Eating cows
There is growing consensus in the scientific community that several psychological problems that afflict humans can
also appear in animals. If the mind, and the self-awareness that goes with it, is what distinguishes us from other animals, and if it is shown that the minds of animals are similar enough to ours to share certain psychological problems, does that not negate our uniqueness?
To quote the article in Seed magazine: "The idea that humans share a psyche with other animals is enormously challenging. First, it alters the basic model around which biomedical and other disciplines have organized theory and terminology. Concepts like sense of self, empathy and intention have largely been considered exclusive to humans, and have therefore defined what animals are not. Such perceived dissimilarities have shaped theory, practice, law and custom for centuries. The human-animal gap influences how we live, how we formulate scientific questions, how we practice science and even what we eat."
If we are more alike than different from other animals, what gives us the right to declare ourselves their masters? Because we have the power to?
Imagine harvesting humans for meat. Suddenly that piece of cow you have on your plate does not seem so appetizing anymore, does it?
Freedom in learning, right from the start
A free school in New York believes that students, right from grade school kids, should be the one designing their own curriculum.
LinkComing from a country where rote-learning is highly emphasized and even celebrated, this came as a pleasant surprise. Yet, as I think deeper, my brain shouts "Illogical"!
Are we born with self-motivation? Are we born knowing what we want to know? Even though I celebrate the American college system where students have the autonomy to learn what they want to learn, to specialize in what they choose to specialize, I am not sure how this could be extended to kids. Granted, there exists kids with strong innate interest in a particular field or just strong plain curiosity, they belong to the minority. When we are young, we are probably still in dreamland, eating candies, playing with other kids and talking about the latest kid shows. I know I didn't care about school back then. Who need all the boring Math, Science that seems out of this world, and language... as long as I can communicate with my friends, isn't it enough?
I only truly appreciate all this later, much later. It is only through testing and trying in this huge world did I finally manage to find out where my interest lies, what my beliefs are. It is like standing in front of a ice-cream store and gotta keep trying the different flavors before one could figure out which is the personal favorite. Except, I needed much prodding before I step out and explore this world, unwillingly. If not for the enforced school system, I think I would be wondering on some streets and still dream the same old innocent dream of bright blue skies.
Of course, this is so subjective, I shouldn't even post here. But this seems like a good topic for discussion. Anyone?
Comments on a comment
Many thanks to 'kx' for his thoughtful comment on my article. He is one of my friends for whom I have a lot of respect. I should like to take time to comment upon his remarks. If anyone is mistaken, he is most definitely not of the creationist ken. He was just pointing out some shortcomings in my post.
"Human evolution has always been known to be a theory in crisis within the scientific community itself, largely due to lacking evidence." -kx
Unfortunately, whatever the anti-evolutionists would like you to believe, this is simply not true. There are 2 types of evidence for evolution--direct and indirect. The direct evidence is mostly for microevolution--changes in species over time. Experiments with fruit flies and other animals in the laboratory have proven microevolution. Even creationists themselves admit that microevolution is a fact.
Macroevolution (large scale changes above the taxonomic level of species), however, has evidence that is to be gathered mostly from inference from fossils and DNA. Because we cannot see it actually happening, it is termed indirect evidence. We examine the features of current species, their ancient ancestors, then theorize that if evolution were to hold true, we should find fossils with in-between features. So far the fossil record has been favourable to, if not damningly favourable to, evolution.
"You do say that whatever evidence we lack we will find- as much as a proponent for evolution, I am disturbed about that" -kx
It is faith I suppose, but again we have to be careful not to confuse the 2 different types of faith. This is much less the faith in the sense of "I believe I will go to heaven after I die", but more "I have seen the sun rise for the last 10,000 times, therefore I believe it will rise tomorrow". One thing that makes science different from religion is that it has to be consistent. Evolution has so much indirect and direct evidence that most of the scientific community accepts it as fact. When I said that we will find the evidence we lack today, tomorrow, it was much less a statement of blind faith than a belief that the Universe is consistent. Because evolution is a fact, whatever we dig up has to be consistent with that.
"I think the debate occurs because of a lack of agreement on the types of evidence that we would find or should find and there are worrying reports of selective acceptance of various findings and also the selective dismissal of those that do not fit the current theory" -kx
Precisely. But it is the creationists who keep shifting the goal posts. They ask for the missing link between birds and dinosaurs. We find the fossil of a reptile with feathers. They say, "Ah ha, but what about whales and land mammals?". We find an intermediate whale with clearly antropied limbs. They say, "Ah ha, you said mammals evolved from the sea, where's the evidence?". We find the aforementioned tetrapod. Every missing link that we find the creationists answer with a request for 2 more and so on
ad nauseum.
I am hard pressed for any case of "selective dismissal" of evidence though, unless you are referring to the creationists.
"I too am confident that someday science will provide the answers, but perhaps not exactly the evidence we'd all expect or like to see." -kx
That is the beauty of it, no? We might not like nor expect what we find, but we have to deal with it. Richard Dawkins recounted an event during his undergraduate years when the pet theory of one of his professors was blown away by a visiting speaker. The professor got up, walked to the front of the room, shook the speaker's hand and said, "My dear sir, I congragulate you for having proven me wrong the last 15 years!"
"I'm always amazed at the ppl who ask for Intelligent Design to be taught in the classrooms. I wonder how religion can take ID being taught as an alternative theory to their children- that being the very nature of theories being that it is not necessarily true. I think ID should be left to the religious institutions, not schools." -kx
I agree. I have no problem with creation science (ugh!) being taught as theology. Trying to pass it of as a counterpart to evolution is plain silly, not to mention dangerous. Creationists claim they only want "equal time". BULLSHIT. They are not interested in equal time; they want
all the time. They want to use intelligent design as a wedge to reintroduce God in the classroom. Ask them to let
evolution be taught in
churches in the interest of equal time, then watch their reaction.
