A New Scapegoat

[blockquote]But now I'm reassured. Reason my yet rule. Yes, the book of Genesis is allegorical for something, it is not a literal account of creation. Now if only we could get more people to comprehend that ... wait. What looms ahead?[/blockquote]

It isn't?

'Cause, I always thought it was. A literal, and incorrect, explanation of the creation of our species.

Damned brackets. I blame cab sav.

"The evidence is too great to be ignored"? Hmm?

See! Us Brits can do the loons just as well you yanks. Hurrah for deranged folk as the common denominator.

Come on, its just a local nutcase writing to the Belfast Telegraph. I'm not sure you should take it too seriously.
They have a link on the same page to another letter carefully explaining why Cain married his own sister!
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/letters/article2936717.ece

It's the Belfast Telegraph. No-one takes it seriously that isn't already mostly gone in the head.

"Reason my yet rule" ? Is that supposed to be "Reason might yet rule" ?

Paging Shirley MacLaine.

What really cracks me up about 'past lives' is that they are always exceptional lives and never dull, boring, miserable lives. Interesting lives are statistically rare, so anyone claiming to have an extraordinary run of luck against astronomical odds has to be lying.

not only past lives, but lives-between-lives

Anything could be true. Maybe aliens stole all our furniture last night and replaced them with exact replicas. Or perhaps some malevolent god shipped us off a few seconds ago to live a hundred billion other lives in other universes. All of our wrong-headed conclusions about life were recorded for his amusement, whereupon we were whisked back here to resume our banal existence a planck tick later, utterly unaware of the eons that transpired in between. Hmmm, but then again, maybe this life is one of the hundred billion.

I was also interested in the Cain married his own sister letter - is the writer implying that moral values are situation dependant ? Keep in mind that here in the UK Ireland is considered to be pretty conservative.

Initially, I felt like claiming the writer as a fellow-Irishman, but no, no ... definitely UK.

What really cracks me up about 'past lives' is that they are always exceptional lives and never dull, boring, miserable lives. Interesting lives are statistically rare, so anyone claiming to have an extraordinary run of luck against astronomical odds has to be lying.

That's not true. I myself have had several rather boring past lives. In the last one, I was an accountant for a large corporate real estate management company. I died of a massive coronary when I ignored the advice of my doctor. I was survived by my wife and two daughters (I'd always wanted a son...). I'm good with numbers, so that makes sense.

Ben, I think that's obvious.

In this blog, quibbling obvious typographical errors is considered uncouth.

Show me a "past lifer" who can speak a language they've never been exposed to (no, not Atlantean), and then we'll talk.

A devout Catholic once told me she thought the afterlife was exactly like that shown in the movie Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore/Whoopi Goldberg movie "Ghost."

According to her, the REAL deal is ghosts that hang around and talk to us by possessing black female mediums, and then get sucked up into a bright light when their work on Earth is done.

I just wish other Christians would give up the Bible and live their lives by movie plots. At least we'd have something to talk about.

Urgh. I hate that newage garbage. I think in Canada, it's even worse because organized religion isn't as institutional in people's lives. People need to get their woo-woo from somewhere.

One of my father's last girlfriends convinced him to buy a "book" by Deepak Chopra. When I saw it, it was all I could do not to open the window and pitch the garbage out.

He forgot to add the word 'awubble' at the end!

And they sell more books than the "New Atheists"!

Speaking of which, The God Delusion is nearing one year on the NYTimes bestseller list.

The creationism/evolution debate is now entering the Ontario Provincial election. Johnn Tory, Progressive Conservative leader, who wants to fund private schools using public funds, has said that "they teach evolution in the Ontario curriculum, but they also could teach the fact to the children that there are other theories that people have out there that are part of some Christian belief."

He has now backtracked saying that if these schools teach creationism in science class, they would not be eligible for funding.

That's not true. I myself have had several rather boring past lives. In the last one, I was an accountant for a large corporate real estate management company. I died of a massive coronary when I ignored the advice of my doctor. I was survived by my wife and two daughters (I'd always wanted a son...). I'm good with numbers, so that makes sense.

You were a vertebrate? Damn. The past lives I remember go: cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium... Erm...

Well, okay, I guess it does read as a bit boring, for a while... But it seemed like fun at the time. Life in a stromatolite mat is alright, man. Photosynthesizing! Woo hoo!

