“science”

British opinions on evolution…

I know I’m not following my previous topic list, but what do people think of the unsubstantiated and unashamedly biased propaganda here presented? It seems that the BBC feels it imperative to shove one ideology down the throats of a population who don’t all buy it; and then tell them that they are stupid because they don’t agree with “science” (whatever that is).

The Secular State’s Homeschooling Crackdown

Jess, dear sister, you especially may like the content of this link.

The Secular State’s Homeschooling Crackdown

I agree wholeheartedly with most of what this says barring the use of statistics to show how homeschoolers are, on average, better at university than other students. Half of the students who go to uni don’t care for grades anyway. You’re really comparing the results of people who care about their children’s education and the general population, many of whom do not. If you compared, for example, the grades of a student whose parents sent their child to school and were conscientious concerning said child’s education and a homeschooled child, I think you would find the grades to be considerably closer. The point is not the grades, but the worldview presented.

This use of statistics is similar to that employed by some Seventh Day Adventists I know who claim that a vegetarian diet is better than a diet that includes meat and will help you live longer because the statistics say that vegetarians live longer than the average population with lower disease rates. Can you see it? The average population has a high number of binge drinkers, smokers, sex addicts and MacDonalds addicts among other habitual indulgences devastating to ones health. This hardly proves the case for vegetarianism, though neither does it disprove the case, it merely proves that people who care about living healthy will generally be healthier and live longer. It also, I suppose, disproves the myth that you can’t be a vegetarian and be healthy, but that’s hardly a case against eating meat.

In the good old days when the earth was flat…

I am not dead. I have been busy. I still am busy, but I thought this link was interesting and worth a read.

Myth of the flat earth

Melbourne “March for the Babies”.

Just a plug for the upcoming Pro-life march coming up on Saturday October 9, 2010. If you believe in the value of human life and live in Australia; come. The march begins at 2.00pm (1400hrs) at Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens.

From their website:

“March for the Babies was established with the assistance of representatives from leading pro-life groups throughout Victoria. Our goal is to promote an annual day of remembrance and peaceful witness to affirm the right to life of every unborn child, assist women in crisis pregnancies and allow freedom of conscience for healthcare workers opposed to abortion.”

A Nobel theme…

Image via Wikipedia

When Barack Obama spoke on the floor of the Illinois senate against the act for protection of babies born alive after failed abortions, in fact, he was the only senator to do so, he made it clear that his reason for rejecting it was his fear of its overturning Roe v. Wade:

Whenever we define a pre-viable foetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – a child, a 9-month old – child that was delivered to term.That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the Equal Protection Clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute.

At least he is consistent; if the same child had no rights if it was still in the womb, why should its rights be different outside it? Failing, unfortunately, to recognise this as evidence of the abhorrence of abortion, he uses it to justify infanticide.

Why are people so keen on pushing abortion, birth control, infanticide (which is essentially the same as abortion anyway) and more…?

Population control.There are many reasons pushed, but this is, as far as I can tell, the main reason, excepting of course pure selfishness. On the surface many ostensibly ‘reasonable’ people take this at face value; there are a number of main lies, some of which are unspoken:

* The world is overpopulated.

* This issue needs to be resolved or we all may die from starvation or some disaster brought on by man’s dastardly existence.

* It would be impermissible to kill adult humans (after all Hitler and Stalin are considered evil so we can’t do it the way they did.)

* Forced contraception and/or sterilisation is not acceptable. (though that can change; see China)

* Abortion is less savage than killing a ‘real human being’; its the best of a lot of bad options.

* Man is God. Nature is God.

The western world has rejected its’ roots; it has, to a certain degree, decided that God (as Nietzche would have it) is dead. This is, incidentally, the path that Hitler took and can be summarised in what George MacDonald calls the chief principle of the devil; “I am my own”.

People who think that the world began on it’s own and will keep going till it conks out feel the need to cut population in order to protect that world.

People who read the bible see “fill the earth and subdue it” and “children are a blessing from the Lord”.

These paths are completely at odds.

