Nenn ich dich Aufgang oder Untergang?
Denn manchmal bin ich vor dem Morgen bang
und greife scheu nach seiner Rosen Röte.
Und ahne eine Angst in seiner Flöte
vor Tagen, welche Liedlos sind und lang.
Aber die Abende sind mild und mein,
von meinem Schauen sind sie still beschienen.
In meinen Armen schlafen Wälder ein,
und ich bin selbst das Klingen über ihnen
und mit dem Dunkel in den Violinen
verwandt durch all mein Dunkelsein.
When I started college at [University of Puerto Rico] it surprised me that a lot of the people in my department had such a strong spirituality to merely be called Christians. I thought most of the students and scientists would have my line of thought as to what God is. When I learned about intelligent design, not knowing much about it, I thought it was a “subtheory” of evolution. Of course the creationists tried to convince me, but I wasn’t swayed. This is their chance to say that a supreme being (god) exists in order to counter the effects of the feared topic of evolution. The thing going on here is that the creationists look for an excuse to be able to bring God back to this world so full of sin and to be able to control society once again. This is an excellent idea for them because that’s the goal of everyone that has power (“government”). It’s also difficult on experiments alone to determine how the first amino acid was formed before life emerged. This kind of biology is speculative, that being its weak point against creationism. Still, it is concluded, according to evolutionists, that intelligent design is not based on the scientific method, unlike evolution. In science an observation is needed in order to conduct an experiment. When the experiment has been run several times and you always get a conclusive answer, then it passes on to being a theory. Therefore, ID doesn’t even come close to what ideal research would be. It’s a religio-philosophical analysis to explain why we’re here. It bothers me that they use science as a means to justify their cause. Maybe in this paragraph we’ll find ourselves in a sort of midpoint in which creation by a higher being is incomprehensible to me, or on the other hand, it would be absurd to them to think that such a “perfect” universe had not been created by that higher being. Maybe ID would be more tenable as a science fiction story. That intelligent being would be part of the race of the sdioesieh (that’s what it would sound like to us in order to understand) with technology advanced enough to control and recreate space-time, create matter/energy, specially hydrogen, my favorite element, and then control our stars’ nuclear reactions to form the atoms necessary to generate carbon based life. I should pitch this idea to the scientologists to see what they say… overall I agree with the religious world in the sense of promoting a society with fraternity as its purpose. Yeah, it sounds like a Miss Universe speech, and I like it like that. I like being able to read that professor’s opinion. I’m going to see if a discussion of these topics is possible at UPR.
Changing the subject, it’s good that we’re still alive. I hope this semester has started well for you and that you’re ok, even if “ok” is relative. Take care.
-guillermo
This is the translated version. The original is here.
Guillermo, miralo por encima y me dices si lo traduje bien.
A few months ago I was reading a review of William Dembski’s book No Free Lunch. I thougt it was a fairly good debunking of Dembski’s nonsense, so I sent it to Guillermo, a friend of mine back home. His reply is one of the most insightful commentaries I’ve seen in my life, not specifically of the book, but of the whole concept of intelligent design. His reply was also significant because out of all my friends he’s the one whose ideas mirror mine the most. With his permission, I’m posting the email in its entirety, in Spanish (the original language), and with a few alterations to aid in intelligibility:
Cuando entré a la upi [Universidad de Puerto Rico] me sorprendió que muchas de las personas que estaban en mi facultad tenían y tienen la espiritualidad ferviente para no decir que son sólo cristianos. Pensaba que la mayoría de los estudiantes y científicos iban a tener mi línea de pensamiento con respecto a lo que es dios. Cuando me topé con lo del diseño inteligente y no conocer mucho al respecto creía que era una subteoria de la evolución. Claro los creacionistas me lo vendieron bien, pero no me lo creí. Para ellos esta es su oportunidad de decir que hay un ser superior (dios) y asi contrarrestar los efectos del gran temido tema de la evolución. Lo que pasa es que los creacionistas buscan su excusa para poder traer a dios nuevamente a este mundo taaaaaan pecaminoooooso y volver a estar en control de la sociedad, que es una excelente idea para ellos como grupo porque eso es la meta de toda persona con poder (gobierno). También es difícil determinar a base de experimentos cómo surgio el primer amino ácido antes de que se generase vida. Por eso es que esta biología es especulativa y es su parte débil ante el creacionismo, pero sí se concluye, según los evolucionistas, que “ID” no esta basada en el procedimiento científico como lo es la evolución. En las ciencias se necesita una observación para llevar a cabo un experimento y cuando ese experimento lo han corrido más de una vez y siempre se llega a una contestación pura, entonces es que pasa a ser una teoría. Por lo tanto “ID” ni se acerca a lo que se llama una investigación, eso un análisis filósofo-religioso para explicar por que estamos aquí. Me molesta que utilicen la ciencia como medio de justificación para su causa. Tal vez en este párrafo nos econtramos en un punto medio en el cual para mí es incomprensible la creación por un ser superior o si se vira la tortilla, para ellos es absurdo no pensar que alguien creó el universo tan “perfecto”. Como punto a favor de “ID” convertido en una historia de ciencia ficción es… que ese ser inteligente perteneciera a la raza de sdioesieh (asi sonaría para nosotros para poderlo entender) con tecnología para poder controlar y recrear tiempo-espacio, crear materia-energía, en especial a mi elemento favorito hidrógeno y luego regular las reacciones nucleares de nuestras estrellas para formar los átomos necesarios que fomenten la vida a base de carbono. Se lo debería de presentar a los de cienciología a ver que opinan… en fin estoy de acuerdo con el mundo religioso en el sentido de hacer promoción a una sociedad con el proposito de fraternidad. Sí suena miss universe y me gusta. Me agrada poder leer la opinión de ese profesor. Voy a ver si se puede tener una discusión de estos temas en la upi.
Ahora cambiando el tema y finalizando que bueno que seguimos vivos. Espero que este semestre te esté comenzando con poca ansiedad y que la estés pasando bien aunque bien sea relativo, cuidate mucho
-guillermo
I’m going to attempt to translate this in another post and comment on it a little bit.
BBC News put out an interesting article three days ago titled Linguist ‘have different brains’. It says that a new study suggests that people that are good with languages have a difference in brain structure and shape:
Neuroscientists at University College London say they have more “white brain matter” in a part of the brain which processes sound.
Their brains could also be less symmetrical than others.
The assymetry they refer to above occurs in the transverse temporal gyri (Heschl’s gyri). It involves basically the left gyrus being significantly bigger in the faster learners than the slower learners.
In most people (at least most right-handed people), language is localized in the left hemisphere. So the fact that the left Heschl’s gyrus on the faster language learners looks almost twice the size of the one on the slower language learners seems to be a good cause for the enhanced ability to identify different sounds.
They should follow up this research with some sort of study comparing people that are more visually oriented. I know that sometimes in another language I can’t really identify a sound unless I can imagine how it would be written. But then again maybe that’s just me…
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