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Going One God Further
November 4th, 2006 · 13 Comments · Uncategorized
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Expressing Our Primal Genes for Lean Health, Vitality and Attractiveness
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Tipping the scale at 230+ (5'10) in May, 2007, at 33%+ body fat, I decided to do something about it. This blog is about that continuing journey. Having lost 60 net pounds -- on the way to 10% BF -- I'm ready to reveal my "secrets." I'm enthusiastic about helping others achieve real results. The mainstream advice is mostly wrong. One need only take a look around.
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Richard Dawkins, Apostle of Reason
"Memes are 'living structures, not just metaphorically but technically.When you plant a fertile meme in my mind,you literally parasitise my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitise the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking – the meme for, say,[Pythagoras's Theorem] is actually realised physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men "
I cannot speak for others, but for my own part,it is impossible to read these words without feeling anxiety for Dr Dawkins' sanity. I try to think of what I, or anyone, could say to him, to help restrain him from going over the edge into absolute madness. But if a man believes that, when he was first taught Pythagoras's theorem at school,his brain was parasitised by a certain micro maggot which, 2,600 years earlier, had parasitised the brain of Pythagoras,…what can one say to him,with any hope of effect? And if a man already believes that genes are selfish, why indeed should he not also believe that prime numbers are sex mad, or that geometrical theorems are brain parasites?"
- David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales
You read too much into it, John. I think.
I'm not completely versed in this idea of memes. I've been aware of it for some time (I think I first peripherally familiarized myself with it in around '95), but have never been interested enough to pursue it any further.
I have read and been told by people with knowledge in the area of neurology, that human infants actually are not born with all of the physical, connections one has some years later and that this "wiring" takes place in the first years of development. If true, then it certainly calls into question the potentially irrevocable behavior patters that might develop early on.
Still, I tend to think this kind of complete materialism is neither a good nor complete explanation of what clearly seems to me to be free will, and that is essentially what we're talking about.
So, I don't know. I think we have free will, and I really don't see how it can be denied. I suppose it's possible that the brain is so absolutely complex, with such a vast array of "predictable" responses to near infinitely complex stimuli that we're just fooled into thinking it's free will when it's really just a program so complex as to defy complete understanding. But then, even if so, one wonders were the meaningful distinction lies.
I tend to think not, that we have true volition, but I'm prepared to accept whatever real facts come to light, whatever they may be. I think that's the only rational way to approach anything.
So John, was that lengthy digression meant to convince us that Dawkins' argument in this video is wrong?
No, it was meant to suggest that Dawkins is a crank, a fool and a fraud; like Noam Chomsky he builds a mountain of crap on a tiny foundation of actual accomplishment. He's a malicious, lying, hateful bigot, a leftist and a collectivist who would persecute as cheerfully as a Torquemada or a Stalin if he got the chance. But he gets props around here because for all the protestations of individualism you are part of just another mob, and when your group loyalty is invoked, if the common enemy is spotted, then off you all go.
John:
Full-of-shit, as usual. You're just making that up, because you have absolutely no basis for it. Nothing I've ever read or heard from Dawkins even remotely suggests he's that kind of person.
Look: you're just another basically good-natured delusional guy with an imaginary friend, who takes offense to that simple fact being pointed out to him.
Well, it's not going to stop around here. I have no doubt that your delusions afford you comfort, and it's really no business of mine what fairy tales you choose to believe. But if you choose to engage here, there's little I can offer you but the ridicule you deserve.
John,
You're full of shit for another reason: the name of neither the video nor the person in it appears here. I've heard of Dawkins, and knew he wrote books about memes and evolution, but that's about it – I've never even seen his face.
I had to click through to YouTube to see who it was, and I only bothered after wondering why you went off on Dawkins with a comment that was, substantively, entirely unrelated to the video.
John, I hate to say something as trite as "I'm rubber, you're glue", but next time you write comments like this, you should have a mirror on top of your monitor.
