Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

The wall separating Church and State has almost collapsed.

Oklahoma sued over school standards that mix Christianity with right-wing lies.

Muslims are in a frenzy over a cartoon depicting one of 200 million Muhammad’s.

SCOTUS pretends Pride is Porn in bigot parents case.

A pair of foxes were discovered on the Ark.

World of Woo:  This is what it looks like when disinformation doctors pretend to value data and science to further their true objective, MAHA politics.

Environment:  China loves that Big Beautiful Bill.

RFK Jr.’s new vaccine panel is ‘critically corrupted’ to the point of being unethical.

I am not sure if this interview is tragedy or comedy or maybe just batshit crazy.

The Scopes Monkey Trial a century on: A global mess that nobody won.

Gene therapy restored hearing in deaf patients.

Long Reads:

Look into My Eyes: A deeper look at a group of New York City psychics.

How the Biosphere 2 experiment changed our understanding of the Earth.

What’s it like to be a crab?

There are no particles or fields only structure.

Eat your AI Slop or China wins.

Sunday Book Club: Life’s Edge: The Search for what it means to be Alive. (See last video)

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Podcast: Will Potter uncovers some disturbing truths about the conditions under which our food is produced.

Coffee Break Videos:  Daniel Dennett – From Bacteria to Bach and Back.  Can Politics and Truth Coexist? AronRa – Do You Believe This? (Trick Question). Book review.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week!

[Strega]

Thanks, Reg!

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

How the Biosphere 2 experiment changed our understanding of the Earth.

One big thing Biosphere 2 showed is that the Thermodynamic principle of Entropy is real. In that closed system, things tended from order to disorder. It also showed that Real Nature (to use a redundancy) has all kinds of inputs and energy-converting interactions going on that we’ve only begun to understand.

The Biosphere 2 should also give pause to all who posit Intelligent Design…if only they would pause. An Intelligently Designed Universe would have none of the perils of either Biosphere 2 or the real world we inhabit daily.

Other interesting things proved by Biosphere 2 is that science can go on without government grants and that, “Leon” Musk and Orange Man notwithstanding, Billionaires can have as much sense as money and Ed Bass certainly did. Also noteworthy is that science is a method not just a profession, and it can potentially be done by anyone.

The idea for Biosphere 2 came from a group of people – including Nelson – living in an ecovillage on a New Mexico ranch who spent their time organic farming and doing performance art and carpentry. The group’s founder, John Allen, dreamed of building a self-contained system to better understand Earth’s complexities and find ways of using technology to more peacefully exist with the natural world, Nelson says.

The project was bankrolled by billionaire Ed Bass, who put about $150m towards Biosphere 2 (equivalent to $440m today, or £330m)….

Many experts had rigid views of how science should be done and didn’t consider it a legitimate experiment. It had been funded by a wealthy individual rather than a government and conducted by self-taught science generalists rather than scientists with PhDs from academic institutions. Rand believes this would be far less controversial today.

In fact, prior to 1940, most science in the U.S. was bankrolled by private endeavors. Orville and Wilbur Wright’s little project in their bicycle garage and Thomas Alva Edison’s 10,000 ways that didn’t work come to mind. This article from the American Council of Science and Health is quite interesting:

Science Subsidy Trap: Why Public Research Funding Needs to End
https://www.acsh.org/news/2025/04/16/science-subsidy-trap-why-public-research-funding-needs-end-49423

Biosphere 2 was indeed a lab that rendered many insights. And the quest for knowledge goes on as long as we don’t stop.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

What’s it like to be a crab?

You mean all of my responses to this animal cosplay are not enough proof? 🦀😁

[_Robert_]

Well now that the righty tighties are in charge, Amen, things could not be more stupid as time passes barring a merciful comet strike.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

From what I’ve read of the Aeon essay, this guy must have learned his biology from Jordan Peterson. Citing mythology and Sci-Fi and bad Roger Corman movies that didn’t even make it to MST3K and analogy and metaphor as evidence? And using the term “late-stage Capitalism” as if he knows it’s over (or even begun) or even knows what time it is?

Like Rocky The Flying Squirrel said: “Bullwinkle Is A Dope!” 😁

• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addenda

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers,

The Scopes Monkey Trial a century on: A global mess that nobody won.

For this occasion, MST3K performed their Cliff’s Notes mash-up version of the Scopes Monkey Trial and it’s portrayal in Inherit the Wind. As with real-life, nobody really won here either but it was done with comic effect:

[Simon Paynton]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

SCOTUS pretends Pride is Porn in bigot parents case.

Here the religious parents want to keep their kids in taxpayer-funded schools, while exempting them from lessons of general applicability.

