Humanist Association of Orange County - Newsletter for
January 2006
Issue #98 ( HTML format )
Editor: Benito Franqui
Associate Editor: Dave Silva
Send submissions and membership renewals to:
HAOC
2609 Fernside St.
Orange, CA 92865
benfranq@earthlink.net
Articles submitted for publication in the newsletter
must be received no later than 10 days before the
next HAOC meeting.
The Humanist Association of Orange County ( HAOC) is a chapter of the American Humanist Association.
Please visit our website at http://www.ochumanists.org
HAOC Board
President: Pete Anderson
Vice President: Dave Silva
Treasurer: Harry Becker
Secretary: Jerry Parks
Member at large: Carl Mariz
Member at large: Benito Franqui
NEXT
HAOC MEETING
Sunday, January 15, 1:30 P.M.
The Great Debate - Does God Exist?
(
A video presentation of a debate which took place at Stanford University on
January 24, 2005 ).
This
presentation will be split into two parts lasting 47 and 30 minutes. During a
15-minute intermission, attendees will have the opportunity to match their wits
with those of renowned skeptic Michael Shermer by guessing which arguments
Shermer will come up with in order to rebut the arguments presented by believer
Douglas Geivett ( or viceversa ) during the first part.
Dr. Michael Shermer is
the Founding Publisher of Skeptic
magazine, the Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific
American,
and the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at the
California Institute of Technology. He was a professor for 19 years at Glendale
College and Occidental College. He conducts research on the psychology of
belief. He is the
author of Science
Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown,
The
Science of Good and Evil:
Why
People Cheat, Gossip, Share Care, and Follow the Golden Rule,
In
Darwin's
Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace,
The
Borderlands of Science,
Denying History,
How
We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God,
and Why
People Believe Weird Things.
He is the editor of the Encyclopedia
of Pseudoscience.
Dr.
Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University in Malibu,
California, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University,
Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate
University in California.
Dr.
Douglas Geivett
is Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology, Biola University in
La Mirada, California. Dr. Geivett's research interests include the philosophy
of religion, philosophical theology, epistemology, and the history of modern
philosophy. He is the author of Evil
and the Evidence for God and
co-editor of Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology and
In
Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive
Case for God's Action in History.
Dr. Geivett has contributed chapters to God
Matters: Readings in the Philosophy of Religion,
God Under Fire: The Rationality
of Theism,
and Does
God Exist? The Craig-Flew Debate.
Dr.Geivett is the former president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. In
the past, Dr. Geivett has served as minister to college students at churches in
the Pacific Northwest and in Southern California and continues to speak in
churches and in university campuses on subjects related to apologetics and the
Christian life.
Dr.
Geivett received a B.S. from Multnomah School of of the Bible, an M.A. from
Dallas Theological Seminary, another M.A. from Gonzaga University, and his PH.D.
from the University of Southern California.
NEXT
CFI-WEST MEETING
Jan.
15, 4:30 PM
Costa Mesa Neighborhood Community Center
Robert
Sheaffer: The Da Vinci Code Baloney
.The
Da Vinci Code is a runaway bestseller and a forthcoming movie. This
"factual novel" purports to reveal "the greatest conspiracy of
the past 2000 years." It says that a secret society of leading
intellectuals has allegedly been dedicated to preserving the astonishing secrets
and traditions that organized religion has conspired to suppress.
CSICOP
fellow Robert Sheaffer will share with us a skeptic's guide to what he calls
"the Da Vinci Code Baloney." Sheaffer is one of the leading skeptical
investigators of UFOs and a founding member of the UFO Subcommittee of CSICOP; a
founding director and past Chairman pf the Bay Area Skeptics, and the author of
UFO Sightings (Prometheus Books, 1998). He has appeared on many radio and TV
programs. His writings and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as
OMNI, Scientific American, Spaceflight, Astronomy, The Humanist, Free Inquiry,
Reason, and others. He is a regular columnist for Skeptical Inquirer.
The
Costa Mesa Community Center is located at 1845 Park Avenue, Costa Mesa,
California.
$6.00, or free for Friends of the Center.
