Michael Flynn's Blog, page 44

A COMMON MISPERCEPTION

Creation is not a one-time event
but a continual holding in being

A correspondent in another venue, whom we will call Charles Cheese, writes:

 

[Scientific explanation] would be moot if Biblical creation were found to be true ... why bother to find out what makes people sick if it would only take prayer to cure you? Why bother to discover what cause earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or other natural disasters if it the just punishment of a displeased God?  There would be absolutley no need for any science if ... that's how God did it, is the answer to every question!

TOF is somewhat mystified by this contention, and for two reasons.

What are the two reasons?  Read on!

Oh Happiness! our being's end and aim!

Oh Happiness! our being's end and aim!So said Pope.  No, not that Pope.  The one who wrote poetry. 

In another venue, TOF chanced to encounter the following encomium to evolution:

The brain evolved in the same way the fins evolved: because their evolution conferred survival advantages in given situations.

Now the curious thing was that this statement was made by an individual (whom we will call "Adam Apple") who also asseverated that there was no τελος in nature.  I will wait a moment for my reader to stop banging his forehead against his desktop.  You could damage your computer screen that way.   

....(waiting)
....(waiting)

READ  MORE

χmas Time is Here By-Golly

As dependable as holly and mistletoe are the old fundamentalist claims that Christmas is "really" just a pagan festival.  In a recent Letter to the Editor of our local paper, a writer whom we will call "Mr. G" called it "bizarre" to acknowledge a deity with a "mere human construct" like a calendar.  By this we must suppose that cathedrals, statues, stained glass windows, Handel's Messiah, and the designations BC and AD are "bizarre."  Well, tastes vary, we suppose.  

This post is a somewhat expanded version of my reply, which appeared a couple days later.  

Mr. G claimed that Dec. 25 was the pagan Roman celebration of the winter solstice.  But this cannot be true for the excellent reason that:

the Romans did not celebrate solstices and equinoxes, andDec. 25 was not the solsticeREAD MORE

An Interview

I have been interviewed. 

Science Fiction Theater

Hoo-ah.  This was a favorite TV show of mine when I was a kid.  When media science fiction was not all space wars and monsters.

It's also interesting to visit an alien civilization; viz., the 1950s.

The Auld Question

The War Between Reason and ReligionAgobard of Lyons, "On Hail and Thunder" (9th Century)

"A certain stupidity was spread a few years ago...read more

Flynn in the Window

No, I don't know why it appears sideways.  But the Barnes and Noble at PA 33 and Freemansburg Ave. in Easton will be hosting your humble servant for an afternoon of reading and signing.  We can only hope my fan shows up.

The photo was captured by my daughter with her phone as she was walking by. 

FUN WITH STATISTICS!

The Better Angels of Our Nature
Steven Pinker, whom we last saw here making a hash of the mind-body "problem" and earlier denying the existence of human dignity, is a Public Intellectual.  Now, someone who intellectualizes in public may have other bad habits, and here we find him setting eyes rolling among both statisticians and historians with a book entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature. 

Dr. Singer sometimes presents as a scientist, but on closer examination,
we find he is only a psychologist.  (Yes, yes, I know; but for me the touchstone is physics.)  It is unclear what aspects of training in the psyche provides expertise in historical analysis or even in statistics.  Psych majors often take Stats-for-psych-majors, but this ought not be confused with the true quill.  Certainly, any author who gets his name in larger type than the title of the book is an Important Author. But perhaps this is no more than a distinguished expert in one field trying to import that distinction to an alien field, with indifferent results.

(Yes, yes, I know.  But TOF does not pretend to be a Public Intellectual or even an Important Author.)

Read more

Modern Times

Sometimes the Mask Slips, Just a Little

In A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism, by Al Gore and David Blood, we are struck by a vital question: How long did Gore have to search for a co-author named Blood? 

Read more

CLEARING THE TABS

Sundry miscellany found here.