#aplang18reading

[toastgod500]

Reading The Primary Work 3

I’m really enjoying the current argument Dawkins is proposing, as he explains creationists often search for “gaps” in science, where there exists a biological phenomena in which scientists have yet to completely explain why the phenomena has come to be, so the creationists jump to the conclusion that the “unexplained” phenomena must be the byproduct of intelligent design.  Dawkins explains how flawed this argument is throughout chapter 4, but neatly and wittingly sums up the creationist’s logic on page 154 as he writes, “The logic turns out to be no more convincing than this: ‘I [insert own name] am personally unable to think which [insert biological phenomena] could have been built up step by step.  Therefore it is irreducibly complex.  That means it is designed.’”  When put this way, it seems blatantly obvious how flawed the creationist argument is.  Dawkins goes on to clarify that even if scientists fail to come up with an explanation (which they always do, which is why the creationist argument is flawed), it is plain bad logic to assume that ‘design’ must be responsible for the phenomena.

I stumbled upon this highly biased website https://creation.com, which claims to provide resources and information for people so that they can make an intelligent decision on whether they believe in intelligent design, or evolution.  After reading some of the posts, it is clear the website only exists to spread lies and misconceptions about science.  This is truly sad to me, that these lies exist on the internet, being taught to children who grow up to believe this as the truth.

I think what bothers me the most is that creationists are complacent with not understanding how the world genuinely is.  I completely agree with Dawkins on page 152 as he writes, “...one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.”  

https://www.theguardian.com  This article written by Dawkins and Jerry Coyne furthermore stresses the gravity of these issues.

Although these ideas were unfamiliar to me until reading them now, I think I’m able to understand Dawkins’s arguments in full once I think them through.  It helps to discuss the ideas within the book with other people, to gain multiple viewpoints or interpretations of a topic (s/o John Dingle <3).

[simrankhurana]

Wow I’m sad

As I read A Long Way Home, it brings up a lot of emotions. This isn’t necessarily something I prefer when I choose my forms of entertainment like books or tv shows, but I think these emotions are necessary. I grew up around poverty. I was never in it, but I went to India like twice a year since I was a baby. I’d become accustomed to people knocking on your window and asking for money or selling tissue boxes while you are stopped at a light in your car, or kids following you around asking you for food and saying they are hungry. There was empathy and sadness there, but what could I do, there was only so much money and food I could give out, and it certainly wasn’t enough for everyone. As I read this personal narrative of a 5 year old describing what it’s like to have to fend for yourself, to not know when you might eat next, and to just live to survive, it hit a new emotion for me. I saw poverty in a way I hadn’t quite seen in before, I saw it from a first person perspective. I think it’s gunna be hard when I go to India in march, just walking the streets and knowing that each of these people have fought these kinds of battles and probably have their own stories, but they’ll never get to write a book, and it’ll never turn into a huge movie. Saroo remembers his childhood vividly, even as a 30 year old. I hardly remember my middle school years. This leads me to believe that on many levels, his struggles stuck with him and shaped the person he is. I have currently read to where Saroo is just about to accidentally board the train

[rose-hutcheson-blog]

Choosing my book

I chose orange is the new black because I really like the TV series but I don’t know if I’ll regret it or not. It was really hard for me to find a book because I knew that it would have to be able to have some of the abstracts in it. I also knew I’d have to be interested in the topic, and on top of that i was confused on whether it had to be biography or what types of books fit the requirements. This isn’t how I normally choose books, so I was very stressed looking for a book and went to barnes n noble like three times before decideing on this book. Watch a week before the research project is due im gonna be like maybe i should switch books.

[astronomeher-blog]

millions of years from now, people might doubt that golden frogs were ever real

so,

my thoughts on chapter one.

To be fair, Kolbert did state in her prologue that many of the animals in the first chapters were extinct, but it didn’t make it any less of a shocker when she wrote about her inability to find females of a certain frog species the local amphibian conservation center was short of. Kolbert also talked about something called “background extinction,” which is the rate at which organisms of a certain group will go extinct per geologic-epoch, or something like that. For example, she gives the expected background extinction rate of mammals as one species per seven hundred years. Apparently, amphibians are going extinct at an extremely scary rate, just like how the Panamanian golden frog disappeared extremely fast. Although this frog species and many others were going extinct due to a certain fungus, it is most likely humans who spread the fungus through the capture and export of frogs all around the world for food, medicine, makeup, etc. It really made me think about how in millions of years, people (if we’re still around) may treat these frogs as creatures of myth similar to dinosaurs. I get that we’re technically advanced now, but amphibians are also creatures that don’t really fossilize well. Also, I wonder what other creatures we will cause the extinction of in the future and of all the creatures whose existence we aren’t aware of either. I’m also mad at humans for being so reckless, honestly. We’re causing so much damage we don’t even recognize for CENTURIES. 

I found this article and this article while looking up animals whose extinction we have witnessed in our lifetime. 

