Starbuckle

The chances are one in one, because I would make sure the tiles are face-up.

BC wrote: "The first persistent replicator (i.e. a compound or molecular structure that could copy itself) arose by chance. All subsequent copies are the result of physical processes operating according to physical laws." What do you mean by "by chance"? I would say that a knowledgeable, uninvolved observer could not have known which incident would prove successful in starting off the evolutionary process. But the first incident of persistent replication certainly occurred according to physical laws. It's not as if physical laws were suspended so that it could happen. After the incident, certain kinds of processes were possible that were not possible before it; that's all. The term "chance" is used equivocally by the creationists. On the one hand it seems to mean "without divine intervention and management." Then again it seems to mean "without systemic causation." Then again it seems to mean "having to do with statistical probabilities/prediction." When creationists say, "You don't think such and such could happen BY CHANCE, do you?," it is important to know what they mean by "chance." If I can't predict what biological solution might arise to the problem of a specific environmental challenge, that doesn't mean a specific solution can't naturally arise or that the chances are unfathomably low; not even if there's only a 1-in-zillion chance of any particular solution arising from the perspective of my ignorance of how all the relevant factors will interact over time to result in a solution (if one does arise). If I knew more, my ability to predict would improve. But can one estimate the chances of anything very complex occuring unless there is some kind of repeating event or series of events? When we deal with a fair coin, that's one thing; we can flip it endlessly. But we can't again and again unspool and re-spool any stretch of evolutionary history to determine what are the "chances" that evolutionary history will proceed in this direction or that direction.

All the stuff about the zillion to one odds of anything happening in the chemical or bio-chemical world "by Chance" is so much stuff and nonsense. The "chances" that things with a certain identity will function in a certain way under certain conditions are 100%. If you throw a few relevant elements in a test-tube setup and mix water and heat, you start getting building blocks of life. That was established in the 1950s. Google the Stanley Miller experiment. What are the probability-table chances that a hydrogen atom will latch onto another hydrogen atom to form H2, or latch onto another hydrogen and oxygen to form H2O? Perhaps some number can be arrived at if you abstract away from any given circumstances and postulate, say, ten different sets of chemical circumstances in which you might find hydrogen. In five of these proposed chemical situations, let's say, the H2 can and would form; in the other five, the H2 cannot and would not form. The "chances," then, under the terms of the proposal, with the hydrogen stipulated to have the same chance of being piped into any one of the ten scenarios, are five in ten that H2 will form; or one in two. But this is a meaningless perspective when one is dealing with a specific context in which hydrogen atoms are near each other under typical conditions of temperature and pressure and no other atoms are around. When hydrogen is your only kind of atom interacting, you get hydrogen gas. You get H2. You get it because of the nature of the bonds that can form between the atoms. H2 is very stable. H wants to get together with other H. It's not a matter of somebody in a meta-universe watching the hydrogen and flipping a coin to determine whether today the hydrogen is going to behave like hydrogen or not. Hydrogen always behaves like hydrogen. It is extremely hydrogenesque. What does "Chance alone" have to do with it? Nor is the interaction between organisms, species and environment a matter of "Chance alone." Some organisms are going to be better at producing kids that survive than others. The survival-enhancing traits of the more prolific members of the species are the traits that will be most generally passed on. New traits that make it easier to survive in a particular environment are the traits that are most likely to become widespread throughout the species. The effects of natural selection are manifest in the fossil record, in the relationships between species living now, and in the realtime investigations of evolutionary change such as those of Peter and Rosemary Grant, who documented the changes in bill size of Darwin's finches in response to periods of drier or wetter weather. The causal interactions that affect the evolutionary history of a species can obviously be much more complex than briefly indicated above, but it's not about "Chance." It's about causality. Cause and effect in the primeval soup also operated; and once a set of any molecules could self-replicate, the evolutionary ball had begun rolling, however slowly. The Miller experiments established that the transition from chemical affinities and processes to biochemical affinities and processes is not that drastic, let alone unthinkable, and regardless of exactly what the geo-chemical processes and environmental circumstances were 3.5 billion years ago.

