Gurdur

And so life rolls on to the especially symbolic 6666. After 3 years on SecWeb, it's time for some stock-taking. Apart from that, I will also be fulfilling AspenMama's and Secular Pinoy's wishes, but as stated there, rather than trying to squeeze everything into one post, I will make a number of posts in this thread celebrating my 6666th, and I'll spread out everything over those posts.
Makes it all more readable and all that.

You know, what gets to me is the recognition that after 3 years here, I haven't changed my mind on any major issue at all. And I don't think that's a good thing --- it means my beliefs are not being challenged in any kind of really relevant, hard-hitting way here; more to the point, I don't feel like I'm even learning all that much new either, which I think is a shame. I'm going to explore the reasons for that throughout this thread. It's not as though somehow I'm terribly hidebound or rigidly opinionated --- other things in life have changed some of my major opinions over the last few years --- it's just that so much here flies right by in a gush of irrelevance.

So bugger that for the moment, and let's pay attention to some things which are really important; to wit, let's dedicate some flowers.
Same rules as in my previous dedications here: these are all plants I have raised myself in my garden. For those of you not yet knowing, I have owned a garden (and a house, and a neighbouring factory building) for the very first time in my life since September last year, and I have gone correspondingly hogwild into gardening as a result (before September, 2002, I was capable of saying plants were green, had rigid cell walls. and mostly depended on one of four different types of photosynthesis cycle, but that was the extent of my knowledge; i.e., clueless).

Soooooo:
first off, AspenMama.
Here are some pix all of the same plant, Calochortus superbus, known as the Mariposa lily, a native of parts of California, and I believe you find some members of the Calochortus family in Colorado too.
I really love Calochortus; I got some last year, but they are incredibly difficult to get hold of either here or over the internet --- the supplier I got them from last year no longer stocks them, and hardly anyone else in either the USA or Europe seems to stock them either --- especially in an easy net-orderable form. Still, I've placed an order for the last bulbs a supplier in the UK has --- Calochortus superbus (as pictured below), Calochortus venustus (purpleish) and Calochortus luteus (gold).
I hope very much to establish these plants long-term in my garden. BTW, Calochortus comes from the Greek for "beautiful grass", which is very appropriate.

First pic of a Calochortus superbus dedicated to AspenMama

Second pic, same kind of plant, different specimen

Pic taken from side-view of blossom, same kind of plant, different specimen

Third pic, same kind of plant, different specimen

Fourth pic, same kind of plant, different specimen

Fifth pic, same kind of plant, different specimen

Sixth pic, same kind of plant, different specimen

Seventh pic, same kind of plant, different specimen

You can tell I really like them, huh ?

Dixie Nurse,
here is another of my favourite blossoms for you,
Yes, it's a genuine Papaver somniferum, which means it also has medical significance.
Apparently, the local law here is that I can have 70 plants in 10 square metres, which may well be just as well.

They appeared all by themselves; possibly the seeds lay dormant in the earth at least 40 years, or possibly came in the compost I bought for the garden.
This particular specimen is a sport named the "Pink Giant"; it's quite tall even by Papaver somniferum standards, and has all the properties of the species.....
I got some seeds of a varient whcih is purple, and a varient which has a red cross on a white background, and I'll try sowing those too in February. In the meantime, I have harvested roughly half a million seeds of the Pink Giant Papaver somniferum, and will definitely sow them in quite a few places throughtout the garden this coming February.

First pic of flower dedicated to Dixie Nurse

Second pic of flower dedicated to Dixie Nurse
________

Pic of small part of garden showing Calochortus, lilies, Papaver somniferum and a kiwi plant
________

And a gaudy red lily for LadyShea and vicesboy

And one of my most interesting plants for Luiseach and her husband, a window plant from Namibia --- I'm going to eventually have a whole small corner of Bag End in the attic given over to window plants and living-stones, I think. I find their structure quite fascinating.
________

Sooooooo, I'll tackle the reasons why I do not feel I am really learning much here, let alone to the point of changing any major opinion, in my next posts in this thread, plus I'll be doing the story AspenMama requested.

The minstrel in the gallery
Looked down upon the smiling faces.
He met the gazes, observed the spaces
Between the old men's cackle.
He brewed a song of love and hatred,
Oblique suggestions and he waited.
He polarized the pumpkin-eaters,
Static-humming panel-beaters,
Freshly day-glow'd factory cheaters
----- Jethro Tull

livius drusus

Lo sai che i papaveri son alti, alti, alti
E tu sei piccolina
E tu sei piccolina
Lo sai che i papaveri son alti, alti, alti
Sei nata paperina
Che cose ci vuoi far?

Not terribly relevant, perhaps, but I find it fits nonetheless (or maybe even because of it).

Happy 6666, Gurd!

