Animals can tell right from wrong?

Via the Telegraph.

Scientists studying animal behaviour believe they have growing evidence that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans.

Until recently, humans were thought to be the only species to experience complex emotions and have a sense of morality.

This, if true, blows the whole "morality comes from god" argument right out of the water. If mice and rats are as moral as us, then perhaps we should start asking them what the One True Religion™ is.

Elephants are intensely sociable and emotional animals. Research by Iain Douglas Hamilton, from the department of zoology at Oxford University, suggests elephants experience compassion and has found evidence of elephants helping injured or ill members of their herd.

In one case, a Matriarch known as Eleanor fell ill and a female in the herd gently tried to help Eleanor back to her feet, staying with her before she died.

In 2003, a herd of 11 elephants rescued antelope who were being held inside an enclosure in KwaZula-Natal, South Africa.

The matriarch unfastened all of the metal latches holding the gates closed and swung the entrance open allowing the antelope to escape.

This is thought to be a rare example of animals showing empathy for members of another species – a trait previously thought to be the exclusive preserve of mankind.

This part of the article in particular caught my interest. What seems to be highly complex actions and moral thought from a decidedly non-primate species? I'd never heard of this before, but if its true it really could be used an argument to persuade on-the-fencers to our side, at least on the morality-independent-from-god issue.

The BBC News

I've finally given up on north-american news networks for accurate, relevant news. I've personally found that the BBC is far better, in terms of a lack of fluff-pieces and news of substance from around the world.

In the last couple days, a few things that the americans haven't really touched:

• The bulldozing of the homes of the child-stars from Slumdog Millionaire
• The Air India crash leaving around 100 people dead
• the end of Civil war in Sri lanka

Makes me angry, so I quit watching networks like cnn, msnbc, fox (ugh) etc.

Chemical Predetermination

This was sparked by a conversation in the comments on another blog. I'm fleshing out a few idea's, so it might wander a bit.

The concept is fairly simple. We use chemistry to study the interactions between different types and forms of matter and energy, which, due to the way the universe is constructed and operates under, react in certain predictable ways in any given environment.

A vague but accurate description.

At what point does that reaction get free will? What, inside the skull of a human, exerts influence on the outcome of the reactions going on inside? You can poke around in there all you want, you won't find it.

If chemical reactions behave the same way in the same conditions, then everything going on inside your skull right now is happening the only way it can. That means that the reaction going on inside you head, all your thoughts, are the only thoughts you could have had.

Every thought you will ever have in your life will be predictable result of what came before it, all determined before it began.

But wait, you say, thought is effected by input! what input? The environment that surrounds you and feeds into your brain is as set in stone as your reaction to them.

Bing bang theory postulates a theoretical beginning to the universe, one that we might eventually understand fully. Observation of the universe as it is suggests that in the end, it will eventually end with universal heat death.

If you have the beginning of the equation, and the solution, the work in between is implied to have a predictable structure.





I'm going to throw this up on the the blog instead of letting it languish in the draft folder like most stuff i've written, so i can remember to flesh it out and work on it. :/

Bleh

This is utter stupidity.

1. The presence of uncaused, immaterial entities within our reality would point to a reality beyond our finite, material cause-and-effect universe
2. Numbers exist, and are uncaused and immaterial (they do not require the material world to exist, and would exist whether humans were around to "discover" them or not)
3. The rules of logic exist, and are uncaused and immaterial -- they do not require the material world to exist
4. Therefore uncaused, immaterial entities exist
5. Uncaused entities must be eternal (because a cause would indicate a point-in-time)
6. Therefore eternal, immaterial entities exist
7. Therefore the materialistic worldview assumption of atheists is an inadequate depiction of the reality in which we live, and the materialistic assumptions of science are an inadequate methodology to discover all of reality

Part Two:

8. Logic and mathematics are products of mind
9. Therefore there is an eternal mind
10. Whoever possesses this mind would be characterized by earthlings as "God"
11. Therefore, God exists

Lets try this.

