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Made for Comedy Ricky Gervais has 50 year old plumber choose to identify as a 8 year old girl (Plus HUMANIST award taken away from Richard Dawkins)

After Life 2 – Man identifies as an 8 year old girl

4:20 am 4/10/21

In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as.

Discuss.

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4/12/21 12:46pm

I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic “Discuss” question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue .

Show captionBooks

Richard Dawkins loses ‘humanist of the year’ title over trans comments

American Humanist Association criticises academic for comments about identity using ‘the guise of scientific discourse’, and withdraws its 1996 honourAlison FloodTue 20 Apr 2021 08.56 EDT

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The American Humanist Association has withdrawn its humanist of the year award from Richard Dawkins, 25 years after he received the honour, criticising the academic and author for “demean[ing] marginalised groups” using “the guise of scientific discourse”.

The AHA honoured Dawkins, whose books include The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, in 1996 for his “significant contributions” in communicating scientific concepts to the public. On Monday, it announced that it was withdrawing the award, referring to a tweet sent by Dawkins earlier this month, in which he compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist who posed as a black woman for years.

“In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black,” wrote Dawkins on Twitter. “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”

Dawkins later responded to criticism, writing: “I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic ‘Discuss’ question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue.”

Among his critics was Alison Gill, vice president for legal and policy at American Atheists and a trans woman. She said Dawkins’ comments reinforce dangerous and harmful narratives. She said: “Given the repercussions for the millions of trans people in this country, in this one life we have to live, as an atheist and as a trans woman, I hope that Professor Dawkins treats this issue with greater understanding and respect in the future.”

In 2015, Dawkins also wrote: “Is trans woman a woman? Purely semantic. If you define by chromosomes, no. If by self-identification, yes. I call her “she” out of courtesy.”

In a statement from its board, the AHA said that Dawkins had “over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalised groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values”.

The evolutionary biologist’s latest comment, the board said, “implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient”, while his “subsequent attempts at clarification are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity”.

“Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honored by the AHA, and has voted to withdraw, effective immediately, the 1996 Humanist of the Year award,” said the organisation.

The Guardian has reached out to Dawkins for comment.

Last year, the author JK Rowling returned an award given to her by the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights organisation, after its president, Kennedy’s daughter Kerry Kennedy, criticised her views on transgender issues. “I am deeply saddened that RFKHR has felt compelled to adopt this stance, but no award or honour, no matter my admiration for the person for whom it was named, means so much to me that I would forfeit the right to follow the dictates of my own conscience,” said Rowling in a statement at the time.

Tribute to Horace Barlow

Steven Dakin @StevenDakin

Elegant & important psychophysics from @TheKwonLab. Retinal ganglion cell dysfunction (not death) limits contrast sensitivity in glaucoma. Sidenote: credit to late/great Horace Barlow for the equivalent noise paradigm.

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November 2, 2019

November 2, 2019

Dr. Horace Barlow, Cambridge CB3 9AX, England
Dear Dr. Barlow,

I have enjoyed reading the book OUTGROWING GOD by your friend Richard Dawkins, and he certainly has much respect for you great grandfather Charles Darwin. However, he has not studied the Bible as extensively as Darwin did because many of Dawkins’ criticisms of the Bible don’t seem to be valid. For instance, on page 53 he states:

Genesis says Abraham owned camels, but archaeological evidence shows that the camel was not domesticated until many centuries after Abraham 

Did Camels Exist in Biblical Times?

5 reasons why domesticated camels likely existedMegan Sauter November 12, 2018  16 Comments 2730 views  Share

Did camels exist in Biblical times?

Some Biblical texts, such as Genesis 12 and 24, claim that Abraham owned camels. Yet archaeological researchshows that camels were not domesticated in the land of Canaan until the 10th century B.C.E.—about a thousand years after the time of Abraham. This seems to suggest that camels in these Biblical stories are anachronistic.