I did get to do the nematode thing, too, eventually, sometime around the middle Ordovician. I mean, I think it was the Ordovician. I hazily remember a brachiopod I used to hang with (decent guy... for a metazoan) saying it was the Ordovician. But he wasn't much for marking his calendar, so who knows...

Funny thing. Same guy, he came back later as part of a S. aureus colony that almost killed me. Fun times.

My only real brush with glory was in the New Kingdom period in Egypt. I met Ramses II...

Well, okay. I guess I'm name dropping. And maybe 'met' is overstating at bit...

Technically, I was one of his intestinal flukes...

But we were close, man. Real close.

Not only a life after death, but a life before life? Wow. That's deep. So it's basically "life can neither be created nor destroyed" kind of things.

What a retard.

Some people really spazz out at the lurking awareness that this is all you get. Then they waste hours of their precious life-time worrying about life-times that they never had, and afterlives they never will have. Oddly, they are never willing to test their hypotheses by taking a flying leap.

The past lives I remember go: cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium, cyanobacterium... Erm...

Couldn't you have posted a warning? Now I need to clean all this coffee out of my keyboard. UNfortunately for me, USB keyboards don't recycle karmicly when you wreck them...

So, at the risk of exposing my ignorance of res biologiae (and possibly of Latin... and/or Greek), here's a question related to the whole reincarnation gig: Is there any way to calculate whether there is more or less "life" now than earlier? Because if you could only reincarnate from human to human, then you have the obvious question of where the new souls are coming from (since there were fewer humans before than there are now). But if you throw open the doors to any ol' life form, well, I don't know how to calculate that.

Anyone?

Since I'm back on my meds, I can't add to that...:)

"The evidence is too great to be ignored"? Hmm?

See! Us Brits can do the loons just as well you yanks.

Doozer's Other Law #12, which is either;

"There is no amount of evidence on any subject that is too great to be ignored".

or

"Anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason (or no reason) is fully capable of ignoring any amount of evidence on any subject at all, no matter how hard you kick him".

I just wish other Christians would give up the Bible and live their lives by movie plots. At least we'd have something to talk about.

You'd be amazed how many do. I've run across plenty of evanglicals who appear to believe in the inerrancy of both the bible and any old crap they see in a movie that sounds about right to them. I've had people repeat stuff from The Omen to me under the impression it's in the bible.

All this just shows is that once people leave school, the influence on their beliefs of organised religion, new age pseudo-science, astrology, Patrick Swayze or Dark Vador will end up being much greater than real science.

Questions : is this a problem ? If Yes, can it be solved ? If Yes, will it be a gradual change, and what can influence that change ?

When will the damn creationists figure out if they want theistic evolution or not? I swear, every time one of these debates comes up, it either degenerates into the person never coming back or what basically amounts to 'I believe in Theistic Evolution'.

Can the creationists please make up their minds?

thnx.

I love the word 'regressionist' . It sounds like it might describe someone who has regressed to old, long disproved ideas.

See! Us Brits can do the loons just as well you yanks.

A point of pedantry - the writer appears to be from Newtownards which, like Belfast, is in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is on the island of Ireland (or Eire) - Britain is a different island so, while us Brits can do the loons, this is is not an example of British lunacy :-)

Though - to pedant back at myself for a moment, Ireland is in the British Isles, so...never mind.

Is there any way to calculate whether there is more or less "life" now than earlier?

A much more interesting question than this silliness about sprits dipping in and out.

Pick some feature of life that allows calculation. Keep in mind that much of life on Earth doesn't even fit nicely into our definitions of the word "individual", let alone much-debated concepts like "species". For the sake of argument, lets assume one individual life-form is either
a) one multicellular organism individual, with distinct boundaries between its cells and the rest of the world
or
b) one clone of cells not physically bound together in space, but carrying 99.9999% identical DNA sequences

We run into a minor quibble with things that span both a) and b), like identical twins, but I doubt that's going to have much impact on our all-of-time calculations. And I'm not going to argue here about cell theory or viruses.

So, is there more life now than in the past? I don't know how to get at even rough estimates for this, except to point out that the colonization of the land massively increased the volume of space available for living things, so I'd say there's more now than there was in the Cambrian. Total global biomass as of perhaps 250 million years ago (yeah, yeah, end-Permian mass extinction event yada yada) was probably similar to that of today.