1. In a medium in which cause and effect does not apply, logic does not apply, for starters. So the existence of immaterial, uncaused beings actually doesn't imply anything about the space in which they exist, of anything else. The whole concept is a paradox. Thus the first axiom fails.

2. Numbers do not exist. The concept of numbers, and the symbology representing that concept exist, both in a material, very-much-caused way. Thus the second axiom fails.

3. Again, the laws of logic and the process in which they are used is a wholly human-derived concept that exists only within human perspective and perception of the material world. Like #2, it also dependent on cause and effect, a symptom of something very much material. Thus the third axiom fails.

After this, the whole argument is baseless, but I'll continue with observations for persistence's sake.

4. This does not follow, becuase, again, if something is free of cuase and effect, it is, in essence, random noise and chaos, and cannot be regarded as an entity of any sort in the first place At least as i understand the term entity, which is very loosely defined within the argument presented.)

5. Eternality is also a concept with the frame of time. no time is no the same ass an infinite amount of time. It would be more accurate to say these enitity, if free of space and time, exist no-where, and no-when. Which is to say, the never existed anywhere, at any time.

6. Again, the failure of that before precludes this statments validity, along with the inhererent and paradoxical (self-addmitted) non-existance of such beings.

7. This is an unwarranted and terrible logical leap. Even given the situation where the entire supporting argument before this was no a pile of rubish and false assumptions, the existance of non-material "entities" outside of our universe implies no ability to effect any change of interaction on the real, material universe.

Even were this so, only the mechanics of the reality in which we can see and measure and quanifty has any information we can obtain and reliabley assess, and thus learn from. So the existance of any "higher plane" (i assume that he assumes this out of my own arrogant pride, i suppose, but doesnt negate the fact I'm probably right :/ ) is completely irrelevant to scince, atheism, the quest for god, or our own "enlightenment".

Part two, and point 8-12 can be dealt with sumarrily from the argument that both concepts exist with the scope of the material mind alone, as something free of cause and effect can find the product of two and two to be five as easily as four. One cannot use logic to justify the illogical.



I can taste the woo. Bleh.

The Spirit's plot has more holes than a necrophiliac victim.

Russia-Georgia conflict will raise oil prices

Russia invaded georgia. I've expected Putin to go expansionist for some time. When he installed Medvedev, long-time Putin-crony, as president, this was fairly clear. You don't start shifting your own position in government until you are absolutely sure that your domestic political security is assured.

Anywho, the war in georgia is going to affect you at the tank. Oil from the Caspian runs through there. or did. I doubt that it will continue to run for long. So, start hoarding fuel and food my friends. As the chinese would say, our lives are about to get interesting.

Heaven Hotter than Hell

Everyone has seen the first calculations, they can be found on google fairly easy.

The temperature of heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is the Bible, Isaiah 30:26 reads, Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days. Thus, heaven receives from the moon as much radiation as the earth does from the sun, and in addition seven times seven (forty nine) times as much as the earth does from the sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of heaven: The radiation falling on heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation. In other words, heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann fourth power law for radiation

(H/E)⁴ = 50

where E is the absolute temperature of the earth, 300°K (273+27). This gives H the absolute temperature of heaven, as 798° absolute (525°C).

The exact temperature of hell cannot be computed but it must be less than 444.6°C, the temperature at which brimstone or sulfur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelations 21:8: But the fearful and unbelieving... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone [sulfur] means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, which is 444.6°C. (Above that point, it would be a vapor, not a lake.)

We have then, temperature of heaven, 525°C (977°F). Temperature of hell, less than 445°F). Therefore heaven is hotter than hell.

But I, at least, have never seen a response published in the same time-period.

In Applied Optics (1972, 11 A14) there appeared a calculation of the respective temperatures of Heaven and Hell. That of Heaven was computed by substituting the values given in Isaiah 30 26 [1] in the Stefan-Boltzman radiation law, so that (H/E)⁴ = 50, where E, the absolute temperature of the Earth, is 300ºK, whence the temperature of Heaven, H, is 798ºK or 525ºC. This is hard to find fault with.