Abraham’s Camels. Did camels exist in Biblical times? Camels appear with Abraham in some Biblical texts—and depictions thereof, such as The Caravan of Abram by James Tissot, based on Genesis 12. When were camels first domesticated? Although camel domestication had not taken place by the time of Abraham in the land of Canaan, it had in Mesopotamia. Photo: PD-1923.Mark W. Chavalas explores the history of camel domestication in his Biblical Views column “Did Abraham Ride a Camel?”published in the November/December 2018 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Although he agrees that camel domestication likely did not take place in Canaan until the 10th century B.C.E., he notes that Abraham’s place of origin was not Canaan—but Mesopotamia. Thus, to ascertain whether Abraham’s camels are anachronistic, we need to ask: When were camels first domesticated in Mesopotamia?

Chavalas explains that the events in the Biblical accounts of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs (Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Israel and Rachel) have been traditionally dated to c. 2000–1600 B.C.E. (during the Middle Bronze Age). Camels appear in Mesopotamian sources in the third millennium B.C.E.—before this period. However, the mere presence of camels in sources does not necessarily mean that camels were domesticated.

The question remains: When were camels domesticated in Mesopotamia?

In his examination of camel domestication history, Chavalas looks at a variety of textual, artistic, and archaeological sources from Mesopotamia dating to the third and second millennia. We will examine five of these sources here:

1. One of the first pieces of evidence for camel domestication comes from the site of Eshnunna in modern Iraq: A plaque from the mid-third millennium shows a camel being ridden by a human.

2. Another source is a 21st-century B.C.E. text from Puzrish-Dagan in modern Iraq that may record camel deliveries.

3. Third, an 18th-century B.C.E. text (quoting from an earlier third millennium text) from Nippur in modern Iraq says, “the milk of the camel is sweet.” Chavalas explains why he thinks this likely refers to a domesticated camel:

Having walked in many surveys through camel herds in Syria along the Middle Euphrates River, I believe that this text is describing a domesticated camel; who would want to milk a “wild camel”? At the very least, the Bactrian camel was being used for dairy needs at this time.

4. Next, an 18th-century B.C.E. cylinder seal depicts a two-humped camel with riders. Although this seal’s exact place of origin is unknown, it reputedly comes from Syria, and it resembles other seals from Alalakh (a site in modern Turkey near Turkey’s southern border with Syria).

5. Finally, a 17th-century text from Alalakh includes camels in a list of domesticated animals that required food.

Camel Domestication. When were camels first domesticated? This impression of an 18th-century B.C.E. cylinder seal from Syria depicts a two-humped camel with riders. The seal and other archaeological discoveries shed light on camel domestication history, suggesting that camel domestication had occurred in Mesopotamia by the second millennium B.C.E. Photo: ©The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Although domesticated camels may not have been widespread in Mesopotamia in the second millennium, these pieces of evidence show that by the second millennium, there were at least some domesticated camels. Thus, camel domestication had taken place in Mesopotamia by the time of Abraham. Accordingly, Chavalas argues that the camels in the stories of Abraham in Genesis are not anachronistic.

Learn more about the history of camel domestication in Mark W. Chavalas’s Biblical Views column “Did Abraham Ride a Camel?” published in the November/December 2018 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.——————

Subscribers: Read the full Biblical Views column “Did Abraham Ride a Camel?” by Mark W. Chavalas in the November/December 2018 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Francis Schaeffer noted concerning Charles Darwin’s loss of faith:

This is very sad. He lies on his bunk and the Beagle tosses and turns and he makes daydreams, and his dreams and hopes are that someone would find in Pompeii or some place like this, an old manuscript by a distinguished Roman that would put his stamp of authority on it, which would be able to show that Christ existed. This is undoubtedly what he is talking about. Darwin gave up this hope with great difficulty.

Dr. Barlow you have an advantage of 150 years over your great grandfather and the archaeologist’s spade has continued to dig. Take a look at this piece of evidence from the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop:

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?)

In the previous chapter we saw that the Bible gives us the explanation for the existence of the universe and its form and for the mannishness of man. Or, to reverse this, we came to see that the universe and its form and the mannishness of man are a testimony to the truth of the Bible. In this chapter we will consider a third testimony: the Bible’s openness to verification by historical study.

