Lies

After following the Terry Schiavo drama play out on TV, I only
have an open question to post today.

How do you reason with the unreasonable, and how do you argue
with liars?

The power? of prayer

The resent news stories: Terry Schiavo, the young girl
killed in Florida, and the school murders have brought
requests for prayers, and prayers themselves,to
television newscasts in numbers greater then normal.
So, let's ask the obvious questions: what are prayers?
and do they work? Lately, I've been working on a
practical meme map of religion, in general, so at first
I naturally thought of prayer as a meme. A meme in the
religious meme complex, doing several jobs: providing a
means for the faithful to communicate with their deity,
relieving personal anxiety, promoting community among
the faithful, and above all, reinforcing the hold of
the religious meme complex and promoting it's
replication.Then I thought, there is another prayer,
the magic prayer: words uttered around an ancient
campfire to promote the success of an up-coming hunt,
or over a sick child or companion, maybe to control
the weather. This prayer does not have a mediator or
deity, just a wish, like a Las Vegas gambler, wishing
for better luck.
Do all of these prayers and wishes work? No, they never
have and never will work, Why do people believe that
prays do work? In the meme complex, people are
told, by authority that prays do work.
They have faith that this represents the truth.
Now, faith and truth block independent
thought and reason by the faithful while sacred
also prevents outside inquiry. Further, sacred is
protected by, blaspheme and heresy which
implies threat to the faithful; ultimately hell for
the believer and bodily harm for the none-believer. Then
again, if the public-heat becomes to much for prayer,
the faithful can fall back on persecution.

Out side the meme complex people believe prayer works
because they fall victim to antidotal evidence and
fallacious logic. After the fact, when something happens
people will claim that they prayed before it happened,
of course this is lying, which is quite common. Then there
is the case of differential reporting, only the ones that
experience a positive outcome will report that they prayed.
Another example is: there are one hundred people involved
in a train accident and the fifty that survive say that God
saved them, while the other fifty casualties must remain
silent.

Here are three reasons why prayer does not work:
One: there is no force carrier between prayer and effect,
What causes the effect? Photons? or gravity?, what
actually moves the movable and saves the lives?

Two: there is just a lot of inappropriate prayer.
All twelve boxers in a contest pray to win,
prayer works one time and does not work eleven times.
Football teams pray to win, 50% here. People pray for
a hurricane to not hit their city, but refuse to pay
damages when it hits another city.

Three: actuarial tables. Believers and none-believers
have the some mortality rates. Believers do not get
reduced rates on: life insurance, health insurance,
home owners insurance, or car insurance. They are also
not given reduced amounts on social security because
the live longer.

How here is the final rub, If there is a God and a
Christian prays to God to save his life or his child’s
life, and God answers his payers, then God must Kill
another Christian or child for the actuarial tables
to remain unbiased, otherwise God would revel himself
by the change in the actuarial tables.

The Human

Terry Schiavo, the Human , died 15 years ago. Medical
ethicists judge people by their humanity, how they differ, as
humans, from other animals. Humans: contemplate the future,
contemplate the past, manipulate symbolic logic, use language;
compassionate humans will empathize with another humans
situation. Terry Schiavo is dead and her delusional,
"living in denial family", can not do anything about it. She exhibits
no unique human traits, and no amount of whining to the
religious-right will bring back her abilities.
Terry Schiavo is now being used to further the right-to-life agenda
of the evangelicals in congress. The recent legislation is a good
example of what happens in a theocracy, How do you like living in
Iran? with the congressional mullahs in charge, passing religious
laws when ever they please.

On television people are calling doctors, murderers, and people claim
the ethics committees are executing people. when you make any life
sacred, how do you eat or kill cockroches?

Now I sound mean, well, maybe I am? when a baby bird falls
out of, or is pushed out of the birds nest in my garrage, and I find it
in time, I step on its head with the heel of my foot, why? because
I hate birds, I actually love nature. No, because the fire-ants will eat
it alive, and there is no reason for it to suffer, if I am there.

My mother and I held the hand of my father when he died, he
could have talked if he had not had a breathing tube in his throat;
the conversation was one-sided, How we loved him and how he was
a great father. The other people there where: the hospice nurse and
a Catholic priest, ( I'm not religious, only understanding, If my
mother or father wanted somthing "said") , The cardiac doctors,
who are obligated to an undying positive attitude were gone.
The system worked well, with out outside intervention.
My father spent 3 weeks in the ICU, I had to tell him that an
echocardiogram had shown that he had only 15% usage of his heart,
and we would have to "let him go" ( euphemism for Die). We did not
call the doctors murderers, we did not call the echocardiogram
"junk-science", we did not go whining to politicians. when the
hospice nurse asked, why did we take it so well? I told her, because
it is natural to die. One of my old-sayings is, "the most dangerous
thing that we do in life is to be born, because we will have to die."
All I can finally say, is, get the family some psychotherapy and
and give them privacy.

