The Supernatural

[Sam Lord]

Yeah Trow ..... it's a pity Dawkins is an unbeliever ......lol !!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion

Dawkins was (is) a reactionary sociobiologist i.e. someone who attempts to provide a biological basis for human society and behaviour. If it is biologicaly based it is, of course, something that cannot be changed ... capitalism is the result of our "selfish genes" and we will always have exploitative societies. Just about everything he has written on this matter is becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect.

Here is an article on memes.

http://hallpike.com/Memetics.%20A%20...do-science.pdf

[Trow]

Dawkins was (is) a reactionary sociobiologist i.e. someone who attempts to provide a biological basis for human society and behaviour. If it is biologicaly based it is, of course, something that cannot be changed ... capitalism is the result of our "selfish genes" and we will always have exploitative societies. Just about everything he has written on this matter is becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect.

Here is an article on memes.

http://hallpike.com/Memetics.%20A%20...do-science.pdf

Actually, you can change what is biologically based, wipe out the whole gene pool.
Or the strands that corrupt. Would that end Capitalism?

Would wiping out the Jews have silenced the wailing wall?...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Wall

We can talk for eternity about fabled Gods and Demons just as for eternity we'll speak of Wars. All wrapped up in rumours of our own making.

Those who wage War are our Gods and Demons.

[riposte]

Dawkins was (is) a reactionary sociobiologist i.e. someone who attempts to provide a biological basis for human society and behaviour. If it is biologicaly based it is, of course, something that cannot be changed ... capitalism is the result of our "selfish genes" and we will always have exploitative societies. Just about everything he has written on this matter is becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect.

Here is an article on memes.

http://hallpike.com/Memetics.%20A%20...do-science.pdf

Sam ... I am fully aware that many branches of science have been the subject of turf wars between the left and the right going back to before WWII. Eg. Nature Vs Nurture.

With the defeat of the Nazis (who adopted the Nature Model) ...The Nurture Model became dominant for nearly 60 years and informed all aspects of British Social policy.

Pinker's " Blank Slate" has now reversed that trend

As regards the article above ...... it clearly demonstrates significant differences between the "Meme" and the "Gene" ...... but it doesn't destroy the concept of the Meme ..... which is clearly at work in the behaviour of "the birds and the bees."

[bernadette]

I think its not impossible that some sort of genetic memory is passed on.

Its not unknown for people to mention that a child does something exactly as the deceased father he has never met used to.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Dawkins was (is) a reactionary sociobiologist i.e. someone who attempts to provide a biological basis for human society and behaviour. If it is biologicaly based it is, of course, something that cannot be changed ... capitalism is the result of our "selfish genes" and we will always have exploitative societies. Just about everything he has written on this matter is becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect.

Here is an article on memes.

http://hallpike.com/Memetics.%20A%20...do-science.pdf

I beg your pardon, Sam?

Just about everything he has written on this matter is becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect.

Either Dawkins's work has been shown to be incorrect or it hasn't. It isn't possible for someone's work to use your interesting assessment of time 'becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect'. Is Dawkins work still considered correct or not- there is no halfway house here.

Apart from anything else that is a hideously tortured way of trying to imply Dawkins has been contradicted in his work and shown to be erroneous without actually saying so.

I took a look at the paper on memetics by CR Hallpike and would just like to point out that Hallpike is not a biologist let alone an evolutionary biologist. He is an anthropologist.

This is how his paper begins; 'The conquest of culture is a long-standing ambition of some biologists, who regard claims for its uniqueness as a kind of Creationism.'

That is a distinctly unscientific assertion. It is an accusation. It is an expression of opinion unsupported by any evidence in the paper itself or on footnotes and may well point to an aggrieved and now quite elderly anthropologist who seems to be have got the hump that much of the attention in evolution studies has switched to evolutionary biology.

[riposte]

I beg your pardon, Sam?



Either Dawkins's work has been shown to be incorrect or it hasn't. It isn't possible for someone's work to use your interesting assessment of time 'becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect'. Is Dawkins work still considered correct or not- there is no halfway house here.

Apart from anything else that is a hideously tortured way of trying to imply Dawkins has been contradicted in his work and shown to be erroneous without actually saying so.

I took a look at the paper on memetics by CR Hallpike and would just like to point out that Hallpike is not a biologist let alone an evolutionary biologist. He is an anthropologist.

This is how his paper begins; 'The conquest of culture is a long-standing ambition of some biologists, who regard claims for its uniqueness as a kind of Creationism.'

That is a distinctly unscientific assertion. It is an accusation. It is an expression of opinion unsupported by any evidence in the paper itself or on footnotes and may well point to an aggrieved and now quite elderly anthropologist who seems to be have got the hump that much of the attention in evolution studies has switched to evolutionary biology.

Ah! now Captain.... you're being a bit hard on Sam....lol!!

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Can't stand this kind of thing:

Just about everything he has written on this matter is becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect.

Apart from the fact that it is a blatantly false statement- the only controversy over Dawkins' work I know of is an argument he is having with another evolutionary biologist over the process of natural selection at cellular level.

That description by Sam is downright allright- downright 'wrong'. I think it is an attempt by someone to say Dawkins has been somehow discredited. That would be substantially incorrect to say the least.

The paper by Hallpike linked as supporting documentation is not from am evolutionary biologist- in fact it is from an elderly anthropologist who clearly has the hump that evolutionary biologists have taken a large part of attention in a field in which anthropologists used to have a clear run.