Christianity involves history. To say only that is already to have said something remarkable, because it separates the Judeo-Christian world-view from almost all other religious thought. It is rooted in history.

The Bible tells us how God communicated with man in history. For example, God revealed Himself to Abraham at a point in time and at a particular geographical place. He did likewise with Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel and so on. The implications of this are extremely important to us. Because the truth God communicated in the Bible is so tied up with the flow of human events, it is possible by historical study to confirm some of the historical details.

It is remarkable that this possibility exists. Compare the information we have from other continents of that period. We know comparatively little about what happened in Africa or South America or China or Russia or even Europe. We see beautiful remains of temples and burial places, cult figures, utensils, and so forth, but there is not much actual “history” that can be reconstructed, at least not much when compared to that which is possible in the Middle East.

When we look at the material which has been discovered from the Nile to the Euphrates that derives from the 2500-year span before Christ, we are in a completely different situation from that in regard to South America or Asia. The kings of Egypt and Assyria built thousands of monuments commemorating their victories and recounting their different exploits. Whole libraries have been discovered from places like Nuzu and Mari and most recently at Elba, which give hundreds of thousands of texts relating to the historical details of their time. It is within this geographical area that the Bible is set. So it is possible to find material which bears upon what the Bible tells us.

The Bible purports to give us information on history. Is the history accurate? The more we understand about the Middle East between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 100, the more confident we can be that the information in the Bible is reliable, even when it speaks about the simple things of time and place.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #94)

So the story goes on. We have stopped at only a few incidents in the sweep back to the year 1000 B.C. What we hope has emerged from this is a sense of the historical reliability of the Bible’s text. When the Bible refers to historical incidents, it is speaking about the same sort of “history” that historians examine elsewhere in other cultures and periods. This borne out by the fact that some of the incidents, some of the individuals, and some of the places have been confirmed by archaeological discoveries in the past hundred years has swept away the possibility of a naive skepticism about the Bible’s history. And what is particularly striking is that the tide has built up concerning the time before the year 1000 B.C. Our knowledge about the years 2500 B.C. to 1000 B.C. has vastly increased through discoveries sometimes of whole libraries and even of hitherto unknown people and languages.

There was a time, for example, when the Hittite people, referred to in the early parts of the Bible, were treated as fictitious by critical scholars. Then came the discoveries after 1906 at Boghaz Koi (Boghaz-koy) which not only gave us the certainty of their existence but stacks of details from their own archives!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, 13900 cottontail lane, Alexander, AR 72002

Thought provoking article below:

Harvard Magazine
Main Menu · Search ·Current Issue ·Contact ·Archives ·Centennial ·Letters to the Editor ·FAQs

Of the several thousand letters that charles darwin wrote during his lifetime, few were more important than one he sent on September 5, 1857, to Harvard botanist Asa Gray. Darwin wrote in his semi-legible scrawl: “I will enclose the briefest abstract of my notions on the means by which nature makes her species….I ask you not to mention my doctrine.” Asa Gray thus became the first person in North America to learn about Darwin’s ideas on natural selection.

Darwin revealed his theory to the general public two years later in his revolutionary book, On the Origin of Species. Its publication prompted fierce debate in this country. On one side arose Gray, Darwin’s friend and supporter, a taciturn man best known as a cataloguer and collector of plants. In opposition stood Gray’s Harvard colleague Louis Agassiz, a charming, brilliant lecturer and the most popular scientist in the land. Harvard thus became the most important battleground in the initial American engagement with natural selection.

~~~

Asa Gray was Fisher professor of natural history at Harvard from 1842 till 1873. Although he was originally trained as a medical doctor, his passion was plants. His reputation as a taxonomist helped him establish one of America’s premier collections of dried plants, which contained material from collectors who had traveled in the United States and around the world. By the early 1860s, his personal herbarium totaled almost 200,000 specimens.

Gray and Darwin’s epistolary relationship began in 1855, when Darwin wrote Gray. As usual with Darwin, he was humble, and he wanted information. The Englishman asked the American about alpine plants in the United States and their relationship to plants in Europe and Asia. During the next few years, Gray used his vast collection to provide much-needed information on two topics essential to Darwin’s theory–the distribution of plants, and variation in wild, non-domesticated species.

Despite Gray’s world renown as a botanist, his colleague Louis Agassiz, professor of zoology and geology, commanded most of the scientific attention in Cambridge. Respected by scientists and liked by the general public, Agassiz was also friends with the Boston literati, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Of Swiss origin, Agassiz had made his mark in science in 1840 with his best-known book, Études sur les glaciers. In it he proposed the then-unorthodox theory that great glaciers had once covered and carved northern Europe.

Agassiz first came to this country in 1846, to present a series of lectures in Boston. As many as 5,000 people a night attended his talks on subjects as diverse as fossil fishes, the Ice Age, and embryology. In 1847, Harvard wooed him away from Europe. The most important North American scientific periodical of the day, the American Journal of Science, reported, “Every scientific man in America will be rejoiced to hear so unexpected a piece of news.” In the following years, Agassiz continued to make science accessible to the public through lectures, books, and articles.

