Letters to the Editor
sammyp
Published Letters: 4
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Not Exactly Axordil
[Read the article: Manufacturing belief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, Wolpert does say we are here to reproduce. He stops there, but if I extend that thinking into a value system, murdering is okay if it allows me to mate with more females. If you are too weak to fight me off, then my conquest is just that much the better for our species.
From such an athiest/biologist's position, I do not know on what basis one could make an argument for - oh, pick one - women's rights. Justice, equality - these get dropped, as far as I can tell.
sammy p
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Science verus meaning
[Read the article: Manufacturing belief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Science has no meaning in of itself, except for the individual scientist, for whom it's meaning is exactly it's power to enhance one's ability to breed and raise children. Not everyone can be beautiful, or physically or politically powerful (not that scientist's are not all of these). As it is said in the article:
"Do you find yourself wondering about ultimate meaning? Does that matter in your life?
Never. Ultimate meaning has no meaning in my life. I sound a bit shallow, but I think it's actually quite deep not to be bothered by that sort of thing."
Indoor plumbing is nice (thanks, science!), but scientific prestige contains the same meaning as silver hair along the back of an ape: the power to attract. Certainly it would be silly to posit some sort of external, overarching meaning to science.
Is science competitive? It must be, with all of us trying to distinguish ourselves above the herd.
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WTF? the moral majority
[Read the article: Manufacturing belief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I do hope we find some sort of synthethis - for example, suppose that in order to cut greenhouse emissions we decided the best and least expensive course was to selectively eliminate some percentage of the human population - say 35%. I can think of many religious and ethical and moral arguments against such a policy, but, from a scientific standpoint, the only arguments against the genocide that I can muster are the resultant loss of genetic diversity within the human gene pool. And I suppose with careful selection and preservation this could be avoided.
Science seems to afford only a relative value to each of us, whereas the religions I am familar with tend to give an absolute value to each human life.
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What?
[Read the article: Pakistan turns scary for Bush's war on terror]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay, I do not think Bush has ever had a thoughtful, effective foreign policy, but this is a bit over the top. Bush did not install Musharraf - Bush had to garner support from countries as they had constituted themselves. Sure, the U.S. could have taken the position that Pakistan needed to embrace a more democratic form of government, but it is hard to say if U.S. pressure would have been a stabilizing force on Pakistan. In any event, one can make the same observation about our policies towards several nations, that we support not democracies or even democratic movements, but strong men and kings.
I'll be happy to see Bush go, but come on, he did not make Pakistan. If this illustrates anything, it is that the influence of the U.S. is limited. The only question, in my mind, is how much has our ability to influence events deteriorated during Bush's presidency?