happens to conflict when you turn it inward and resolve the conflict inwardly on a purely energetic level, feeding the conflict positive vibes and loving kindness? Try it! I’ve solved so many conflicts in this way, and it works a hell of a lot better than talking things out!
Love
p
btw– SLAM!!! Is that the resounding SILENCE signaling my victory in
debate??? 🙂 😉
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Ryan |
Let’s try and reduce the scope of this argument…
You have conducted an inwardly-directed spiritual journey that has
proven to you beyond a shadow of a doubt the validity of certain Hindu scriptures. Your belief in these scriptures is so powerful that you want the Federal Government to mandate teaching it in Science Classes in Public School Systems.
The conclusions of your inner spiritual journey are so detailed and
precise as to render all other belief systems invalid. Christianity,
Budhism, Shamanism, Judaism, Shintoism, Islam, Wicca, Athiest and other cannot coexist with your scripture. Billions of other human beings have conducted inward spiritual journeys and come to the other
institutionalized religious conclusions, not yours.
The Dalai Lama adheres to Budhism. Why is his inward testing invalid
and yours valid? Rene Descartes conducted a very thorough and
systematic process of inward testing and it brought him to the
Christian God. His process of inward testing was documented in his
“Meditations.” Where did he go wrong and you got it right? Why is my
personal inward testing, which brought me to Science, invalid?
Respond to either argument A or B, depending on how you answer which
came first, your inward testing or your reading the Hindu scripture :
A. If your inward testing came first, then did it reveal to you
everything you read in the Hindu scriptures? If so, then why do you
have to read the scriptures at all? Shouldn’t your inward testing
reveal everything to you perfectly?
B. If you read the scriptures first, then isn’t it possible that you
entered your inward testing with them as a preconcieved idea and sought to prove their validity? Science is supposed to work from observation to hypothesis, but a common flaw of human beings is to begin with an assumption and then try to prove it. You didn’t find it odd that your inward testing proved the Hindu scriptures exactly? Again, why even read scriptures if your inward testing has all of the answers?
You see, I’m trying to break you out of this circular logic:
1. Darin’s conclusions are correct because he has found proof of them
inside his own mind through “Inward Testing.”
2. People who dispute Darin’s conclusions are wrong because they have
not conducted his “Inward Testing”–not just any inward testing, but
Darin’s personal inward testing.
This is purely hubris on your part Darin. If others have conducted
inward testing and not come to the conclusions you have, then it is
extremely conceited of you to think your process of inward testing
superior to all others. Again we see the superiority of Science in this regard as the Scientific Process relies heavily on peer review to maintain its integrity. Other minds are brought in to challenge one another’s ideas and a consensus reality is achieved. Your inward
testing is a dogmatic attempt to seize control of reality from those
around you and impose your singular interpretation through force.
You are being pure evil. Please stop that. (j/k)
Ryan
PS – This disputation is a sort of peer-review process. I may not
convince you of anything–in fact your dogmatic nature renders such an outcome impossible, but the spectators are learning from this exchange. When they meet other’s like you, they will be better prepared to dispute them in a public forum. This way we will marginalize and isolate your psychosis from infecting others.
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Darin |
I’m really enjoying these conversations because it’s really helping me to realize where Westerners get stuck on the whole understanding the Divine thing :), but Ryan, you’re putting way too many words in my mouth.
” You have conducted an inwardly-directed spiritual journey that has
proven to you beyond a shadow of a doubt the validity of certain Hindu scriptures. Your belief in these scriptures is so powerful that you want the Federal Government to mandate teaching it in Science Classes in Public School Systems.”
What??? Where did you glean this from what I said? I said “obviously we CAN’T teach this in schools”. My point here has simply been that no matter what we teach, the truth is that fate and free will BOTH have a role in what happens, so we can teach evolution as the scientific/fate half of this equation, but we should never undermine the free will/ID half because to do that is self-defeatism and simply false.
” The conclusions of your inner spiritual journey are so detailed and
precise as to render all other belief systems invalid. Christianity,
Budhism, Shamanism, Judaism, Shintoism, Islam, Wicca, Athiest and other cannot coexist with your scripture. Billions of other human beings have conducted inward spiritual journeys and come to the other
institutionalized religious conclusions, not yours.