Gurdur

hmmm, just for that, a white lily for Livius Drusus.

And yes, mods, contraversial posts are coming soon on this thread, so you might like to hold fire before thinking of moving this thread to wherever threads that are simply too positive are moved.

Gurdur

In the three years I've been on SecWeb, the only two stances of any real significance I think I have changed are:

1) Memetics
2) That atheism is the answer.

I didn't change my stance on memetics because of DChicken --- when I first championed memetics here, 2½ years ago, the field showed real promise, IMHO ---- but it's a promise that AFAICS has remained unfulfilled. IIRC, tronvillain mentioned only a week or less ago that it was SecWeb Book Of The Month --- but it's getting old as a book already, and its value lay more in the thought-provoking, potentially ground-breaking area rather than in real foundations; and those foundations remain as yet unlayed.
Despite a valiant effort from Dennett, memes still remain unformalized; vague descriptions in lieu of anything hard and precise; and as a result, there's nothing scientifically useful emerging from the field. AFAICS, nothing new on the subject has been said in 2 years ... and that's an awfully long time for such a field at this point in history.

As for atheism being the answer, well now, ironically SecWeb has played quite a part in convincing me of the opposite. I am now very firmly of the opinion that decent humanism is the answer, and I couldn't give a stuff whether it's secular or religious humanism.

Why did I come to that conclusion ?
One reason is the inability of atheists to organize themselves into nationally significant forces. A prime example is the shooting-oneself-in-the-foot displayed in one of the two major kerfuffles over the Godless March On Washington, which was a pretty small affair, wasn't it ?
If Farrrakhan can get more, if a gay-rights march can get more, then there's something wrong with how American atheists/agnostics are approaching or perceiving things ----
and I summarize how I see the main error being the attitude
"We'ld rather be pure and 'right' than succesful"
an attitude that shows itself in all its dismal dubious splendour every time there's a "Agnostics are simply lily-livered atheists" thread here on this board.
Part of that too is the sheer boring monoculturalism shown here --- USA attiutudes, USA preocupations, USA beliefs ---- and also the choice of belief over fact, as in the relentless blaming of "theism" for all the world's ills. Hey ? What is wrong with this picture ? I haven't noticed vast attempts by the Amish, Doukhobors or the Ba'hai --- all very much theist --- to take over the world, or even to significantly change it, so obviously theism per se is not the problem, only parts of it, such as the Roman Catholic Church or the loose Southern Baptist Evangelical types.
But you wouldn't guess that half the time from what is actually said here, and as for doing anything about the problems, well now, its ACLU and one particular USA lawyer chasing child-abuse suits who seem to have done the greatest part of the running, not publically organized atheists as such.

And my attitude would seem to be far from a minority one -- as far as I have found out around here, most people simply don't see the point in evangelically atheisism --- it simply does not address, positively or negatively, their own concerns.
Even for the fundy types who love bashing athiests, they use atheism only as an unspecified bogeyman, and seem rather surprised to find out that atheists actually exist, as when the head of the Mormon church a couple of years back slammed atheists as non-existant in foxholes, and got slammed back by an association of atheist veterans.

Most people seem to see a utilitarian advantage in having a society which is largely secular but has some religious components lying around in odd corners --- and the reason why they view it that way is because of humanist motives, i.e. they see religion as possibly been a check upon laiseez-faire apitalism and other nihilist evils, and therefore find the appeal to vague religion useful, despite its shoddy contradictory foundations.
IOW, people at large look to the effects, not the coherency of initial premises, and that's why atheism seems to fail so badly --- it offers in practice nothing in the way of a coherent moral platform, and apart from church/state seperation (already dubious; most European countries have state churches, and are very secular, while the USA has strong state/church seperation, and is almost unique in its religiousity as an industrialized nation) --- which is better handled by ACLU anyway --- atheists on the whole seem to have nothing eye-catching to say.

Of course, there's always the odd genuinely humanist atheist or agnostic here and there who has great effect through being socially involved and consistant --- but this doesn't apply to atheists as a bloc.

Luiseach

That's a way cool plant, Gurdur. A strange combination of delicacy and strength.

I'm very honoured.

Best wishes,

Luiseach

Virgil Tibbs

It seems to me that a much higher percentage of nontheists are humanists than theists. Indeed, supernaturalism of any sort can't offer any better reason to be a humanist than one could find in the secular world, but supernaturalism can and does offer lots of reasons not to be a humanist.

Certainly, atheism does not make someone good any more than it makes someone evil. All it is is a lack of belief in a deity. But I feel humanism is easier to reach when built upon an accurate under standing of how the universe works. As soon as one allows for believing what one prefers to be true, it is easy to say things you would not do personally are "immoral" based only on your dislike of them and with no weighing of the harm they do or lack thereof.