Crenellated

While reading an article in the Houston Chronical this morning, I
found a source of complexity that produces beautiful and natural
shapes, Crocheted hyperbolic space. These shapes arise naturally by
mathematical process,not by design. Examples in nature of hyperbolic surfaces are: surfaces in the brain, and some kinds of lettuce and seaweed.

Meme Complex

While I was doing a search on memes, I ran into a good saying:
"an idea is something you have, a ideology is something that
has you." Morris Berman
I would like to map the religious meme complex, must be
thousands of memes in it, identify each meme and show
it's place in the complex. I don't see any
mapping of memes on the Web, only academic-talk, nothing
practical. Here is a short list of memes, not in any order:
Heaven, Hell, sin, rapture, prayer, hope , faith, trust,
pious, righteous, sacred, blaspheme, and it goes on and on.

Dark-Energy

I found a good press release about the vacuum, which supports
my intuitive idea that the universe is an emergent property of an
underlying infinite superstring network. The release points out
that: as the universe expands the vacuum does not dilute in the
same way as matter does, but, seems to expand as the universe
expands. Remember that the vacuum is not just empty space, it
contains a continuum of all energies in neutral balance, and is also
an emergent property of the underlying superstring network.
It is this new area of the superstring network, being incorporated into
the universe, that is the source of the dark-energy; and it is this
additional energy that causes the acceleration in the expantion of the
universe, which has recently been discovered.

I think intuitively, in the future as the universe expands and
incorporates more and more of the underlying network, the
vacuum will completely dominate the very dilute matter and
conditions could favor a new Big-Bang.

A few appropriate entries from my archives:

What is real? The active agents (superstrings) that exist in a
network at the level of 10 to the minus 33 centimeters are the
only "real things", every thing above 10 to the minus 33
centimeters is an emergent property of their activity.

What is the extent of the superstring network?
The superstring network always existed and always will, it is also
infinite for the same reasons. Start, finish, beginning, and end,
are human concepts; there is no, significant or logical reason for
a start or a finish, a beginning or an end. Also, "nothing" can not
be demonstrated experimentally or philosophically.

What prevents a Big Bang now? As a matter of conjecture, I
think it could be a feedback relationship with the density of
energy or matter being the salient factor.

Artifical Consciousness

I received an e-mail from a friend: a discussion between him and
a pantheist. The topic was, " Dust to Dust", What good is it to take
comfort in knowing that our atoms will go on after death, when we
will not have a consciousness to enjoy the experience. The pantheist
said: It is important to take comfort now, while you are alive.
What if you could retain your consciousness?
In my archives, I’ve talked about the impossibility of teleportation
and precognition but, what about artifical consciousness? I think it
could become a reality but, would you actually, ( think about it),
want to be conscious after death?

The human brain has over 100 billion cells, each cell can connect
to as many as one thousand other cells. With nanotechnology, a
network with the same number of agents and connectivity could be
produced, once random activity is applied by a mechanism, much
like our own brain stem, the network would self-organize and limit
cycles would emerge. Training, and or programing, might finish the
process. Sounds very difficult but more probable then Heaven.

This artifical brain could be connected at birth, to remove the
problem of information transfer, and be with you your whole life.
It could be taken out as your body sleeps, come back and share
memories through an artificial corpus callosum. Your mind-double
could have a photographic memory? Perfect memories for that
matter; you stop just short of giving it power-of-attorney. The
perfect assistant, while you are alive. But, what happens when you
die and attend your own funeral? What will you do?, when they play
rap music on new years eve instead of, "Auld Lang Syne", and the
world leaves you farther and farther behind. Finally, you become
irrelevant and someone pulls-the-plug, on you, to save energy.
When you think about it; Heaven and the above scenario have
their problems.

Gorilla's Caretaker

My intuitive-science bent, on the following newspaper story:

3rd woman sues gorilla’s caretaker over alleged
breast-baring request
From the perspective of the female gorilla, held captive and
naked, who would you bond with? A clothed jailer or a half naked
fellow female. Sex was not required, just compliance with
routines that would make the captive subject more comfortable.

Are they suing for the usual millions of dollars?

Something from my archives:

What is Reality? Reality is that which exists when you and I are
both dead and gone.

More Nightly News

Looks like I've found a good source of anti-intuitive science.
Tonight on the local news they ask the question?: "Do you
want to know how long you will live, right down to the second?"
They claim that, tonight at ten, they will take you to a place
where you can find out. Again, what kind of message is this
sending children, who need a good intuitive understanding of
science to make it in our technological society.

This is what I have to say, from my archives:

Precognition? No. Why? The universe is made new every instant
by complex processes, the future doesn't exist to send back
information, also there is no means for information to travel
into the past.