I think it ironic, considering the above, that Barack Obama was chosen for the Nobel prize ahead of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng (also a contender this year) who was imprisoned for a term of four years by the Chinese government after accusing them of forcing more than 7000 abortions and sterilisations in Shandong province.
BBC Chen Guangcheng freed in China

lessons from gravel…

When I was a child I used to play a game with myself in which I would kick a pebble lying in the midst of a gravel surfaced road, follow it with my eyes and then kick the same pebble, continuing thus until I was at my destination or I couldn’t find the pebble any more.
Now, being an individual who questions everything, I couldn’t quite believe that it was the same rock – how did I know that I didn’t just miss the original rock and accidentally pick out another that just happened to be identical in both size and shape? You may now be asking yourself why I should be happy to show myself so cranially deficient as to not be instantly able to work out the probabilities presented. Indeed, if you keep reading, chances are that you may become convinced that you are currently guilty of the same stupidity, magnified, as that of which I overcame at six or seven years of age.
The other consideration acting on the main point of which I am yet to reveal is my childhood faith. I had always been taught that I was created wondrously by a wondrous God within his wondrous world.
I saw beauty everywhere. It took a number of years for me to really appreciate the reality of badness in the world; that was the hardest realisation of my life. I could spend up to an hour lying on my belly on the lawn, head propped on elbows, examining a daisy.

Now eventually, and I may say unsurprisingly considering I was an avid reader, I came across the theory of evolution. (I had by this time read enough books to no longer believe everything contained therein). First I said to myself that this could not have taken place; things don’t make themselves; the probability of one stone being the same as another I had already, as I have previously noted, discovered to be vanishingly small. All the incongruities of a natural stone are, ostensibly at least, random.
They are complex because the forces of nature have carved out in its history a myriad of chance mutilations that are totally individual. And, leave no stone unturned, you will never find one the same. Your pet rock, after all, is an individual.
They are complex because they are naturally varied, but they are not designedly so. We may call this unspecified complexity.
Now, when I looked at the natural world I saw a vast range of things which were much more complex than a stone – specifically, designedly complex and I said to myself; how could this have made itself? How could anybody believe that this world originated by itself from nothing?

Where does specified complexity come from? I’m not talking here of adaptation to a particular environment; that sort of specificity is not evolution. I am asking the reader to consider what is behind specific complexity? What pre-existing material does natural selection have to work on? Where did it come from? Our word for living things gives a clue; organisms. Living things are organised! People have seen this for aeons but our modern enlightened scientific outlook has done away with such primitive superstitions! Or it says something more ridiculous; things organise themselves. Tornadoes build houses.
There must be a blueprint, and biologists will agree with me that there is.
A blueprint is an example of specified complexity.
Specified complexity requires information.
Information requires intelligent input.

If I pick ten letters from the alphabet at random I will have unspecified complexity.
If I write a recipe for a cake I have passed on information; this is specified complexity.
The probability of either of these sequences repeating themselves by random selections of the same number of letters is of such a low probability as to be laughable.
I know that for some people the word evolution has become a god-like presupposition, but this enters the region of pure religious belief, not science. (Eevolution [as Richard Dawkins would pronounce it, with due reverence] is great, and Darwin is his prophet!)

So when I look at nature which has far more complexity than a rock, a ten letter sequence or a recipe for cake; why should I be condemned as a heretical simpleton if I do not believe this evolution nonsense?

Watched a movie with some younger siblings tonight. The main human character pines after his talking chipmunks, eventually rescuing them from the greedy man who wants to make money from them.
I sort of thought, “suck it up sister, they’re just chipmunks”, but its a kids movie. The main point of mentioning it is that I sort of thought, well, that these kids that I’d looked after, their lives are in danger – not physical danger. I know this because I have seen it. But now I can’t do anything about it – or can I? I want to send letters but James 2:16 keeps pushing itself into my consciousness:
““If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?”
What good is it? Why should I send something; I’ve still proven to them that I won’t be there for them, I’m like every other white fella; comes, goes. Can’t trust. Can’t become really attached. Kids know that becoming too attached to someone who will eventually leave them is a risk, but I think they believed me when I said I’d stay, that I was coming back…

now

ALL NAMES ARE FICTITIOUS, FOR PRIVACY REASONS.
I’m finding it hard to adjust back home in Geelong.
I’m restless and apathetic. Time seems to have no meaning. I hardly have the inclination to get up, to shower, to shave. I miss and worry about the girls back at Tiwi. My girls, I used to say. Months of looking after, hurting with, being excited with, putting up with, cleaning up after, cooking for doesn’t fade so quickly as I’d like it to.
Abigail, only 12 and having trouble with a boy, Adam, who likes her, and being teased about it is considerably distressed. He is traumatised, having found his father dead several days after he’d hung himself. As much as I feel for him I want to protect her from him; at least till she’s older. I could list more; I could say something for every single one of these kids. I have no power; any I had was, in human terms, hung on the apparently arbitrary decision of one individual, the CEO, who being rarely present knows what goes on in the school only distantly, second hand.
What gives him the right?

