Subject: Re: Religion bashing, was: Jesus give the Schroedinger Equation on the Cross
From: ritzel@prairienet.org (Brian J. Ritzel)
Date: 19 Sep 1996 18:07:02 GMT
David Kastrup (dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de) wrote:
[deletia]
: Fact is that many philosophers have strained hard to argue that morals
: do not need to depend on faith. "Modern" people think that this means
: you can drop both faith *and* morals. In light of this general
: misconception I cannot applaud attempts to ridicule religious belief
: and religious morals while demanding scientific beliefs and no morals
: as a general substitute. People doing so do even generally feel
: superior to people having strict beliefs and morals.
:
: Personally, I prefer living in a world where people have a conscience,
: and tolerate any way in which other people get their impulse to behave
: in a way making living together possible.
:
: Personally, I think that people without religion should be like the
: heartless Tin Man in "The Wizard of Oz". He would always weep when
: treading by accident upon some beetle or something until rusting,
: because he did not have the heart to do so.
It is the hubris of the religious that only religion, and, most often,
only *their* religion, can provide moral grounding and a conscience.
Religion does not hold a monopoly on morality, as much as, in the West, the
Xian Industry would like one to believe. In fact, religion most often acts
as a barrier to morality.
The heartless Tin Men are those who are incapable of living a moral
existance without the threat of divine retribution. They are not moral --
they are cowards. For most "religious" people, however, their religion
provides little more than a justification and excuse for their own
personality disorders, and simply allows them to increase their immoral
behavior since, as a believer, they have a blank check for
"sin-forgiveness". And for those few capable of getting something out of
religion -- they are precisely those who don't need it.
In practice, religion is a fog that clouds the minds of the morally weak,
and deters the minds of the morally strong. It is Evil's most powerful
tool.
Much better is for people to be taught the cognitive and emotional
intelligence necessary to develop their own personal proofs and
understanding of moral truims such as the "Golden Rule". Then they
*become* moral.
-Bri
--
Brian Jay Ritzel
ritzel@prairienet.org
Copyright (c) 1996
Subject: Re: Religion bashing, was: Jesus give the Schroedinger Equation on the Cross
From: bmw@uclink2.berkeley.edu (Ben Waggoner)
Date: 19 Sep 1996 18:23:11 GMT
WOULD EVERYONE PLEASE STOP CROSSPOSTING TO SCI.BIO.PALEONTOLOGY!
We're having enough problems with off-topic crossposting as it is, and
most of us would rather not read these long discussions inspired by
Archimedes Plutonium's ranting. Please edit your headers if it is at all
possible for you to do so (some newsreaders, notably AOL's, don't let you
do this, but most do).
Sorry for crossposting this to so many newsgroups, but I don't know how
else to get the word out. Thank you for being considerate.
Brian J. Ritzel (ritzel@prairienet.org) wrote:
: David Kastrup (dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de) wrote:
: [deletia]
: : Fact is that many philosophers have strained hard to argue that morals
: : do not need to depend on faith. "Modern" people think that this means
: : you can drop both faith *and* morals. In light of this general
: : misconception I cannot applaud attempts to ridicule religious belief
: : and religious morals while demanding scientific beliefs and no morals
: : as a general substitute. People doing so do even generally feel
: : superior to people having strict beliefs and morals.
[merciful snip]
--
Ben Waggoner
Department of Integrative Biology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
bmw@uclink2.berkeley.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Yes, I do believe in true love. I think it would be a bit difficult to
find, since everyone in the world is an idiot and I want to kill them
all, but I think it's possible."
Unknown USENET Sage
Subject: REPOST: RA opportunity in Geochronology
From: copeland@uh.edu (Peter Copeland)
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 13:39:45 -0500
I am posting this to advertise an opportunity for a graduate student you
may know. I have available an RA in my lab and I am hoping you may pass
this information on to any student who might be interested. I am looking
for someone who is interested in using 40Ar/39Ar to study tectonic and
stratigraphic problems at the Ph.D. level; the RA will be for working in
the lab on the day-to-day maintenance of the equipment. The RA is
available in either the Spring or Fall of 1997.
