September 10, 2007; At the Eagle Pub near Queens College, Cambridge; UK the proprietors have posted this commemorative plaque. Although Francis is no longer with us, our GRG Patron Saint, James Watson, is alive and well. His DNA was sequenced in June by Baylor University in Houston, TX using technology developed by 454 Life Sciences of Connecticut.
October 28, 2006; Prof. Richard Dawkins on a recent book tour of the US stopped at
CalTech in Pasadena on a warm and beautiful Saturday afternoon to do a series of readings from
his latest best-seller, The God Delusion to a standing-room-only audience in the
Beckman Auditorium. The photos below show him autographing copies of his book for those
who just bought one...
December 1, 2006; Click on the first photo above of the books to take a look at Prof. Dawkins new International Foundation for Science and Reason. His introductory video clip about the purposes of the Foundation is well worth watching.
"The universe as we observe it appears to have precisely the properties one would
expect if there were, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind,
pitiless indifference."
"[95 - 97] percent of all species that have ever lived on the Earth are now extinct. Any creatures,
including humans, that are still alive are the most recent version of a long line of true survivors."
-- Richard Dawkins, Fellow of New College and Charles Simonyi Professor of Public
Understanding of Science at Oxford University, UK
~10:00 PM PST; Good Friday, March 25, 2005, Crowne Plaza Hotel near LAX in Los Angeles,
California; USA
Professor Dawkins (L) is shown autographing a copy of his latest book, The Ancestor's Tale:
A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (673 pages; Houghton Mifflin Company; Boston,
MA; 2004) for Stephen Coles following a one-hour lecture about a new book he is in the process
of writing on the topic of God's continuing role in human affairs. There will be an accompanying
TV documentary to be broadcast on UK Channel 4 sponsored by some sort of British
theological organization. And this despite the fact that Dawkins is a well-known atheist and will
not be ashamed to disclose this religious persuasion on TV. Ironically, we have referred to him
as
our "Patron Saint," before we knew of this additional fact about him. After all, how can a
self-avowed atheist be the "saint" of anything?
One of the points that Dawkins made in his talk is that Darwinian evolution explains the existence of human beings without having to postulate a miraculous, irrational, magical, mysterious, supernatural force in the universe (i.e, God). It is elegant in the same way that prior ante-Greek models of the universe are inelegant. Consider the paradox of a flat-Earth plate being held up by four strong elephants. When asked what holds up the elephants? The perpetrators of this fairy tale, in the same equivalence class as the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause, asked us to imagine a really big turtle. By recursive induction, such a model becomes infinitely complex. You see what I mean. And this problem is not shared by the Copernican helico-centric round-earth model that contains its own mechanism ( gravity). Likewise the Darwinian principle of Survival of the Fittest coupled to a mutation rate in DNA in the context of a stochastic environment (an ecology of predator/prey relationships subject to thermodynamic entropy contains its own mechanism for extropy (the temporary elaboration of complexity given an ample supply of energy).
The introduction of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution followed by its elaboration by modern biologists, who have rationalized it in a manner to be consistent with the Laws of Physics and Chemistry, is spiritually liberating. And why is that? We no longer have to search out God's intent for mortal humans (Thy "will" be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.) which is such a frustrating business, since He has revealed so little evidence for His purpose, or having to listen to the admonitions of those self-appointed prophets who seek to speak for Him (the clergy/ruling-class, who fabricated the notions of sin and guilt, acting largely out of self-interest to maintain their social status). Instead, we can come to appreciate that our "human condition" is in no way sacred -- that it was, in fact, thrust upon us without our consent. Therefore, we can change it if it suits our own purpose, in the same fashion as wearing clothing when it's cold or putting on a pair of spectacles when our vision becomes impaired with old age without fear of untoward consequences in the "afterlife." So, this argument is liberating in the sense that the fatalistic dogma of nearly all religions regarding "heaven" (and "hell") and/or reincarnation can now be ignored with impunity.
This doesn't mean that we can safely abandon our sense of moral purpose while we are here on this planet. We know that we have free will, but there are consequences for our actions. It does mean that we have a shared responsibility to create a social system of morality, ethics, and laws while we are here to facilitate our free search for ultimate purpose in our lives. And this is one of the central purposes of religion, among which are attempts at explanation of the mysteries of nature, rituals for the celebration of critical-path life-history events (birth, adulthood, marriage, and death), and inspiration to find value in our lives.
"There is a natural equilibrium between the extinction of old species and the evolution
of
new species (speciation) which is delicately balanced by the rate of mutations introduced
into DNA during replication." This is, of course, the result of a seemingly-deliberate intrinsic net
error rate in the germ-line cells following post-replicative enzymatic proof-reading or
post-editing
of the DNA (not too much, but not too little either, about 1 per billion nucleotides in mammals)
and, in particular, the evolution of sperm/egg surface-antigenic hand-shakes to complete the
process of speciation. The Darwinian invention of diploid chromosomal crossing-over during
sexual reproduction accelerated the rate of speciation considerably and gave a significant
advantage to both plants and animals who adopted this mode of reproduction on the surface of
the earth (or in the shallow areas of the oceans) in coping with periodic mass extinctions which
broke the food chain during rare periods of multi-season darkness (punctuated evolution). This
advantage obtains from having a stockpile of recessive genes in the pool when the environment
changes capriciously disfavoring the corresponding dominant genes This would certainly not be
a
fun time for large predatory animals, who before this event, enjoyed being located toward the top
of the food web.
"Extinction" PBS-TV Series on Evolution Part 4 of 7 (Channel 28; Friday, May 24,
2002; 11:00 PM PDT; TRT= 1 hour)
"When Earth's human population passed 6 billion, we had already exceeded by as much
as 100 times the biomass of any large animal species that had ever existed on land." We
consume
and exhale materials in such large amounts that we have already modified the air, the water, and
the land we inhabit. At the rate we're going, by the end of the present Century, we may have
extinguished half the species of plants and animals that have ever lived on Earth. We take small
comfort in the idea that extinction only happens to big scary dinosaurs or tiny insignificant fish
--- not in our own backyards. But the truth is that, in the event of a non-linear catastrophic event
in our biosphere, we could be in serious danger of extinguishing not only our own species but
almost every other form of life along with us. If, as a species, humans continue to depend on the
fragile earth-surface food chain, there is no guarantee that we can escape from this predicament
of extinction. Those who wish to forever avoid the fate of the dinosaurs have some work to do.
--- Professor Edward Osborne Wilson, Biology Department, Harvard University
Ref. The Future of Life (Knopf, New York; 2002).
Painting by Thomas Moran, "Ponce de Leon in Florida" looking in vain for the Fountain of
Youth .)
There were
to the Charter Section of our website.
Click on the icon above for more details.