Whether you are burning puddings,
Candles, midnight oil or joss sticks;
Whether you are theists, atheists,
Panentheists or agnostics;
Whether you are snug indoors
While the outside world is storming,
Or shivering in the icy blasts
(Produced by global warming?);
Whether you are terrified
By a nuclear Iran,
Or wondering how we’ll ever leave
Iraq, Afghanistan;
Whether banks and politicians
Drive you to depression,
Or you trust their "selfless" love
To end this grim recession;
Anything that cheers us up
Must be a good idea.
So Merry Christmas, everyone,
And have a great New Year.

I will write more when I can.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/01/30/daily-mail-ramp-up-climate-ala...

"I’m not even going to comment on this latest absurd report from The Mail. It shows just how far the MSM has descended into publishing such puerile nonsense. It is little wonder that very few people now believe what the media tells them anymore.

"But the very first paragraph is very revealing:

"From the unprecedented heatwave in 2022 to the deadly Storm Eowyn just this month, climate change is already wreaking havoc on Britain’s weather.

"The summer of 2022 was not even as hot as 1976, which rather destroys the narrative.

"But where do they get the idea that Storm Eowyn was caused by climate change?

"As a minute’s research would have told the pathetic journalist who wrote this drivel, Eowyn was a run of the mill storm, the sort which has happened many times in the past.

"But it certainly proves the point of what I have been saying for years now – that the Met Office’s naming of storms and the use of recently introduced clifftop and hilltop sites to produce scary headlines has now created an atmosphere of hysteria, upon which the corrupt media feed.

"Of course, I might be wrong.

"But I have not seen anything from the Met Office so far that puts Eowyn into perspective, or acknowledges the fact that there is no trend towards more intense or frequent storms.

"Indeed, they have just published a new post on their blog, “Is further stormy weather on the way?”, which would have offered the chance to put the record straight."

Comment: no wonder dhw is so panicky

LUCA

DAVID: The article provides a different estimate of LUCA age and size. The striking point is how quickly life appeared after the Earth formed. Strongly supports the concept of a designer at work.

dhw: 4.2 billion years is “inferred” and approximate. How do you and the authors know the length of time it normally takes for life to appear and complexify?

DAVID: Using mutation rates and times of obvious change in forms allows looking backward in time. Of course, the results are estimates.

And how do you and the authors know the length of time it normally takes for life to appear and complexify?

The brain: concept cells

I’m a bit reluctant to comment, as again I find parts of it difficult to understand, but I’m afraid the following made me laugh out loud:

QUOTE: "Concept cells could code for anything and everything, but they are not used for object recognition. They’re too slow for that: These cells fire after a delay of about 300 milliseconds. “It’s unclear why it takes so long,”

300 milliseconds = so long? I wonder how “long” it takes for cells to recognize objects. Ah well, it’s all relative, as Einstein might have said. Any idea how they measure such timings?

QUOTE: "It’s possible that these neurons can play different roles and take on different identities based on the task at hand,” Buffalo said. When it needs to be a concept cell for Jennifer Aniston, that’s what it is. When it needs to be a place cell to help you navigate toward the martini at the bar, it is a place cell. “That cell is like a Swiss Army knife,” Miller suggested.

I do like this. It suggests to me that cells are living, cognitive entities which can perform different activities and take on different roles according to different requirements. Very much in line with Shapiro, wouldn’t you say?

DAVID: very early tentative research into memory function. Identifying specific neuron function is amazing. Animals must have place neurons but not concept ones I assume.

Does that mean your dog doesn't recognize you?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02461-1

It's a long time since I visited the Agnostic Web.
Hope you are all well.
Happy new year.

George Jelliss

Within this text is The Proof, beyond an ounce of doubt, by way of the language of the Universe: Mathematics, that The Triune God is The One True God and The Holy Bible is His Word.

https://trinitythetruth.github.io/ << Review and Confirm Proof Here.

So welcome to 2025!
Are we not lucky to be alive?
Able to enjoy the fruits of our labours,
To laugh and share with friends and neighbours,
To use the rain and bask in the sun,
And to live at peace with everyone?

Whether or not there’s a God above,
The greatest gift of all is love.
Too simple? Without it we can’t survive.
So I wish us all love in 2025.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241204114304.htm

"Scientists have now discovered that the heart has its own complex nervous system that is crucial to controlling its rhythm.

