(M) On Comments…

On July 12th 2008, at 5:05 pm, Stephen Gash commented on ‘Ostensible Enlightenment’:

‘It was not the ENGLISH Parliament, which disappeared of 1st May 1707, it was the British Parliament. There is still no English Parliament.’

Thank you Stephen, that is correct, and the original has been ammended accordingly, but it’s not a simple issue. The 1707 Act of Union with Scotland did occur long before 1760-1820, the period identified as the height of Enclosure, but a creeping, rather than a sweeping Enclosure had been going on since the late 1500’s, by virtue of, and for the benfit of the English.

1760-1820 spans the 1800 date of the Act of Union with Ireland, so I would have had to begin the sentance with Parliament of the United Kindgdom, and end it with ‘and Ireland’, and then we’d be into Catholic Emancipation, the Act of Uniformity, crop failures and absentee English landlords as a backdrop for the Factory Act, only to find, 15 years later that I’m wrong again.

But it was perhaps unfortunate that I used the term ‘English’ in the sense it’s used in ‘The Oxford History of England’ – and as it has been used historically to refer not merely to the British Isles, but to the colonies of the British Empire. My argument is that these very concepts are inherrently flawed – the ostensible rationalization of religious divisions between members of the human species, that employed as a basis for thought and behaviour encourage just such marginalization.

If any human beings have been offended by my failure to include, or disclude accordingly, the Irish, Scots and/or Welsh in responsibility for Enclosure and the Factory Act, I can only apologize.

Thanks again Stephen,

Regards, Mark.

On July 17, 2008 at 12:47 pm, Joel commented on ‘Or Else…’:

‘I have nothing to add.’

Thank you Joel. That’s funny, but I just couldn’t bring myself to publish speculations on the future of humankind and civilization if we continue in the course of religious, political and economic ideas of low validity, using scientific knowledge as a tool, and ignoring scientific knowledge as a rule for the conduct of our affairs. It’s too awful to think about what our offspring will suffer if we don’t address our epistemologies – though it be to the cost of our identities and and worldviews, it’s a small price to pay.

Regards, Mark.

On July 18, 2008 at 5:23 pm rivera2007 commenting on ‘The Next Step in Human Evolution Part One’ said:

‘I failed to see the relation between this article and the title. What have a meteor shower, a bride to be, and a Primer Minister to do with human evolution? There is a short paragraph, to be sure, regarding the role of science in the evolution process, apparently taking over from a god. Your assumption that that god took an evolutionary shortcut is simply that, an assumption based simply on faith and unprovable. If he did it once, being all powerful, why leave it in the hands of humans? They’ll probably botch the job!
I shall read parts 2 and 3 for maybe the answer is there to my query.’

rivera2007 – thanks for your comments. It’s clear you haven’t understood what I meant, possibly because I haven’t expressed myself clearly enough. Let me try to be clear – this is an athiestic argument that accounts for the occurence and role of the concept of God in human evolution – but refutes His existence. Boiled down to its essence, my argument is that the role God has played – a lingua franca of the social group and an ostensibly objective authority for hierarchy and law, should now be played by science. It’s a large and complex issue – I’m doing my best to present in simple terms, while at the same time making it known that such a contentious subject is in no way treated lightly. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but I hope you’ll bear with me as I work on it.

All the best, Mark.