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vol VII: Notes

2012

Notes

[Sunday 18 November 2012 - Saturday 25 November 2012]

[Notebook: DB 73 Spring2012]

[page 187]

Sunday 18 November 2012

Slowly getting around it. We have a problem of representation that has led us to distinguish God, by definition the source of the Universe, from the World, the system whose origin is described in Genesis. What we need is a representation in which God and the World are one. Our candidate is a transfinite computer network, which can be (?) mapped onto quantum field theory.

So we go: Representation: quantum mechanics, transfinite computer network, quantum field

[pager 188]

theory. We have the same problem in physics as in theology, one the dichotomy of God and the world, the other the dichotomy of the standard model and gravitation.

Aquinas sees our minds as sparks of the Old Divinity, and we can now put it all into mathematics through a mixture of Noether's theorem (symmetry and continuity, ie the vacuum) and fixed point theory (emergence of forms of action, ie algorithms. An algorithm is the defining feature of the set of instances of the algorithm. By comparing sets of instances (measurements) we can estimate the probability of various events. The amplitudes are subject to invisible processing.

Lonergan chapter 3: Procession and Related Notions

Page 106: 'Just as modern exact science is generically mathematics and only specifically mechanics or physics or chemistry, so also the Thomist analysis of the verbum of inner word is generically metaphysics and only specifically psychology.

How does the world represent itself? The invisibility theorem is consistent with the isolated quantum system.

We have built up a whole world digitally, and most of it is transparent to users.

Theology = god = source of creation
creation - individual observables
metaphysics - how the source works
physics - particular applications of metaphysics.

[page 189]

Lonergan page 107: 'processio = eductio principiati a suo principio' ie a computation (ie any computable determinate [logical] process).

In divinis the Word proceeds from [God] 'sicut oritur actus ex actu', which is just what happens all the tome so we can see the whole divine Universal process as procession of the Word, ie communication. Procession is to become real, that is to become flesh. The basic error of the ancients is the notion that one can represent form without flesh, that is without marks or fixed points.

Child sexual abuse cover up ios an example of the greater sin of the Church, mental abuse of all those people who it has perverted by its doctrines, particularly its claim to infallibility.

We move along symmetries, equipotentials (first law [every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion . . . ].

Lonergan page 119: 'Deus operatur in omni operante' Agreed.

We can 'escape' from the present moment of time by modelling past moments and predicting (or making) future moments.

Monday 19 November 2012

The Catholic Church creates around itself a forest of obfuscation as it works to twist reality to suit its own ideas of itself as the infallible arbiter of human life. Fortunately now it is slowly being subjected to the rules of law and evidence, particularly in its promotion of sexual perversion and the cover ups consequently necessary to preserve its public reputation. its sexual perversion is just one small consequence of its total mental perversion. Karen Kissane: Woman's death shows risks of putting church before civil law

[page 190]

Lonergan and Catholic theologians in general have got themselves into a tangle because they have to maintain artificial distinctions between God and the World and between humanity and the rest of the world. Physicists seems to have got into a similar tangle by insisting on the continuity of space-time when they might do better to think in terms of logical continuity.

It is depressing to see an institution with such large momentum (established dynamic structure) ploughing ahead on a doomed course and likely to continue to take us all with it into radical misunderstanding of the nature of our existence.

Computation can be achieved with distinct physical objects (electron states, elephants etc) an rules for manipulating them. Thus the physical symbols used in a computation may already be (internally) transfinite, but insofar as they are countable and distinct can be used as elements of a computer or a message.

Lonergan's Verbum is a study of Aquinas representation of the psychological model of the Trinity.

Einstein was able to use Riemann's work to represent dynamic space in the same way as von Neumann and others used Hilbert space to represent quantum mechanics.

Zee (page 4) begins with a 2D mattress of coupled harmonic oscillators represented by masses on springs . . .. A harmonic oscillator is an entoty that moves about a fixed point constrained by a force that varies as the distance of the oscillator from the fixed point.

[page 191]

To have no expectations is to never be disappointed, and I think the Catholic indoctrination that I was a sinner no matter what led me to have no expectations, which is of course what the elite want, willing slaves. From this 'ground state' people arise who have higher expectations and greater disappointments right up to the level where their life is at stake if their expectation is not fulfilled, so that it must be weighed up with maximum care.

