. . . In This Issue.

Open Forum for June 15^th Meeting.

Quote of the Month: George W. Bush

HAOC Election Results.

"Jim Stanbery Speaks on the United Nations" by Dave Silva.

"Science, Evolution & ‘Intelligent Design" by Charles L. Rulon.

"A.A.A.D.D." - Humor

At the June 15^th Meeting:

Open Forum.

Quote of the Month:

"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill."

George W. Bush -Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003

HAOC ELECTION

We were very impressed by Jim Stanbery as a public speaker. Jim has taught at L. A. Harbor College for many years, but that doesn’t automatically make you a polished speaker. I would like to thank Harry Becker for getting Mr. Stanbery to speak at HAOC.

In reviewing the history of attempts by nations to achieve some degree of co-operation we go back to the Greek City States where commerce, travel and legal rights were explored. All to often co-operation between cultures was a result of military conquest; such as, the Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire and the USSR

By 1865 international postal regulations were established and by 1908 was created at The Hague and convened every seven years. Stanbery points out that even though the U.S. failed to join the League of Nations, after WWI, that doesn’t mean that the League didn’t accomplish positive things.

That brings us to what is a common misperception among people in our country about the United Nations. Many people think that because the U. N. doesn’t command the power to achieve sweeping change in the area of international law, or to generally command the military might to check aggression that it is a failure. On the other hand, many people in our country have an irrational and unfounded fear that the U. N. might really function as a world government. Those on the right feel that any mandated standards of international behavior imposed on the U. S. are inherently a bad thing. This is very evident in our lack of support for an International Criminal Court and our greedy, shortsighted actions on world environmental issues. We do make an exception in co-operating with certain rulings by the World Trade Organization and agreements made by the G-7 or G-8 powers on monetary and trade policies.

What most people don’t understand, or even think about, is that if the U. S. got out of the U. N it would still continue to function and effect us though numerous agencies and established policies. Put another way, if the U. N. were abolished the world would have to recreate something very much like it in order for nations to dialog and interact with each other.

One idea that Stanbery proposed was financing the U. N.’s $16 billion budget by a .01 tax on the traffic of international goods. Since the U. S. pays a third of the U. N. budget and is constantly in arrears this would seem a good solution. I believe that we need a stronger, more democratic United Nations and that would be a far healthier thing for the future of humanity than having the U. S. trying to run the world as a military superpower.

We want to thank professor Stanbery for a very enlightening talk and discussion.

A. Science isn’t about absolute proofs, but about constructing workable causal models of reality. Scientists also can’t absolutely disprove the claim that space aliens are hiding somewhere on Earth or that there’s an invisible, undetectable, fire-breathing dragon circling Los Angeles.

So, let those who claim to have solid evidence for an Intelligent Designer, or space alien, or flying Dragon come forth and have their evidence subjected to the scientific method — the only method we know of for reliably advancing empirically testable knowledge.

Besides, inventing an "Intelligent Designer" raises all sorts of new problems/concerns:

1. Since the "Intelligent Designer hypothesis" doesn’t suggest any new scientific experiment, it just tends to stop research. We’ll never get closer to discovering how life could have evolved throughout our universe if all we did was to rubber stamp our gaps in scientific knowledge with a "God did it" proclamation.

2. Once we grant the possibility that an "Intelligent Designer" might somehow be involved in evolution, then we have to acknowledge the possibility that this "Designer" could be messing around in everything all the time, even planting all the evidence for our evolution for inscrutable reasons. How can we know? Besides, if humans really are central to the world, why the need for such a vast universe, or so many billions of years passing before life emerges? Why all of this unwarranted design"?

3. When most Americans speak of an "Intelligent Designer", what they really mean is the all-powerful Biblical God of love. Yet, the scientific evidence tells us that the entire history of the evolution of life on Earth for over a billion years is just a story of random genetic errors followed by the extermination of the weak and unfit.

Accompanying this mindless selection by nature is pain, starvation, cruelty, flawed designs, jury-rigged solutions, dead ends, misfits, "lucky breaks", disease, violent deaths, prodigious waste of life...and the eventual extinction of over 95% of all the hundreds of millions of different species to have evolved, most of which were parasites. There were far more losers than winners and great losses were often associated with the most trivial of gains. Is this the omniscient "God of love and mercy" that Christians really want to worship?

4. If there really is an "Intelligent Designer" behind our universe and life, why does it have to be the Christian God? Why not Zeus? Or the Egyptian Sun God? Or why not zillions of highly advanced telepathic gremlins. The possibilities are endless and that’s the problem. Once supernatural answers enter the equation, then anything go. We’re only limited by our imaginations.

Q. Can you give me an example of how some gap in our scientific knowledge was filled with "God did it", only later to be explained naturally?

A. There are numerous examples. Lightning and earthquakes were once believed to be the wrath of an angry God. Also, God’s angels pushed the planets around the Earth. Until 1859, we had no idea how we, and the rest of life, got here. So, we were all specially created by God a few thousand years ago. Then along came Darwinian evolution.