And wipe up the drool while you're at it.
I think I deserve better ridicule than this. Your stock phrase "full of shit", even when reinforced by Mr. Bennett's "wipe up the drool" doesn't make the grade.
"Nothing I've ever read or heard from Dawkins even remotely suggests he's that kind of person."
Well, then, you read pretty selectively, don't you, Mr. Nikoley? Let's see; I think "fraud" or "crank" is pretty well demonstrated by the fraudulent discipline of "memetics", which our Mr. Dawkins founded and heavily promoted. If you disagree, perhaps you'd explain how "memetics" is any less fraudulent or crankish then, say, homeopathy. But I suspect this is an aspect of the Apostle of Reason's career you'd understandably prefer to pass over in silence.
As for his being a leftist, well, again, it's obvious enough, especially in his writings on American politics. Certainly the local Democrats around here worsip him as if he were the Gnostic Demiurge. I realize the admiration of Democrats may not be very damning anymore, now that we see the dawning of the Objectivist/Communist Popular Front Against God, but there you are. (I informed a Democrat friend of mine that the Ayn Rand Institute had now rallied to his side in the upcoming elections – his reply was; "I hate Objectivists")
Finally, as to the revered Dawkin's propensity towards persecution – well, first of all, if you believe, or pretend to believe that beliefs are diseases then your thinking is automatically going to run to vaccination.Mr. Dawkins has already claimed that religious education is a abuse against children. He, as is typical of many leftists, want to turn a political difference into a public health issue so that it can be brought under regulation. This is familiar stuff; we see it all the time in the "gun control debate" and other issues. If some Trinity Broadcasting feeb were to get up on their pulpit and claim that atheism was a mental illness or a communicable disease you'd understand the implications immediantly. Since it's Dawkins, and he's on "your side" – well, you don't. Or won't.
Memetics, of course, denies free will, denies individual responsibility, denies even the existence of the individual. What could be better suited to collectivist uses? Your somewhat evasive post of a while back aside, you seem determined to ignore this fact.
Mr. Bennett has chosen a more prudent strategy – that of claiming near-complete ignorance of Mr. Dawkin's positions and acts. Maybe you should contemplate the same.
John, I guess I shouldn't hold my breath waiting for you to say anything about the video? Not that I would, or that I care.
I think I deserve better ridicule than this. Your stock phrase "full of shit", even when reinforced by Mr. Bennett's "wipe up the drool" doesn't make the grade.
No, John, you really don't. For you, the bar just isn't that high.
John:
Here's my problem with your whole line of "reasoning": I posted a video by Dawkins rationally taking to task nutty religious beliefs, and so far as I can tell, you've written not a single syllable that could be counted as argument against what was said in that video, so far as I can tell.
Rather, you attempt to instruct us on a host of things that have nothing to do with the context. In other words, you're being dishonest. Rather than take Dawkins to task directly, you wish to smear him to that others will discount actual facts and actual reason in an area where what he says has validity.
It's very simple. Regardless of who Dawkins is, what he believes about free will, and what positions he holds as to social or public policy are independent of the facts and reason presented in that video.
This is what I have always loathed about Objectivists, by the way. If someone is a "bad guy," then anything and everything they say is either rejected or ignored out-of-hand. This is just intellectually dishonest behavior, and so far as what I see from you, it's your chief mode of operation.
I'm quite comfortable and confident in being able to acknowledge certain facts and reason Dawkins might come up with, while at the same time, condemning him on other grounds if such information happens to come to my attention.
Also, John:
I wonder how you would reconcile Dawkin's supposed denial of free will (I haven't researched whether that's true or not) with his crusade against religion.
Would you not say his crusade has a moral element to it, or, at very least, is free will not implicit in this whole crusade? What point would there be in trying to convince people of the fallacy of religious faith by means of his many books and, more recently, his TV programs and interviews if people were helpless to change their thinking on the matter?