~~~

On November 11, 1859, Darwin began the arduous task of gaining support for the imminent publication of Origin of Species. (Not that sales mattered to him financially; he was independently wealthy. Nevertheless, he would receive two-thirds of the net profit!) Like any modern author, he asked his publisher, John Murray of London, to send presentation copies to potential reviewers.

He also wrote personal notes to 11 of the most important scientists of the day. The majority of these letters acknowledged that the recipient would not support Darwin’s theory of natural selection. In one letter he wrote: “How savage you will be, if you read it, and how you will long to crucify me alive!!” But Darwin also tried to push the veracity of his theory by writing later in the same letter, “I am fully convinced that you will become year after year, less fixed in your belief in the immutability of species.”

Two of Darwin’s November 11 letters crossed the Atlantic to Harvard. One went to Asa Gray and the other to Louis Agassiz. The letters are now preserved in the Gray Herbarium Library and the Houghton Library.

Agassiz’s letter is short, only three sentences. Darwin knew that Agassiz would not agree with his theory. He wrote: “As the conclusions at which I have arrived on several points differ so widely from yours,…I hope that you will at least give me credit, however erroneous you may think my conclusion, for having earnestly endeavored to arrive at the truth.” Agassiz did not reply to Darwin, who did not send him another letter until 1868.

In contrast, the letter to Gray (at top right) covers almost two full pages. Again Darwin is humble, and seeks out Gray’s approval, but he is also proud of the book. “If ever you do read it, & can screw out the time to send me…however short a note…I should be extremely grateful,” he writes. In a postscript Darwin adds “…I cannot possibly believe that a false theory would explain so many classes of facts.”

Agassiz and Gray received their copies of Origin in late December. Gray peppered the margins of the small green book with “Yes,” “Well put,” and numerous exclamation points. He clearly approved of Darwin’s overall tone and reasoning. On the other hand, Agassiz’s marginalia range from “This is truly monstrous” to “The mistake of Darwin…” to “A sentence likely to mislead!”– notes that he elaborated on later in his more formal criticism of Darwin and his theory.