Duplicate.

GHS wrote: "While a very young and very devout Christian, I would occasionally awake during the middle of the night and see Jesus standing next to my bed. Complete with halo and a white robe, he looked exactly like a standard painting I had seen countless times. I remember wondering when Jesus posed for the portrait and who painted it." Did these visions at the time contribute to a feeling of absolute conviction that your religious faith was justified, even though in retrospect you can think of other reasons for your experience?

I, too, have had an Experience. This is an Experience I had just a few minutes ago, playing the Zone.com checkers game that comes with Windows XP. The Zone.com software anonymously connects you with other players over the Internet. I always rank myself as an "expert" checkers player, but sometimes Zone.com pits me against much weaker players anyway. (It's okay. Although they are not as challenging, the weaker opponents offer the compensating virtue of being easier to destroy.) Anyway, in the game that I played just now, I was able very early on to force my opponent to jump me in such a way that I could then triple-jump him and get a king without risk of immediately losing that king. But before my opponent jumped the man I was forcing him to jump (and, therefore, before I could then execute the triple jump I had set up), he sent me a message requesting a draw. I rejected the proposal, since I wanted to experience the sadistic joy of annihilating him, and didn't feel inclined to pretend that I wasn't about to do so. Well, the instant after I rebuffed him, I got another message from the Zone.com software: "Your opponent has left the game." Now, I don't know if it's ESP or what, but I am certain that my opponent did not at that moment lose his connection to the Internet as a result of the power going out or the like. I am certain that a cat did not jump on his keyboard, causing him to exit the game software prematurely and involuntarily. I am certain that no home invader suddenly shot up his modem. No, the only thing that happened to my poor stunned foe was that he had decided that he wasn't going to display even the minimal sportsmanship required to formally resign, and that, to avoid suffering the triple jump and ensuing methodical decimation, he must exit the game in a huff. My only clues are the fact that he was about to get slaughtered and the timing of his unceremonious departure. I will never be able to determine to the satisfaction of a court of law whether my conclusion is correct. Yet I know that it is; and the power of a thousand suns could not dissuade me.

GHS wrote: "My most extraordinary inner experience had nothing to do with God or religion. I have been candid about my drug use before, both on OL and other forums, so there is nothing revelatory about this story, except the details." I am very surprised. Do you discuss the reasons for your drug use somewhere in the forums? Can you provide a link?

Wow, that is a very charming and funny movie clip. Peter O'Toole as God? And much later he played the Pope in "The Tudors." An entirely different character....