"'This 'little brain' has a key role in maintaining and controlling the heartbeat, similar to how the brain regulates rhythmic functions such as locomotion and breathing," explains Konstantinos Ampatzis, principal researcher and docent at the Department of Neuroscience.

"The researchers identified several types of neurons in the heart that have different functions, including a small group of neurons with pacemaker properties. The finding challenges the current view on how the heartbeat is controlled, which may have clinical implications.

"'We were surprised to see how complex the nervous system within the heart is," says Konstantinos Ampatzis. "Understanding this system better could lead to new insights into heart diseases and help develop new treatments for diseases such as arrhythmias."

"The study was conducted on zebrafish, an animal model that exhibits strong similarities to human heart rate and overall cardiac function. The researchers were able to map out the composition, organisation and function of neurons within the heart using a combination of methods such as single-cell RNA sequencing, anatomical studies and electrophysiological techniques.

"'We will now continue to investigate how the heart's brain interacts with the actual brain to regulate heart functions under different conditions such as exercise, stress, or disease," says Konstantinos Ampatzis. "We aim to identify new therapeutic targets by examining how disruptions in the heart's neuronal network contribute to different heart disorders.'"

Comment: when higher heart rate centers stop lower rate centers take over. The heart always wants to beat at some given rate.

https://bigthink.com/thinking/is-stoicism-a-religion-3-key-clues/?utm_source=rejoiner&a...

"In parallel to these issues is an interesting, correlative phenomenon: the resurrection of Stoicism. As someone who makes a living out of being a public philosopher, I’ve noticed how often and easily people label things as “a bit like Stoicism.” Anything good, useful, or deep is called Stoic. In many circles, Stoicism has become synonymous with “philosophy” more broadly.

"So, we have two observations here: First, a crisis in meaning — an existential ennui or sociological anomie. Second, Stoicism is popular and becoming more so. Now, correlation does not equal causation, and these observations could happily live unconnected. The decline of religion in the West and the rise of Stoicism may be as unrelated as the spread of Wi-Fi and the disappearance of phone booths.
***

“'A philosophy of life has to have three components,” Pigliucci said. “It has metaphysics — meaning a picture of how the world works and how the world hangs together, so to speak. It has an ethics — that is, an idea of how you should live in that world. And then it has a set of practices, meditations, and exercises of different kinds. And those are meant to help you out [in] implementing your ethics. And now, if you think about it, religions have all those three, right?”

***

"So, if religions have three elements, and ancient Stoicism has those elements, it would seem fair to conclude that ancient Stoicism, at least, was a religion. But for many people today who are only loosely familiar with Stoicism, the metaphysical elements might not be so obvious. People are often introduced to Stoicism through disembodied quotes floating around social media, or “life-pro tips” to help you get by. They’ll know it from cognitive behavioral therapy or when looking for self-improvement tips. As such, they’ll probably only come to associate Stoicism with its practices and meditations.

"Metaphysical commitments are the kinds of things that many nonreligious people, especially those stewed in a scientific worldview, find hardest to swallow. It’s the belief in a soul, an afterlife, an interventionist God, or some karmic force like samsara. In Stoicism, the metaphysical commitment is in the underlying force known as logos, or rationality. According to Pigliucci, however, this is a different kind of metaphysics to “other” religions.

“'Here, the relationship between faith and reason is different. Typically, in a religion, metaphysics is about faith. And reason comes in as sort of, so to speak, as the handmaiden of faith. So, it’s reason; it’s fine so long as it agrees with the faith. If it doesn’t, then we’ve got trouble. In the case of philosophy, it’s the opposite. There is no faith. The Stoics didn’t go out there and pray to Zeus or anything like that. It’s all about reason because it is a philosophy, first.”

***

"...the Stoics were about embracing your fate, or, as Nietzsche famously put it much later on, ‘amor fati’ or love your fate.”

“' The Universe doesn’t care about me. So bad things do happen to people, but I look at it from the Stoic perspective of accepting the facts for what they are and doing your best with what the Universe provides you with. And I’m still left with acceptance and endurance.”

"For Pigliucci, much of the ancient Stoics’ acceptance comes from their foundational, metaphysical commitments. When we take that away, we’re left not with a “love of fate” or a “trust in the divine plan,” but rather a tool for endurance. But what about Stoics’ ethical commitments? What about the Stoic idea that a life of virtue is the best and most fulfilled? Can we salvage that from its underlying religious belief? It’s difficult.