What??????? No, in fact all these other systems are understood
perfectly in the context of the Vedas, there are no contradictions,
just different systems. When the forces of the universe, which, like
everything, are self-aware and intelligent, become personified, they
take on the personality most culturally relevant to whom their
appearing. Again, truth is One, but Seers call it by many names. The Vedas tell a history of the world that is not at all in conflict with these other histories, in fact they MATCH UP, like the story of the great flood in Judaism corresponding to the incarnation of Vishnu as Matsya, the fish, who saved the world from the great flood. (BTW, the 10 incarnations of Vishnu, alluded to in the Matrix movies, represent EVOLUTION– fish, tortoise, boar, man-lion, dwarf, rama with an ax, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Kalki who has yet to appear; again science’s ‘discovery’ of evolution has been written down already for thousands of years :). As an interesting side note, Vamana in Sanskrit means dwarf and can be broken down as: va=future evolutionary value of the human race is mana=mental prowess. Vanara is monkey in Sanskrit: va= the future evolutionary value of monkey is nara= human.) BTW, when Christians try to tell you that Jesus was unique among masters, there really is some truth to that! He was the only redeemer given to humanity, the only incarnation of God that TOOK ON everyone’s karmas! It killed Him to do it, but what a sacrifice! Ramakrishna, one of India’s greatest saints, in His illustrious spiritual career only took
on the karma of three people!
” The Dalai Lama adheres to Budhism. Why is his inward testing invalid and yours valid? Rene Descartes conducted a very thorough and
systematic process of inward testing and it brought him to the
Christian God. His process of inward testing was documented in his
“Meditations.” Where did he go wrong and you got it right? Why is my
personal inward testing, which brought me to Science, invalid?”
Buddha came after Krishna, the perfect human being, as an incarnation
of man who is done with the world and wants out of the sufferings of Kali Yuga (the next stage of evolution). Tibetan Buddhism is a Tantric form of Buddhism that draws its roots from the Vedas. I wouldn’t call Descartes’s inward testing ‘thorough’, I’d call it jerking himself off on paper. He started off wrong by trying to prove he exists when he should have started off by asking what he meant when he said, “I”.
Science is definitely NOT invalid, I LOVE science and I’m with you on
that boat. Science is related to the masculine, or Solar, half of our nervous system though. If you purify it completely, you can achieve great knowledge, this system of yoga is called jnana yoga or the path of wisdom. This was how I started as well and if it wasn’t for science I never would have been dried out enough to get a fateful glimpse of Truth that led me to Buddhism and ultimately to my guru. But the solar path requires great will and determination to burn through your obstacles, and if you fall it’s a long way down. The lunar path, that of devotion and passion, takes longer because it involves a lot of side-paths, but it’s ultimately safer because there’s no danger of falling. The two complement each other greatly however, which is why I always say that science was the second most valuable training I’ve ever received, the most valuable being learning how to surrender my will to the Divine; which I’m still learning and have a long way to go :).
“A. If your inward testing came first, then did it reveal to you
everything you read in the Hindu scriptures? If so, then why do you
have to read the scriptures at all? Shouldn’t your inward testing
reveal everything to you perfectly?
B. If you read the scriptures first, then isn’t it possible that you
entered your inward testing with them as a preconcieved idea and soughtto prove their validity? Science is supposed to work from observation to hypothesis, but a common flaw of human beings is to begin with an assumption and then try to prove it. You didn’t find it odd that your inward testing proved the Hindu scriptures exactly? Again, why even read scriptures if your inward testing has all of the answers?”
This is a fair question. I once met a man who was told by Krishnamurti to give up all institutions. So he quit college and lived out of a sleeping bag for over thirty years, practicing 8 asanas that he was taught, some breathing exercises, and meditation. He had fully developed his own metaphysical system based on modern physics, and had found esoteric reflections of the laws of the natural world in his own body! He showed me how the four fundamental forces of the universe are found in the digits of the hands, and drove my science-trained mind crazy with his esoteric musings which I only now have begun to understand and appreciate. The point is that we can go at it on our own and our answers will then be couched in our own terms, great! But if you look to the system of the Vedas, which is the most ancient and thus developed in the world, than you can spare yourself a lot of work. Imagine trying to re-invent calculus! Sure you could invent a whole new system to perform calculus with your own symbols and techniques, but on another level, why bother? Why not study what people have written before, try to practice to see what it is they’re talking about, and stand on the shoulders of giants?
