AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH !

PETER !

You've changed your forum name. I didn't recognize you.

Great to read you again. How in the heck have you been, you likeable rascal
you?

When you go into free-flow-of-ideas mode, I find myself having to work
harder than I want
to, to try to follow it. I have to admit, however, that at some points I
almost enjoy and tend to think maybe I can follow what your message might
be.

Wayyyyyyy back in the fifties, I got on a reading kick on psychiatric
counseling and read some
books written by psychiatrists, giving verbatim transcripts of some
doctor-patient sessions,
and then applying "theory" to what took place in the transcripts. As best I
can recall, the
psychiatrists were all of the classical school -- i.e., Freudian.

One thing I found highly intriguing was the fact that the mind normal...
tends to try to connect and attach some meaning to such things as random
dots on a piece of paper, abstract art, nonsense syllables, and even the
thoughts of paranoid schizophrenics, when they tend to insert parts of two
or more sentences into one another.

One thing we are advised against, should we need to relate to a
schizophrenic, is to attempt to rationalize what they say. One problem with
doing that is that we might find ourselves making sense of something that
never had any sense to it to begin with.

As with "speaking in tongues" there is some advantage, and pleasure, for a
(not sick) person in babbling. It seems to induce a release of endorphins,
for some reason... to lower blood pressure... to vent stress, somehow. In
fact, when done together with deliberate random rapid eye movements, actual,
measurable physical benefits result.

I have read, even, that the fact that babies appear to engage in free-form
vocalization and eye movements is associated with the proper post partum
"wirings" of the brain.

On the other hand, if a person tries to rationalize free-form babble, that
creates stress in the rationalizer. And that stress can be reflected back
upon the schizophrenic, baby, speaker in tongues, or healthy free-form
babbler.

An interesting experiment I have engaged in, on my own, is to listen to
something, such as a television program at a volume I cannot understand and
to not try to rationalize it, but just listen to the "music" of the
language. In fact,
I find I can easily discern between the German language, Japanese, Spanish,
French and English at a volume so low that I cannot identify more than an
occasional syllable, or one-syllable word.

Another experiment I have enjoyed is that of listening to audible words
without rationalizing them... that is, listening to the music that is
there -- especially where the author is one who writes in a way that
produces beautiful sounding phrases and sound combinations which are
distinct as separate and apart from what they say.

And the really amazing thing is that some authors' shaping of the rhythms
and sounds of the words can work WITH the word meanings to produce certain
emotions, to create suspense, to give the reader a subliminal feeling about
a character whom the author wants the reader to like, dislike, feel anxious
about... etc.

Where the sound of the words and the rhythmic phrasings of them add
dimension to what the words are saying, that -- in my estimation -- is what
distinguishes a GREAT writer or speech writer from one who merely organizes
ideas into optimal order... psychological, emotional, logical or
chronological.

Oddly, some of the phrasings of GREAT song lyrics are NOT conversational,
but flow more smoothly than do conversational conventions. For example, in
the song, You'll Never Walk Alone, I can almost hear the lyricist saying,
"And the sweet silvery song of a lark." That would be correct English and
quite clear in its literal meaning. However, the lyricist wrote, "And the
sweet silver song of a lark." Somehow that line transcends correct or
conversational speech. In fact, as one song analyst surmised, words can be
put together in such a way that, when sung to music, they bypass the side of
the brain that tries to edit and rationalize, and are received by the side
which translates them DIRECTLY into empathy and emotion.

But then, too, a good propagandist is one who also has mastered the art of
dealing directly with the part of the recipient's brain that does not
recognize the need to edit or rationalize, and simply allows himself/herself
to be
moved emotionally... especially to like what the propagandist wishes to
persuade of, or dislike whatever target the propagandist wishes to demonize.

Is the wandering far from the subject of bio-evolution... I THINK NOT.
And here is why...

Some writers (some deserving the title theorist, and some deserving little
more than the title propagandist) are able to sway the thinking of their
reader -- even very INTELLIGENT readers -- through techniques more suited to
the
caging of propaganda.

