Informant38

notes:
Two similar but separately-camped battles - between the pro-Jared Diamond-ists and his detractors from within the disciplines of anthropology and geology (here); and between the ID/creationists and their opponents in science generally (everywhere really, but here just now) - have this inside-out parallel thing I'm trying to get ahold of, where the ID v. science fight is basically won at every meeting by the superior force of logical positivism (but those hicks just keep on comin!); and the Diamond v. no-Diamond fight (about why what Diamond et. al. call "Eurasian societies" were/was essentially undefeated on its rise to world dominance, with Diamond's book and PBS series either aiding and abetting the institutional racism of Wesern culture, or not) while still in contest looks to be being won by the home team, in this case the brilliant and humorous OZma at Savage Minds.
These are notes remember.
There's something at the heart of the creationist v. science thing that bugs me - I mean aside from the weird espousal/recognition/defense of a process that the most-funded branches of science are dedicated absolutely to thwarting at every turn, when it might be applied to themselves.
It's the way when "Darwinists" are wrong about some peripheral aspect, or about anything really, the godsquad leaps up and screams and cheers, as though that disproved everything that's been said in support of Darwin's essential idea - that evolution, the selection over time of viable organisms and the ability to pass the attributes of viability along to offspring through reproduction- was therefore wrong.
Well okay. So why is it that because a bunch of delusional self-appointed champions of the idea that the universe is not morally neutral are wrong about things, that that puts paid to the idea itself?
The science guys would say it doesn't, it's just that absent any positive evidence it's impossible to prove or disprove.
What I'm working toward is the proprietary aspect. That's what's messing it up. It's not "God made the universe and all that moves in it". It's "our God made the universe and all that moves in it." And since their God, by their own testimony has done and said many contradictory and inconsistent things, there it goes. No God, no moral center to life or the universe. Total freedom, once you gain control of the resources and dominate your enemies and rivals.
And that's right where the Diamond pro/con debate is at.
And what I'd like to be able to express there but haven't got clear enough yet, is something like -
Diamond's explanation for Western colonialism's superiority has nothing to do with what the colonizers themselves thought about things. Because the colonizers themselves, most of them, thought their dominance was a gift of God, given because they were chosen and blessed. In fact most of those conflicts were seen by most of the combatants as spiritual contests first and most importantly.
And what I'd like to be able to express, but it's vital that it be accurate, is that they were right, it was spiritual first, but that once again the proponents of that argument have what they feel is a proprietary hold on the concepts and terms, so that someone like me has almost nowhere to stand and speak from.
I don't want to give any power to the raving loons who are driving the world toward Armageddon at full throttle, but I think it's going to be absolutely crucial for the good guys to open up to a larger picture that includes non-anthropocentric intelligence and a foundation for life that has what might as well be a design to it, emanating from something beyond our ability to get rationally inside our heads. Crucial because they're feeding the same malevolent power the delusionals are, only from the other side.
Which takes us right up to current events.
I saw that potato bug chimera O'Reilly briefly on the tube the other night. Long enough for him to say, and I am quoting him here "Without Islam, there would be no terrorists."
But that idea - that something exists beyond and outside the cold utilizable material universe, that there are levels of infinite complexity around and within everything including Bill O'Reilly - takes us right on out past the noise, to the San Francisco Cow Palace in 1965 and to here, now -
Ladies and Gentlemen - The Rolling Stones!