Darwin Day 2014

Confucius – 'What is necessary first is to rectify the names.'

Science, done right, NEVER makes assumptions. Get the data first; work the logic back until you find the least hare-brained assumptions that lead to the data. If new data screws up your beautiful and wonderful logic...do the goddam math again. Right this time! THAT is Occam's Razor.

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I've been reading a lot of ancient philosophy, so I am going to bore you for the next while with a recap of my latest self-obsessed epiphanies. After all, the whole point of being 'cultured' is to inflict the fruits of your lack of mundane industry on the pathetic intellects of your unelightened friends, yes? Russians, brillant masters of both simple and subtle tortures, consider the adjective 'niculturniiy' to possess the same emotional freight and derogotary intent as we would put into, 'congenital dipshit'. They also say 'God writes straight with crooked lines', sooo....what exactly are they getting at?

And why do the fragmentary and mythical blatherings of 2500 year old cultures have any relevance to a 21^st century controversy between the following philosophical positions?

1. The universe was built, last week in geological terms, by a vaporous moral cripple, in a few days of light-duty labor that would shame the efforts of a fingerpainting monkey. And THIS week, the Jesuits realized how stupid this all sounded, hijacked a gimmick called 'logic', and created enough bullshit in the intervening, uh, days, to completely flummox everyone that wasn't following with a score card.
2. Universally observable and derivable physical laws, completely without purpose or destiny and entirely indifferent to the pathetic concerns of intelligent beings, managed to assemble the Damned Thing over an unimagineably vast period of time, completely by trial and error. Mostly error.

Shit! Can we submit some more alternatives here?

The Indian philosopher Kapila, around the time of the Buddha, managed to invent the essential scientific view of biological evolution, and it is a masterpiece of reductionist thinking:

1. 'Our' senses are all we have to observe with, or even IMAGINE we can observe with. No matter what kind of handy spy gadget we may create, we will still have to be able to read the needle on the damned thing somehow and have a vague idea of what the number means.
2. Limbs, words, sex and filth are all we're equipped with to effect changes. All our fancy gadgets (if I must repeat myself) are overextended exaggerations of what we're already packing at birth.
3. What we end up seeing is mostly dirt, air, fire, light, beetles and each other; we also suspect that 'nothing' might be an object in its own right, because we are quite capable of complaing when we lack anything in the list above, except maybe the beetles. Weird.
4. Since this is all we have, and all we see, and all we can do...the emotions this stupid situation creates are the most basic things (and probably the ONLY things) that drives progress of any kind.
5. Period.

If you think this over for a bit, you realize that....even the most primitive one-celled critter in the muckiest sea on the most deity-forsaken rock in the galaxy is going share the same essential motivations as the famous shit-flinging apes of Planet III/dipshit yellow dwarf/Orion sector. Move, blab, eat, shit, engage in procreative activity. Mr. Paramecium will be quite satisified to do those things over and over and over....to escape the last thing, which is to...

GO TO HEAVEN! WHERE WE CAN MOCK THE PETTY ASPIRATIONS OF OUR FILTHY-MINDED ENEMIES FOREVER!

What, no, I didn't mean....Hmm. This seems a bit, well, selfish to me, somehow. So maybe what will happen is that I will stave off a wonderful opportunity to...

BURN IN HELL! BECAUSE I WAS TOO STUBBORN AND UNLUCKY TO KISS THE RIGHT ASSES WHEN I HAD A CHANCE!

Um, no, not that either. Odd how, when you go to heaven, you are part of the 'in' crowd, whereas if you end up in the other place...Surely being neck-deep in burning pitch would a LOT more tolerable if there were a few friends there, cheering you...uh, maybe not. Maybe we're engaging in hedonistic orgies because we don't like...

TAXES! NOW, DAMMIT, THE CONSTITUTION SPECIFICALLY STATES THAT MY GUNS ARE GRANTED TO ME BY A BENEFICIENT AND VENGEFUL GOD TO SHOOT THE FIRST GUBBEMENT EMPLOYEE THAT I TELLS ME TO REMOVE THE AXLE OF MY GRANDADDY'S 36 FORD COUPE, RIGHT BEHIND THE PERFECTLY GOOD CHEST FREEZER THAT I SWEAR I'LL GET FIXED UP TO SELL REAL SOON NOW...

Uk. That's worse the first two. Let's just we'll leave the answer to the student for now..

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Confucius, around the same time as Kapila, was vastly disgusted with things Chinese. During his later years, he was head-hunted by a recruiter for the prince of Wei. When the famous sage was asked what he would do first when the prince appointed him his head of government, he said 'What is necessary to rectify the names.'

What the hell did he mean by that?

Many people are intimidated by science, and one of the most common complaints is that:

'There are too many weird, made up words, and even the ones I recognize don't seem to mean what I (was brought up, was taught, should by golly) think they mean.'

..and the paranoid or traumitized ones might add:

'and I think THEY are part of a world-wide UN conspiracy to take our jobs, corrupt our children and bodily fluids, and generally sneer at us for our lack of...uh, whatever it is they think we lack...'

Confucius would have understood, though, because, above all things, he taught his thousands of pupils that 'the whole end of speech is to be understood'. Clarity, in thinking and speaking, is the most important thing he thought he could beat into the heads of his students.

Scientists use many common words, and have invented hundreds of thousands of new ones, because clarity and precision are absolutely essential in order to do consistent, universal, and verifiable science.

A decent scientific education includes a course in logic, and if there is ANYTHING they've tried to hammer into students' brains since the days of Plato, it is that logic can be used, and abused, to 'prove' absolutely anything. Some handy tricks include: vague terminology; absurd analogies; or unquestionable assumptions. (Ass, you, me, umption...there's a joke in there somewhere.) Thanks to a vast lack of sense of humor, imagination, and ethical intuition, the practitioners of these methods can delude themselves into thinking that they are turning the 'tools of science' against their tormentors. Hah-hah! Take that, you logic-chopping atheist bastards! God sez your tools are useless!

'Suzy, a careful and methodical girl, bought a new pair of scissors. Being (those things), she read the scissor-manual very carefully, learning that: for safety purposes, the thumb and middle finger of the left hand must be inserted as indicated in the accompanying diagram and....' Gahh! ' Suzy used the scissors to cut a neat circle of yellow paper, and drew a happy face on it. By attaching this ornament to the diplay case for her rock collection, she hoped to add a cheerful and attractive decorative note to her admittedly drab entry in the local science fair. Due to her careful attention and skillful use of the appropriate tools, she was quite pleased with the result and was sure the judges would approach her exhibit in a receptive frame of mind, the better to appreciate the detailed descriptions and outlines of geological provenance for each of her specimens.'

'Glenn, her classmate, was more energetic and outgoing, always good for a laugh. Just the kind of person you wanted to share the room with during those boring lectures in Earth Science (whatever that was). He also wished to enter something for the science fair; morever, he believed that his theme, 'Timeline for Scientific Creationism', would easily win first prize; after all, his mom had already found him a design for a good poster off the Internet.

Wow, mom had done a great job of having this printed for him downtown. All Glenn had to do was make an eye-catching caption for it. He thought '6000 BC (Before Jesus Christ)' would nicely summarize his entry.'