This is why I have never been that much interested in memetics. It seems like an intriguing explanation, to me, of how ideas get propagated, or "culturized," i.e., they are perceived as a practical "success" on the part of their adherents and are thus passed on to offspring (reproduced), and so on. Repeat millions of times, like genes.
Surely you don't believe that most of the stupid ideas held by most everyone is the result of independent analysis, arrived at through free-will inquiry.
No, most stuff is leaned, swallowed whole, accepted because of the (learned) automatic respect for figures of authority.
I began doing a little reading on the debate surrounding fee will this afternoon, but just couldn't stick with it. It's really pointless. If there's no free will, there's just no point in debating (or studying) anything.
So, for now, I conclude that it must go to far deeper nuances than that, and those proposing such apparently ridiculous notions might be talking about something other than what I might think — but I'm not interested enough to really get to the bottom of it.
And even if there isn't technically "free will," then at the very least our deterministic responses to infinitely complex stimuli are so far beyond our ability to predict that it's hard to imagine such a distinction being meaningful. (And I realize that leaves open the question of moral agency, which is really the crux of the matter.)
In that respect, it's rather like Newtonian physics being "wrong" in the extremes of Einsteinian physics.
And even if there isn't technically "free will," then at the very least our deterministic responses to infinitely complex stimuli are so far beyond our ability to predict that it's hard to imagine such a distinction being meaningful.
It's not meaningful. The argument over "actual" free will is an out of context floating abstraction. The only context that matters in the question is the one within my consciousness, and from in here I perceive free will directly. Whether, from some arbitrary external context, it is actually free will or just massively complex determinism doesn't matter. Either way, I will still act on the basis of free will (either because it is actually there, or because I'm "programmed" to believe it), and acting – and thus thinking – from any other basis would be a contradiction.
In my interactions with other people, I can't directly access their consciousness, I can only observe their response to stimuli, which includes the words I say to them. If someone acts in a way fully consistent with consciousness and free will, I can treat them as if they possess those attributes, whether they actually do or not in some other context. As the Turing Test pre-supposes, anything, whether a person, an animal, or a computer, is conscious – in the context of my interaction with them – so long as I can't tell the difference. Determining whether and to what extent their behavior is consistent with consciousness and free will is part of my duty to judge other people and all things, and any other context is irrelevant, in principle, to me.
Sabotta very nearly fails my Turing Test – YMMV.
While my own personal beliefs tend toward skeptical believer to reluctant agnostic, I have to say that one small incident in the video makes me question Mr. Dawkins' intent.
If you watch, at the end of the segment, he simply TELLS us that he and his crew were packing up when Haggard came rolling up and demanding that Dawkins and his crew get off his land, etc. We even see the video of Mr. Haggard driving up, getting out, and then pointing off in the distance.
However, where is the proof? In the video I cannot make out the shouts to leave that Dawkins claims. And, for all we know, his pointing could have been in response to a request for directions. Lastly, if Mr. Haggard did do these things is it unreasonable to believe that it was only after Mr. Dawkins and crew had acted inappropriately in some fashion that upset Mr. Haggard?
Great thing video editing and narration. We can show what we want and characterize the rest in any manner we wish. Again, it is not to say that these things did not happen, but I did not see any real confrontation that would have led me to believe what Mr. Dawkins was telling me.
I have never been one to allow religion get in the way of my thoughts about the possibility of God. If true, I tend to believe as the Deists of old did, in a benevolent clock maker who made the universe then set it loose and let things run their course.
I could, of course, be wrong.
Forgive me for not reading everything here. Dawkins is not crazy, the person who questions his sanity totally misunderstands. He is just stressing that the passing on of many concepts is a physical thing.
Re: God – while the 'set it loose' argument could be true, any argument that EVERYTHING once originated from a supernatural being is just as good as no explanation at all.