I am well aware that no one actually reads this page. And the few readers I had when I started have long since gone, but here's another post, just so that I have it somewhere where I can refer to it later.

I've been reading Darwinian Fairytales by Australian author David Stove. I'm really enjoying the book as it pokes a good deal of fun at Darwinism. ("Wait, are you saying Darwin was *GASP* WRONG?!") If you find yourself asking this question, it is very likely that you belong to the religion known as "Scientism".

Anyway, I'll spare the details of the book except to say that I just read a section that discusses what we can possibly learn by answering questions of the type: "Where did humans come from?". Sure, we can look for an answer and modern Science would probably tell us what we all know: Humans evolved from monkeys/apes. Fine. Science hasn't yet told us HOW this happened, but this seems to be OK with most people in this religion of Science.

However, let's say that this question was answered. Let's say we found the proverbial "missing link" that solved all of the problems about where we came from. Swell. Now what? What could we possibly do with this information? The only reasonable answer is: OK... so where did the monkeys/apes come from? I think I need not continue down this path, but anyone who has spent time with (or been) a six-year-old is well aware of what happens when we keep asking "Why?" when we get an answer.

So there's really nothing that can be gained from learning where we came from biologically. I'll go so far as to argue that this sentiment even extends to Physics. Why bother asking if the moon was spun off or knocked off by a meteor? Where did the meteor come from? Where did the mass that we now call Earth come from? "The Big Bang", you say? Yes, how convenient. We have just as much information about the universe and this "Big Bang" as we do that the universe was created by an all-powerful God.

Garbage.

If we really want to know about humanity, then we need to not ask "from where did it come?" but "what is it now?". We're so concerned with finding out our origins as if it will explain everything about us that we haven't bothered to look at where we are! Does anyone realize how little we know about the human body?! We don't know how the brain works. We don't know what causes many maladies. We can look billions of miles into the sky to see stars as they were long before humans ever existed, and yet we can't peer into a living human body without killing it.*

Good job, Science!

* If you don't agree with this statement, ask yourself candidly if you would be willing to 1) be cut open and left open for long periods of time, or 2) to live your life under and X-Ray machine, or 3) spend your life in an MRI machine, or 4) to be pumped full of radioactive juice that they use to scan you, etc.....

I don't have much to say today. However, for all of you Scientism-ists out there, THIS is what hundreds of years of scientific discovery has brought you. Thanks CSIRO!

So get this. I've got a test coming up in my Shiite Islam class and I need to know all 12 Imams of "Twelver" Shi'ism. In order to help myself remember, I've come up with this song to the tune of Camptown Races.

Ali, Hassan, and Husayn (and then Zayn ),
Camptown ladies sing this song (doo dah doo dah),
Al- Ba- qir and Al-Sa- diq, and then Al-Kazim.
Camptown track is five miles long, oh doo dah day.

Ali Al- Ri- da, and then Al-Taqi,
Gwine to run all night, Gwine to run all day,
Al- Ha- di, Al-As-ka- ri, and vanished Mahdi.
Camptown track is five miles long, oh doo dah day.

That's it!

I read an article today that asks "Why doesn't America believe in Evolution?". From the first paragraph, the author implicitly states his opinion that anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is a backwards nut-job (as if you didn't get this from the title of the article). I don't mention this article here to defend it or to refute it; afterall, I do believe in evolution. I mention it because of its negative tone pointed - decidedly - at religion.

I must stop here and give the author credit for pointing out that many Christians regard the Biblical account of creation as a metaphor (though I would call it a myth or didactic fiction). I also feel, however, that maybe he is a little hard on "fundamentalist" Christians. I can't believe I'm about to stand up for right-wing fundamentalists (*shudder*), but I think the author really is missing the mark by insinuating that people who believe in creation are stupid or backwards. Couldn't it be that these people just have a very strong belief that differs from our own? Are they causing you harm by believing in creationism?