Jneil, thanks for joining this discussion. I haven't read your longer exposition yet but will try to do so soon. God could not answer my question about why the consciousness of the universe as a whole, if it could be said to be conscious, would be so hard to perceive that it would require a special experience to do so. As individuals we have no direct awareness of any awareness but our own, but we have no trouble inferring consciousness in other human beings and animals. If the consciousness permeating the universe as a whole is so very different from our own awareness (weaker than it? more furtive than it?) that it cannot be detected except under very special circumstances, can it really be said to be consciousness? Why would its manifestations not be readily observable by those who lack the same extraordinary experiences that you and others have reported? Do you know/have any opinion about James's book on religious experiences? Here's a passage that I happened upon more or less at random but which seems relevant in which James compares conversion to psychological maturation. Is anything detailed below have parallels in your own experience? (I added a couple paragraph breaks that are not in the text.) "Formed associations of ideas and habits are usually factors of retardation in such changes of equilibrium. New information, however acquired, plays an accelerating part in the changes; and the slow mutation of our instincts and propensities, under the 'unimaginable touch of time' has an enormous influence. Moreover, all these influences may work subconsciously or half unconsciously. And when you get a Subject in whom the subconscious life -- of which I must speak more fully soon -- is largely developed, and in whom motives habitually ripen in silence, you get a case of which you can never give a full account, and in which, both to the Subject and the onlookers, there may appear an element of marvel. Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. Hope, happiness, security, resolve, emotions characteristic of conversion, can be equally explosive. And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them. "Jouffroy is an example: 'Down this slope it was that my intelligence had glided, and little by little it had got far from its first faith. But this melancholy revolution had not taken place in the broad daylight of my consciousness; too many scruples, too many guides and sacred affections had made it dreadful to me, so that I was far from avowing to myself the progress it had made. It had gone on in silence, by an involuntary elaboration of which I was not the accomplice; and although I had in reality long ceased to be a Christian, yet, in the innocence of my intention, I should have shuddered to suspect it, and thought it calumny had I been accused of such a falling away.' Then follows Jouffroy's account of his counter-conversion, quoted above on p. 173. One hardly needs examples; but for love, see p. 176, note, for fear, p. 161; for remorse, see Othello after the murder; for anger see Lear after Cordelia's first speech to him; for resolve, see p. 175 (J. Foster case). "Here is a pathological case in which guilt was the feeling that suddenly exploded: 'One night I was seized on entering bed with a rigor, such as Swedenborg describes as coming over him with a sense of holiness, but over me with a sense of guilt. During that whole night I lay under the influnce of the rigor, and from its inception I felt that I was under the curse of God. I have never done one act of duty in my life -- sins against God and man beginning as far as my memory goes back -- a wildcat in human shape.' "In his recent work on the Psychology of Religion, Professor Starbuck of California has shown by a statistical inquiry how closely parallel in its manifestations the ordinary 'conversion' which occurs in young people brought up in evangelical circles is to that growth into a larger spiritual life which is a normal phase of adolescence in every class of human beings. The age is the same, falling usually between fourteen and seventeen. The symptoms are the same, -- sense of incompleteness and imperfection; brooding, depression, morbid introspection, and sense of sin; anxiety about the hereafter; distress over doubts, and the like. And the result is the same -- a happy relief and objectivity, as the confidence in self gets greater through the adjustment of the faculties to the wider outlook. In spontaneous religious awakening, apart from revivalistic examples, and in the ordinary storm and stress and moulting-time of adolescence, we also may meet with mystical experiences, astonishing the subjects by their suddenness, just as in revivalistic conversion. The analogy, in fact, is complete; and Starbuck's conclusion as to these ordinary youthful conversions would seem to be the only sound one: Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity. " 'Theology,' says Dr. Starbuck, 'takes the adolescent tendencies and builds upon them; it sees that the essential thing in adolescent growth is bringing the person out of childhood into the new life of maturity and personal insight. It accordingly brings those means to bear which will intensify the normal tendencies. It shortens up the period of duration of storm and stress.' The conversion phenomena of 'conviction of sin' last, by this investigator's statistics, about one fifth as long as the periods of adolescent storm and stress phenomena of which he also got statistics, but they are very much more intense. Bodily accompaniments, loss of sleep and appetite, for example, are much more frequent in them. 'The essential distinction appears to be that conversion intensifies but shortens the period by bringing the person to a definite crisis.' " http://bit.ly/gQ4vh5 [a Virginia.edu etext site] ###

