Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Judge dismisses challenge to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission .

Gorsuch rejects idea that U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.

USDA employees go to court again to stop secretary’s proselytizing.

World of Woo: Wellness grifter kills young woman in his Batshit lifestyle center.

Environment: Researchers use hemp, rock dust and biochar to scrub forever chemicals from farm soils.

Updating Darwin: biologists are returning to an older theory to explain anomalies in evolution.

Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons? What happens when humans try to understand the world without the tools to evaluate truth? An LLM may hallucinate because it is optimized to continue rather than abstain and humans do the same.

On crime, punishment and mass incarceration.

Humans are born as socially bootable apes than can tackle Quantum Mechanics 16 years later.

What would the first intelligent life have seen in its night sky?

Most people do not have a timeline in their heads. They have a drawer full of historical shadows. (See Book Club below)

Can Science even test prayers?

Sunday Book Club: The Icepick Surgeon.

Podcast: Could AI be conscious?

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……(at Volume 11 😊) .

Coffee Break Videos:   The stupidity trap. Bill Maher making sense? Three handy tools to spot pseudoscience. Outsmarting car thieves.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week !!

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Just a follow up on the AI reasoning and the human evaluation of truth story above.

Religion is our oldest large-scale example of hallucinating a ‘theological Polyfilla” into the gaps of our knowledge. As investigation expands, the gaps contract and less filler is required. Yet believers often treat the retreat as evidence of refinement rather than defeat. They move their gods from the explained territory into whatever crack remains inaccessible.  The fact is that this  ‘holy putty’ has never independently explained anything. It merely conceals the unfinished section and gives ignorance a smooth surface. The history of science is the history of repeatedly scraping it out and replacing it with an actual explanation. The remaining gaps may be difficult to fill, perhaps permanently so. But a hole in our knowledge is not positive evidence that somebody lives inside it.

Holy Putty™ — The all-purpose theological filler for cracks in human knowledge since the Bronze Age.

The problem with Holy Putty™ is that it sets before the evidence arrives, so it cannot accommodate new knowledge as it hardens into doctrine. The ‘good news’ is that, in drying so quickly, it tends to crack under scrutiny and  allows science to repair the gap properly. It is the opposite of Holy Putty. It does not conceal ignorance beneath an answer. It pencil-marks the ignorance, builds a temporary model around it, and labels every supporting plank. Religion fills the gap with a conclusion. Science surrounds the gap with questions until an answer can be supported.

[jakelafort]

Enco there are a great many capable advocates worthy of Israel’s hypothetical Department of Counter Propaganda.

Einat Wilf springs to mind. Started a lefty. Thought it was about land and eager to make a deal with Palestinians for two states. Educated at Harvard and i think Cambridge and a true academic. Has researched the bejesus out of Unwra and is the one who i think coined term Palestinianism. Knows the history. Is really intelligent. Running for office now too.

Joseph Cohen is a religious Jew but runs something called Israel Advocacy Movement and takes calls from Nazis, antizionists, Muslims, Lefties and does a decent job. Very conversant with history of Zionism and the region.

Agree on travelingisrael guy. He is unemotional and intelligent and exposes a lot of the lies.

Our old friend and antitheist Pat Condell has joined the fray and he is acerbic. I have a feeling he is deficient on requisite knowledge so i would not choose him to debate but as a stand alone he is great.

Dan Schueften (spelling) is a historian and ultra cocky. I’d utilize him. There are Arab and Druze who should be utilized also.

Uri Geller is a bum. I think Randi dispatched him a long time ago. Just the kind of asshole the public likes.

https://www.ba-bamail.com/videos/baba-recommends/the-great-lie-pat-condell-on-the-palestinian-debate/

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

World of Woo: Wellness grifter kills young woman in his Batshit lifestyle center.

Sad and disgusting. The very name “Bereshit Lifestyle Center” should have been a tip-off. Is it located in the woods?

If so, it could answer two questions, one question with another:

One, Is pseudoscience harmful?

And the answer, Two, Is Bereshit in the woods?
🐻💩

Bill Maher making sense?

Bill Maher makes perfect sense and good on him for exposing The Democratic Socialists of America for their not just half-baked, but raw egg Kookie dough schemes that would poison us all!

What is little discussed, though, is that there is a Republican Socialist of America in the White House:

Trump Administration Is Taking Ownership In Private Companies. The Strategy Has The Public Worried
The Trump administration has, since January, finalized at least 30 deals worth about $27 billion
By Brian Slupski
Published 07/21/26 AT 6:26 AM EDT
https://www.ibtimes.com/trump-administration-taking-ownership-private-companies-strategy-has-public-worried-3805499

Trump has also advocated for a Sovereign Wealth Fund, where Government would invest Taxpayer Dollars into not just individual companies, but multiple companies in whole sectors of the economy! This would give Government potentially unlimited control of business, enable Government to pick winners and losers, bail out losers at the expense of winners, give Government more money to reward cronies and waste, and create multiple economic bubbles whose bursting would make The Great Depression look like a Utopia.

