Clipe do Dia nº 443

Retornaram ao alto nível de sempre nesse último disco.

Clipe do Dia nº 442

Iro Mendes!

Humanismo

The word 'humanism' has had , and continues to have, a variety of meanings. At its broadest, 'humanism' means little more than a system of thought in which human values, interests, and dignity are considered particularly important. Understood in this way, perhaps almost every one qualifies as a humanist (including those of us who are religious).

However, those who organize under the banner of 'humanism' today, especially in the UK, usually mean something rather more focused. They embrace a particular kind of worldview tha by no means every one accept. That worldview is the focus of this book.

So what distinguishes the humanist outlook? It is difficult to be very precise. The boundaries of the concept are elastic. But I think most humanists would probably agree on something like the following minimal, seven-point characterization (in no particular order):

First, humanists believe science, and reason more generally, are invaluable tools we can and should apply to all areas of life. No beliefs should be considered off-limits and protected from rational scrutiny.

Second, humanists are either atheists or at least agnostics. They are sceptical about the claim that there exists a god or gods. They are also sceptical about angels, demons, and other such supernatural beings.

Third, humanists believe that this life is the only life we have. We are not reincarnated. Nor is there any heaven or hell to which we go after we die. Notice that the humanist's sceptical position regarding both gods and an afterlife is not a dogmatic 'faith position', but a consequence of their having subjected such beliefs to critical scrutiny and found them seriously wanting.

Fourth, humanism involves a commitment to the existence and importance of moral value. Humanists also believe our ethics should be strongly informed by study of what human beings are actually like, and of what  will help them flourishing in this world, rather then the next. Humanists reject such negative claims as that there cannot be moral value without God, and that we will not be, or are unlikely to be, good without God and religion to guide us. Humanists offer moral justifications and arguments rooted other than in religious authority and dogma.

Fifth, humanists emphasize our individual moral autonomy. It is our individual responsability to make our own moral judgements, rather than attempt to hand that responsability over to some external authority - such as a political leader or religion - that will make those judgements for us. Humanists favour developing forms of moral education that emphasize this responsability and that will equip us with the skills we will need to discharge properly.

Sixth, humanists believe our lives can have meaning without it being bestowed from above by God. They suppose that the lives of, say, Pablo Picasso, Marie Curie, Ernest Shackelton, and Albert Einstein were all rich, significant, and meaningful, whether there is a God or not.

Seventh, humanists are secularists, in the sense that they favour an open, democractic society in which the state takes a neutral position with respect to religion, protecting the freedom of individuals to follow and espouse, or reject and criticize, both religious and atheist beliefs. While humanists will obviously oppose any attempt to coerce people into embracing religious belief, they are no less opposed to coercing people into embracing atheism, as happened under certain totalitarian regimes.

- Stephen Law, "Humanism: a Very Short Introduction" (OUP, 2011, pp. 1-3)

Melhor ficção científica da história

6 - Ascent of Man

A new animal was abroad on the planet, spreading slowly out from the African heartland. It was still so rare that a hasty census might have overlooked it, among the teeming billions of creatures roving over land and sea. There was no evidence, as yet, that it would prosper or even survive: on this world where so many mightier beasts had passed away, its fate still wavered in the balance.

In the hundred thousand years since the crystals had descended upon Africa, the man-apes had invented nothing. But they had started to change, and had developed skills which no other animal possessed. Their bone clubs had increased their reach and multiplied their strength; they were no longer defenseless against the predators with whom they had to compete. The smaller carnivores they could drive away from their own kills; the larger ones they could at least discourage, and sometimes put to flight.

Their massive teeth were growing smaller, for they were no longer essential. The sharp-edged stones that could be used to dig out roots, or to cut and saw through tough flesh or fiber, had begun to replace them, with immeasurable consequences. No longer were the man-apes faced with starvation when their teeth became damaged or worn; even the crudest tools could add many years to their lives. And as their fangs diminished, the shape of their face started to alter; the snout receded, the massive jaw became more delicate, the mouth able to make more subtle sounds. Speech was still a million years away, but the first steps toward it had been taken.

And then the world began to change. In four great waves, with two hundred thousand years between their crests, the Ice Ages swept by, leaving their mark on all the globe. Outside the tropics, the glaciers slew those who had prematurely left theft ancestral home; and everywhere they winnowed out the creatures who could not adapt.

When the ice had passed, so had much of the planet's early life - including the man-apes. But, unlike so many others, they had left descendants; they had not merely become extinct - they had been transformed. The toolmakers had been remade by their own tools.

For in using clubs and flints, their hands had developed a dexterity found nowhere else in the animal kingdom, permitting them to make still better tools, which in turn had developed their limbs and brains yet further. It was an accelerating, cumulative process; and at its end was Man.

The first true men had tools and weapons only a little better than those of their ancestors a million years earlier, but they could use them with far greater skill.

And somewhere in the shadowy centuries that had gone before they had invented the most essential tool of all, though it could be neither seen nor touched. They had learned to speak, and so had won their first great victory over Time. Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed on to the next, so that each age could profit from those that had gone before.

Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.

He was also learning to harness the forces of nature; with the taming of fire, he had laid the foundations of technology and left his animal origins far behind. Stone gave way to bronze, and then to iron. Hunting was succeeded by agriculture. The tribe grew into the village, the village into the town. Speech became eternal, thanks to certain marks on stone and clay and papyrus. Presently he invented philosophy, and religion. And he peopled the sky, not altogether inaccurately, with gods.