As the well-known Dr. Michael Shermer (of Skeptic Magazine, The Skeptic
Society, and author of some books
telling what is wrong with certain non-science, or anti-science dogma-based
pseudo-scientific arguments) has noted... con artists often find the most
intelligent individuals the MOST GULLIBLE... once, that is, the con artist
has found a way past that individuals first line of defenses against being
duped.

Examples abound of highly intelligent people who have been drawn into cults,
conned out of fortunes, AND... which is VERY MUCH ON SUBJECT in present
forum... who have become converts to one or another
dogmatic school of thought beyond the farthest reaches of empirical
evidence.

But, before I go, please note that I am not an enemy of reason nor a person
without religious faith. What I maintain is that much I read and hear in
defense of the concept of evolution is empirically well established, and
some of it is not empirically supportable; and the same is true of much
reasoning in support of an assertion that faith in something beyond human
knowledge has been found each and every time some layer of ignorance is
peeled away by progress in science. This is no more than a way of saying
that again and again and again things that were not previously known, have
been discovered, and became known... and there is zero evidence that the
worlds brightest and bets informed individual knows all there is, beyond the
CURRENT frontiers of human knowledge. Therefore, "faith" could be defined
as a belief that there REMAINS beyond human knowledge some things which have
not yet been discovered by humans, and eventually will be. NOTHING in
science indicates to the contrary.

If, then, there IS more "out there" that we do not know... then neither
scientist NOR religious dogma knows and understands it fully... and MUCH OF
THE SHOUTING between those who preach for and against the concept of
evolution is over things NEITHER SIDE CAN PROVE. Hence, NEITHER the
scientist who invoked things not yet known to science, NOR the dogmatist who
deems himself/herself to speak on "Gd's" behalf speaks from
knowledge... but from preferential bias, only.

Once one accepts the reality that science applies faith every day that it
assumes there is something else out there not yet empirically determined,
this is no more than acceptance of the reality that none of us empiricists
yet knows WHAT THAT IS, OR IS NOT.

Faith being therefore realistic, all that remains is for us to have
preferences. If one prefers to believe the unknown holds a divinity capable
of caring about humans, and another prefers to believe what lies outside
current knowledge is merely bleak, meaningless, purposeless, consciousless,
indifferent, brainlessness... the one stance is no more, nor any less,
empirically sound as the other. And any who claims to "know" what is out
there, either way, should produce his empirical evidence... or simply
exercise his own preferences and let the other preferer exercise his.

I admire Shermer, even beyond the point where his preferences and mine may
diverge... just as long as neither of us claims to KNOW something is, or is
not, that neither of us can produce empirical evidence for or against.

But, anyhow, these observations ARE on subject, because they lie at the core
of soundly, or unsoundly, communicating among ourselves about bio-evolution.

We can talk in a free-form way about it, as you do, and that is valid.
We can talk about the empirical evidence and how we wish to interpret what
lies beyond it, and express our
preferences, AS SUCH... and that is sound.
It is only when we lose the distinction between things empirically provable
and things we believe ONLY because they fit our preferences in what we WANT
to think lies beyond the outer limits of our knowledge, that we are neither
on solid ground in science NOR in metaphysics.

Where debaters get hung up in a shouting match saying to one another...

.... with one saying, "You can't prove it so."

.... and the other saying, "You can't prove it NOT so."

BOTH impress me as both correct, and as childishly futile...

Personally, I like Dr. Einstein's approach in trying to understand nature.
He is quoted as saying that he wanted to try to "think like Gd." Physicists
use that expression to mean EITHER kind of preference for what lies beyond
human knowledge and understanding. But from EITHER preference, an open mind
is an open mind, and looks at nature, AS IT IS, without trying to stamp it
with ANY non-empirically-based preference for belief in what the "other
side" of the opague *ontological curtain" is like. Let us push that curtain
(or envelope) every chance we get, and SEE what is there. And, meantime, if
we want to base our lives and our pursuit of happiness on some personal
preferences in what to believe is there, then that should not be allowed to
DISTORT what we have on this side so far... as of any given moment.

Do you concur?

g

"Entertained by my own EIMC" fairyland.org> wrote
in message news:en3l2h$2ign$1@darwin.ediacara.org...