Professionally, the two men generally kept their comments about each other’s reaction to Darwin’s theory on a high level. Personally, they remained distant, indulging in a few caustic remarks to friends. On January 5, 1860, for example, Gray wrote a detailed letter about the American response to Origin of Species to the English botanist Joseph Hooker. In describing his own feelings, Gray wrote: “It is crammed full of most interesting matter–thoroughly digested–well expressed–close, cogent; and taken as a system it makes out a better case than I had supposed possible.” Several paragraphs later he described a much different response from Agassiz: “…when I saw him last, [he] had read but part of it. He says it is poor–very poor!! (entre nous). The fact [is] he growls over it much like a well cudgeled dog [and] is very much annoyed by it.”

~~~

Agassiz launched his public attack on Darwin at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston’s most important learned society. He told the group gathered on January 10, 1860, that modern species and fossil species had no genetic relationship. This tenet was central to the theory of special creationism, which held that God had created each and every species in its current location. Species did not change through time, but they did become extinct. Great catastrophes, like floods or the glaciers described by Agassiz in Études, had periodically destroyed life on earth. The fossil record indicated at least 48 successive periods of change, according to Agassiz.

He clarified his position a month later and condemned one of Darwin’s pivotal themes–variation within species. America’s foremost zoologist denied the “existence of varieties, properly so called, in the animal kingdom.” Instead, Agassiz viewed variation within species as merely a stage of growth or a cycle of development. God had created the species; therefore they were immutable. In addition to this line of attack, Agassiz categorically rejected Darwin’s use of domesticated animals as an example of change over time.

By mid summer Agassiz had clearly defined his position: he stood resolutely on the side of special creationism and against Darwin. Agassiz realized that some would question his statements, but knew that “after mature examination of the facts they would be generally received.” In July 1860, he concluded his review of Origin of Species in the American Journal of Science by writing, “I shall therefore consider the transmutation theory a scientific mistake, untrue in facts, unscientific in its methods, and mischievous in its tendency.”

Gray began his public defense of Darwin, also in the American Journal of Science, with a positive review of Origin in the March 1860 issue. He wrote that Darwin’s ideas on variation within plants and animals were “general, and even universal.” He supported the English naturalist’s use of domesticated animals as examples, and believed that Darwin’s various associations of facts “[seem] fair and natural.”

Although Gray vigorously defended Darwin and natural selection in this review, in a three-part series in the Atlantic Monthly, and throughout the springtime debates at Boston’s learned societies, he, like Agassiz, maintained a link between a supreme power and natural selection. Gray did not support Agassiz’s brand of special creationism, but did believe “that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines” by the hands of a creator. Natural selection occurred, but God played some not clearly defined role in the process.

Darwin never supported these statements on the role of a higher power. He wrote Gray: “I grieve to say that I am in an utterly hopeless muddle. I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance; & yet I cannot look at each separate thing as a result of Design.”

Darwin did, however, realize the importance of Gray’s thesis in the developing battle between religion and science. (The bishop of Oxford popularized this debate in June 1860 by asking Darwin’s main supporter in England, Thomas Huxley, “Was it through his grandfather or his grandmother
that he claimed his descent from a monkey?”) With Darwin’s assistance, Gray’s Atlantic pieces, which contained his most cogent explanations for natural selection and Design, reached England as a small pamphlet bearing the Darwin-suggested motto, “Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural Theology.”

Despite Gray’s strong religious feelings, he was at heart a scientist. Unlike Agassiz, he could separate his faith and his science. Gray ultimately concluded that “The work [Origin] is a scientific one…and by its science it must stand or fall.”

~~~

For Gray, 1860 was the most important year of the Darwinian debate. He would continue occasionally to write and speak out on the subject, but never as vigorously as during the first eight months of the decade. The controversy had taken him away from his beloved plants. He returned to his work of identifying and cataloguing, and to the next edition of his and John Torrey’s Manual of Botany. In 1864 he donated his library and plant specimens to Harvard; they became the nucleus of the Gray Herbarium. He continued to correspond with Darwin, whose work began to address many botanical problems, including carnivorous plants. They remained friends until Darwin died in 1882.

As a committed anti-evolutionist, Agassiz continued to oppose Darwin for the rest of his career. He presented three lecture courses and published 21 articles and three books between 1861 and 1866 extolling special creationism. None of these, however, were in professional or scientific journals. Despite his growing popularity with the general public, Agassiz’s influence in the scientific debate over evolution faded. When he died, in 1873, he was one of the last, and certainly the most important, of the scientists who subscribed to special creationism.

Ironically, Agassiz is one of the main reasons that Harvard remains a center for evolutionary studies. The worldwide scope of the animal and fossil collections at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, which Agassiz established and directed, combined with the specimens housed in the Gray Herbarium, facilitate ongoing research into questions of natural selection and speciation. In spite of their differences, both Gray and Agassiz shared a profound respect for the scientific method. Their rigorous examination of plants and animals laid the groundwork for the eventual acceptance of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Freelance writer David B. Williams likes to explore the historical as well as the natural parts of natural history. His “Lessons in Stone,” a geological tour of Harvard buildings, appeared in the November-December 1997 issue.