The assessment of the temperature of Hell stands, I suggest, on less firm ground. As authority we use the data provided in Revelations 21 8 [2], so that the temperature of Hell seems to be 444.6ºC–the temperature at which liquid sulfur is in equilibrium with its vapour–a temperature indeed which is sufficiently reliable to be used in the secondary calibration of pyrometers.

Now this last reckoning fails to follow the argument through. 444.6ºC is the temperature at which liquid sulfur is in equilibrium with its vapour at normal atmospheric pressure. Have we any data as to the pressure likely to be found in Hell?

The answer is "Yes". A nineteenth century mathematician has already provided the groundwork for Us [3] and we may feel confident that by the year 2000 the total number of the damned will be at least 29,422,641,251,519,917,000 souls. Yet the area of the valley of Gehinnom [4] is only 7,000,000 square meters.

We can now apply these figures in the Ideal Gas Equation to calculate what the pressure will be in the valley of Gehinnom. Since surely some souls must have been damned since 1877 [5], the pressure can only have increased since these calculations were made and the equilibrium point on the phase diagram of sulfur must have shifted still further, so that if we can show that at a temperature of 525ºC sulfur would still be liquid at the pressure calculated (which is a minimum value, remember). Hell (Gehinnom) is now cooler than Heaven.

Certain corrections must be applied first, however.

1. Neiht based his calculation on a date of creation of 1658 + 2326 - 1877 = 2107 BC (minimum). Counting generations in the Bible gives a date for the Creation of 4004 BC. However, atomic dating has shown that Olduvai man is at least 2 × 10⁶ years old [6].

2. We should use a Fibonacci series for the expansion, not a simple doubling series. [7] The ancient Jewish laws against inbreeding also act in the same direction. [8]

3. By a fortunate coincidence, the effects of 1 and 2 cancel each other exactly. [9]

4. The human body is not an ideal gas, but

5. A good deal of it is gaseous at 525ºC, and in any case,

6. It could well be that at very great pressures the external pressure may well exceed the pressure of electromagnetic repulsion, when different "gas" laws would apply. This merely explains how the Lord works in fitting so large a number of damned souls into so small a space [10] and it need not be quantitative.

In the calculation the following assumptions are made:

1. The average height can be taken as one meter. This seems a fair figure between the newborn babe and the fullgrown man.

2. The average space needed is about 30 cm × 20 cm. It seems unlikely that any closer packing could be achieved. Neiht uses a figure of 1/20 cubic meters per person, which is nearly identical with my independent assessment. Mine allows a neat cancellation, later.

3. I have assumed that not more than two layers of damned persons can be accommodated, since otherwise those in the middle layers would escape the full rigours of Hell.

So that,

The volume available in Gehenna is 60 × 10⁶ × 2 m³ and

The original volume of the damned is 0.06 × 29.422641 × 10¹⁸m³

Then, at constant temperature (which we assume, taking equilibrium)

P₁V₁ = P₂V₂ or P₂ = P₁V₁/V₂

Substituting,

(1)

P₂ = [29 × 6 × 10¹⁶] / [2 × 6 × 10⁷] = 14.5 × 10⁹ atmospheres

Now let us see what pressure is needed to liquefy sulfur vapour at 525ºC.

We have, using the Clausius-Cleypeyron equation in its integrated form,

Log P = 7.43287 - 3268.2 / T

where P = pressure in mm Hg

and T = the elevated boiling point in ºK,

so that

Log P = 7.43287 - (3268.2/798) = 3.3373813

whence,

(2)

P = 2174.607 mm Hg = 2.86 atmospheres

(1) is so much greater than (2) that Revelations 21 8 indicates a temperature very considerably higher than 525ºC.

Thus, Hell is hotter than Heaven (which remains deucedly hot).

The math does check out, and most of the assumptions are reasonable. Unfortunately, even though he sticks to the point for the most point, he seems to assume that sinners bodies, rather than one's incorporeal soul go to hell. But, unless we've been burying a heck of a lot of saints, sinners bodies tend to stay in the ground where they are buried. So the whole argument is based on the assumption that the intangible soul can change the pressure in a given volume, which, unfortunately, is indemonstrable.

Nice try, good luck next time!