Elon Musk has also proposed a Universal Basic Income to deal with AI-created unemployment, which would also equally destroy the economy and ultimately AI itself.

As I pointed out in The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Thread, Socialists want a magical, alchemical Sampo to provide everything people desire, but what they’ll end up with is The Day the Earth Froze.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

The videos you previously posted of Eniat Wilf showed she knows her stuff. I’ll have to watch more.

I forgot about Pat Condell. I haven’t seen videos from him since the beginning of The Age of MAGA. I was surprised to learn he’s still around. He seems able to hold his own but hasn’t produced content on a regular basis for a while. His older stuff on Islam is still timeless!

Joseph Cohen looks promising in making breakthroughs with some real hard cases. I definitely will watch more, especially since observant Jews don’t proselytize their own religion, so he doesn’t have the down side of Christian Zionism.

Dan Schueftan, spelled with an ‘a’, sound like he can give great history lessons, not to mention strategy.

Uri Gellar was indeed refuted by The Amazing Randi, as well as his silly appearance on Johnny Carson’s show, but sadly Uri still has an audience. Perhaps an official from the IDF could remind him: “We melt metal with our minds too, using the invention of Thermite.” 😁

Lots of great minds to defend Israel! They could always use more and maybe more will arise from Gazans and West Bank residents as more unfiltered news comes out.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I recalled Pat Condell today when I was watching the first video about the ‘Stupidity Trap’.

[jakelafort]

The article concerning Lamarck makes sense. Darwin and Lamarck are kissing cousins. I suspect some of the most shocking adaptations are a result of the latter.

Here is one of the oldest organisms on earth that i recently ‘discovered’ and its origins and evolution would make good reading.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

…and sharks have been around 50 million years longer than trees…….

[Strega]

Cheers Reg!

• This reply was modified 16 hours, 38 minutes ago by Strega.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

The article concerning Lamarck makes sense. Darwin and Lamarck are kissing cousins. I suspect some of the most shocking adaptations are a result of the latter.

If environmental conditions interact with the RNA and DNA to produce adaptations (as was the case with C. elegans worm,) then this is actually Mendelian Genetics, not Lamarckianism. And if the genetic adaptations spread across generations, then that is Darwinian Natural Selection. This goes ditto with the species of rice adapting to differing climates.

And with the example of a mother killer whale teaching her young to hunt different prey, the teaching and learning mechanism of the killer whale’s conscious faculty is a product of Mendelian Genetics and is spread over generations also by Darwinian Natural Selection.

Mendelianism and Darwinianism combined explain adaptations spread over time with greater accuracy and specificity than Lamarckianism, which just seems to fall back on “somehow.”

The fossil records also confirm the Darwinian/Mendelian view that adaptations happen over many generations. If I’m reading it correct, Lamarckianism says adaptations can be anywhere from immediate to at longest one generation.

Lysenkoism was a variation on Lamarckianism and the Soviet Union starved by the millions waiting on Lysenko to grow grains in the Siberian steppe.

Lamarckianism was better than “God dood it”, but the evidence goes best with Darwinianism and Mendelianism.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

Aint read about Gregor and his pissy peas for as long as i care to rememmber these. My impression though is of a monk who learned through observation the rules of pea reproduction and their traits. Dominant and recessive. Fixed rules. Determinism. Utilized it to produce artificial selection.

If survival of the fittest is the popular 1 liner for evolution and roughly accurate then the inheritability of acquired chacteristics is same for Lamarckism. I remember reading how giraffes stretching their necks to reach the highest juicy morsels was thought to be passed on to little baby giraffes. That notion was refuted by idea of natural selection in that the offspring who were blessed with longer necks had a bigger menu and were more apt to have a bigger menu and therefore to survive and pass on long necks.

Well i think the author of that book in sunday school is relying on subsequent observation/experiments to demonstrate that in fact acquired characteristics can be and are passed on to progeny through a then unknown genetic mechanism. (I am not sure cultural evolution should come under lamarck’s umbrella) Organisms have innate flexibility through genetic expression (i think?) to adapt in their lives to environmental pressures which in turn can be inherited. Further this flexibility is subject to natural selection and itself evolves. So like peas in a pod that leave Gregor fiddling with his cross and updating his journal evolution and Lamarck are pieces of the puzzle that ought not confuzzle through political disagreements and ideologies.

And btw the notion that evolution is ever so slow is not always true. Remember punctuated equilibrium? (I have a fuzzy memory of some new indication that evolution is sometimes rapid. And i am not thinking of microbes in which generations are over so quickly that in temporal terms evolution is rapidamente) Makes perfect sense that acquired characteristics under new environmental and threatening stressors would be Lamarck stepping up to the plate and sucking face with Darwin to keep hope alive.

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