Up@dawn 2.0

Friday, August 10, 2018

Au revoir, "Evolution in America" 2018

A fond farewell to our summer course "Evolution in America," certainly a rousing success by Henry Adams' standards: "The chief wonder of [our] education is that it did not ruin everybody involved in it."

Adams also fretted about the 2d Law of Thermodynamics, despite William James's counterpoint that the occupants of an entropic universe need not be unhappy. Not only weren't we ruined, we were happy explorers of the religion-science chasm in the USA. The field trip to Dayton TN for the Scopes re-enactment was fun. When we disagreed amongst ourselves, we did so agreeably. Thanks to you all, and good luck!

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Postscript. Rebecca Goldstein didn't consider this "final and clinching proof..." -




The Final Proof of the non-Existence of God was proved by a Babel Fish.

Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some have chosen to see it as the final proof of the NON-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED"

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

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