found_drama

OK, I admit it, this is a blatant B^2 rip but imitation is the highest form of flattery and (let’s face it) this is the choicest quote in the Salon article:

SALON: What do you do with consciousness? I mean, do you really think the mind is totally reducible to neural networks and the electro-chemical surges in the brain? Or might there be something else that goes beyond the physical mechanics of the brain?

DAWKINS: Well, once again, let’s not use the word “reducible” in a negative way. The sheer number of neurons in the brain, and the complication of the connections between the neurons, is such that one doesn’t want to use the word “reducible” in any kind of negative way. Consciousness is the biggest puzzle facing biology, neurobiology, computational studies and evolutionary biology. It is a very, very big problem. I don’t know the answer. Nobody knows the answer. I think one day they probably will know the answer. But even if science doesn’t know the answer, I return to the question, what on earth makes you think that religion will? Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous. Nobody has an explanation for consciousness. That should be a spur to work harder and try to understand it. Not to give up and just say, “Oh well, it must be a soul.” That doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t explain anything. You’ve said absolutely nothing when you’ve said that.

So (like my title says): I <3 [tag]Richard Dawkins[/tag]. Truly one of the great living minds in science. And apparently, philosophically spot on as well.

We barely made it out without killing anyone the first time.  Cleared the town but we knew they would be after us for things other than the killing; we definitely hadn’t murdered anyone but I didn’t know about the other things.  I couldn’t know.

We took refuge in the parking lot of a townhouse community for the night; houses adjoined each other for a quarter-mile in either direction.  We weren’t staying at anyone’s house, just slept in the (stolen?) mini-van out in the parking lot.  But they found us there.  I couldn’t know if these guys were in any way affiliated with our first pursuers.  But they found us.  My companion wasn’t in the car when they came on.  I had been outside, surveying the neighborhood (and the many people in the street) when I noticed them peering into the windows of our mini-van.  I tried to ask them if I could help them, like maybe they were lost.  But when they saw me, they pulled their guns.

I didn’t have a choice.  I shot at them.  I hit one.  He went down inside the mini-van.  The other ran off.  I don’t know if I hit him.

We drove all night to escape, that stinking body in the mini-van.  We kept our route to the coast.  We tried to stay out of sight.  Eventually, we turned and drove inland again until we came upon a motel at the edge of the forest.  We checked in around dusk.  My companion would stay.  I hiked into the woods, dragging that body behind me along the trail under cover of darkness.  Deep enough into the woods, I turned off the trail and hiked for miles, waiting for it to get far enough off.  The landscape kept changing around me.  Flat terrain, steep mountains…  The Earth moved around me and I dropped him and tried to find my way out - - down the hill, turn along the cliff’s edge, keep moving down the river bank toward the bridge and into the city…