Further, the author quotes someone else referring to people who are undecided on the topic as "people that can be reached". So all of the rest are getting cut off? Also, the author and the people quoted refer to "battles" between creationists and evolutionists. Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Can you, Mr. Evolutionist, prove to me how we got here? No, you can not. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that you're shouting your position from a lofty and unstable place. I'm also not saying that creationists aren't doing the same thing. In both cases, we need something more.

Here's another article that I found today. This one talks about the oldest "computer" ever found. "Computer" is really stretching the definition to its most basic (i.e. "computer" = something that computes, as opposed to the more recent definition of an electronic device that runs software). Anyway, regardless of what you call it, it is an amazing feat and we should be impressed that something made in 80 B.C.E. 1) was so technologically advanced and 2) survived to this day.

Scientism-ists are probably frothing at the mouth to say "See what Science can do?!". However, I feel that this is a perfect example of the failure of Science. The techniques that were used to make that device as well as the knowledge needed to engineer it are simple today, but at the time it was something special. Whatever happened to that knowledge? It sank on a ship and wasn't found for almost 2100 years!

Anyway, all of this isn't very well reasoned, but I wanted to point out that the original author's article was poorly written. There was a far better way to approach that topic and present the data that it contained.

Ok.... my sermon is over.

I came across an article today (it's rather old now) from a person who is glorifying Scientism. This bothers me a bit as I can't imagine someone willfully embracing this idea. I always thought people who leaned too much on reason (in lieu of a balance between reason, feeling, and emotion) practiced Scientism on accident. Now, I learn that people actually WANT to practice Scientism! Here is a link to the article. You can judge for yourself.

The author of the article defines Scientism as "... a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science."

So, by implication, this person wants to define love as a certain balance of chemicals, and explain what is right and good by assigning mathematical values to certain decisions (or worse, leaving it up to the politicians!!), or define compassion as simple utility.

This is all very dangerous. If we try to define our world, our emotions, and our ideals as simple mathematical equations then we are nihilistically flattening all of these realms into one and - effectively - destroying all but one of them. Don't read too much into this, but this very thing was Hitler's mistake. He thought about his idea of utopia and never stopped to think if he should implement it! If we run around making decisions about things that are clearly not in the realm of Science, then we are falling into the same trap (OK, I feel obliged to say that I'm not saying Scientism-ists are as bad as Hitler, just that they are making the same errors). If we try to use purely scientific terms to answer questions that start with "Should I...?" then we will always come up with the wrong answer.

Also, how are we to measure ethics in a world of Scientism? Are we to assign units of measure to pleasure and pain? Let's call the pain units "dolors" and the pleasure units "hedons". Therefore, I do not want to cut off my finger with a rusty saw because it would mean a higher dolor count than hedon count. Is this your idea of a good ethical system?!

Well, guess what? It's already been done! (Incidentally, this is where we get the word "hedonism"). Science clearly has no place in ethics, morals, or spirituality.

Keep your hands on your side of the car, Science.

I see from my account here that it's been almost a month since my last post. Oops!

Anyway, as you may or may not have read on my other blog, I was recently admitted to Concordia as a Qualifying Student for the Master's in History and Philosophy of Religion. My first course, which was chosen almost entirely due to its temporal location in the work week, will be Shiite Islam. This is all fine and good since it's becoming more and more important for those of us in the West to really understand Islam and where it's coming from. The problem is that I don't know much about Islam, so taking a course specific to Shiite Islam could be a little tricky.

So I got online and found a book that's used as a textbook for the Introduction to Islam course called, appropriately, Introduction to Islam! It was $90 at Concordia's bookstore, but I managed to find a used copy in the States for about $6. I just started reading it this morning and - so far - it isn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. Not Islam, but the writing style, I mean. I haven't even gotten into Islam yet as the author is giving an overview of Egyptian culture and religion first. There will be a review here in a few weeks when I finish the book.