http://www.pulpless.com/jneil/libertarianprophet.html The lack of certain follow-up questions is a little frustrating in Gary YOrk's interview with SF writer and publisher J. Neil Schulman. For example, WHY did God (allegedly) threaten to kill Schulman (and why didn't Schulman call the police to report Him)? WHAT did Schulman learn during the time that he (allegedly) shared God's super-cognitive powers? But my main question here is whether accepting the existence of God or accepting that he had had a "psychotic break" with reality were really Schulman's only reasonable alternatives when he experienced whatever it was that he experienced. Does a strong feeling that God (whatever his nature is said to be) is communicating with you constitute evidence for a God? Or does it mean only that you are experiencing something that you can't yet explain? From the interview: GARY YORK: Neil, you say you met God. What exactly do you mean by that? J. NEIL SCHULMAN: God didn't call me for an appointment in an office building like in Oh God! or Bruce Almighty. But I've had two distinct waking experiences where I can say with confidence that I encountered God's presence. The first time I recognize for sure was on April 15, 1988 when God put his hand on my heart and threatened to kill me. The second encounter was February 18, 1997, when God merged his own consciousness with my own for the better part of a day, and for that short time let me share his own mind and superhuman cognitive powers. Both were life-changing experiences, and when my abstract skepticism came up against my actual experience, I could either conclude that I was out of my mind or eventually accept the reality of it. After a thorough analysis of my previous life's experiences, and later experiences that lent validation, I concluded that the reality was that what had happened to me were really encounters with God -- therefore proving God's existence to me -- and that sanity would lie not in denying the truth of my experience by dismissing it as a psychotic break but in embracing the reality of it, maintaining my rational faculties, and proceeding accordingly. [schulman also contends that Randian-style rationalism is consistent with accepting the existence and lawfulness of a supernatural realm. of a supernatural realm. Does Schulman believe that the supernatural realm, evidence of which he allegedly received directly from God, has the power to intermittently repeal the law of identity in the natural realm?] GARY YORK: You once were a rationalist; you claim that you remain a rationalist. How, as someone who now believes in God, a supernatural entity, can you simultaneously espouse a belief in the supremacy of reason? J. NEIL SCHULMAN: Because I don't believe the supernatural is unreal, therefore reason can eventually discern supernatural operations and supernatural laws. More of Jneil's god-notions in this exclamation-strewn writeup: http://www.weeklyuniverse.com/2003/godexists.htm ###

Rothbard's tome and many other books in Austrian economics and other classics can be downloaded free from Mises.org in epub or pdf format.

And now for my treatise on igneous rock and truffles...

I've been skipping around 100 Voices. This is a fascinating book with a lot of great stories and revelations, some of it very affecting. The very best so far for me is what the fellow writers and the creators she championed have to say about her. Alvin Toffler (the Playboy interviewer of Rand) tells about how Rand, mid-interview, ordered him to go out and read Atlas Shrugged and not come back until he had read it. He did so. McConnell asks whether Rand then quizzed Toffler to make sure that he had read it. Toffler answers simply, "Look, we authors can spot that stuff ten miles away." Mickey Spillane has a lot to say about his friendship with Rand, how they talked about craft and critics. At one point Spillane mentions how he encountered Rand's "disciples" when visiting her apartment ("You've probably heard about them," he tells McConnell). The Spillane material and the comments from Robert Stack about his strong emotional reaction to Rand's public defense of "The Untouchables," are, as the reviewers say, alone worth the price of the book. Stack gives the impression that no critic had articulated the values of the show, which many reviewers slammed for its violence and black-and-white moral perspective, before Rand's piece came out. Stack framed Rand's article, wrote her an eloquent letter about what her column meant to him, and was able to quote from both decades later. McConnell (and those who assisted him, for example with Rand's sister in Russia) generally do a fine job. It's the most compelling book-length thing about Rand I've seen since Passion of Ayn Rand.

So how does the story end? The novel ends on a cliffhanger, with the world devastated and Galt and the others ready to return to the world. We learn nothing about the reconstruction phase, and so far as I know Rand never wrote a sequel.

I think Robinson Crusoe was brought up because its subject is man in isolation (at least for much of the book), and the topic of the thread is the nature of the human need for other people. But you're right. Alissa Rosenbaum didn't really come into her own as a novelist until she ditched the pen name of "Daniel Defoe" and opted for "Ayn Rand" instead.

There is some evidence that early in evolutionary history, RNA had a dual function taken over later and separately by DNA and protein. We know that many viruses have only RNA, no DNA, and that this RNA can self-replicate. We know that in eukaryotic cells, although linear RNA's function is primarily that of an intermediary between DNA and protein, different forms of RNA have important structural roles in the protein-building process. But the whole project of pretending on the basis of gaps in or questions about scientific understanding that therefore the only viable "alternative" is to postulate magic, non-natural processes is misbegotten from the get-go, indeed nonsensical. We have evidence for natural processes. We don't have any evidence for the invisible super-beings who can subvert the nature of things at will. But if anyone contributing to this thread does believe that there is evidence of the magic-wielding invisible super-beings, can he condescend to present it?

