Are Humans what they deeply feel they are or what the facts of biology show?

HELP me out here, IF you are interested in controversial topics.

For a number of years, I have studied a particular controversy--that is HUGE these days.

ARE HUMANS WHAT THEY DEEPLY FEEL OR WHAT BIOLOGICAL FACTS SHOW?

Let's say that I deeply feel I am Native American, Navajo, even though my DNA test shows that I am not.
CAN IT STILL BE TRUE THAT I AM INDIGENOUS?

I have read both totally opposite sides of the controversy, and some in the middle, etc. Studied what medical doctors and biologists have to say about the facts, etc.

And I am frustrated that both opposite extremes--like so much of politics--exaggerates, distorts, lacks empathy, and misuses language (George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm) changing the common definition of words into their opposite meanings.

I will try and be silent, and will LISTEN to what you think and have to say on this topic if you are willing to jump off the cliff with your hang-glider;-)
I am going to use the real situation of ancestry so as to avoid censorship issues.

TRUE STORY of MY YOUTH: For most of my teen years, for many reasons, I very deeply wanted to be a Native American. I suppose this fascination, almost
obsession began from studying Native Americans as a young Boy Scout and buying authentic moccasins on a trip when young, and from later studying American history.

Then recently came the huge controversy related to one politician stating she was of Native American heritage (because her family had told her so).
Many of the opposite political party claimed she was lying. ETC.
Later it was proven by DNA testing that she actually does have partial Native American ancestry. But that didn't solve the controversy because then it became a question of other things!

HOWEVER, what IF the DNA test has shownn that she doesn't have Native American ancestry?

Can she still be Native American?!

What IF I claim that I am really Indigenous, Navajo, because I deeply feel that I am Native American, even though DNA shows that I am actually Scottish and
Northwestern European?


In the Light,
Dan Wilcox

How Do We Discern the True Nature of Reality--the LIGHT, from what's false: myth, illusion, and superstition?

As I still seek to advance more toward the Light,
despite my own aged physical receding,
(soon to be deader than a doorstopper), how do I and billions of other human
primates deal with the mysterious, conundrumed central questions of our existence?

1. What new ethical insights ought we to be seeking, and hopefully, finding, like our forebears
before us who discovered the truths of equality, human rights, peacemaking, and transcendence?

2. How do we counter the current false human narratives, life-stances, and worldviews which cause so much havoc, intolerance, anguish, suffering,
and destruction?

3. How do we discern what is true versus what is illusion and superstition in ultimate matters, when we can't prove "OUGHTs"?

For instance, how can we witness to human worth?

Hard secularists claim there is so much evidence from biology, neuroscience, and physics that
human choice,
moral responsibility,
creativity,
even human consciousness are ALL illusions/delusions.

According to them only atoms locked-into-a-hard-fated cosmos exist. NOTHING else.


4. If every human truly has inherent value, why is it that so many billions of humans deny this in their reasoning, or their daily behavior?

5. How are Friends (and other transcendentalists and moral realists) different from humanists who appear to claim that all humans do have "inherent worth" YET at the same time claim that only matter and energy exist?

Human Manifesto III: "We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility."

Is this a semantic problem or are they being contradictory?

6. Do we ourselves have contradictions within our own life-stance?

7. This day are we moment by moment working in each relationship to truly relate as that the other person has "inherent value' within her/himself?



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Is This True: "Most Scientists Are Non-Religious" According to Jerry Coyne?

Biologist and Atheist Jerry Coyne writes on his science webblog,
"Why else are most scientists nonreligious—far more so than the general public?"

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/ideologically-motivated-teachers-indoctrinate-students-into-thinking-that-science-and-religion-are-compatible/

Caution: Whether or not religion or non-religion, theism or atheism, is true, isn't a popularity contest!

The number of scientists who are or aren't "religious" is only a general indicator of whether or not science and religion are compatible, not whether religion is true or false.

HOWEVER, contrary to atheist Jerry Coyne, according to Pew Research, 51% of scientists aren't atheists.