"A lot of the Stoic emphasis on virtue — such as the four cardinal virtues of practical wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance — is framed within a certain belief in the summum bonum, or the “greatest good.” Stoicism starts with the basic belief that the greatest good in life is virtue. But it’s debatable how true that is.

***

"And the reason you cannot be a Stoic and an Epicurean at the same time is because for a Stoic, the highest good is virtue. For an Epicurean, the highest good is tranquility of mind, or ataraxia.”

***

“'We know Stoic exercises work because they have been the initial inspiration for cognitive behavioral therapy back in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Both Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, the two people that basically got CBT started, were both inspired by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius mostly, and they explicitly say so. Now, of course, CBT is a therapy, not a philosophy or a life.”

***

"Not everyone likes seeing Stoicism as a religion, and of course, that’s okay. Pigliucci’s latest book is a fantastic and highly readable exploration of the different ancient philosophies available, and it settles on a kind of balance. We need virtue, sure, but we also need pleasure and epistemic humility. Explore philosophy and find something that works for you. Take what you need. Do whatever you can to get by and to get better."

Comment: without the support of religion what do you do? This interview tells us face life with a stiff upper lip. DHW should tell us how he does it.

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/15_november_2024/42...

"Healthy humans produce ∼2.4 million mature red blood cells (RBCs) every second. This process, called erythropoiesis, begins with the differentiation of multipotent hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) to lineage-committed erythroid precursors, followed by drastic morphological and functional changes, including the formation of a specialized plasma membrane, loss of most organelles, contraction of the proteome, and massive production of hemoglobin, which constitutes >95% of RBC cytosolic protein.

***

"Metabolic requirements vary during development, and our understanding of how metabolic activity influences cell specialization is incomplete. Here, we describe a switch from glutamine catabolism to synthesis required for erythroid cell maturation. Glutamine synthetase (GS), one of the oldest functioning genes in evolution, is activated during erythroid maturation to detoxify ammonium generated from heme biosynthesis, which is up-regulated to support hemoglobin production. Loss of GS in mouse erythroid precursors caused ammonium accumulation and oxidative stress, impairing erythroid maturation and recovery from anemia. In β-thalassemia, GS activity is inhibited by protein oxidation, leading to glutamate and ammonium accumulation, whereas enhancing GS activity alleviates the metabolic and pathological defects. Our findings identify an evolutionarily conserved metabolic adaptation that could potentially be leveraged to treat common red blood cell disorders."

Comment: this is an enormous production of a vital protein which carries both oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. Hemoglobin is highly complex protein that supports the concept of design.

Immunity system complexity

QUOTES: “To thrive in their new hosts, bacteria seek out iron. To protect their iron supplies, which are stored in mitochondria, the worms activate a defense tactic.”

"Dillin and his team showed that C. elegans worms’ sense of smell coordinates a mitochondrial response, particularly in intestinal cells, to resist bacterial infection. The researchers speculate that this process is conserved in mammals for pathogen detection and immune regulation.”

DAVID: this is a clear example of an automatic protein trigger for response to a specific danger. No thought involved.

The fact that scientists have observed the material mechanisms by which organisms defend themselves does not mean that the processes do not require thought of some kind. You have always accepted that this is true of bacteria. So now you have intelligent bacteria and robot worms, the latter having somehow been preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago to switch on whatever set of instructions your God planted in the cells which evolved into C. elegans and into every other species you can think of. Not too far-fetched for you?

Introducing the brain; its fractal organizstion

DAVID: There is no question an amoeba acts with purpose. The question is how automatic are those actions based upon built-in designed responses. A designing God and chance are the only two possible answers.

dhw: By built-in designed responses I presume you mean detailed instructions on how the amoeba should respond to all situations and conditions for the rest of time, and the appropriate set of instructions will automatically switch itself on when each particular problem arises. You cannot or will not countenance the possibility that your God might have endowed the amoeba or any other brainless organism or indeed most cell communities with the intelligence to work out their own solutions.

DAVID: Your interpretation is correct. I believe it is all automatic.

