What, Why & How do we Know ?
Several different threads here. All mentioned before – reading Sam Harris “End of Faith” itself, a discussion thread on MoQ.Discuss with End of Faith title and several spin-off threads, and a discussion thread on Chairman Parker’s Blog. My position can be summarised quite easily. Tolerance of (misplaced) religious faith is as dangerous as extremes of … Continue reading “End of Faith in What ?”
Interesting little snapshot here via Johnnie Moore, originally from Marina’s Bloggariffic on the evolution of blogging. The technology changes like fashions come and go, but the evolution of use, uses that add value to humanity, is comically retarded. The ratio of nuggets to trivia is pretty static …. 90% of X is crap, because 90% … Continue reading “We’ve come a long way (not) baby.”
Just added “Freedom of Science” to the blogroll. Pretty whacky style, but a very similar agenda to mine, in this case aimed at “Newtonism” specifically as the problem rather than “scientific objectivism” more generally in my case. Freeing knowledge from academic categories. But very similar rationale too, about the easy option associated with the immensely … Continue reading “Freedom of Science”
The debate trundles on. Struan Hellier’s father Graham Hellier is a Presbyterian minister and has written this “Christian Response” to Dawkins. I responded with these comments. My position is already pretty clear – Dawkins is as extreme as any religious extremist and unfortunately he cannot separate his (correct) arguments about the memetic success of religious … Continue reading “Dawkins vs God – Round XXIV”
After some stressful hectic weeks – company annual conference, and a “learning experience” in US temporary-resident house-buying – Sylvia and I decided we’d have a quiet holiday weekend after work on Saturday. After checking the boys were surviving OK with end of year exam progress – just one of them has one to go – we went … Continue reading “Take it or leave it.”
Copy of Nick Rose’s 1998 paper from the Journal of Memetics, on some of the important misunderstandings and controversies in memetics, and distinctions between genetic and memetic mechanisms that mean the analogy is only approximate.
Interesting post from Sam Norton. A thoughtful Christian positioning on recent “blasphemy furies”. Amongst other things I was taken by this quote from Rene Girard. “The invention of science is not the reason that there are no longer witch-hunts, but the fact that there are no longer witch-hunts is the reason that science has been … Continue reading “Would Science Consider This Blasphemous ?”
Dave Pollard picks up on The Edge 2006 Question response from Kai Krause, and adds quite a detailed take of his own. The original Krause analogy is a good one. If you take a memetic view of cultural ideas, that drive our day to day decision making, the crises that occur (those that don’t arise … Continue reading “The Blue Screen of Death”