That means that a majority of scientists are 'religious," not the "most scientists are nonreligious," Coyne's claim.

"According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power."

"Finally, the poll of scientists finds that four-in-ten scientists (41%) say they do not believe in God or a higher power."
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/

That doesn't sound like "most scientists" are "non-religious."

But let's give professor Coyne the benefit of the doubt; maybe his claim was that "most scientists" are not organizationally Christian?
--

Also, consider this study done by Rice University:
"First worldwide survey of religion and science: No, not all scientists are atheists
AMY MCCAIG – DECEMBER 3, 2015

"Are all scientists atheists? Do they believe religion and science can co-exist?"

"These questions and others were addressed in the first worldwide survey of how scientists view religion, released today by researchers at Rice University."

“More than half of scientists in India, Italy, Taiwan and Turkey self-identify as religious,” Ecklund said.

“And it’s striking that approximately twice as many ‘convinced atheists’ exist in the general population of Hong Kong, for example, (55 percent) compared with the scientific community in this region (26 percent).”

“No one today can deny that there is a popular ‘warfare’ framing between science and religion,” said the study’s principal investigator, Elaine Howard Ecklund, founding director of Rice University’s Religion and Public Life Program and the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences. “This is a war of words fueled by scientists, religious people and those in between.”

"The study’s results challenge longstanding assumptions about the science-faith interface. While it is commonly assumed that most scientists are atheists, the global perspective resulting from the study shows that this is simply not the case."

"Elite scientists: 34% Atheist, 30% Agnostic, 36% Religious"

"The researchers did find that scientists are generally less religious than a given general population."

However, there were exceptions to this:
39 percent of scientists in Hong Kong identify as religious compared with 20 percent of the general population of Hong Kong,
and 54 percent of scientists in Taiwan identify as religious compared with 44 percent of the general population of Taiwan."

"Ecklund noted that such patterns challenge longstanding assumptions about the irreligious character of scientists around the world."

"When asked about terms of conflict between religion and science, Ecklund noted that only a minority of scientists in each regional context believe that science and religion are in conflict."

"In the U.K. – one of the most secular countries studied – only 32 percent of scientists characterized the science-faith interface as one of conflict. In the U.S., this number was only 29 percent."

"In addition to the survey’s quantitative findings, the researchers found nuanced views in scientists’ responses during interviews. For example, numerous scientists expressed how religion can provide a “check” in ethically gray areas."

"Ecklund and fellow Rice researchers Kirstin Matthews and Steven Lewis collected information from 9,422 respondents in eight regions around the world: France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S."

"They also traveled to these regions to conduct in-depth interviews with 609 scientists, the largest worldwide survey and interview study ever conducted of the intersection between faith and science."

About Amy McCaig
Amy is a senior media relations specialist in Rice University's Office of Public Affairs.
http://news.rice.edu/2015/12/03/first-worldwide-survey-of-religion-and-science-no-not-all-scientists-are-atheists/

Also, consider this survey's results:
NBCNews
updated 6/23/2005 11:42:26 AM ET

"CHICAGO — A survey examining religion in medicine found that most U.S. doctors believe in God..."

"In the survey of 1,044 doctors nationwide, 76 percent said they believe in God..."

“We were surprised to find that physicians were as religious as they apparently are,” said Dr. Farr Curlin, a researcher at the University of Chicago’s MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics."
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8318894/ns/health-health_care/t/survey-most-doctors-believe-god-afterlife/

Of course, probably, Coyne would argue that doctors aren't scientists.

But even discounting doctors, it isn't true that "most scientists are nonreligious."

Professor Coyne needs to edit his incorrect claim, or provide contrary evidence.

In the Light of Ultimate Reality, God, Deity, Divine, Essence, the Good, Transcendence, Process, Higher Power, Meaning,
(or whatever other term religious people use to refer to their convincement
that matter and energy aren't the only reality).