The human eye is not irreducibly complex!
First go
here.
If you looked at the comments section at all, you will notice that the to-ing and fro-ing quickly descended into chaos so endemic to many evolutionist vs. creationist debates. Sigh.
I myself was particularly intrigued by the video. On hindsight, the concept seems so stunningly simple that I wish I had thought of it. I applaud Dr. Nilsson for his brilliance.
For those of you who are puzzled by the big fuss, I will provide some background. For creationists, and now their thinly-veiled "intelligunt desine" (thanks to Jiahao for pointing
this out to me) reincarnates, one of their key arguments against the plausibility of evolution has always been the existence of some irreducibly complex structures in nature. The human eye is an oft-cited example. A popular analogy among evolution-bashers is to liken evolution to putting a bunch of gears and screws and springs into a bottle, then shaking it until you get a functional pocket watch. They claim that there is absolutely no way that a random process would be able to produce a structure whose parts are finely tuned to tick-tock perfectly together. I agree whole-heartedly with that sentiment--if the process involved were indeed random. Evolution is, unfortunately,
not random.
What is popularly known as "Evolution Theory" is, in fact, a combination of two things. First is the
fact of evolution. It happened; it is happening; and it will continue to happen no matter how many Bibles you throw at it. The mountain of evidence for evolution is staggering in terms of the fossil record. The "missing links" that we do not have today we will find tomorrow. The recent
discovery of the tetrapod being a case in point. I was having a lively discussion with a close friend (who was, unfortunately, a staunch advocate of Genesis) right before the discovery of the tetrapod missing link. I had asserted that whatever evidence we lack will eventually be found, and was pleasantly surprised (I might even have been ecstatic) few days later when my prophecy was fulfilled (I know that
Stephen Jay Gould, one of my most admired writers, would have given two arms and a leg to see the fossil himself. Alas, he was surrendered to the earth in 2002).
The second part of what is known as "Evolution Theory" is, wait for it, the theory of evolution. The part of evolution in doubt is the exact mechanisms by which it proceeds. This is what the scientific community debates about. We know natural selection is a fact, but we have not worked out all the kinks and the details. The theory presented in the video is yet another nail in the creationist coffin. Though, like the undead so popular in B-grade horror movies, I very much doubt they will oblige to stay buried. Natural selection is what makes evolution "unrandom". Environmental pressures work to push genetic drift or mutation (which is random) in very specific directions. To produce all the wonders of our rapidly-going-down-the-drain Earth, all you need now is time. Of which there has been plenty, unless you are one of those who believe that the Universe is only 6000 years old. The Earth is commonly accepted by the scientific community to be about 4.5 billion years old. This, my friend, is a very very very very long time.
The point I am trying to make, after much words, is that a person who places any value on Truth at all will have to factor the fact of evolution into their belief system. In the words of Cardinal Paul Poupard, religion risks turning into "
fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific findings.
Roman Catholic Church - Where marketers pray the hardest
Marketers are "donating" products to Pope Benedict XVI and praying real hard that the Pontiff would be seen using their products.
LinkIt is reported that the Pope is better than any A-list celebrity when it comes to endorsing products because the Pope has more devoted followers. This only goes to show that religion isn't the only thing many so-claimed devouters goes for. It could easily be a sense of belonging. It could easily be a lot of other things. Suddenly God isn't enough. Emulating the Pope is.
The five-sensed cane of mind
In this case, I shall have to agree to disagree with my fellow contributor.
Harry Kemp wrote the following in "The Second Book of Modern Verse" (1922):
BlindThe Spring blew trumpets of color;Her Green sang in my brain--I heard a blind man groping"Tap--tap" with his cane;I pitied him in his blindness;But can I boast, "I see"?Perhaps there walks a spiritClose by, who pities me,--A spirit who hears me tappingThe five-sensed cane of mindAmid such unguessed glories--That I am worse than blind.Arthur C. Clarke, recalling the above poem but not the author, misquoted in his book "Profiles of the Future" (dated but still highly readable and entertaining): "... Amid such
greater glories, That I am worse than blind."
Truth be told, I rather prefer Clarke's version.
Back to the point I was trying to make--that there are many wonders that lie outside of our senses, but I believe that religious mumbo jumbo is not the way to understand them. This is why we build machines to extend our senses. Sound recorders to downconvert the voices of bats so we can hear them, radio telescopes to probe where our eyes cannot, electron microscopes to explore features we cannot feel.
Mystics would like you to believe that the chaotic (and understandably bewildering) quantum universe is justification for, and here I quote Mr Chopra himself, the possibility for "healing without touch" , "telepathy" and "clarivoyance". If any of these things do happen, it will be through technology, through hardwork and through basic down-to-Earth rationality. Healing without touch? Endoscopy. Telepathy? Some kind of implanted communication device. Clairvoyance? Memory downloads.
Even chaos is nothing of the sort. It is subject to probabilities, to statistical analysis. You might not know for sure what the next coin toss would reveal, but you do know the chances.
Just because our five senses are inadequate does not mean that we should abandon what they tell us, or throw up our hands in despair. We have to proceed on the basic premise that reality has to be consistent. Yes, there are other realities besides what our five senses tell us, but the only way to understand those realities is through the good old five-sensed cane of mind, not, as Mr Chopra would like you to believe, the "sixth sense [of the soul]".
Introduction
This blog is all for promoting rationality, just as what Asimov had done. With this in mind, I would love to share this
website.
We have been relying on our senses, our perceptions all our lives. Could anyone of us transcend that? Would our future be really that different from now?
Rationality and irrationality is separated by a very thin line. For all we know, that line might not even exist at all in the quantum space.