Research in my lab includes denudation studies of the Himalaya
(investigating both the crystalline rocks of the highlands and the
sedimentary rocks of the foreland basin), the timing of volcanic eruptions
(I am beginning a new project in the Lesser Antilles), and the use of
40Ar/39Ar analyses to assess the thermal history of hydrocarbon-bearing
sedimentary rocks (work in conjunction with Amoco). The student who fills
this position will be able to participate in these research projects or
devise one of his/her own. Desirable qualities for this position include
previous experience in geochronology, igneous or metamorphic petrology, or
structural geology and a desire to expand into using 40Ar/39Ar analyses to
solve tectonic, stratigraphic, or petrologic problems. This position will
pay up to $1250 per month (plus insurance) during the school year and up
to $1875 per month during the summer.
I am looking for a PhD student, not a MS, not a post-doc. Anyone
interested in learning more about this opportunity please contact me at
the following addresses:
Peter Copeland
Dept. of Geosciences
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-5503
copeland@uh.edu
phone: (713) 743-3396 fax (713) 748-7906
--
copeland@uh.edu
Subject: Re: IMPACT OROGENY ON EARTH
From: "Robert D. Brown"
Date: 19 Sep 1996 16:05:20 GMT
> It isn't now and it wasn't when it first became active, more than 100
> million years ago. If it was started as a result of a meteor impact,
> the evidence has been subducted into the Aleutian trench.
Wrong again, Chuck, but thank you for keep bringing up objections that
initially sound reasonable to a geological community convinced that Earth
is in some manner "mystically" protected from the impacts that occur on
other planetary structures (or that these impacts haven't transpired since
4 billion years ago). Much of the surficial evidence of the Hawaii impact
has been carried off into the Aleutian trench (and other trenches), but we
still have this iridium-enriched volcano called Hawaii, and we still have
its circum-global CIRCULAR impact crater rim that we call mountains.
Secondly, show me one single paper that gives a 100 m.y. origin to the
Hawaii volcano and I'll show you dozens that place its age between 65 and
70 m.y.a.
Thirdly, SKrueger, does not seem to understand impact physics. How about
yourself? Let's assume an Alvarez-sized impactor 6-10 km diameter, and for
the sake of simplicity let's say it is pure iron and spherical. The
"magical shield" that you are proposing in the above post assumes that the
Earth's oceanic crust deflects the impactor at a seafloor level. Please
explain to me and all the others how it is that the oceanic crust does what
you have just proposed. How is it that the impactor does not blast its way
down into deeper layers of Earth's lithosphere, say the 25-35 km that I
have previously proposed. I love "magic" shows, Chuck. Here's your chance
to put on one of your own design. Go for it.
Robert D. Brown, M.D.
Pelorus Research Laboratory
Hints: The relevant equation is: kinetic energy of motion = 0.5 M * V^2.
(M=mass, V=velocity). The density of pure iron is 8000 kg/m^3. Let's
assume V for the asteroid is 15km/sec relative to Earth, a typical cosmic
velocity.
Subject: Re: Dumb gets dumber
From: "Robert D. Brown"
Date: 19 Sep 1996 19:02:29 GMT
SKrueger:
> Robert,
> You cannot know how incredibly dumb you sound to a geologist.
----> I will assume you are referring to yourself. R U a geologist? RDB
SKrueger:
Your daffy
> theory is in direct contradiction with reams of hard data.
----> Is that the data that "proves" Earth is protected by an invisible
shield, cutting it off from the rest of the cosmos? RDB
SKrueger:
It is
> painfully obvious that you have read just enough geology to make yourself
> look silly.
----> Actually, SKrueger, some of my colleagues have told me that it IS
silly to try to talk sense into people who spend their whole lives with
their heads in the ground, never looking up to see the cosmos all around
them. I, of course, defended your right to appear dull-witted.
BTW, we got a good chuckle from some of your "silly" comments, too.
Actually, some friends and I sat around laughing about your analysis of
impact physics just last night. One made a hilarious toast to your comment
about there being no evidence of earthquakes and continental uplift at the
K/T boundary, in the middle of a conversation regarding impact orogeny
(mountain building as a consequence of impacts). We're still waiting for
you to tell us where those ODP and DSDP holes are in respect to the
Hawaiian impact site, and eagerly await your explanation for the
distribution of dinosaur fossils outside the crater's rim.