When I finally get into the Master's program, I'll need to pick two religious traditions on which to focus. I'm assuming that one of the two should NOT be Christianity, otherwise I would prefer studying Theology instead of Religion. So, I'm thinking that Islam would be a good choice due to the current rise in tensions in the Middle East (and in North America in the form of the September 11th attacks). I truly believe that Islam isn't to blame for this, but no one on this side of the pond seems to agree with me. Islam is portrayed as a backwards religion that hates modernity and demoralizes women. I don't buy it. Islam is a Semitic religion just like Judaism and Christianity and we in the West don't have a problem with those. I argue that if there is any modernity-hating and women-demoralizing going on that it's cultural, not religious in nature. And so, studying Islam is one way that I can help correct that misconception. As it is, I don't know enough about it to defend it adequately, so hopefully I will learn.

As for the other religious tradition, I was thinking Eastern religions. I know that Buddhism gets a lot of attention at Concordia, but I think that Taoism - the one I'd most like to study - may be grouped in together with other Far-Eastern religions that may or may not include Buddhism.

Barring that, however, I also wouldn't mind studying the occult. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding there, as well. Oh, and look! There's a class in the Winter that fits my schedule called "Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion"! Yay!

Book Review: The Essential Ken Wilbur: An Introductory Reader, Ken Wilbur

This book is a compilation of excerpts from various Ken Wilbur books written, apparently, prior to 1998 by the woman who edited many (all?) of them. I say this because The Marriage of Sense and Soul was written in 1998 and there are no excerpts from it. However, the more I read the more I noticed that it didn't really matter much that some books weren't included because Wilbur is basically saying the same thing over and over again in his books. Now, don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of The Marriage of Sense and Soul and I thought it was a fantastic read. But since it was my first experience with Wilbur, I didn't realize how unoriginal that books was in his repertoire.

Anyway, the books was fine and it even got me to do some thinking about many things. And this is the point, isn't it? The middle section talks about his theories of hierarchies and holons. It's like the mathematics in Physics; it takes the fun out of it completely. But that's not to say there's nothing good in there.

One thing that was in this book that was missing from the other one that I read is his cheesy endings to chapters. Now, I don't know how much of this was the compiler's doing and how much of it was his, but you'll get some really deep thoughts with a concluding paragraph about how if manage to understand these things, then the skies will open up to you and the seas will roll in your heart and the clouds of your mind will lift like a gentle fog on a crisp morning in the foothills of the Tibetan rain forest. Okay, so I made all of that crap up, but that's the kind of mood-killing fodder with which he'd end some very fine ideas.

One last negative note before I finish: There was a very short section on Academic Religion. It was only a paragraph, really. Since I intend to go into Academic Religion, I was very interested in this section. I'll sum it up for you. In the first paragraph he talks about how, when he was a child, he'd put bugs in a "killing jar", which is a jar with a lid into which you'd drop a lethal fluid on cotton balls and insects so you could mount and display the insects. The last paragraph, which I will quote in its entirety was "Academic religion is the killing jar of spirit". I feel that Wilbur is elevating Spirituality over the social and anthropological aspects of Religion. Religion is both social and spiritual. To claim that one is inherently better than the other is... well, let's just say it... elitist.

OK, so I said only one more note, but here's another while we're on the topic of elitism. Ken Wilbur is an elitist. There's no two ways about it. He likes to make hierarchies because that allows him to place himself at one end and everyone else at the other. He likes to structure ideas in lists and orders because, if you know the lists and orders, then you obviously are clairvoyant enough to understand why they are this way. It's annoying, Ken.

Finally (yes, it really is final this time), I want to say that Ken Wilbur's books are pretty good. I wouldn't recommend that you read them all, but I would recommend that you read at least one. I liked Science and Religion: The Marriage of Sense and Soul and after reading The Essential Ken Wilbur I have a feeling I would have liked One Taste, or Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, or any number of others. Not because they have something new to offer, but because they are effectively the same books! Or at the very least the same ideas laid out differently.

So, go buy yourself a Ken Wilbur book. Read it. Enjoy it. Learn from it. Then, it's "move along folks, there's nothing more to see here".