From what I can make out it is a variation on the nature versus nurture debate but with respect Hallpike is not presenting any refutation of Dawkins's work.

'The next few years were spent writing How We Got Here, also published in 2008. This brings together the ideas of all his previous books to produce a comprehensive account of social evolution, and which also provides a more complete and concise theory of how it occurs than anything hitherto. It is notable, in particular, for a detailed investigation of the origins of modern science – an essential basis of modern industrial civilisation – which is intended as a conclusive refutation of those materialists and Darwinians who have produced theories of social evolution. Materialist and Darwinian attempts to explain Man in essentially animal terms are shown to be pseudo-science, which cannot understand that the development of human culture was something fundamentally new in the history of the world. How We Got Here is intended for the general educated public, because everyone should understand how our extraordinary society evolved, and to show that anthropology can make an essential contribution to this.' http://hallpike.com/author.htm

Interesting as it might seem to take Hallpike up on his assertion that the explanation of Man in animal terms is 'pseudo-science' I can think of a number of ways in whicb to point to troublesome pieces of data which should worry anyone who thinks Man is seperate in evolutionary terms from the rest of the fauna of the planet- (example- empathy seems to be be an ability which describes Man but then chimps and dolphins have displayed empathy which appears to be down to specific areas of operation of the brain) and as an athropologist I am sure Hallpike cannot ignore the known switch to a protein diet and the development of language skills as evolutionary leap which in turn appears to have affected the evolution of the human brain.

But I am afraid that Hallpike would only have one point with which I would agree- and that is that conditioning to social ceremony and behaviour would play its part over time but none of that would confound Dawkin's work.

[Sam Lord]

Either Dawkins's work has been shown to be incorrect or it hasn't. It isn't possible for someone's work to use your interesting assessment of time 'becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect'. Is Dawkins work still considered correct or not- there is no halfway house here.

I'd be very surprised if there are many scientists who would be prepared to stand over his work. Memes, for example, have about as much scientific validity as intelligent design.

But I suppose what I really intended to convey that while sociobiology was at one time all the rage, in recent years it has lost most of it's traction. But, of course, there are those still prepared to buy into the crude reductionism of Dawkins.

[Sam Lord]

Ah! now Captain.... you're being a bit hard on Sam....lol!!

Railbirds are really despicable...

[Trow]

Yeah Trow ..... it's a pity Dawkins is an unbeliever ......lol !!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion

Pseudoscience.

[Quote ,,,In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. unquote]

''Almost certainly ?.''

If ''personal God'' refers to a reverence of an ''external higher being'' like Jesus, his Da and their long haired friends then yeah it is deluding.

Eternal life? Go forth and multiply. Pass on your genetics.

In saying that, does this make us all our own personal Gods and Goddesses? Or am i deluding myself?

[bernadette]

[Quote ,,,In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. unquote]

''Almost certainly ?.''

If ''personal God'' refers to a reverence of an ''external higher being'' like Jesus, his Da and their long haired friends then yeah it is deluding.

Eternal life? Go forth and multiply. Pass on your genetics.

In saying that, does this make us all our own personal Gods and Goddesses? Or am i deluding myself?

LOL!! Not all of us Trow...

[Sam Lord]

Pinker's " Blank Slate" has now reversed that trend

Unlikely. It is more a political polemic than a work of science. Demolishing straw men left right and centre. Dawkins thought it was great though.

..perhaps the most damaging weakness in books of the generic Blank Slate kind is their intellectual dishonesty (evident in the misrepresentation of the views of others), combined with a faith in simple solutions to complex problems. The paucity of nuance in the book is astonishing

http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Pinker.pdf

[fluffybiscuits]

Dawkins was (is) a reactionary sociobiologist i.e. someone who attempts to provide a biological basis for human society and behaviour. If it is biologicaly based it is, of course, something that cannot be changed ... capitalism is the result of our "selfish genes" and we will always have exploitative societies. Just about everything he has written on this matter is becoming increasingly exposed as downright incorrect.

Here is an article on memes.

http://hallpike.com/Memetics.%20A%20...do-science.pdf

Delightful can of worms to discuss on a warm summers evening It could be shown to be something that is 50/50, genetic production would account for a lot of our behaviours. Mental illness tends to run in families and has often been shown especially things like manic depression to run in families where the gene may be passed from father to son . With this in mind some research a couple of years ago even suggested there was a specific chromosome that dictated the type of depression that one person may develop over years (http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/157/5/645.short ). Something like religion may have developed in response to changing societal developments and the need to protect resources and instill some sort of faith in people . With the world becoming ever more crowded it would have made sense for people to band themselves into groups who thought alike. Need to read up a bit on memetics myself tommorrow. I skimmed the Selfish Gene but need more in dept knowledge!

[bernadette]

We know bugger all about genetics and not much more about the brain. Its not impossible for some traits to be capable of genetic origins, or not, but its way too early to be certain.

The earth was flat then it wasn't. The earth was made in six days then it wasn't. The earth is millions of years old, the earth is six?? thousand years old.

All the above are man made 'certaintys'.

[riposte]

Railbirds are really despicable...

That's a bit thick Sam ..... I introduced the subject of Memetics ... and you jumped in to to make some controversial comments to which I replied with points you then ignored ........ referring to me as a fence-sitter is not only silly ...... it's totally untrue.