Same again: your God preprogrammed the first cells with instructions not only for every species, but also for every response by every cell to every new condition/problem that might arise for the rest of time (except when he popped in to do a dabble). And you tell us that your views keep evolving and you explore possibilities. I’ll wait patiently for you to “evolve” this view and explore other possibilities.

A theoretical God

DAVID: Considering what has been created, especially the massive complexity of the biochemistry of life, one must presume a God with endless capacities and knowledge.

I’m not sure about “endless”, but if God exists, then we can certainly assume that he knows (or finds out) how to create what he has created.

DAVID: That is how I start my view of God. Following Adler, the appearance of humans through natural evolution is so unusual a result, we are God's primary purpose in evolving us.

We’ve been through this before, and your first sentence already tells us that the massive complexity of the biochemistry of life is so “unusual” that every single species – including all those that had no connection with humans – must have been part of your God’s purpose. “Primary” is not the same as one and only, and you have never accepted any other purpose. This, as you have agreed right from the start, presents you with an insoluble problem, because if your God’s powers are endless, it makes absolutely no sense that he designed and had to cull 99.9% of species that had no connection with the one and only purpose you impose on him.

DAVID: How we relate to God is an endless discussion here, along with how He relates to us. You have one fixed view of a humanized God while my views keep evolving and many steps I've taken are contradictory to past positions. But at least I am exploring possibilities.

I have never ever offered any fixed view of a God which for all I know does not even exist, and I have never suggested that God is a human being. You have agreed that he may have certain thought patterns and emotions like our own, and I have offered you various alternative theistic explanations of how and why a theoretical God might have used evolution for different purposes and methods from those you have fixed your mind on. Some of these followed on from your own proposals or agreements (enjoyment, interest, escape from boredom, desire for a relationship with us, recognition, worship). Your contradictions persist into the present – you accept that the latter purposes are possible, but you say they are not possible because your God is selfless and is not human in any way. Similarly, your God is 100% benevolent, but there is only a 50/50 chance that he cares about us, and you then exclude any possibility that he might care about us because caring is a human emotion and your God is not human in any way. Thank you for accepting the fact that you are continually contradicting yourself. It would be nice to think that this awareness might help you to explore possibilities to which so far you have closed your mind! (See the “evolution” thread for further discussion.)

"Welcome to faith and trust. I take from theologian presentations what fits my concepts developed from reading Adler's books and Karen Anderson's "A History of God", clearly describing Hebrew, Christian and Muslim forms of God as they evolved. Not a glimmer of your contrived versions."

https://aeon.co/essays/how-monotheists-modelled-god-on-a-harem-keeping-alpha-male?utm_s...

"...there is little doubt that the great majority of believers imagine a personal god who can be spoken to, who answers prayers, who has strong opinions and often discernible emotions, too: sad, angry, pleased, displeased, vengeful, jealous, forgiving, loving, and so forth.

"Not everyone buys into a sky-god with a long white beard, a serious and all-knowing mien, capable of rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad. But it doesn’t take much imagination to recognise that God, as worshipped in most of the world, is remarkably humanoid, widely perceived as possessing many of those features that are associated with ‘alpha males’: a great, big, scary, wilful, yet nourishing and protective guy… in short, a silverback gorilla writ large.

***

"Among monotheists, God is universally seen as not only great but literally The Greatest in every respect: power, wisdom, goodness and so forth, just as silverback male gorillas would doubtless describe themselves and demand that their subordinates agree.

***

"‘Scary’: it is dangerous to challenge the status of the alpha harem-master. After all, he got there by being not only omnipotent and omniscient, but also omni-destroying – or at least, highly threatening – when crossed. For the monotheist, fear of God is more than a prerequisite for belief in Him: the two are nearly identical.

"‘Wilful’: God generally has very strong opinions, not least that He must be obeyed. A truly omnipotent being presumably could orchestrate things as He chooses, but instead – like an alpha male harem-master who is currently in charge but who has to constantly guard against intruders (against takeovers by other wannabe alphas – or in religious terms, competing gods) – he is jealous, vengeful of those who disobey, vigorously prohibiting any backsliding or counter-revolutionary support for competitors.