Daniel Wilcox

The Amazing Reality of Genetic Life

The amazing, incredible reality of genetic life...

If I got to live, again, and was born with scientific ability, it would be difficult
for me to choose between the fields of astrophysics/astronomy
versus genetics/biology!

Genetics is a fascinating field of endeavor which has greatly altered how thinkers view Life and reality.

Consider this measured reflection from a science website:

"One of the surprises that came out of the Human Genome Project was how few genes (protein coding stretches of DNA) humans
have — around 23,000,
not that different compared to the fruit fly with 14,000,
and quite a bit less than rice, with 51,000."

Wow!
So we human beings, homo sapiens, are situated between
a fruit fly
and a grain of rice!
We have more genes than a fruit fly, but less than a grain of rice!

Sounds hilariously bizarre, like some sort of slapstick movie comedy.

What sense does all of this make?

Read on:
"Traditionally the metaphor for genes was something more akin
to a blueprint, — the “standard dogma” of Francis Crick: each gene codes for
one mRNA which codes for one protein — but now we realize that many are better viewed as switches or volume knobs.

Moreover, one gene can have multiple effects. Complexity arises not so much from
the genes themselves as from the connections between them.

These network properties are currently an enormously rich topic of research. For example, the way the network is connected can dramatically affect the interplay between robustness to mutation and evolvability (the ability of a system to generate heritable phenotypic novelty).

The same gene often turns out to be used throughout the animal kingdom:
you can take the pax-6 gene that controls eye development from a human and put
it into the part of a fly that controls wings formation and the fly will make a (malformed) eye on its wing.

The same gene that controls the formation of human arms also controls the formation
of wings on birds, fins on fish, and legs on centipedes!

Modifying the way these genes are “wired together” can lead to massive changes
in an organism.

The burgeoning new field of evodevo (evolutionary developmental biology) studies how evolution exploits these “toolbox genes”
to help generate the endless forms most beautiful we see around us.

Much remains to be understood, but adjectives
like remarkable, elegant, and awe-inspiring are apt.
Clay or Lego blocks?

In a fascinating book proposing a “theory of facilitated variation” biologists Marc Kirschner and John Gehrard point out that while
the Modern Synthesis implicitly used the metaphor of clay -- evolution could produce variation in almost any direction,
but in very tiny steps--
modern biology would be better served by the metaphor of Lego blocks:
reusable connectable units are more constrained in what they can do, but you can generate useful new variation in much larger steps.

Selfish genes, or control on many levels? The field of systems biology is challenging
the reductionist bottom-up primacy that has dominated biological explanation over the last few decades.

In a beautiful book, The Music of Life: Biology beyond the Genome (OUP 2006),
Denis Noble, a remarkable polymath and one of the fathers of systems biology, takes the gene-centric view of his Oxford colleague Richard Dawkins to task.

He asserts that we must look beyond the “selfish gene."

A better metaphor for understanding life is music, “a symphonic interplay between genes, cells, organs, body, and environment."
from the BioLogos Website

And this:
On the reality of evolution--
"One way to view the dogmatic nature of neo-darwinism as it is often presented in public is to see it as a reaction to the dogmatism of the creationists. The ‘uncertain’ (in the sense of lacking reason) faith in creationism is replaced by the ‘certainties’ of science.

But there is a conflation here of very different degrees of certainty in science. There can’t be much doubt about the fact that life on earth has evolved.

There is much less certainty about the mechanisms. Unlike Darwinism (Darwin knew nothing of mechanisms, genes were not known), neo-darwinism proposes the exclusion of many mechanisms that have in fact now been found to occur in nature.

Adopting the ‘certainty’ of evolution to clothe the ‘uncertainty’ of particular theories about mechanisms has been the cause of many problems in public debate on evolution.

It is perfectly possible to defend the virtual certainty that life has evolved while debating in the usual argumentative scientific way the uncertainties surrounding the question of mechanisms.

The truth is that amongst the many mechanisms now known we know very little about which were prevalent in evolution. The answer is likely to be that different mechanisms were dominant at different stages.