As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful. With stone and bronze and iron and steel he had run the gamut of everything that could pierce and slash, and quite early in time he had learned how to strike down his victims from a distance. The spear, the bow, the gun, and finally the guided missile had given him weapons of infinite range and all but infinite power.

Without those weapons, often though he had used them against himself, Man would never have conquered his world. Into them he had put his heart and soul, and for ages they had served him well.

But now, as long as they existed, he was living on borrowed time.

Clipe do Dia nº 441

MC5 full concert. Kick out the jams!

Três livros sobre seleção natural

I well remember the thrill when I first learned the whole system of evolutionary logic as applied to biology from Dr. [William] Drury. It was similar to the feeling I had when I first fell in love with astronomy as a twelve-year old. Astronomy gave you inorganic creation and evolution over a 15-billion-year period of time. Evolutionary logic gave you the comparable story over 4 billion years and evolutionary logic applied to life. In both cases, I felt a sense of religious awe. Astronomy spoke of vastness of time and space while evolutionary biology did the same thing for living creatures. The living world was not created 6 thousand  years ago, in one blinding flash of creation, or in seven days, perhaps. Living creatures have been forming over a 4-billion-year period of time, with natural selection knitting together adaptive traits over time. Living creatures are expected to be organized functionally in exquisite and even counterintuitive forms. In no way did this perspective diminsh my sense of awe, nor did it argue, one way or another, for the existence of an omnipotent force to which personal attention was suggested.
- Robert Trivers ("Natural selection and social theory: selected papers of Robert Trivers", 2002, Oxford University Press, p. 57)

Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins's books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
- Douglas Adams (Interview with American Atheits)

Successful biological research in this century has had three doctrinal bases: mechanism (as opposed to vitalism), natural selection (trial and error, as opposed to rational plan), and historicity. [Historicity] is the recognition of the role of historical contingency in determining properties of the Earth's biota. (...) Mechanism implies that every physico-chemical processes are at work in an organism. Every vital function is performed by material machinery that can in principle be understood from a physical and chemical examination. (...) The second basis of modern biology is the assumption that the Darwinian process of natural selection accounts for all aspects of the adaptation of an organism to a particular way of life in a particular environment.
- George C. Williams ("Natural selection: domains, levels and challenges", 1992, Oxford University Press, pp. 3-5)

Clipe do Dia nº 440

Grande Muddy Waters.

Viva la révolution!

Em 14 de julho de 1789 ocorria a tomada da Bastilha, estopim da Revolução Francesa. Uma frase interessante no verbete da Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_revolution):

The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. The growth of republics and liberal democracies, the spread of secularism, the development of modern ideologies, and the invention of total war^[5] all mark their birth during the Revolution.

Clipe do Dia nº 339

Feliz dia do Rock.

Clipe do Dia nº 338

Pedrada.

Clipe do Dia nº 337

I never thought work could be so rewarding.

Clipe do Dia nº 336

Rolling Stones quebrando a vala.

Darwin Debate

Baita discussão. Na minha opinião, o Steven Pinker é o que defende as posições com as quais eu concordo mais. O Jonathan Miller também levanta ideias interessantes. O Steve Jones é daqueles biólogos críticos das explicações evolutivas para o comportamento humano, mas é um crítico de alto nível. A Meredith Small se posiciona mais próxima ao Steve Jones, mas também não fala bobagem.

Clipe do Dia nº 335

Bah, faz tempo que eu não escutava essa...

Clipe do Dia nº 334

Daquelas bandas que quase todas músicas são boas. Uma raridade.

Clipe do Dia nº 333

Todas as coisas boas me lembram dela. Deve ser porque ela é o melhor que há.

Clipe do Dia nº 332

Isso soa como rock and roll aos meus ouvidos.

P.S. ...in this giant super CD format!

Soa como música aos meus ouvidos

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
- David Hume

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
- Carl Sagan

Probably all organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial life form. There is grandeur in this view of life that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
- Charles Darwin

If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so. The trick is to want the right things, then science will provide you with the most effective methods of achieving them.
- Richard Dawkins

It's a long way to the top (if you wanna rock 'n' roll)!
- Angus Young, Malcolm Young e Bon Scott

Clipe do Dia nº 331

Today is Bob Dylan's Day!

A Esperança Brota Eterna

[A Esperança brota eterna] expressa minha convicção de que os humanos são, por natureza, uma espécie progressista, sempre à procura  de maiores níveis de felicidade e satisfação. Infelizmente, o corolário é que os humanos com excessiva frequência se dispõem a agarrar-se a promessas não realistas de uma vida melhor ou a acreditar que uma vida melhor só pode ser conseguida prendendo-se à intolerância e à ignorância, depreciando a vida dos outros. E, às vezes, ao ficarmos focados numa vida futura, perdemos o que temos nesta vida. Trata-se de uma fonte diferente de esperança, mas é esperança de qualquer modo: esperança  de que a inteligência humana, combinada  com compaixão, possa resolver a nossa miríade de problemas e melhorar a qualidade de cada vida; esperança de que o progresso histórico continua a sua marcha em direção a maiores liberdades e aceitação para todos os humanos; e esperança de que a razão e a ciência, assim como o amor e a empatia possam ajudar a compreender o nosso universo, o nosso mundo e a nós mesmos.
- Michael Shermer (p. 310, "Por que as pessoas acreditam em coisas estranhas?")