"‘Nourishing’: one way or another, harem-keepers are expected to benefit their underlings, often by their success in hunting, warfare or by successfully orchestrating not only their own fertility (via their wives) but also the flourishing of the other group members. Garcia notes that the Bible and Quran are both larded with numerous references to God’s provisioning of his flock: for example, ‘He provides food for those who fear him; He remembers His covenant Forever’ (Psalm 111:15), ‘And it is He who feeds me and gives me drink’ (Quran 26:79), ‘It is He who made the earth tame for you – so walk among its slopes and eat of His provision’ (Quran 67:15).

"‘Protective’: just as the silverback guards his harem with ferocious protectiveness, so too does God. ‘But you, Lord, do not be far from me,’ implores the psalmist. ‘You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword,

***

"‘Guy’: the monotheist God is male as are His chief representatives on earth, just like primate harem-keepers. It shouldn’t be surprising that religious leaders are prone to employing the great, big, scary, wilful, yet nourishing and protective guy when seeking to achieve and reinforce their dominance. Why would their followers even succumb to this domination? To some extent, it takes a willing subject to be led down the path of perceiving God as a powerful, harem-keeping entity.

***

"The big three Abrahamic religions most especially maintain that God strongly disapproves of various sexual practices, not just adultery. It is clear not only from the numerous examples adduced in Alpha God, but from the Bible and the Quran themselves, that the Abrahamic God is likely to be incensed by pretty much any kind of sexual pleasure, including homosexuality, masturbation, oral or anal sex, revealing clothing, even libidinous thoughts. Sexual restraint is a terrific way to avert jealous anger on the part of any dominant harem-keeper."

Comment: the comparison with a silver back keeping a haram is terribly overdrawn. The vengeful, terrifying, angry God in this essay is not any God I know. Per Anderson, the God here belongs in the OT, as God's love appears in the NT, and we find a more intellectual approach in the Quran where God is studied through His amazing works. Then Adler tells me how to think about God as a non-human personage. That is what I have tried here.

However, that is not quite the end of the atheistic alternative, which blatantly requires faith in chance combinations of matter and energy to provide all the ingredients plus the “spark” necessary for life, reproduction, evolution and consciousness. There is a third possible explanation or “first cause”, which is the theory of panpsychism. We've discussed it before, but I'm reminded of it by one of David’s schizophrenic approaches to his God, which has him asking: “Why must He have a reason?” (This is synonymous with purpose.) Another is that his God is selfless and is not human in any way. The theory of panpsychism takes on lots of different forms, but its basis is that everything (“pan” = all or everything) has some kind of mental component. This is a bit misleading, as I doubt if many panpsychists would argue that a stone has any form of mentality, but the proposal becomes less fantastic when we consider the different degrees of intelligence that are actually known to us. Even David acknowledges that single cells (e.g. bacteria) have a mental component, and a recent article concerning the behaviour of molecules within a single cell could also be construed as evidence of mental activity. We have no idea where the borderline might lie between zero and minimal, but the basic principle should not be dismissed, and it provides a third choice of first cause: instead of an all-powerful, all-knowing, sourceless, top-down mind, or the blind gropings of chance, we have primitive levels of intelligence which gradually evolve bottom-up to higher levels.

There are, of course, huge problems with this theory too, not the least of which is how rudimentary levels of intelligence could possibly create the conditions under which life can exist, let alone evolve. (Many folk do expect there to be primitive life on other planets, but evolution requires a wide variety of conditions.) Back to atheistic chance? But are these problems any less impenetrable than those posed by faith in chance as the creator of life and intelligence or in a sourceless superintelligence that has simply always been there?

This third option allows for design, but dispenses with the need for a purpose and for a single “humanized” God. One of David’s selves should welcome it as a possibility (I myself would certainly go no further than that), since it conforms to his concept of a first cause which may have no purpose, and is not human in any way - until, of course, it evolves into humans!

We who are old are lucky to live so long,
And so we should not cry.
But the sad truth is that the longer we live
The more often we say goodbye.

I shall be spending the next few days visiting a dear friend for the last time.

Lynette (BBella’s real name) in fact died shortly after she stopped writing, and following the death of her husband. It appears that this was her wish, and no doubt her natural death was controlled by the astonishing willpower that had kept her alive in the past. I’m deeply moved by her daughter’s email, and feel I should share the news with those of you who will remember her contributions.

I shall log on each day to delete bogus posts (except while I’m away next week), but I doubt if there will be much time for proper posts.

These continue to trickle in and are deleted as soon as they are spotted. All totally pointless.