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Horace Barlow pictured below:

_____________

I found Dr. Barlow to be a true gentleman and he was very kind to take the time to answer the questions that I submitted to him. In the upcoming months I will take time once a week to pay tribute to his life and reveal our correspondence. In the first week I noted:

 Today I am posting my first letter to him in February of 2015 which discussed Charles Darwin lamenting his loss of aesthetic tastes which he blamed on Darwin’s own dedication to the study of evolution. In a later return letter, Dr. Barlow agreed that Darwin did in fact lose his aesthetic tastes at the end of his life.

In the second week I look at the views of Michael Polanyi and share the comments of Francis Schaeffer concerning Polanyi’s views.

In the third week, I look at the life of Brandon Burlsworth in the November 28, 2016 letter and the movie GREATER and the problem of evil which Charles Darwin definitely had a problem with once his daughter died.

On the 4th letter to Dr. Barlow looks at Darwin’s admission that he at times thinks that creation appears to look like the expression of a mind. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words in 1968 sermon at this link.

My Fifth Letter concerning Charles Darwin’s views on MORAL MOTIONS Which was mailed on March 1, 2017. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning moral motions in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

6th letter on May 1, 2017 in which Charles Darwin’s hopes are that someone would find in Pompeii an old manuscript by a distinguished Roman that would show that Christ existed! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning the possible manuscript finds in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link  

7th letter on Darwin discussing DETERMINISM  dated 7-1-17 . Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning determinism in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

8th letter responds to Dr. Barlow’s letter to me concerning  Francis Schaeffer discussing Darwin’s own words concerning chance in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

9th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 1-2-18 and included Charles Darwin’s comments on William Paley. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning William Paley in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

In the 21st letter on May 15, 2019 to Dr Barlow I discuss the writings of Francis Schaeffer who passed away the 35 years earlier on May 15, 1985. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words at length in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

In the 22nd letter I respond to Charles Darwin’s words, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe…will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words about hell  in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

In 23rd postcard sent on 7-2-19 I asked Dr Barlow if he was a humanist. Sir Julian Huxley, founder of the American Humanist Association noted, “I use the word ‘humanist’ to mean someone who believes that man is just as much a natural phenomenon as an animal or plant; that his body, mind and soul were not supernaturally created but are products of evolution, and that he is not under the control or guidance of any supernatural being.”

In my 24th letter on 8-2-19 I quote Jerry  Bergman who noted Jean Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. A founding father of the modern American scientific establishment, Agassiz was also a lifelong opponent of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Agassiz “ruled in professorial majesty at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.”

In my 26th letter on 10-2-19 I quoted Bertrand Russell’s daughter’s statement, “I believe myself that his whole life was a search for God…. Indeed, he had first taken up philosophy in hope of finding proof of the evidence of the existence of God … Somewhere at the back of my father’s mind, at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul  there was an empty space that had once been filled by God, and he never found anything else to put in it”

In my 27th letter on 11-2-19 I disproved Richard Dawkins’ assertion, “Genesis says Abraham owned camels, but archaeological evidence shows that the camel was not domesticated until many centuries after Abraham.” Furthermore, I gave more evidence indicating the Bible is historically accurate. 

On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

__________________________

There are 3 videos in this series and they have statements by 150 academics and scientists and I hope to respond to all of them. Wikipedia notes Horace Basil Barlow FRS was a British visual neuroscientist.

Barlow was the son of the civil servant Sir Alan Barlow and his wife Lady Nora (née Darwin), and thus the great-grandson of Charles Darwin (see Darwin — Wedgwood family). He earned an M.D. at Harvard University in 1946.

In 1953 Barlow discovered that the frog brain has neurons which fire in response to specific visual stimuli. This was a precursor to the work of Hubel and Wiesel on visual receptive fields in the visual cortex. He has made a long study of visual inhibition, the process whereby a neuron firing in response to one group of retinal cells can inhibit the firing of another neuron; this allows perception of relative contrast.