Just because atheists have not organized themselves into a significant political group yet does not mean it can't happen. Certainly, you could have said as much of homosexuals for the vast majority of human history, but fortunately they finally did organize.

Just to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with any of the above, althogh there are plenty of people not from the US who post here.

There is a touch of dogamtic atheism here and there that is disheartening, however. I don't think any movement is immune to generating dogmatic adherents, however.

The underlying problem is that theism does not provide any justification to be good that cannot be found in the secular world expect for (usually unquestioning) obediance to the diety and the bribery of an afterlife. Meanwhile, some forms of theism do give clear justification for evil deeds.

The question is not whether all theism promotes bad behavior (it does not) but whether there is any correlation between theism and a lack of humanist values, which I'd argue there probably is. I doubt there has ever been any scientific study of this, but there are some indicators in support, such as the strong correlation between the xian right and anti-gay movements in the US.

It's pretty tough for atheists to publically organize in the US with over half the country would not support a canditate on basis of his atheism alone. AFAIK there has never been any openly atheist candidate that won an election. And also atheists groups are smaller and less mainstream and less well known than the ACLU, so its not suprising they accomplish far less.

Just to be clear, I wouldn't support running around and forcing beliefs on people either. But that is not mean one should shy away from a fair argument or feel compelled to hide one's belief's or lack of belief.

My concern with theism is it a small part of a larger human failing: believing what one prefers to be true over evidence. For example, there is no evidence to support racist claims, but racists make these claims anyway, usually because they were indoctrinated into them at a young age and the claims have become an important part of their identity (sound familiar?). An environment where theism (or any form of supernaturalism) is strong encourages people not to look at claims that sound pleasing skeptically. This aids just about any form of bigotry.

Meanwhile atheism does not either support or take away support for bigotry in and of itself, however the natural world view that usually goes along with it would encourage a more impartial evalutation of evidence for or against a specific claim IMO. Most atheists do not take a view of "x absolutely must be true or I can't cope emotionally " the way most theists seem to, with x being any number of beliefs.

If organized religion fell apart buts its underlying assumptions remained (such as supernaturalism providing meaning in life), then I agree that would be a very bad thing. However, in this case supernaturalism is causing the problem it is being used as a stopgap to solve: if no one (or very few people) had any supernaturalist beliefs, not one would take seriously the claim that a deity was needed to give life meaning. Thus so many people would not adhere to this non sequitor of atheism leading to nihilism.

It's not the purpose of atheism to supply a moral platform, but to supply the foundation upon which to build one. Morality can either be built upon the rickety foundation of supernaturalism, in which case the moral system will be in danger of collapse if the supernatural belief is abandoned, or it can be built on a naturalist basis. I don't think atheism/naturalism is likely to fall apart anytime soon, barring a massive resergence of religious fundamentalism and the collapse of free nations into theocracy. And even a theocracy would have to maintain some portion their population with emprical views if they hoped to have technological advance.

Also, when holding up the US as an example of anything having to do with supernaturalism, you have to keep in mind that we still are basically in the grip of McCarthyism: while the actual senator was himself discredited, his idea of connecting atheism to "un-American" values is still going strong to this day. This, and the fact that the US was founded with a deeply religious population, explains our failure to fully seperate church and state IMO.

Tibbs

EDIT: Sorry if this post would have been more appropriate to a different forum, I seem to have forgotten I was in misc. discussions.

Gurdur

Dunno where you get your info from.
BTW, the Uniting Church of Australia (formerly Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists) now are in the process of allowing the performing of church homo marriages.
And the Protestant Church of Germany will often perform homo partnership ceremonies.
Bingo.
I don't agree. I think it results from underlying values --- independent of religion or secularism.

Indeed, but I'm getting slowly to the point of just why the USA ones seem so incapable. Or at least inchoate.
Israel has a Secular Party, BTW. Doing well, too.
Point granted. I agree with you.
More than a touch, and that's one of my points.
um ?
Blacks and gays did well enough despite much worse difficulties.
It doesn't. It can't.
Basic values and moral choices are arbitrary.
Well yes, but it doesn't help if atheists can't get their act together.

The point I'm stating:
Atheism per se simply doesn't appeal to many --- for utilitarian reasons, not theoretical ones. Broad humanism, whether secular or religious, would appeal to more.
I wouldn't worry. Blame it all on me.

livius drusus

Naw, blame it on me. I think this is very much a discussion, and given how many topics it covers, I think miscellaneous is certainly an accurate adjective. Besides, I really like seeing the title on the topic list. It gives me a little numerological frisson.

HelenM

Gurdur,

Thanks for sharing your flowers and reflections upon reaching post #6666. Very pretty and very interesting (imo).

Helen

Badfish

Yeah thanks Gurder, like 666 or 6666 really means anything other than the number of a man.