What we are saying is that pure act is all that you need to build this Universe, all we need is a representation that makes this clear.

Now we can conceive of a practical computer as a harmonic oscillator. Coordinating all its activity is a clock whose signal marks the point at which all the logic gates change their state as required by their inputs and the system settles down to its new state. The clock renders the actual dynamic process invisible and all we can see are the sequential states of the 'machine' after each step forward. The superposition of the intervals required for its various operations gives us a sort of spectrum of the computing machine, something of interest to those who would optimize software by finding and eliminating bottlenecks. The same activity is important in politics, where we need broadband coupling between the government and the people.

The canvas on which both engineers and the Universe build is space-time

Conan Doyle: An author living the life of his characters. Carr

[page 192]

The character is what lies behind the persona and generates its response to its input via characteristics = algorithms

What have I found in the transfinite computer network? A representation that has the maximum possible memory and computing power, the biggest dynamic formalism that can be (maybe).

Quantum mechanics: state vectors / operators
observables are operators and what we see are the eigenvalues of the observables via the eigenvalue equation. Eigenvalues and eigenvectors - Wikipedia

Eigenfunction / eigenvalue couples form and frequency.

Theology and corporate murder = war.

Carr page 231: General von Berhardi: ' "Strong healthy flourishing nations increase in numbers. From a given moment . . . they require new territory for the accommodation of their surplus population. Since almost every part of the globe is inhabited, new territory must be obtained by conquest, which thus becomes a law of necessity." '

His world just has not turned out as he wanted it and he thinks it all stinks,. This is the Christian view too, The world is a fuckup the result of original sin, and we had best keep away from it.

It is hard to know what Christians believe but we know exactly what Catholics are supposed to believe.

[page 193]

Carr page 239: The solution to every detective story is the procedure emplyed by the criminal.

'the enigmatic clue'

. . .

The periodicity of complex symbolic computations is the link between quantum field theory's harmonic oscillators and the computers of the transfinite network.

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Conan Doyle: I am not of large spirit and quail somewhat at the task I have undertaken, consoling myself that the momentum of belief in an alien God is so great that I can never turn it in my lifetime. At the same time I have faith in my position, and will continue my Dominican habit of studying and writing four hours every day, knowing that from time to time I will make another step forward and eventually document my position in an unassailable way. My only regret is that I do not have the genius of Doyle or Aquinas, Dirac or Einstein and must substitute for this by persistence.

Carr page 277: For Doyle 'The centre of all belief was the New Testament, with Christ and his teachings as its inspiration. .. . there was, in his philosophy, no such thing as death. . . . What survived death was the etheric body: that is the soul clothes in its bodily likeness at the best period of its earthly life.'

'Timor mortis conturbat me.' But we must face it if we are to have peace.

[page 194]

Carr page 281: Doyle: 'I can only write what comes to me.' [random insight]

Merton Elected Silence: All the things we could do outside God we can do inside God, and more. Merton

Merton page 3: 'The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.' This the escapism [denialism]of one who knows not that the world itself is divine and in no way to be deprecated. Denial - Wikipedia

Merton Page 11: Locked in the Christian hypothesis yet claiming to be free: 'My mind was clean and informed enough to receive any set of standards, and work with the most perfect of them and work with grace itself, and God's own values [?] if I ever had the chance.'

page 23: 'It is a law of man's nature, written into his very essence, that he should want to stand together with other men in order to acknowledge theiur common dependence on God, their Gather and Creator.' But what God, and is she our mother?

page 25: 'The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them sear the means of grace the way they do not feel sin.' Evil personified by a childish mystic.

'And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine, will be enough to keep them from finding out the truth about anything.' Devilish bullshit!

page 28: 'France, I am glad I was born in your land, and I am glad God brought me back to you, for a time, before it was too late.'

page 58: '. . . all our duties and our needs, in all the fundaemtnal

[page 195]

things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing.' Survival creates a duty to meet our needs, but it is better sop say 'by which we were created' since we are the product of a divine world.

'. . . our stupid and godless society . . . ' Poor silly blind man, thoroughly indoctrinated.

Merton page 76; 'For I hope that in the living Christ, I shall one day see my father again.' We are inclined to be deluded into hoping for impossible things. Christianity is built on the feat of death and punishment, life and the promise of eternal life , the most powerful sticks and carrots, psychic potentials.