A
Tale of Two Geniuses
By Benito Franqui
Richard
Wagner and Richard Feynman. One in music, the other in theoretical physics.
One
paid meticulous attention to every aspect of the creation and performance of
hyper-complex
musical dramas depicting supernatural events. The other cared only about natural
events, and the only aspect of music he cared about was rhythm. He was always
looking for the simplest way to explain hyper-complex
natural phenomena.
One
was a holist/wholist, the other a reductionist.
One
was a nationalist who helped to pave the way for National Socialism, the other a
rationalist who helped to undo National Socialism.
One
was a rabid anti-Semite, the other of Jewish ancestry.
In
spite of the history of German rationalism vs Jewish mysticism, the roles were
in their cases reversed.
One
trait they did share was their engaging in adulterous relationships. Seems that
in spite of their towering intellectual achievements, the ancient
Naked Ape within each one of us still demanded to be given his share.
Testosterone cuts both ways...
The
works of both have enriched our lives - even though Wagner's personal opinions
helped to perpetuate certain harmful stereotypes which a Feynman-style
rational analysis would have shown to be without any real basis.
The
Global Consciousness
Project
By
Benito Franqui
From
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ :
The
Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international
and multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and
others. This website introduces methods and technology and empirical results in
one section, and presents interpretations and applications in another.
We
have been collecting data from a global network of random event generators since
August, 1998. The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world
running custom software that reads the output of physical random number
generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over
months and years. The data are transmitted over the internet to a server in
Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis. Individual data
create a tapestry of color. The dot below shows coherence.
The
purpose of this project is to examine subtle correlations that appear to reflect
the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. The scientific work is
careful, but it is at the margins of our understanding. We believe our view may
be enriched by a creative and poetic perspective. Here we present various
aspects of the project, including some insight into its scientific and
philosophical implications.
Sounds
really interesting, doesn't it? As well as scientific! But let's be cautious -
as Feynman and Shermer would probably suggest.
From
our earliest beginnings, we humans have been trying to detect meaningful
patterns in what at first seemed to be nothing more than random noise. And for
good reason - our survival often depended on detecting significant deviations
from the norm. Decisions as to
when, where, how, what, or whom to live, hunt, cultivate, fight,
collaborate with, or marry have always been crucial.
So the practice arose of studying natural phenomena such as the
appearance of animal entrails,
bird
flight patterns,
tea
leaves,
or shuffled
decks of cards, cloud
formations, the motions and changes in luminosity of "heavenly"
bodies, etc.
Some
of those studies yielded practical results: certain cloud formations may signal
an approaching hurricane, and
the
study of the motions of the planets led eventually to the discovery of the laws
of physics and the invention of the myriad devices which make modern life more
enjoyable.
But
many other such studies have led nowhere. Recent examples include: trying to
discern voices in blank audio tapes, "remote viewing" studies in which
Stanford Research Institute was involved, and a study of the effect of prayer in
which Columbia University was involved. So the participation of an otherwise
reputable academic institution is no guarantee that the resulting research
"findings" will be truly scientific. Scientists are not much more
immune to the seductions of fame, power, and wishful thinking than the rest of
us are.
So,
while I find the idea of a global consciousness
to be extremely
appealing, let's not start rebuilding the altars to Gaia yet.
Some
failed predictions
"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific
advances." -- Dr. Lee DeForest, Inventor of TV
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." --
Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project
"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." --
Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas
Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the
best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last
out the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall,
1957
"But what ... is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a
means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us," --
Western Union internal memo, 1876.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay
for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates
in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible," -- A Yale University management
professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight
delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary
Cooper," -- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in
"Gone With The Wind."
"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say
America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make," --
Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out," --
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," -- Lord Kelvin,
president, Royal Society, 1895.
"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this," -- Spencer
Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It"
Notepads.
Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're
crazy," -- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to
drill for oil in 1859.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." --
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value," -- Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented," -- Charles H.
Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.
"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the
water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of
vacuum tubes required." -- professor of electrical engineering, New York
University
"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make
copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by
itself." -- the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the
inventor to found Xerox
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." -- Pierre
Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon," -- Sir John Eric Ericksen,
British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.
and
last but not least...
"There
is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson,
president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977