I’m sorry if I sound bitter. I am. Hopefully I will get over it.
I thought I had and for a week or so it seems ok, and then its all back in your mind again.

A Story

I don’t know if you, as a kid, ever had to share a room with a sibling but I, as one of twelve children did. What I found quite often was that when you were supposed to be going to sleep you often ended up doing something quite different. Now if you, as I say, have had the aforementioned privilege then you may have played that game that for want of a name of any sort I will call ‘mixed up sentences’. This game consists of one person saying a word followed by a word by the other person. Of course both of you have your own ideas for what the sentence should be and try to direct it in the desired direction only for it to turn out rather funny or nonsensical.

Now I was babysitting two bored brothers the other day. David, who is eight and Samuel who is ten.
They were getting a bit rowdy and I wanted to occupy them so I said “let’s make a story”.
So we did. Each of us would tell as much of the story as we felt like, after which the next person would continue. I thought it turned out quite funny.

(C) means Caleb (me)
(D) means David
(S) means Samuel

(C) once upon a time there was a tree. (D) This tree bore apples and oranges and lemons and grapes. (S) This tree was awesome!
(C) It was a very strange tree because most trees can’t grow more than one type of fruit.
(D) Many people came and ate the fruit; when they came there were chocolate sheep all around the tree.
(S) The sheep were very fuzzy and had black chocolate heads and white chocolate wool.
(C) There were thorn bushes near the tree and when the sheep brushed against their sharp spines they left some of their chocolate wool behind for the people to grab and eat!
(D) When the people came and grabbed and ate there were heaps of gingerbread cats all around and they ate the chocolate wool as well.
(S)There were also cockatiels flying around, landing on people and pooing on them. (C) all the people said yuck! and pushed the birds away because they were pooing too much. (D) But I forgot! there were liquorice cows too!

(S) Now one of the people happened to be named ‘Sir Donald Bradman’. (C) In this story Sir Donald Bradman is really bad at cricket and was always bowled out first thing, so everyone called him ‘Sir Donald Duck’.
(D) there were little bits of chocolate that you could blow up like balloons and they were balloons of course! Chocolate balloons!
(S) There were also wild-flowers around the tree and everyone picked them for their mothers. But of course they were also made out of lollies.
(C) As soon as they were picked, the flowers would become as solid and hard as a boiled sweet.
(D) Before that there were white chocolate flowers and when it was really really hot they were very very hard with ice cream at the centre. (this was rather strange chocolate and ice cream because the hotter the sun got the harder they became – ED)

(S) When Sir Donald was young, people used to call him ‘the light’ because he stood out from all the cricket players because he was so bad at it. But anyway he won lots of prizes at school because he collected teaspoons.
(C) Now at this time, which was when the chocolate flowers bloomed and before there were any lolly flowers people were so greedy that they would pick the chocolate flowers and eat them straight away without giving any to their mothers. To fix this the chocolate flowers were dug up and replace with normal flowers. People weren’t that happy because some people actually had brought the chocolate flowers back to their mothers and why should they be punished as well as the greedy people?
So the gardeners came again and and dug up the normal flowers and replaced them with lolly flowers. These could be eaten slowly but if eaten quickly and greedily the hard, sharp candy petals would cut the greedy peoples’ mouths. (D) there were also lights made with toffee that appeared as if from nowhere at dusk.
(S) Next to the tree flowed a river and up and down that river were ferries that always dropped people off and picked people up from the tree. On the opposite side of the river from the tree stood a castle. The castle and the land around it were rule by Sir Donald Duck.
In the castle, Sir Donald had fifty dogs and by himself at six O’clock in the morning he went for an early morning walk with his dogs.
These were the kind of dogs he had:
He had German Shepherds and Dalmatians, and big black fluffy dogs that could be mistaken for sheep and he had little poodles that had their hair done in such a way that they looked like skin and pom-poms.
(C) Now these were actually ordinary dogs; they were made of meat and hair and bones.
(D) And then one morning as his dogs slurped up their rose-hip tea from their bowls as they did every morning (S) an evil witch came came and tried to put poison in their tea.
The Dogs sensed that there was danger and the smartest one, a German Shepherd named Smarty went down the stairs to alert Sir Donald.

At this point it was David’s bedtime and I sent him off to brush his teeth. So this is all so far.

Wogogo polyrhythms

Been studying (not officially) the music of the Wogogo people of Tanzania.

Very cool.