In 1961 Barlow wrote a seminal article where he asked what the computational aims of the visual system are. He concluded that one of the main aims of visual processing is the reduction of redundancy. While the brightnesses of neighbouring points in images are usually very similar, the retina reduces this redundancy. His work thus was central to the field of statistics of natural scenes that relates the statistics of images of real world scenes to the properties of the nervous system.

Barlow and his co-workers also did substantial work in the field of factorial codes. The goal was to encode images with statistically redundant components or pixels such that the code components are statistically independent. Such codes are hard to find but highly useful for purposes of image classification etc.

Barlow was a fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 and was awarded their Royal Medal in 1993.^[1] He received the 1993 Australia Prize for his research into the mechanisms of visual perception and the 2009 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience.

________________

His comments can be found on the 3rd video and the 128th clip in this series. Below the videos you will find his words.

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

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Interview of Horace Barlow – part 1

Interview of Horace Barlow – part 2

Horace Barlow’s quote taken from interview with Alan Macfarlane:

HAS RELIGION EVER BEEN IMPORTANT TO YOU? IS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU? No, it is not important to me. Saying you don’t believe in God is a very foolish thing to say as it doesn’t explain why so many people talk about it, there has got to be more to it than that; also I think one has to respect what some godly people say and some of the things they do; I wish one could make more sense of it but I don’t think the godly people have done a very good job; I was never baptized or confirmed so have never been a practitioner, and I don’t miss it; DO YOU THINK THAT SCIENCE HAS DIS-PROVEN RELIGION AS DAWKINS ARGUES? I think it [science] provides some hope of acting rationally to handle the social and political problems we have to deal with on a personal level and one a worldwide level. Religion is a way of perpetuating a way of thought that might have otherwise been lost, and I imagine that is fine.   

Dr. Barlow’s only three solid claims in this response to Alan Macfarlane is that science is #1 the best help today with our social problems,(which is in the original clip), #2 Saying you don’t believe in God (position of atheism) is foolish, and #3 we need an explanation for why so many people talk about [God.]

My response to #1 is to look at how the secular humanists have messed up so many things in the past and I include Barlow’s personal family friend Margaret Mead in that. My responses to #2 and #3 were both covered in my earlier response to Roald Hoffmann. 

(Roald Hoffmann is a Nobel Prize winner who I have had the honor of corresponding with in the past. Pictured below)

(This July 1933 photo shows [left to right] anthropologist Gregory Bateson with Margaret Mead)

Horace Barlow’s words  from interview conducted by Alan Macfarlane:

I don’t ever remember going to Bateson’s house in Granchester as a child; William Bateson’s wife was a friend of my mother’s; when Gregory Bateson was out in Bali he met Margaret Mead; Beatrice Bateson, his mother, felt she was too old to go out and inspect her so she sent my mother instead; she flew off in an Imperial Airlines plane and we saw her off from Hendon; that must have been 1937-8; my mother got on very well with Margaret Mead – she was not altogether convinced by her, but very impressed by her breadth of knowledge and energy; she came and stayed with us many times; I was even more sceptical than my mother and thought she was a very impressive person; Gregory was born 1904 and my mother, in 1886, so there was quite a big age difference between them; I never got on close intellectual terms with Gregory even though we were to some extent interested in the same sort of thing, both in cybernetics and psychology, and his ideas were always interesting; however, my model of a scientist was taken from my mother and not from Gregory; my mother was interested in genetics and the paper for which she was famous was on the reproductive system in plants like cowslips; my mother reasoned like a scientist whereas Gregory was a guru – he liked to think things out for himself; he obviously influenced many others too; I saw him once or twice when I went to Berkeley

Postscript:

I was sad to see that Jon Stewart is stepping down from the DAILY SHOW so I wanted to include one of the best clips I have ever seen on his show and it is a short debate between the brilliant scientists  Edward J. Larson (an evolutionist), William A. Dembski (an Intelligent Design Proponent), and then he threw in a nutball in for laughs,  Ellie Crystal (a metaphysical theorist). Dembski gives several great examples of design and it reminded me of many of the words of Darwin show above in my letter to Horace Barlow.

William Dembski on The Jon Stewart Show

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