'The death of my father left me sad and depressed for a couple of months. . . .. I became a true citizen of my own disgusting century.' Your God is omnipotent and made all this!

page 84: 'Even in the purely natural order, a certain purity of heart of required before on intellect can get sufficiently detached and clear to work out the problems of metaphysics. I dare say there are plenty of metaphysicians in hell.' Why?

page 87: '. . . my soul was simply dead.' Crap, of course. '. . . to compare a soul without grace to a corpse without life is only a metaphor. But it is very apt.' And this man is a Catholic hero!

I am so glad i escaped from the monastery without catching any of this. The one true real God saved me although I do seem to remember I once thought this a good book.

[page 196]

Merton page 96: 'It was [Rome] wjere I first saw Him [Christ], whom I now serve as my God and my King, and who owns and tules my life.' How does he serve a God who cannot talk to him?

page 107: 'There has never yet been a bomb invented that ius half so powerful as one mortal sin . . ..' Really?

'It is only the infinite mercy and love of God that has prevented us crom tearing ourselves to pieces and destroying his entire creation long ago.'

page 127: 'In the concrete order of things God gave man a nature that was ordered to supernatural life.' Human arrogance, or it is childishness?

page 138 Merton falls for Gilson Medieval Philosophy Gilson

,p> One wonders how Merton knows so much about what God knows and wants. Is it possible that he is deluding himself? Nevertheless, if the Universe is divine, we need only look and feel to encounter God without too much in the way of prayer and contemplation and grace.

page 141: '. . . he did all the things that normally exclude and nullify the action of grace.'

From one point of view, everything Merton says is true because we are immersed in God, but his conviction that we are sinners in need of supernatural help is false because the natural is already divine,. It takes only a small change of emphasis to move from an alien to an enveloping

[page 197]

God.

Merton page 197: '. . . the Catholic concptionof God was something tremendously solid', and false, but only by 1 bit.

page 148: Huxley: 'We must practice prayer and asceticism'. Ie think and act prudently.

page 150: 'Ultimately, I suppose all Oriental mysticism can be reduced to techniques of muscular relaxation, but in a far more subtle and advanced fashion; and if that is true it is not mysticism at all. it remains purely in the natural order.' Catholic arrogance.

page 151: re Blake: 'I became conscious of the fact that the only way to love was in a world that was charged with the presence and reality of God.' We would say 'is God'.

page 156: '. . . all the obvious lunacies like radio programmes and billboard advertising.' ie God talking to itself.

Completely misunderstands the nature of God, as the Catholic Church does.

page 163: 'There are ways that seem to men to be good, the end whereof is the depths of hell. The only answer to the problem is grace, docility to grace.' Maybe none so ignorant as those which think they know the truth. We need empirical knowledge of God to keep fit.

page 175: 'If people has an appreciation of what it means to be converted from rank, savage paganism, from the spiritual level of a cannibal or an ancient Roman, to the living faith and to the

[page 198]

Church, they would not thjing of catechism as trivial or unimportant.' Fortunately they may have a firmer grasp of reality than the Church.

Merton page 177: '. . . my human motive, my weakness and the cast of my evil habits still remained to be fought and overcome.' Weird.

page 188: '. . . sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.' It is a wonder hell still exists.

And so on . . . Having become convinced one way or another that he is a sinner who cannot be saved by his own efforts, Merton joins a religious organization that promises redemption and believes their story, so living happily ever after and being convinced, encourages others to follow the same path. The fact that he may or may not be deluded is irrelevant to the cure, it has worked for him. I went the same way but became disillusioned with the Church and have instead sought evidence based insight into my condition and now that I am convinced of my story, seek to propagate it for my own benefit and that of my children and the wider community. I see the same general situation happening at all scales: an error causes a potential which leads to a motion correcting the error.

Wednesday 21 November 2012

Merton page 235: '. . . this experience opened another door . . . a way into a world infinitely new, a world that was out of this world of ours and which transcended it infinitely, and which was not a world, but which was god Himself.

[page 199]

Me too, but I see this world as God.

Merton page 237: ' "Heaven is right here in front of me: Heaven, Heaven!" '

Perhaps the biggest error of Christianity is the glorification of pain: ' "If any man will come aftr me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me . . . " ' Although life may not always be easy, there is little to be gained by making it harder.