Beyond that, I don't know how to guess at an answer here.

"I did get to do the nematode thing, too, eventually, sometime around the middle Ordovician. I mean, I think it was the Ordovician. I hazily remember a brachiopod I used to hang with (decent guy... for a metazoan)"

[engage "pedant mode"]
But nematodes are metazoans too.
[/engage "pedant mode"]

Otherwise an excellent and most entertaining post.

But nematodes are metazoans too.

Umm... would you believe they're self-hating metazoa?

Actually, it was just bad editing. Briefly had 'paramecium' instead of nematode, which is when that aside went in; apparently shoulda re-read. Anyway...

In my defense, this is my first go-round as a member of a species with a written language.

if you could only reincarnate from human to human, then you have the obvious question of where the new souls are coming from (since there were fewer humans before than there are now). But if you throw open the doors to any ol' life form, well, I don't know how to calculate that.

If we're counting every individual organism that exists anywhere in the world, humans would seem to be just a rounding error.

"Life is a continuum"

hmmm, "continuum", that is another word that I have to add to my list of words that one may use to express an idea that has no meaning whatsoever but that will look "scientific".
Other candidates :
- interconnected
- quantum
- ...

AJ Milne, stop taunting us with mere snippets and write your damn memoirs already. I'll bet you've got some juicy stories about love in the Permian. And I want to know what happened in the early days of Banded Iron Formation er, formation. You know, before they sold out, when they were still keepin' it real.

I suppose you could limit it to any organism with a nervous system, or any organism with [pick arbitrary distinguishing factor here], which would complicate things. How do you decide what gets a soul? Does an amoeba count, or is the cutoff point, like, ants?

Regardless, I wanna come back as a dolphin. They always seem like they're having so much fun, and they're better surfers than me.

hmmm, "continuum", that is another word that I have to add to my list of words that one may use to express an idea that has no meaning whatsoever but that will look "scientific".

negentropyeater, I can't believe you didn't stick entropy in that list! In my experience, it's got pretty wide application in pseudoscientific circles.

Do animals have souls ? I asked my Google-god and I randomly picked one answer, this is what I found :

"Animals may be said to have souls--if the word "soul" is used as the Bible employs it in discussing members of the animal kingdom (i.e., to describe only the physical life force found within all living creatures). But if the word "soul" is used to refer to an immortal soul that one day will inhabit heaven or hell, then no, animals may not be said to possess a soul. This is the only conclusion that can be drawn, respecting the instruction on the subject found within the Word of God. " - Bert Thompson Phd

So I guess its got nothing to do with the nervous system or the brain, he probably also thinks that a human zygote has an immortal soul.

You see, just ask Google-god and you'll find the answer!

You know, it's interesting. In his God is Not Great book Christopher Hitchins refers to himself as a "Protestant atheist" -- by which he means, Protestant Christian was the baseline form of supernaturalism from which he initially departed. I was technically raised without religion ("freethinker"), but as a child and teen I fell into New Age, neo-pagan, "spiritual but not religious" forms of belief. So I suppose that makes me a "New-Age Atheist." That was my normal standard of supernaturalism which I gradually applied skeptical reason to -- and then spread it out to similar claims, like Christianity and theism simple.

Therefore, this stuff does not sound nuts to me. It sounds wrong. Mistaken. Incorrect. But I approach it with the same sense of consideration for a respectful argument that a lot of atheists seem to use when approaching the more rational forms of Christianity. They once thought it plausible, and it can't be ruled out without thought. I once believed Cosmic Consciousness was plausible. So I want to see the claims examined, dissected, refuted, taken seriously, taken apart, and explained. Not just the guys who write Letters to the Editor, but the Deepok Chopras. The Dean Radins. The Ken Wilbers.

I find the "spiritual energy paranormal consciousness" refutations more interesting than Bible arguments. If you're not raised in it, the whole "blood atonement for sin" stuff sounds like Scientology. Remember, when the "liberal," enlightened, rational, sophisticated critics sneer at the clumsy, anthropomorphic, irrational versions of Supernaturalism which Dawkins et al. attack -- and then claim to have a reasonable religion which comports perfectly with scientific evidence -- this sort of thing is usually what they mean.