I am delighted in your good cheer at this dialogue, I'm having a good time,
too. Since we're all just "silly" in the other's eye, let's continue this
rather "prolonged" discussion, e.g. the one you said "is so goofy that any
1st year geology student could probably
refute it with several lines of evidence". Are you beyond your first year
of geology studies? RDB
SKrueger:
The above quoted post is a classic example.
>
> The ages of deformation in any given tract of continental crust do, in
> general, get younger toward the edges of large continental masses. This
> is because the less dense continental interiors cannot subduct in a
> denser mantle and therefore are successively rimmed by younger and
> younger material which is accreted to them from subducting oceanic slabs
> and episodic plate collisions. But your argument is fatally flawed in 2
> respects:
----> I think you're getting confused between my posts and those provided
by Chuck Karrish. The above cited paragraph wasn't written by me, it was
written by a geologist who was a bit less confused than you seem to be. My
model of Pangaea shows the youngest rock dates along the central magnetic
axis (CMA) (its most inland area) and the oldest apparent rock dates are
distal from the CMA. The further one goes in the Earth-Moon system from
Pangaea's CMA, the older the rocks will date. Chuck already tried to throw
Moon rocks at me as being too old for my model's workings, and I explained
to him that the Moon is the most distant rock from Pangaea's CMA. Please,
SKrueger, you look demented when you make mistakes like that, and I don't
make fun of people whose lives have been destroyed by brain diseases. Do
you drink too, much, perhaps? RDB
SKrueger:
> 1) The younging you read about is related to age of crustal amalgamation,
> not age of rocks. You can find rocks of Precambrian through Recent age in
> the interior of Pangea (Central Africa, Central South America, Southern
> India, Eastern Canada, Western Europe, Central Asia) as well as right at
> the margins of Pangea (Coastal Peru, Eastern Australia, Southeast Asia,
> Western Canada, Southern California).
----> I sure hope Chuck is listening to your lecture. I am very much aware
of what you are saying. Did you know there is mirror symmetry in these
dates (across the CMA)? RDB
SKrueger:
There is a clearly defined fossil
> record of evolving organisms which span the last 600 million years, in
> both the interior and exterior portions of Pangea, and the radiometric
> dating of these sequences is consistent in both locations. There is no
> mysterious bias in radiometric ages based on global position. To argue
> otherwise is to ignore the basic data.
----> Come on, SKrueger, you're really making some rather broad and
unsubstantiated claims here. The fossil record is an entirely fragmented
journal. It takes years of study for a student of paleontology to become
convincingly confused. Its only been since the appearance of the Alvarez
impact thesis that most of them have realized how foggy it is, how hard it
is to figure out what really happened 65 m.y.a. RDB
> 2) The observed younging of deformational ages doesn't only occur toward
> the outer margins of Pangea, but toward many current margins which were
> interior to Pangea (Pinokean - Grenville - Taconic - Appalachian toward
> eastern North America, for example). The observation of younger crustal
> ages towards continental margins is a global tectonic process which has
> been active for at least 3 billion years, not some instantaneous
> phenomenon related to the K/T boundary.
----> Excuse me! The Appalachians, the Atlas, and the northeastern ranges
of the Andes mountains were formed by an impact in what is now the Congo.
Don't start misquoting me, again. I'm glad that you're coming around to my
point of view that the impact record appears sporadic over the short term,
but has been active for (at least) the past 3 billion years. RDB
SKrueger:
> Your posts are becoming more and more ludicrous from a geological
> perspective. You've laid out your theory for the whole world to see, and
> now the whole world is laughing at you. Now would you please go away and
> let us get back to discussing real geology. That is, unless your
> intention is to provide comic relief, in which case you should advertise
> your intentions better.
----> Did you know that thiamin is really helpful for people who drink so
much that they get confused about who is talking to them. We'll raise a
toast tonight to your good health.
Robert D. Brown, M.D.
Pelorus Research Laboratory
SKrueger is:
> * S Krueger (skrueger@arco.com) * *
> * This message is personal and does not * This Sace For Rent *
> * reflect the opinions of my employer * *
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for
having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to
raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), U.S. author. The Crack-Up, “Notebook E”
(ed. by Edmund Wilson, 1945).