Evolution itself evolves."

from http://www.musicoflife.website/Answers-dogmatism.html

By biologist and evolutionist Denis Noble
from Wikipedia: "Denis Noble is a British biologist who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford from 1984 to 2004... He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960."

How amazing, incredible, and wonderful is Life and Reality!

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

How Would You Answer Jerry Coyne?

How would you answer this?

The atheist, biologist, and hard determinist Jerry Coyne asked this question today on his website:

Jerry Coyne: "If you were asked to explain to someone, say an open-minded person you’d just met, why you’re an atheist,
and were limited to at most three sentences,
what would you say?"

Wouldn't the most reasonable answer be--if one is a determinist:

"I had no choice
because it was determined by the cosmos, the laws of physics, etc. that I must be an atheist,
exactly like it was determined by the cosmos that some humans must be theists."

According to biologist Jerry Coyne, God doesn't exist because
#1 of "lack of evidence"
#2 of "evidence against the idea of God...existence of undeserved evil..."
--


For free will theists out there--those who think all human do have a choice--what would you say to Jerry Coyne
as to why you think God is real?


What would you tell Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris, and other determinists,
why you think that all humans
do have moral choice and creative ability?


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #2: What Is Clarity of the Mind?

Continuing with the series, Purity of Mind and Heart:

#1: Use reason to clarify your worldview, when making major decisions, and in opposing what is false, wrong, and destructive.
Steer clear of informal and logical fallacies.

#2 Keep in mind that sometimes the term fallacy can even be used as a fallacy! For example, it has often happened in “appeal to authority.” An individual states 98% of plumbers in the U.S. think that such and such pipe is more reliable than…Or most philosophers think that…
And a person who disagrees says, “Oh, that’s just an appeal to authority—Fallacy!"

Nope. Showing that most authorities in their field support a view--the consensus--isn’t a fallacy, that’s evidence.

The fallacy, “appeal to authority” is when you argue most ministers, or most people in the U.S., believe that evolution is false. That is an error in authority because whether or not evolution is true or false is a subject for biologists to study and present evidence for one way or the other (97% of scientists say evolution is a fact).

Whether or not not most ministers, or most of the public, oppose evolution as false is not significant because they aren't scientists!

#3 Though carefully thought out reasoning is the watch-word, It’s okay, (even sometimes needed or necessary), to make intuitive jumps. Scientists and other thinkers often use intuition including famous ones such as Albert Einstein. Remember his comment about how imagination is more important than knowledge.

When making intuitive leaps, however, make sure it’s not near a cliff;-).

If you’ve been studying a project or issue in depth and haven’t solved the problem, then taking a break, even sleeping on it may help. One scientist actually made an important discovery in a dream.

However, if you are about to try out a new parachute, launch a rocket, get married, or change worldviews, it behooves you to double check your sudden intuitive insight with some careful thinking and evidence.

#4 When thinking through an ethical problem, be careful about semantic confusion, simplistic terms, and confirmation bias. Take a look at Peanuts:

And consider another example of confirmation bias, semantic confusion, and simplistic term-iteness:

"I'm pro-life! Strongly against abortion. We stand with America and our troops. Remember what our Christian leader said, God's gift to America
is the atom bomb."

Huh?



In the Light of Reason,

Daniel Wilcox

Rethinking the Title of My Blog: Part #2

In the volatile, destructive 17th century, during the English Civil War when neighbor slaughtered neighbor, visionary social leveler George Fox wrote in 1646,
“I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death,
but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness…”

Do these words—“infinite ocean of light and love”--describe any aspect of existence?

Is there an “infinity of light and love” in the visible or invisible universe?

Probably not (but more on what Fox’s quote might mean further down in the reflection).

It seems fairly probable and scientifically observable that the biological world isn’t based in infinite love at all. Though many religionists from Young Earth Creationists to Intelligent Design Scientists, of course, claim otherwise. John Haught, a brilliant Roman Catholic thinker, who even accepts Darwinian evolution as fact has a different perspective yet.