Like me, Merton avoided the possibility of military conscription by entering a monastery. No, he didn't have enough teeth (p 265)! Yes, page 319.

page 247: 'The false humility of hell is an unending burning shame at the inescapable stigma of our sins. . . . The anguish of self knowledge is inescapable, as long as there any self-love left in us: . . ..' Mystical rubbiush. The root of love is self-love. My appreciation of my own divinity is the root of my appreciation of the divinity of everybody else!

pae 259: '. . . one who did not think there were any such things as deviles.'!

page 264: 'All I prayed was that God would let me know His will . . ..'

page 274: 'After communion I thought my heart was going to explode.'

page 278 Solipsism: 'O beata solitudo, o sola beautitudo."

page 296: 'Harlem is, in a sense, what God thinks of Hollywood.'

,p> page 304: 'In fact, if Adam had never fallen, the whole human race would have been a series of magnificently different and splendid images of God . . ..' Which it is.

[page 200]

Merton pave 325: 'The monastery is a school—a school in which we learn from God how to be happy.' By running away from real life.

'The beginning of love is truth, and before He will give us His love, God must cleanse our souls of the lies that are in them,' Placed there by the Catholic Church.

We are coming to the nitty gritty: to find the algorithms of the computers that transparently underlie the world of experience. A first step in this direction is to interpret quantum field theory in terms of the transfinite computer network, starting with the algorithm for spacetime.

Where sensitive membranes meet.

First we represent quantum field theory using the transfinite computer network and then we explore the consequences of this mapping, which suggests that the transfinite computer network tells us something about our world.

One cannot come to grips with something until one can see it. The tcn is an heuristic structure (in Lonergan's sense) a phase space in which we hope to constain the behaviour of observables particles by a set of laws or symmetries. A law is a symmetry insofar as it treats every member of a set of relevant instances the same, blind justice

End SPRING2012, begin DB74 CREATION.

[page 1]

[continued from DB 73 SPRING2012]

Christianity is the perfect religion for a powerful elite.

We expect a Royal Commission not only to ascertain the facts of a case and perhaps recommend that lawbreakers be identified and tried, but it must also find ways of detecting and correcting the systemic error revealed buy its work,. that is the deficiencies in the system which are the sources of its corruption. Inquiry must be scientific and explain why.

Thursday 22 November 2012

Pinker, Better Angels Pinker

Debunk toxic ideologies.

Pinker page xxi: 'The decline of violent behaviour has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence, and often attitudes are in the lead.'

'. . . ix trends, five inner demons, four better angels and five historical forces.'

Six trends
1. Hunter gatherer to agricultural civilization - homicide x 0.2.
2. Political centralization - homicide x 0.1 - 0.02.
3. Humanitarian revolution against socially sanctioned violence
4. Long Peace post WWII

[page 2]

5. New Peace
6. Rights Revolution

Five inner demons
1. Predatory violence
2. Dominance
3. Revenge
4. Sadism
5. Ideology

Four better Angels
1. Empathy
2. Self-control
3. Moral sense
4. Reason

Five historical forces
1. Leviathan - state monopoly on force
2. Commerce
3. Feminization
4. Cosmopolitanism
5. 'escalator of reason'

Pinker page xxvi: '. . . we have been doing something right, and it would be good to know exactly what it is.'

Daly and Wilson: Homicide Wilson & Daly

page 6: 'Rather than framing the scourge of warfare as a human problem for humans to solve [Homeric people] concocted a fantasy of hotheaded gods and attributed their own tragedies to the gods' jealousies and follies.'

[page 3]

It is hard to fathom the intellectual evil embodied n the Church, but we must try if we are to survive. They have declared us an our world evil and claimed their lies as truth,. They are the custodians of the biggest lie of all.

Friday 23 November 2012
Saturday 24 November 2012

The Roman Catholic Church has total disregard for data and founds everything on faith in the opinion of the elite.

Pinker page 129: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' Voltaire

The Popes are big on human dignity and talk about it endlessly while treating us like shit. As the Church has shown, particulary in its treatment of children and the consequent multitude of cover ups, absolute power does corrupt absolutely.