The article is saying that the Trump administration wants to impose its view on everybody, without freedom of choice.  In the UK, on a panel show on the BBC, we had a spokeswoman for Trump – I can’t remember her name – who was complaining about Britain’s “lax values” and saying the US had a right to impose their brand of Gilead-conservatism on Britain.  It was very offensive.  These narcissists get everywhere.

[jakelafort]

Imposing values?

Opposing values we value.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Yes, the wholesome traditional family values of the Heritage Foundation as mentioned in that little known document called the Old Testa Project 2025.

[jakelafort]

Yes, values.

Far right values authoritarianism and in murIcA the value of lionizing our fearless cult hero. There and then to encourage a cozy fascist and Christian nation. Democracy was apparently only a brief experiment and was never fully achieved. Immigrants who are for most part peaceful and escaping terror and deprivation are villified. Round em all up! They are eating the cats and dogs. How depraved! Adoration of orange.

Far left purportedly values reason, freedom, liberty and champions the oppressed and reviles oppressors. Those are western in origin. Nothing inherently follows that model in the east. Those categories are set in stone. Once oppressed always so and vice versa. Values are promulgated for its oppressors to live up to and irrelevant for many of the oppressed class. Besides, no matter how vile and anti-western the oppressed are its a reaction to the colonialism of the oppressors. If that isn’t infantile enough the sins of the west are superimposed on the mother of all oppressed people. And the hypercritical, insanely judgmental obsessed lefties bury their cultural relativism in the interests of their construct and their underlying hatred of Jews. At least the far right has something correct. Add DEI, and wokeness that seems a way to manufacture the social milieu that makes everything better. Instead it causes a reaction that swings the political pendulum.

The polarization is intensifying. Both sides are essentially religions. The far right? Authoritarian worship of a cult figure. A very religious mindset there. Devotion to that figure regardless of how norms are violated, laws are violated, decency is violated. It takes faith to be blind to his character and exploits. Yet his adherents fiercely loyal and forever rationalizing the misadventures and criminality of their leader. In failing to uphold separation of church and state and deconstructing political institutions enabling christian nationalism.

Far left is beholden to its constructs and mythology. First and foremost the religion of Jew hate. Completely ahistorical account and a mythology based on nazism, soviet propaganda, Islamic propaganda. The construct is inherently racist and is height of hypocrisy but its adherents also fiercely and emotionally identifying with it. Yes globalize the intifada. Bring on Islamism for its adherents are sacrosanct and exposing how harmful and baleful Islam is makes one a bigot. Free speech be damned. Remember 6th grade social studies and how value of speech, especially political, trumps feelings? Not for lefties. Feelings of the oppressed class paramount. Feelings of Jews who are now oppressors irrelevant and normalizing Jew hatred everywhere and finding the collective Jew guilty derigueur. Media complicit. UN Amnesty and similar organizations complicit. Academia complicit. So pick your poison. You want halal or Virgin birth? Uncle Bob or whatever his name thinks it is all the same. Nothing bad attends religion that would not otherwise exist.

https://www.reuters.com/world/ireland-begin-excavation-mass-grave-church-run-mother-baby-home-2025-07-07/

[jakelafort]

Simon,

Are you othering Maga-heads? Do you differentiate the far right from far left in those terms? Your terms that follow. If you were socked in a snow storm and without a shovel would a Maga-head be less likely than a lefty moron to help you dig out your car? Are lefties smarter than Magas? Do there political affiliations or ideologies reflect their character?

“Morally speaking, the MAGA Republicans, headed by Trump, are:

“morally disengaged – they just don’t care that much about right and wrong, accountability, honesty, etc.;
ethically dark – they achieve their goals at the expense of others, in some way or other, because they are competitive/dominant instead of cooperative.”

[Simon Paynton]

jakelafort wrote:

If you were socked in a snow storm and without a shovel would a Maga-head be less likely than a lefty moron to help you dig out your car?

Yes, I guess I’m talking about the administration.  The actual Trump supporters I know personally are all very nice.

Are lefties different, or just as deluded?  I think they’re subject to a lot of the same pitfalls, like ideological dogmatism.  Then, philosophers do that too.

There’s probably a difference between Trump supporters and MAGA-heads.  The first is a normal person, the second has had their mind hijacked by the Orange Pied Piper.

[jakelafort]

“Pediatrician fired for vile post suggesting Texas flood victims were Trump supporters who got what they voted for. New York Post”

In the comments the following appears.

“Leftists, liberals and Democrats need to be rounded up and put into concentration camps for treason.”

Moving right along singing a song it won’t be long till Murica aint strong. A nation in decline. Another characteristic of these secular religions is the demonization of the other side and the boogeyman/devil scapegoats. Jews and Magas on the far left. Immigrants and lefties for the Magas. Many on either side of political divide can see at least some of the ways in which the other side if all fucked up and hopelessly stupid in believing this or that. But as true theists are blinded by their overidentification and faith in their own BS.

[Author]

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