If you want to know how ‘peer review’ happens among mystics, there are thousands of mind-blowing stories of the sadhus playing games on each other to teach each other lessons. You’re right that the ego is
slippery and can convince itself that it’s achieved great knowledge
when it’s barely scratched the surface, but that’s why almost every
spiritual tradition has emphasized that a GURU is indispensable on the path.
Again, I’m not saying I have it all figured out, I just think I have a little more figured out than you do and am trying to help you see where I’m coming from ;).
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Jason |
Just a question. One thing you keep saying puts me off, and that being the continual notion of us being on the same page and agree that the Vedas were first. How is that founded? It just seems I’ve encountered many cultures and tribes that make the same claim. Take the Amarakaine Tribe (who were also cannibals), make the claim that they were the first people to walk the earth (they are in a hidden part deep in Peruvia). But then you have the Aborigines of Austraila that make the same claim only there’s stronger archeological evidence to back this claim(also many West African tribes claim that their ancient ancestors came from Austraila even though to date
the oldest body found has been in Africa(unless they’ve discovered
another one that I don’t know about since then)).
It just seems typical for a culture or religion to make such a claim to bring about more validity to their beliefs.
Unless the Vedas were dinosaurs, in which case Steven Speilberg needs
to rethink “Jurassic Park”.See the Predators have the most evidence that they were the first, in fact the Vedas stole the scriptures from the Predators and that’s why we don’t see them anymore. Really you need to go watch Alien Vs. Predator again.
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Darin |
The rig veda is the oldest text in the world. Does this mean it’s the oldest knowledge in the world?… who knows? The Vedas were sung as hymns and passed down generation to generation in that form for
thousands of years, and we can be pretty certain that it was PRECISE
because there are still people in India that carry that tradition and
can chant the entire four Vedas (takes about 20 hours).
The thing is that the knowledge is reflective of scientific knowledge
based on empirical studies of the subtle world. You can sit on your
hands and say the subtle world doesn’t exist, but every major culture
has done exploration into that world, developed technologies based on
it, and they all agree on principle aspects of it. Just the form
varies.
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Ryan |
Okay, first let’s make sure we agree on this: It is not a good idea to include your religious explanations of our origins in public school classrooms. This was what our entire argument was about… if you didn’t know that, then you weren’t paying attention–probably because you were too busy preaching.
Please be careful Darin. You might hurt yourself with those fantastic
feats of mental gymnastics your beliefs require to coincide with
reality. I actually got dizzy a couple of times reading your
loop-de-loops of rationalization as you took ancient texts and made
them symbolically synchronize with actual events.
It’s a good thing the vagueness of those texts allows for a great deal of imprecision. Animals, Gods, and various events all serve whatever purpose you need them to at whatever moment. Need to explain why America is doing so great? Go find an Eagle in your ancient text and apply some hefty doses of symbolism to it.
You asked me earlier if I really believed evolution explains it all. I did not respond because I was trying to maintain the scope of our
argument. My personal beliefs have absolutely no bearing on our
collective body of scientific knowledge, as they should not. Since you conceded the argument in your last e-mail. I’ll explain my personal beliefs:
Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, has
been documenting case studies of children remembering past lives. He,
quite responsibly, does not conclude reincarnation as the only
explanation of this, but it does allow for the possibility. The process by which the Dalai Lama is found in each incarnation applies some scientific controls, so I appreciate him more than your ancient texts.
I believe these are proofs that some essence of ourselves is immortal, but without them I still know that time is a dimension and we are immortal because we exist at one point in the timeline. We simply haven’t figured out how to travel along that dimension–yet.
We are sentient minds. Our matter was forged in stars. We are the
universe observing itself. How could you conclude scentists believe the universe is stupid if they believe we are part of the universe and inseparable from it?
I believe it’s more likely that other alien races evolved elsewhere in the Universe and became so advanced that they now guide our existence than any of the explanations religion gives us. I believe one day human beings will enter the singularity and become a collective mind.
I believe perfection lies ahead of us, not behind as religion argues. I appreciate Science’s constant exploration and hope that existence is a mystery we never solve. What fun would existence be if we had it all figured out?
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
– T. S. Eliot
Ryan “Super Science Ninja Squad” Somma
PS: You are wrong about the rig veda being the oldest text in the
world. It is the oldest language text in the world. The oldest texts
are cave paintings, and we must therefore, by your logic of “older is
better,” look to the infinite wisdom of our cave-dwelling ancestors for guidance. I recommend fossils, archeology, and science to learn more about them. Here’s a good place to start:
https://www9.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html
To Be Continued…
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