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Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Carr, John Dickson, Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Carroll & Graf: Reprint edition 2003 'This vivid biography, written by John Dickson Carr, a giant in the field of mystery fiction, benefits from his full access to the archives of the eminent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—to his notebooks, diaries, press clippings, and voluminous correspondence. Like his creation Sherlock Holmes, Doyle had "a horror of destroying documents," and until his death in 1930, they accumulated to vast amount throughout his house at Windlesham. They provide many of the words incorporated by Carr in this lively portrayal of Doyle's forays into politics, his infatuation with spiritualism, his literary ambitions, and dinner-table conversations with friends like H. G. Wells and King Edward VII. Carr, then, in a sense collaborates with his subject to unfold a colorful narrative that takes Doyle from his school days at Stonyhurst to Edinburgh University and a medical practice at Southsea, where he conceived the idea of wedding scientific study to criminal investigation in the fictive person of Sherlock Holmes. It also explores the private tragedy of Doyle's first marriage and long-delayed second as it follows him into the arena of public activity, propaganda, and literary output that would win him not only celebrity but also knighthood. 8 pages of black-and-white photographs are featured.' 
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Crompton, Louis , Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-Century England, Faber and Faber, University of California Press 1985 Jacket: 'Byron and Greek Love exposes the bigoted anti-homosexualism of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, in contrast to a more tolerant Europe. It examines the popular press and private journals, biblical and classical commentaries, legal treatises and parliamentary debates of the day. It also vividly documents the hangings and pilloryings that took place for homosexual 'offences'' 
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Gilson, Etienne, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, University of Notre Dame Press 1991 'In this translation of Etienne Gilson's well known work L'esprit de la philosophie medievale, he undertakes the task of defining the spirit of mediaeval philosophy. Gilson asks whether we can form the concept of a Christian philosophy and, second, whether mediaeval philosophy is not precisely its most adequate historical expression. He maintains that the spirit of mediaeval philosophy is the spirit of Christianity penetrating the Greek tradition, working within it, and drawing out of it a certain view of the world that is specifically Christian. To support his hypothesis, Gilson examines mediaeval thought in its nascent state, at that precise point where the Judeo-Christian graft was inserted into the Hellenic tradition. Gilson's demonstration is purely historical and occasionally theoretical in suggesting how doctrines that satisfied our predecessors for so many centuries may still be found conceivable today.' 
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight : A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '... Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding' 
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Longley, Clifford, and Edited by Suzy Powling. Foreword by Lord Rees-Mogg, The Times Book of Clifford Longley, HarperCollinsReligious 1991 Jacket: 'Clifford Longley is perhaps the best known religious journalist working in Britain today [1991] and surely one of the most accomplished in the post-war period. ... This anthology, the first ever of Longley's work, contains a wide selection of columns published since 1988. Together they make up a colourful and engrossing account of a period when Church affairs have been marked by high controversy, and have regularly hit front pages.' 
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Merton, Thomas, and Evelyn Waugh (Foreword), Elected Silence, Hollis and Carter 1949 Jacket: Evelyn Waugh: 'I regard this as a book which may wekll prove to be of permanent inrterest iun the history of religious experience. No one can afford to neglect tis clear account of a complex religious process.' Graham Greene: 'It is a reare pleasure to read an autobiography with a patttern and meaning valid for all of us. It is a book one reads with a pencil so as to make it one;s own.'  
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Merton, Thomas , , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 50th Anniversary edition 1998 'In 1941, a brilliant, good-looking young man decided to give up a promising literary career in New York to enter a monastery in Kentucky, from where he proceeded to become one of the most influential writers of this century. Talk about losing your life in order to find it. Thomas Merton's first book, The Seven Storey Mountain, describes his early doubts, his conversion to a Catholic faith of extreme certainty, and his decision to take life vows as a Trappist. Although his conversionary piety sometimes falls into sticky-sweet abstractions, Merton's autobiographical reflections are mostly wise, humble, and concrete. The best reason to read The Seven Storey Mountain, however, may be the one Merton provided in his introduction to its Japanese translation: "I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both." '--Michael Joseph Gross 
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Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking Adult 2011 Amazon book description: 'A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought and The Blank Slate Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.' 