I love Dawkins' new series against New Age. About time he got to the harder stuff, methinks ;)

BTW, asked several questions to my Google-god on the subject "Do animals have souls" :
this is the number of links I found changing the word "animals" with other words :

Humans : 2110 links
Dogs : 1010
Animals : 895
Cats : 202
Cows (!): 28
Monkeys : 8
Cephalopods : 0

Last, ask "Does Bush have a soul" and you get 3 links.

I found it strange to see that people are more preoccupied to know if cows have a soul than monkeys.

And no, PZ, nobody seems to be worried about cephalopods...

You don't suppose the author meant Dyan Cannon, star of '60s movie Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice, do you? If so, her book on past lives would be a must read.

Meeting of the Reincarnation Society:

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20070826/cx_cl_uc/cl20070826
(Close to Home)

Sastra:

So I suppose that makes me a "New-Age Atheist." That was my normal standard of supernaturalism which I gradually applied skeptical reason to -- and then spread it out to similar claims, like Christianity and theism simple.

For me, it was UFOs, ley lines, ancient astronauts and Egyptian amulets. I had divested myself of them by age eleven, or thereabouts, but I suppose we're both New Age Atheists!

Blake Stacey wrote:

For me, it was UFOs, ley lines, ancient astronauts and Egyptian amulets.

Yup. My dad is evidently still into "Ancient Astronauts." At age 74.

He's not that upset that I'm an atheist (though he strongly prefers the term "agnostic.") But it really bothers him that I don't believe in ESP. That's even got lots of science behind it, too. (We stay off the topic now.)

In my former lives, I was a dodo, a carrier pigeon, and a mammoth. All of which got chumped out by H. sapiens. Too bad we can't extinguish H. reincarnationistus.

I went to one of those Reincarnation Society meetings but there was no-one there. Just a sign on the door with "Back later" on it.

Anything could be true. Maybe aliens stole all our furniture last night and replaced them with exact replicas.

They keep doing that to me! I wish they'd leave the stains off but I guess they think that's funny.

Well, okay. I guess I'm name dropping. And maybe 'met' is overstating at bit...

Technically, I was one of his intestinal flukes...

But we were close, man. Real close

Dude, I nearly guffawed out loud in lab.

Marcus@20, what's especially interesting is that the last bit of this kook's scribble that PZ quotes has him saying that `the evidence for life before... death is too great to be ignored.'

Yep, I must agree with him there. He's a babbling loony who can't even phrase his own arguments coherently, but he's right there.

'PZ!' (cocks gun, reluctantly aims at theist scrotum twisting icon) 'Step away from the keyboard!'

Wading into Northern Ireland religious opinion and confronting it with reason is like trying to persuade an elephant with diarrhoea to stop shitting: it wastes time and words.

I'm suddenly reminded of Italo Calvino's excellent first-person accounts of meiosis and mitosis.

My wonderful neighbors subscribe to The Secret and every other metaphysical nonsense that comes their way. One of their close relatives recently died and then thoughtfully placed shiny coins on doorsteps and sidewalks as a sign that she was doing well "over there." Because, you know, otherwise we just don't find coins on the ground.

Anyway, speaking of afterlives, I'm wondering whether any physicists, as opposed to writers of speculative fiction, believe that our "selves" travel between parallel universes when we die. And if so, whether those selves could come back here to leave signs.

Ann;

I was once at a lecture by Gary Schwartz, the Harvard Phd psychologist who claims to have done scientific studies demonstrating that mediums really do talk to the dead. He spoke at a skeptic's conference, and began his lecture with a lengthy slide show on a physics theory explaining "how our personalities might survive death." There were a bunch of uncomfortable physicists shifting in the audience, and during questions Neil deGrasse Tyson got up, thanked him for doing the "studies," agreed with previous commenters that they needed to be double-blinded, and then ripped into the physics. He told Schwartz his theory was "sheer drivel." He should leave it out.

As I recall, Dr. Schwartz explained that he had come up with the physics before doing the research. It was very important to him. But he wasn't used to discussing it in front of physicists.

Implication being, he'd take care it didn't happen again, I guess.

#9,

When you consider the fact there were only two people in the first generation, avoiding (forbidden word I'm sure folks can figure out) is pretty much impossible.

I found it strange to see that people are more preoccupied to know if cows have a soul than monkeys.

Maybe because many of us eat cows more often than we eat monkeys?

For a delightful debunking of all things paranormal and New Age, read "Spook" by Mary Roach. It's hilarious.