Or take the orbiting of our planets. The laws of physics allow our planets to cavort in unstable orbits around the sun, rotating any which way with no relation to each other. The ultimate result would have been chaos. Yet, that’s not what we find at all. Instead, we find a very stable, orderly system with all the planets orbiting in the same direction and same plane. Physics, alone, tells us that the probability of this happening by chance is infinitesimal. Therefore, the belief was that our solar system had to have been designed and really finely tuned by God. But then along came the modern theory of solar system formation and all of this suddenly became explained naturally.

The more scientists have learned about our universe and about living things, the clearer it has become that everything — from star formation to the evolution of the human brain— is based entirely on chemical and physical laws. No laws of nature are being by-passed or broken. No paranormal, or supernatural events, or extra "miracles" or "vital" forces seem to exist or to be necessary anywhere.

Thus, it just doesn’t seem necessary any longer to posit "Intelligent Designer" interventions. In fact, over 90% of our

top scientists today completely reject any belief in some "Intelligent Designer" working behind the scenes.²

A. Many can’t and haven’t accepted evolution. Too much is at stake. Biblical infallibility is seen at stake. Vital religious doctrines of the Creation and Fall, Original Sin and the Atonement are seen at stake. The idea of God being an omniscient, creative, designer God of Love who cares for His creations is seen at stake. Biblical morality is being replaced, they fear, by anarchy and chaos. These are not trivial matters. Thus, the intellectual barriers to mixing Darwinian evolution and theology are indeed formidable.

Muslims also have to confront the fact that the Quran, the believed direct word of God, also says that humans were specially created.

A. Yes he did, in 1996. But he also maintained that evolution was not inconsistent with Catholic doctrine. Also, as of 1997 at least thirteen major Protestant organizations had produced documents stating that evolution was not in conflict with their religious beliefs regarding the Bible and God as the Creator.

A. Good question! Theologians wax on about a creative force permeating reality, gradually coaxing order out of chaos, spirituality out of brute material existence. They talk about a ladder of progress ascending toward humanity. They engage in numerous theological debates in attempts to convert old doctrines into vague metaphors and creative reinterpretation of theistic metaphysics.

But the point to emphasize here is that the effort is all one-sided. It is the theologians who are continuously adjusting and reacting to scientific advances, while the scientists have long stopped being influenced by theology in their work.

A. Not necessarily. Christian theology has always stressed that God’s omnipotence never meant that He could do the impossible, like make 2+2=5. Likewise, if God chose to create the biosphere through an evolutionary process, perhaps natural selection is the only mechanism that He could possibly have used. Perhaps no other engine for driving evolution exists. Perhaps God had no choice. If this is true, then the bothersome religious question of why would a loving God allow so much evil to come into the world is explained. It’s merely an inevitable outcome of natural selection.

A No. But remember, even though the intellectual harriers to mixing Darwinian evolution and theology are formidable, most Christians who accept evolution don’t think

like intellectuals. Instead, most just muddle through. Under pressure, they make up or accept whatever works to keep going.

A. That prediction was made by scientists over 100 years ago when only a few million people were believed to be non-religious. Today, an estimated one billion people, or one-sixth of the world’s population are said to be non-theists. This tremendous expansion of non-believers far outstrips the growth of any major religion in the 20th century. These secularists dominate, more or less, the societies and politics of Western Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan. America is now the only First World national culture to retain Third World levels of belief in God.

A. Several reasons have been advanced. First, unlike Europe, our schools have failed to adequately educate our population in rational, critical thinking and in science, especially evolution. Second, unlike Europe, our conservative religious ministers are actively and aggressively recruiting new members all the time. Their salaries depend on it; not so in Europe.

Third, the U.S. completely avoided the tremendous physical and economic destruction brought on by two world wars. Thus, to many Americans, our country has seemed divinely blessed; definitely not so in Europe. Fourth, we have a high rate of poverty by First World standards. Religious beliefs flourish with poverty.

is Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. This is how it manifests:

I decided to wash my car. As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the hall table. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the trash can under the table, and notice that the trash can is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the trash first. But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take Out the trash anyway, I may as well pay the bills first, 

I take my checkbook off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go to my desk where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking. 

I’m going to look for my checks, hut first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. I notice the Coke is getting warm, and decide I should put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye. They need to be watered. I set the Coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning.

I decide I better put them back on my desk, hut first I’m going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we want to watch TV. We will be looking for the remote, but nobody will remember that its on the kitchen table, so 1 decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

I splash some water on the flowers, but most of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then I head down the hail trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day the car isn’t washed, the bills aren’t paid, the trash hasn’t been taken out, there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter, the flowers aren’t watered, there is still only one check in my checkbook, I can’t find the remote, I can’t find my glasses, and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.

Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know 1 was busy all day long, and I’m really tired. 1 realize this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get

SOME HELP FOR/IT. BUT FIRST I’LL CHECK MY E-MAIL.