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Wilson, David Sloan, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society, University Of Chicago Press 2003 Amazon Spotlight Review 'Religion in the Light of Evolution, January 2, 2003 Reviewer: R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) If you have an opinion about religion, or belong to a religion, most people disagree with you; there is not a majority religion in the world. And surely not all religions can be factually correct, since there are fundamental disagreements between them. So, how is it that all those other, incorrect religions exist and seem to help their members and their societies? There must be something they offer beyond a factual representation of gods and the cosmos (and when it comes down to it, if you belong to a religion, yours must be offering something more as well). If religions do help their members and societies, then perhaps they are beneficial in a long term and evolutionary way, and maybe such evolutionary influences should be acknowledged and studied. This is what David Sloan Wilson convincingly declares he has done in _Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society_ (University of Chicago Press): "I will attempt to study religious groups the way I and other evolutionary biologists routinely study guppies, trees, bacteria, and the rest of life on earth, with the intention of making progress that even a reasonable skeptic must acknowledge." To Wilson's credit, he has written carefully about both scientific and religious issues, and readers with an interest in either field will find that he has covered both fairly. His coverage of the science involved begins with an interesting history of "the wrong turn" evolutionary theory took fifty years ago, when it deliberately ignored the influence of group selection. Especially if one accepts that there is for our species not only an inheritance of genes, but also an inheritance of culture, evolutionary influence by and upon religious groups, especially in light of the examples Wilson discusses, now seems obvious. For instance, evolution often studies population changes due to gains and losses from births, deaths, and in the case of religion, conversion and apostasy. The early Christian church is shown to have made gains compared to Judaism and Roman mythology because of its promotion of proselytization, fertility, a welfare state, and women's participation. There is a temple system in Bali dedicated to the water goddess essential for the prosperity of the rice crops; "those who do not follow her laws may not possess her rice terraces." The religious system encompasses eminently practical procedures for promoting fair water use and even for pest control. Religious morality is shown to build upon the principles of the famously successful computer strategy Tit-for-Tat. There is a significant problem, of course, in religions' dealing with other groups; it is not at all uncommon for a religion to teach that murdering those who believe in other religions is different from murdering those inside one's own religion. There is a degree of amorality shown in such competition, no different from the amorality that governs the strivings of ferns, sparrows, and lions. Wilson's many examples are fascinating and easy to take, but _Darwin's Cathedral_ is not light reading; although Wilson wanted to write a book for readers of all backgrounds, he has not "'dumbed down' the material for a popular audience," and admits that there is serious intellectual work to be done in getting through these pages. There is valuable and clear writing here, however, and a new way of looking at religion which may become a standard in scientific evaluation.' 
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Wilson, Margo, and Martin Daly, Homicide (Foundations of Human Behaviour), Aldine Transaction 1988 'This book is an exercise in "evolutionary psychology": the attempt to understand normal social motives as products of the process of evolution by natural selection. There is simply no question that this is the process that created the human psyche, and yet psychologists seldom ask what implications this fact might have for their discipline. We think that the implications are many and profound, touching on such matters as parental affection and rejection, sibling rivalry, sex differences in interests and inclinations, social comparisons and achievement motives, our sense of justice, lifespan developmental changes in attitudes, and that phenomenology of the self.' 
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Links
Denial - Wikipedia Denial - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.' back
Eigenvalues and eigenvectors - Wikipedia Eigenvalues and eigenvectors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'An eigenvector of a square matrix is a non-zero vector that, when multiplied by the matrix, yields a vector that differs from the original at most by a multiplicative scalar.' back
John Burnet John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy: chapter IV, Parmenides of Elea: 85: The Poem back
Karen Kissane Woman's death shows risks of putting the church before civil law 'It is said that the best way to get a bad law overturned is to enforce it. When people see its consequences, the truism goes, they will be so appalled that public support for change will build up an unstoppable head of steam. The death of Savita Halappanavar might do just that for the women of Ireland..' back
Timor mortis conturbat me - Wikipedia Timor mortis conturbat me - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Timor mortis conturbat me is a Latin phrase commonly found in late medieval English poetry. It can be translated into a number of different ways, most literally as "fear of death confounds me". However, a better translation in the context of the poetic usage of the phrase is "fear of death upsets me". Another looser translation is "I am scared to death of dying". The phrase comes from a responsory of the Catholic Office of the Dead, in the third Nocturn of Matins: Peccantem me quotidie, et non poenitentem, timor mortis conturbat me. Quia in inferno nulla est redemptio, miserere mei, Deus, et salva me. (Sinning daily, and not repenting, the fear of death disturbs me. Because there is no redemption in hell, have mercy on me, O God, and save me.)' back

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