Evolved Self Publishing

What question is religion the wrong answer to?

Filed under: Our titles — Shaun, publisher @ 11:08 am

With the release of “Expelled…” and the resulting reviews I’m turned off to the debate over natural selection. The issue is universally seen as involving only origins, not at all the unhappy implications of natural selection for free will.

I’m turning my attention away from attacking natural selection to replacing it. I plan to repeat Descartes’ investigation of reality but with evolution in place of God as the dominant explanatory principle.

The main problem with the modern world view is not natural selection itself but the lack of alternatives for it. The modern world view has many gaps, something like natural selection is the inevitable result–a gap-stopper. The problem is not any one particular gap-stopper, but the existence of the gaps themselves.

Here’s my new focus–what question is religion the wrong answer to, that evolution might answer better?

Please let me know if this sounds promising?

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Darwin’s bulldogs chew on “Expelled…”

Filed under: "Me and The Genies", "Save Our Selves", Natural selection, "Expelled" movie — Shaun, publisher @ 12:05 pm

I’m involved in two excellent discussions re the movie “Expelled…”

First, a discussion linked to from England’s New Scientist magazine’s web-site home page which is drawing a fine caliber of argument, though predominantly physicalist.

Second, website of the Acton Institute, a sort-of Christian think-tank. Here, the physicalists are met with general puzzlement. Their point of view does not carry automatic authority, they are being challenged, “do you stand for all of science?”

I think evolutionists are starting to become a bit intimidated at the prospect of the release of a movie that may expose to public view the excesses of Darwin’ bulldogs. Interesting to me, no one on the New Scientist board will distance themselves from charges of “liar” and “pig ignorant” hurled at non -Darwinists in the discussion. I am still trying to get someone to suggest those remarks be retracted.

I’ve not experienced fair discussion of Darwinism on online boards before. For a sample of what it’s usually like, see the amazon science board in relation to my “Save Our Selves…” book, a followup discussion there in my absence, and the review of my book then posted by one of those present.

That sort of a thing is disgrace to science, matched only by the acquiescence to it of evolutionists in general.

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Post-epiphenomenalist evolutionary theory

Filed under: Natural selection — Shaun, publisher @ 11:15 am

I used to be an epiphenomenalist. Before that I was regular just like you probably, unless you’re an evolutionary scientist.

Regular–what was that like? I can’t remember. I do remember what it was like being an epiphenomenalist. I believed mind couldn’t act on matter. Whatever was in my consciousness couldn’t affect my behavior; my behavior was driven by my brain chemistry, directly. Consciousness was like that screen you see on the back of a digital camera. It shows you the image the camera would take if you pressed the button but it can’t itself push that button. Put the camera on self-timer and it can take the picture, but the image on the back can’t. The camera on self-timer, that’s like our brain chemistry, it can do all the work itself. Consciousness is like that screen on the back–it can’t do anything except tell you what the camera is about to do.

Or, to put it everyday terms, your body puts out urine but that urine can’t jump back into your body and change anything. Same way, once your brain exports something into consciousness that something can’t jump back into the brain to make any difference in what you do. The connection goes only one way, from brain chemistry to consciousness.

And that’s what I believed. Until, one day, I realized it couldn’t be true.

Looking back now, my life divides into two: one period leading up to that moment, and all the time since. And I’ve become a very unusual person–I’ve become an ex-epiphenomenalist!

What that feels like is, as if I’ve grown up backwards. Most people I talk to these days, ardent Darwinists, started out regular, then they became epiphenomenalists. I’ve gone the other way. I used to be an epiphenomenalist, then I became sort-of regular like they were before, like their parents are. In conversation with them I think, “I used to be like you, but I grew out of it,” yet I know what they’re thinking is, “Poor fellow, you haven’t yet grown into it.” They’re proud of having achieved the wisdom of epiphenomenalism, and look down on other people like me, just like I used to look down on people who were “regular.”

What I’ve just said is the story of my life, almost. The other part is having always been a passionate believer in evolution. It’s the two together that put me in the position I’m in now–an evolutionist but not a physicalist, neither Darwinist nor Creationist.

But each assumes I must be the other. So here I am, ducking potshots coming from both sides, but actually saying something entirely different from both of them.

The Creationists are no bother. They just ignore me, I’m irrelevant to them. But to the Darwinists I’m anathema: I used to be one of them but I’ve gone wrong. I’m letting the side down. I’ve become disloyal. I’ve committed apostasy. I’m giving comfort to the enemy. How could I! “How can you be so stupid!”

Well, it’s worse than you think, fellas. I’ve not become just another creationist, I’m becoming something quite other. I’ve broken the code and I’m coming back to turn you guys out, with all your NeoDarwinian ideas, and put new ideas in their place. That career you’ve built around the arcanery of Darwinism, it’s over. You’ll know no more of what evolution’s really about than the freshest incoming student. In fact, you’ll know less, because you’ve so much to unlearn.

Starting from today, that’s my message. And I won’t express it in the language Darwinists use, because I’m superseding that language, and putting another one in its place.

Starting today.

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I’m moving the battlefield

Filed under: Our titles — Shaun, publisher @ 3:54 pm

I’ve been involved in a lot of fights over natural selection recently.

I’ve not enjoyed it. It’s frustrating. It’s little more than posturing. It’s like two pugilists hurling blows while standing seven feet apart and facing in inconsequential directions. No blows are landed. Maybe a better metaphor would be, it’s like a dealer in precious stones trying to compare notes with a scalper who sells tickets to sold-out concerts. Both know there’s important things at stake but they’ve no teminology in common for talking about them, no shared criteria for assessing the relative worth of their treasures, and deep down neither values what the other cherishes. That’s what it’s been like.

I’ve decided to change my strategy. I’m not talking any longer about whether science does or does not make us determined, whether thinking does depend on matter. Instead I’m going to focus on coming up with new terminology for consciousness.

I then wrote, “Here are some examples,” but I couldn’t think of any, not any good ones.

I’ll have to think about it. Ooh! Is that one?

Evolved Self Publishing

April 26, 2008

What question is religion the wrong answer to?

March 27, 2008

Darwin’s bulldogs chew on “Expelled…”

March 14, 2008

Post-epiphenomenalist evolutionary theory

March 13, 2008

I’m moving the battlefield