[toastgod500]

Reading The Primary Work 2

All in all, I’m still continuing to enjoy the book, and feel as if the picture is coming more into focus for me the more I continue to read.  Chapter 3 muses over arguments for God’s existence, which is entertaining to see how Dawkins picks apart the flaws in these arguments.  One thing I’ve noticed, is that, given more time to coherently articulate his thoughts, Dawkins’s arguments are more effective on paper than they are when spoken or debated.  However, this is probably inevitable, as verbal arguments must be conjured on the spot, requiring the speaker to take into account the opposing argument as well as traits of the opposition that may influence the way they argue.  I feel like this is much simpler when given the time to think over ideas and counterarguments thoroughly, and it is clear that Dawkins has devoted the time to thinking his written arguments through entirely.

It is not rare to find a YouTube video where a highly regarded person is “destroying” Bill O’Reilly on his show, which is kind of badass. (See Neil Degrasse Tyson destroys Bill O’Reilly).  Bill O’Reilly manages to accomplish one helpful thing here, he demonstrates some of the “primitive” arguments that Dawkins dissects in chapter 3.  Also I found it hilarious when Reilly completely disregarded Dawkins’s argument around the 3 minute mark.  At that point Dawkins threw Reilly the “not amused” expression.  Reilly also mentions how, at the time of the interview, only 12% of the American population are atheists/ agnostic, which is astonishing in comparison to the other countries he had listed.  The figure below accurately represents this difference between countries using contemporary data.

[toastgod500]

Reading The Primary Work 1

Although I managed to procrastinate the first two weeks of the project away, I’m finally just now getting a good start on my book, and I’m really enjoying it.  I’m most in awe of Dawkins’s tone throughout the book so far, where he handles the topic of religion using a tone that I’ve never heard anyone use before.  It’s clear that no, Dawkins doesn’t care what you have to say about him attacking religion in the way he is.  His idgaf meter is off the charts.  The experience of reading “The God Delusion” is only enhanced with the audio book narrated by Dawkins himself, where there is clear passion oozing from his every word.  Still, Dawkins is scrupulous enough to realize his message will definately be received wrongly by some, and he addresses this on page 50 as he says “I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else.”

It’s admirable the way Dawkins writes so succinctly, wasting no time to get straight to the proving his point with clear evidence.  For example on page 57 he clarifies, “I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.”  Similarly, he had made his purpose obvious on page 25, “...my purpose is consciousness-raising.”

I’ve also noticed how Politics and the English Language by George Orwell applies with the terminology commonly associated with religion.  Specifically the word “God” is very often used insincerely, having multiple different meanings. “If you want to say that ‘God is energy,’ then you can find God in a lump of coal” (page 33).

[gaurav-kaul-blog]

As I’m going through the book, the one thing that I see again and again is the government forcing oppressive regulations, an idea that Orwell is passionate about.

Something that really interests me is the aspect of written language.  Winston is defying the government he is converting his thought to an unregulated form - which is still regulated by telescrenes to a form.

In addition to writing being illegal, an event that even takes place in the book is book burning. 

It is undoubtedly clear that Orwell is talking about the significance of text. At first I was really confused and wondered what that meant.

After some thinking I have come up with 2 things I believe that make writing so “dangerous”. Firstly, Writing is the one medium that can transcend time, when an opinion is stated in writing it can exist for time far beyond that of the writer,  an example showcased in the book. Also, writing is a very condensed form of communication, when you have a book you essentially have the ability to her someones thoughts for an amount of time they would not necessarily converse with you - then when speaking about a population you have the ability to talk to huge amounts of people for huge amounts of Time without expending much energy.

The longevity and density of this form of communication has historically been attacked, from when Genghis  khan destroyed all the books in Baghdad, to countries actively not promoting literacy to  citizens in order to prevent their ability to be use this dangerous medium.

Overall, I would not read this post to each student in each English class - but my ability to have this written medium allows it, and maybe someday our great great great grandchildren will be reading this post , and maybe one day their government will take down this post…

[kpiepszak]

The Cider House Rules #4

As I begin to get farther and farther in my book I realize that there are minor and major themes throughout the novel. I find it really interesting that this book is different than anything I’ve ever read before and since it was written a while ago it is interesting to me that the events that take place in the novel can somewhat relate to the talk of the news that is happening now. One major and very obvious theme that I found throughout my book is the idea of abortion just because from the very beginning of learning how Dr. Larch practices medicine one can see that he is obviously an abortion doctor, but he also is a doctor that delivers babies as well, this has always been very interesting to me that a doctor like that could do both. In a way I feel that many people wouldn’t agree with the story line of this book because someone who disagrees with the idea of abortion or does not believe in that practice would have a hard time reading it.

I also found a minor theme being that people have to learn to make their own choices. This was seen in the beginning of the novel when Homer made the choice to stay in the Orphanage his entire life, as well as the choices women in the novel make everyday. I find it interesting that a lot of the characters have two separate kinds of choices they can make, choices that are few and far between, as well as choices that they can’t even act upon.

Just a couple thoughts on minor and major themes I found🙃