REB--Gordon strikes you as the kind of fair-minded critic of OPAR you're looking for? Whenever he can give the least-charitable reading to Peikoff he does, and he is riled from the get-go by the plainest metaphysics because he doesn't want to believe that you can't tuck God into the very beginning of thought about what self-evidency and the like. His critique is worth reading but I doubt there's a passage in the book that he wouldn't go at hammer and tong if some paid him enough to justify spending so much time on the book. Gordon also found zilch of any value in Ominous Parallels, although he granted, I think, that Peikoff was at least clear.

Bissell: "I think the revised lectures were put together about 1987, if I remember correctly." No, later than that. At any rate, they were received for review by LFB later than that, probably in the early 90s.

I have listened to both versions of the Blumenthal music course -- all of the course as originally delivered and then a couple patches of the re-done lectures produced much later. I can't speak to whether the sound quality of the musical excerpts is better in the revised lecture series, but I infinitely prefer the first version, with Allan Blumenthal's humor and the audience reactions. I don't see what was added by having both Joan and Allan delivering the lectures in the re-do, somewhat monotonously; although I suppose they may have updated some of their observations and commentary. But the revised version is nowhere near as engaging as the lectures as originally recorded, and it is a shame that the original version of the lectures became unavailable after LFB began carrying the revised set. I haven't noticed even the latter being available in more recent years, though I could easily be wrong about that.

"Did Ayn Rand and Adolf Hitler share a common sense of life?" God bless the trolls. What would we do without them?

Jerry Biggers: "The 'transcript of Branden's Objectivism lectures' that you refer to is already published in printed format..." Yes, I know LFB offers it. That's why I said that one way LFB might try to "hang on to customers would be to offer MORE exclusives like" the Branden transcript. By "more" I meant "in addition to." I'm not sure what was so obscure in my wording.

Evolution in the sense of bio-processes untriggered and unguided by an overweening supervising undetectable intelligence is impossible. Parmenides was prescient about this, but it can be proved incontrovertibly by the fact that if you roll the universe like a die a bazillion times in a row, there is only a less than one-in-bazillion chance that evolution would ever happen. With odds that low, what is the likelihood, for all practical purposes, that evolution actually happened? Zero. If you don't believe me, do the experiment for yourself. Run the history of the universe a bazilliion times in a row and see what happens. BUT DO THE EXPERIMENT. GET THE FACTS. Therefore, since evolution is impossible, and since William Shatner is NOT a great actor (don't evade the facts and pretend that he is), the only way that various species could exist is by the magical effort of an antecedent consciousness, an extra-wondrous entity with an intelligence and powers capable of doing these sort of things. Now, what are the chances that an undetectable super-powerful intelligence capable of creating all that we know could exist without benefit of having been itself created by an even greater, even more lustrously wondrous pre-existing intelligence, in light of the fact that less-wondrous entities such as ourselves could not possibly exist without benefit of an already existing creative intelligence? Yeah, geniuses, that's right. ONE IN ONE. Now, as any expert in mathematical probability will tell you--and it is depressing how many of you alleged "rationalists" are so freaking stupid and ignorant when it comes to any mathematical proposition more complicated than one plus one--a one-in-one probability is an ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY. If there is a 100% chance that such-and-such is the cause of such-and-such effect, then SUCH-AND-SUCH IS THE CAUSE. 100% IS THE HIGHEST YOU CAN GO. Bam! Evolution is false and God created the universe and the species! QED! Deny it all you want, but THOSE ARE THE FACTS.

If the White House had hired all the millions of unemployed to help rig the White House Christmas tree, the Obama admin would thereby have created millions of new jobs. If the Christmas tree were then taken down and put back up again four times a month, every month, forever, this would generate permanent employment for all the millions of unemployed. The unemployment crisis would be resolved.

Isn't it kind of rude to start threads with the intention of causing trouble and being annoying, then ignore the responses proffered on those threads and start other threads with the intention of causing trouble and being annoying?

Is there a special award for most non sequiturs per column inch of illogical "argument"? I think I've found a winner.