According to Haught, God demonstrates his vulnerable self-emptying love toward all things and all beings because God doesn’t micromanage everything, doesn’t directly create and control life but instead lets evolution via natural selection proceed through various pathways over billions of years!

“The God of evolution humbly invites creatures to participate in the ongoing creation of the universe. This gracious invitation to share in the creation of the universe is consistent with the fundamental Christian belief that the ultimate ground of the universe and our own lives is the loving, vulnerable, defenseless, and self-emptying generosity of God.” John Haught, God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens

To many this sounds absurd.

The natural order shows Reality to be "Vulnerable? Defenseless? Self-emptying? Gracious? Generous? Loving?" Hardly!

Let’s consider again the actual facts of daily life among all sentient creatures, of the nature of biological evolution, natural selection! Face all of the pain and suffering that has gone on for at least 200 million years.
“Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw”
Alfred Tennyson

“…killer whales pluck newborn seals off the beach and viciously thrash them about…For more than 550 million years, trillions of animals — perhaps many more — have been preyed upon and parasitized, have had their offspring torn to shreds, and been abused and tortured by rapacious predators…"

"Evolution, a natural force of mutation and selection that is a powerful creative agent of design, is blind to any sense of right or wrong. Evolution is amoral. It is apathetic to a species’ quality of life, and callous towards the suffering of the life forms that it moulds…lionesses are ripping off the limbs of screaming gazelles out on the savannahs…wolves are…eating their prey alive or leaving them disembowelled to die.
Steven Hussey, PhD in genetics, University of Pretoria, South Africa

“What a book a Devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!”
Charles Darwin, Francis Darwin, ed., More Letters of Charles Darwin

And that doesn’t even begin to deal with the wreckage, savagery, intolerance and slaughter by humans since they came on the scene. Or the millions slaughtered in the wars of the last 500 years by Roman Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, etc.

On the other hand, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Roman Catholic philosopher, was a famous paleontologist and geologist who wrote that all of cosmic history is moving toward a loving Omega Point at the end of Time. No doubt as a scientist he had reflected many times on the savage face of nature, and yet he held that ultimately nature will be glorified in love.

Were his scientifically and philosophically grounded observations and speculations, just—deluded specks, abstract delusions that have no actual identity in real time/space?

Yes, says millions of other scientists, especially atheistic ones such as Richard Dawkins, Jacques Monad, Daniel C. Dennett, and Sam Harris. According to Dennett, Darwinian evolutionary science is like an acid which eats through every view of humans contrary to materialism.

So, again, like so many difficult studies, it’s very hard to say; after all basic evolutionary biology, (let alone paleontology), is an incredibly complex study. But common sense would seem to rule out the Fox’s and de Chardin’s and Haught’s view that nature is infused and surrounded by God’s cosmic love.

Who knows in an objective sense?

Way beyond my pay grade.

Then there’s the science of cosmology--the study of the origin, nature, and end of the universe, a highly abstract scientific enterprise dealing with billions of light years, billions of galaxies, trillions of planets…and quantum mechanics at the opposite end of size, delving down into the microcosm…

Way beyond my pay grade, too.

I don’t “know.”

But here are the measured thoughts of one physicist and Nobel laureate, Arno Penzias:
“…maybe God always reveals Himself? Again I think as Psalm 19, ‘the heavens proclaim the glory of God,’ that is, God reveals Himself in all there is. All reality, to a greater or lesser extent, reveals the purpose of God. There is some connection to the purpose and order of the world in all aspects of human experience.”
Quoted in the book The God I Believe In, Joshua Haberman, editor

That sounds almost like George Fox
.
I wish I could ask a few hard questions of Penzias and Haught, and for that matter the contrary thinkers Hussey and Dennett.

So what of George Fox’s statement, the title of my blog?

Is it true?

Or completely fallacious, delusionary, and absurd?

To be continued…

Part #3 Next time:-)

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox