What is atheism? – Atheist Alliance International

Posted on by

Atheism is very simple, yet widely misunderstood. The word atheism comprises the word theism with the prefix a. So lets break it down. Theism is the belief in a god or gods. The prefix a means; without or lack of. Therefore, atheism means without a belief in a god or gods or the lack of a belief in a god or gods.

We often hear theists say, If you dont believe in God, you must believe God does not exist! but this is simply wrong. Lacking a belief in a god does not entail believing that no gods exist. A person could reasonably say she doesnt know if any gods exist, and there are none that she currently believes in.

This issue is the single biggest misunderstanding about atheism. Fortunately, there is a neat way to show why its wrong. A god either exists, or it doesnt. There are only two possibilities.

Now, imagine Im holding a bag of coins and I claim theres an even number of coins in the bag. A bag of coins either has an even number of coins or an odd number. Like a gods existence, there are only two possibilities. If you are not able to check my claim by counting the coins, you wont know if my claim is true so you should not believe me. But that does not mean that you must believe there is an odd number of coins in the bag. You dont have the evidence to take a view on it, so you shouldnt believe either possibility.

It is not necessary for an atheist to claim that no gods exist, nevertheless, some do. People often call this position hard atheism. Hard atheism is atheism with the additional conviction that there are no gods anywhere either inside, or outside, of the universe.

Sometimes theists are thoroughly perplexed by atheism. The way they see the world, not believing in a god is bizarrebordering on madness. So lets look at why people are atheists. There are several reasons people lack a belief in gods; we will discuss just two.

Some people are atheists simply because they have never been taught to be theists. People raised by an atheist family in an atheistic society may never be exposed to the idea of gods (except in history books), so they grow up with no belief in them. Remember, people do not suddenly become Christians, Muslims, Hindus or whatever. Children raised in religious families in religious societies are trained to be Christians, Muslims or Hindus.

A significant proportion of atheists in the world today are atheists because they were not taught to be anything else.

Other atheists were taught to believe in a god or gods but decided it didnt make sense so they abandoned their belief.

Lets look at one scenario. Arif was born a Muslim but he knows there are around 5 billion people in the world who believe in different religions and, often, in different gods. He wonders if there is a good reason to be a Muslim rather than something else, but cannot find anything compelling.

He worries that the arguments Muslims use to prove their god exists are the exact same arguments others use to prove their god exists. He knows there are some big questions that science cannot answer, such as Where did the universe come from? and God is used to answer those questions. But he realizes there is a possibility that science may answer those questions one day. And even if it never does, an unanswered question does not mean the particular god Abraham dreamed about 3,500 years ago must be real. Arif knows thousands of people have dreamed of thousands of gods and created thousands of religions. He knows men invent gods and religions. What is special about Abrahams god?

After much thought, Arif sees that his belief is really based on faith, and not on incontrovertible evidence. And he sees that the Christians belief and the Hindus belief is also founded on faith. With a little more thought he concludes that faith is not a way to distinguish what is true from what is falseit is a way to justify whatever you happen to believe. Different people believe completely contradictory things on faith, so it has no value as a way to decide what is true.

At this point Arif has no reasons left to believe in his god, so he becomes an atheist.

This journey of discovery, or something rather like it, is the journey millions of people have taken to become atheists. If you ask any of these people why they are atheists, you would get a similar answer, Because there are no good reasons to believe in gods; and I wont believe in them for bad reasons.

There is nothing you have to believe to be an atheist. Not believing in any god, is the only qualification required. Beyond that, an atheist can believe in anything at all.

So being an atheist, says nothing about a persons politics, attitude towards LGBT rights or views on gun control, abortion, church/state separation or anything else. In principle, an atheist could believe in fairies, although the thinking that leads to unbelief in gods, in most cases leads to unbelief in other things that cannot be shown to be real. Consequently, atheists most likely will not believe in Satan, demons, angels, karma, heaven, hell or anything else that relies on the supernatural but, in principle, they could.

Theism and atheism tell us about a persons belief in gods. Agnosticism and Gnosticism tell us what a person claims to know, not what they believe. Because atheism and agnosticism are different things, it is possible to be both an atheist and an agnostic. An agnostic atheist does not believe in any gods but does not claim to know that no gods exist.

It works the same with theism. It is possible to be an agnostic theista person who believes in God but does not claim to know God exists. In practice though, most believers are gnostic theiststhey believe in God and claim to know God exists. Interestingly, most atheists are agnostic atheists.

Some people self-describe as agnostic when they cannot decide what to believe. Thats fine, but if they do not actually believe in a god, they are not theists, so they must be atheists.

Over centuries, theists have denigrated atheists. Stories have circulated that atheists are immoral, dishonest and untrustworthy, that atheists hate God and love Satan and that atheists ignore God so they can behave however they like. If we look at countries where most people are atheists, we can see such allegations are not true.

Atheists are humans and you will find good and bad, but if you compare atheistic countries with very religious ones, you are likely to see atheistic countries have lower crimes rates and less dysfunctional behavior. For example, Figure 1 shows the relationship between religiosity (the percentage of people who say religion is important in their lives) and intentional homicide rates. All of the high homicide rate countries are very religious but none of the low homicide rate countries are. (Note that the Y axis Homicide Rate is drawn on a logarithmic scale!)

These baseless allegations against atheists have been made for so long that the word atheism is now seen as tarnished and many people avoid it, even though they have no belief in gods. Consequently, some atheists self-identify as freethinkers, skeptics, secularists, agnostics, non-believers and more. That is a pity. Atheism has a long history and it describes an intellectually honorable viewpoint simply and precisely. We vote to use it with pride.

PREVIOUS: About atheism NEXT: Is atheism a religion?Looking for books on atheism, critical thinking, evolution or ethics?

See the rest here:

What is atheism? - Atheist Alliance International

Atheism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Posted on by

The term atheist describes a person who does not believe that God or a divine being exists. Worldwide there may be as many as a billion atheists, although social stigma, political pressure, and intolerance make accurate polling difficult.

For the most part, atheists have presumed that the most reasonable conclusions are the ones that have the best evidential support. And they have argued that the evidence in favor of Gods existence is too weak, or the arguments in favor of concluding there is no God are more compelling. Traditionally the arguments for Gods existence have fallen into several families: ontological, teleological, and cosmological arguments, miracles, and prudential justifications. For detailed discussion of those arguments and the major challenges to them that have motivated the atheist conclusion, the reader is encouraged to consult the other relevant sections of the encyclopedia.

Arguments for the non-existence of God are deductive or inductive. Deductive arguments for the non-existence of God are either single or multiple property disproofs that allege that there are logical or conceptual problems with one or several properties that are essential to any being worthy of the title God. Inductive arguments typically present empirical evidence that is employed to argue that Gods existence is improbable or unreasonable. Briefly stated, the main arguments are: Gods non-existence is analogous to the non-existence of Santa Claus. The existence of widespread human and non-human suffering is incompatible with an all powerful, all knowing, all good being. Discoveries about the origins and nature of the universe, and about the evolution of life on Earth make the God hypothesis an unlikely explanation. Widespread non-belief and the lack of compelling evidence show that a God who seeks belief in humans does not exist. Broad considerations from science that support naturalism, or the view that all and only physical entities and causes exist, have also led many to the atheism conclusion.

The presentation below provides an overview of concepts, arguments, and issues that are central to work on atheism.

Atheism is the view that there is no God. Unless otherwise noted, this article will use the term God to describe the divine entity that is a central tenet of the major monotheistic religious traditionsChristianity, Islam, and Judaism. At a minimum, this being is usually understood as having all power, all knowledge, and being infinitely good or morally perfect. See the article Western Concepts of God for more details. When necessary, we will use the term gods to describe all other lesser or different characterizations of divine beings, that is, beings that lack some, one, or all of the omni- traits.

There have been many thinkers in history who have lacked a belief in God. Some ancient Greek philosophers, such as Epicurus, sought natural explanations for natural phenomena. Epicurus was also to first to question the compatibility of God with suffering. Forms of philosophical naturalism that would replace all supernatural explanations with natural ones also extend into ancient history. During the Enlightenment,David Hume and Immanuel Kant give influential critiques of the traditional arguments for the existence of God in the 18th century. After Darwin (1809-1882) makes the case for evolution and some modern advancements in science, a fully articulated philosophical worldview that denies the existence of God gains traction. In the 19th and 20th centuries, influential critiques on God, belief in God, and Christianity by Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, and Camus set the stage for modern atheism.

It has come to be widely accepted that to be an atheist is to affirm the non-existence of God. Anthony Flew (1984) called this positive atheism, whereas to lack a belief that God or gods exist is to be a negative atheist. Parallels for this use of the term would be terms such as amoral, atypical, or asymmetrical. So negative atheism would includes someone who has never reflected on the question of whether or not God exists and has no opinion about the matter and someone who had thought about the matter a great deal and has concluded either that she has insufficient evidence to decide the question, or that the question cannot be resolved in principle. Agnosticism is traditionally characterized as neither believing that God exists nor believing that God does not exist.

Atheism can be narrow or wide in scope. The narrow atheist does not believe in the existence of God (an omni- being). A wide atheist does not believe that any gods exist, including but not limited to the traditional omni-God. The wide positive atheist denies that God exists, and also denies that Zeus, Gefjun, Thor, Sobek, Bakunawa and others exist. The narrow atheist does not believe that God exists, but need not take a stronger view about the existence or non-existence of other supernatural beings. One could be a narrow atheist about God, but still believe in the existence of some other supernatural entities. (This is one of the reasons that it is a mistake to identify atheism with materialism or naturalism.)

Separating these different senses of the term allows us to better understand the different sorts of justification that can be given for varieties of atheism with different scopes. An argument may serve to justify one form of atheism and not another. For Instance, alleged contradictions within a Christian conception of God by themselves do not serve as evidence for wide atheism, but presumably, reasons that are adequate to show that there is no omni-God would be sufficient to show that there is no Islamic God.

We can divide the justifications for atheism into several categories. For the most part, atheists have taken an evidentialist approach to the question of Gods existence. That is, atheists have taken the view that whether or not a person is justified in having an attitude of belief towards the proposition, God exists, is a function of that persons evidence. Evidence here is understood broadly to include a priori arguments, arguments to the best explanation, inductive and empirical reasons, as well as deductive and conceptual premises. An asymmetry exists between theism and atheism in that atheists have not offered faith as a justification for non-belief. That is, atheists have not presented non-evidentialist defenses for believing that there is no God.

Not all theists appeal only to faith, however. Evidentialists theist and evidentialist atheists may have a number of general epistemological principles concerning evidence, arguments, and implication in common, but then disagree about what the evidence is, how it should be understood, and what it implies. They may disagree, for instance, about whether the values of the physical constants and laws in nature constitute evidence for intentional fine tuning, but agree at least that whether God exists is a matter that can be explored empirically or with reason.

Many non-evidentialist theists may deny that the acceptability of particular religious claim depends upon evidence, reasons, or arguments as they have been classically understood. Faith or prudential based beliefs in God, for example, will fall into this category. The evidentialist atheist and the non-evidentialist theist, therefore, may have a number of more fundamental disagreements about the acceptability of believing, despite inadequate or contrary evidence, the epistemological status of prudential grounds for believing, or the nature of God belief. Their disagreement may not be so much about the evidence, or even about God, but about the legitimate roles that evidence, reason, and faith should play in human belief structures.

It is not clear that arguments against atheism that appeal to faith have any prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence do. The general evidentialist view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound that imposes an epistemic obligation on her to accept the conclusion. Insofar as having faith that a claim is true amounts to believing contrary to or despite a lack of evidence, one persons faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective, epistemological implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable.

Justifying atheism, then, can entail several different projects. There are the evidential disputes over what information we have available to us, how it should be interpreted, and what it implies. There are also broader meta-epistemological concerns about the roles of argument, reasoning, belief, and religiousness in human life. The atheist can find herself not just arguing that the evidence indicates that there is no God, but defending science, the role of reason, and the necessity of basing beliefs on evidence more generally.

Friendly atheism; William Rowe has introduced an important distinction to modern discussions of atheism. If someone has arrived at what they take to be a reasonable and well-justified conclusion that there is no God, then what attitude should she take about another persons persistence in believing in God, particularly when that other person appears to be thoughtful and at least prima facie reasonable? It seems that the atheist could take one of several views. The theists belief, as the atheist sees it, could be rational or irrational, justified or unjustified. Must the atheist who believes that the evidence indicates that there is no God conclude that the theists believing in God is irrational or unjustified? Rowes answer is no. (Rowe 1979, 2006)

Rowe and most modern epistemologists have said that whether a conclusion C is justified for a person S is a function of the information (correct or incorrect) that S possesses and the principles of inference that S employs in arriving at C. But whether or not C is justified is not directly tied to its truth, or even to the truth of the evidence concerning C. That is, a person can have a justified, but false belief. She could arrive at a conclusion through an epistemically inculpable process and yet get it wrong. Ptolemy, for example, the greatest astronomer of his day, who had mastered all of the available information and conducted exhaustive research into the question, was justified in concluding that the Sun orbits the Earth. A medieval physician in the 1200s who guesses (correctly) that the bubonic plague was caused by the bacterium yersinia pestis would not have been reasonable or justified given his background information and given that the bacterium would not even be discovered for 600 years.

We can call the view that rational, justified beliefs can be false, as it applies to atheism, friendly or fallibilist atheism. See the article on Fallibilism. The friendly atheist can grant that a theist may be justified or reasonable in believing in God, even though the atheist takes the theists conclusion to be false. What could explain their divergence to the atheist? The believer may not be in possession of all of the relevant information. The believer may be basing her conclusion on a false premise or premises. The believer may be implicitly or explicitly employing inference rules that themselves are not reliable or truth preserving, but the background information she has leads her, reasonably, to trust the inference rule. The same points can be made for the friendly theist and the view that he may take about the reasonableness of the atheists conclusion. It is also possible, of course, for both sides to be unfriendly and conclude that anyone who disagrees with what they take to be justified is being irrational. Given developments in modern epistemology and Rowes argument, however, the unfriendly view is neither correct nor conducive to a constructive and informed analysis of the question of God.

Atheists have offered a wide range of justifications and accounts for non-belief. A notable modern view is Antony Flews Presumption of Atheism (1984). Flew argues that the default position for any rational believer should be neutral with regard to the existence of God and to be neutral is to not have a belief regarding its existence. And not having a belief with regard to God is to be a negative atheist on Flews account. The onus of proof lies on the man who affirms, not on the man who denies. . . on the proposition, not on the opposition, Flew argues (20). Beyond that, coming to believe that such a thing does or does not exist will require justification, much as a jury presumes innocence concerning the accused and requires evidence in order to conclude that he is guilty. Flews negative atheist will presume nothing at the outset, not even the logical coherence of the notion of God, but her presumption is defeasible, or revisable in the light of evidence. We shall call this view atheism by default.

The atheism by default position contrasts with a more permissive attitude that is sometimes taken regarding religious belief. The notions of religious tolerance and freedom are sometimes understood to indicate the epistemic permissibility of believing despite a lack of evidence in favor or even despite evidence to the contrary. One is in violation of no epistemic duty by believing, even if one lacks conclusive evidence in favor or even if one has evidence that is on the whole against. In contrast to Flews jury model, we can think of this view as treating religious beliefs as permissible until proven incorrect. Some aspects of fideistic accounts or Plantingas reformed epistemology can be understood in this light. This sort of epistemic policy about God or any other matter has been controversial, and a major point of contention between atheists and theists. Atheists have argued that we typically do not take it to be epistemically inculpable or reasonable for a person to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or some other supernatural being merely because they do not possess evidence to the contrary. Nor would we consider it reasonable for a person to begin believing that they have cancer because they do not have proof to the contrary. The atheist by default argues that it would be appropriate to not believe in such circumstances. The epistemic policy here takes its inspiration from an influential piece by W.K. Clifford (1999) in which he argues that it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything for which there is insufficient reason.

There are several other approaches to the justification of atheism that we will consider below. There is a family of arguments, sometimes known as exercises in deductive atheology, for the conclusion that the existence of God is impossible. Another large group of important and influential arguments can be gathered under the heading inductive atheology. These probabilistic arguments invoke considerations about the natural world such as widespread suffering, nonbelief, or findings from biology or cosmology. Another approach, atheistic noncognitivism, denies that God talk is even meaningful or has any propositional content that can be evaluated in terms of truth or falsity. Rather, religious speech acts are better viewed as a complicated sort of emoting or expression of spiritual passion. Inductive and deductive approaches are cognitivistic in that they accept that claims about God have meaningful content and can be determined to be true or false.

Many discussions about the nature and existence of God have either implicitly or explicitly accepted that the concept of God is logically coherent. That is, for many believers and non-believers the assumption has been that such a being as God could possibly exist but they have disagreed about whether there actually is one. Atheists within the deductive atheology tradition, however, have not even granted that God, as he is typically described, is possible. The first question we should ask, argues the deductive atheist, is whether the description or the concept is logically consistent. If it is not, then no such being could possibly exist. The deductive atheist argues that some, one, or all of Gods essential properties are logically contradictory. Since logical impossibilities are not and cannot be real, God does not and cannot exist. Consider a putative description of an object as a four-sided triangle, a married bachelor, or prime number with more than 2 factors. We can be certain that no such thing fitting that description exists because what they describe is demonstrably impossible.

If deductive atheological proofs are successful, the results are epistemically significant. Many people have doubts that the view that there is no God can be rationally justified. But if deductive disproofs show that there can exist no being with a certain property or properties and those properties figure essentially in the characterization of God, then we will have the strongest possible justification for concluding that there is no being fitting any of those characterizations. If God is impossible, then God does not exist.

It may be possible at this point to re-engineer the description of God so that it avoids the difficulties, but as a consequence the theist faces several challenges according to the deductive atheologist. First, if the traditional description of God is logically incoherent, then what is the relationship between a theists belief and some revised, more sophisticated account that allegedly does not suffer from those problems? Is that the God that she believed in all along? Before the account of God was improved by consideration of the atheological arguments, what were the reasons that led her to believe in that conception of God? Secondly, if the classical characterizations of God are shown to be logically impossible, then there is a legitimate question as whether any new description that avoids those problems describes a being that is worthy of the label. It will not do, in the eyes of many theists and atheists, to retreat to the view that God is merely a somewhat powerful, partially-knowing, and partly-good being, for example. Thirdly, the atheist will still want to know on the basis of what evidence or arguments should we conclude that a being as described by this modified account exists? Fourthly, there is no question that there exist less than omni-beings in the world. We possess less than infinite power, knowledge and goodness, as do many other creatures and objects in our experience. What is the philosophical importance or metaphysical significance of arguing for the existence of those sorts of beings and advocating belief in them? Fifthly, and most importantly, if it has been argued that Gods essential properties are impossible, then any move to another description seems to be a concession that positive atheism about God is justified.

Another possible response that the theist may take in response to deductive atheological arguments is to assert that God is something beyond proper description with any of the concepts or properties that we can or do employ as suggested in Kierkegaard or Tillich. So complications from incompatibilities among properties of God indicate problems for our descriptions, not the impossibility of a divine being worthy of the label. Many atheists have not been satisfied with this response because the theist has now asserted the existence of and attempted to argue in favor of believing in a being that we cannot form a proper idea of, one that does not have properties that we can acknowledge; it is a being that defies comprehension. It is not clear how we could have reasons or justifications for believing in the existence of such a thing. It is not clear how it could be an existing thing in any familiar sense of the term in that it lacks comprehensible properties. Or put another way, as Patrick Grim notes, If a believers notion of God remains so vague as to escape all impossibility arguments, it can be argued, it cannot be clear to even him what he believesor whether what he takes for pious belief has any content at all, (2007, p. 200). It is not clear how it could be reasonable to believe in such a thing, and it is even more doubtful that it is epistemically unjustified or irresponsible to deny that such a thing is exists. It is clear, however, that the deductive atheologist must acknowledge the growth and development of our concepts and descriptions of reality over time, and she must take a reasonable view about the relationship of those attempts and revisions in our ideas about what may turns out to be real.

Deductive disproofs have typically focused on logical inconsistencies to be found either within a single property or between multiple properties. Philosophers have struggled to work out the details of what it would be to be omnipotent, for instance. It has come to be widely accepted that a being cannot be omnipotent where omnipotence simply means to power to do anything including the logically impossible. This definition of the term suffers from the stone paradox. An omnipotent being would either be capable of creating a rock that he cannot lift, or he is incapable. If he is incapable, then there is something he cannot do, and therefore he does not have the power to do anything. If he can create such a rock, then again there is something that he cannot do, namely lift the rock he just created. So paradoxically, having the ability to do anything would appear to entail being unable to do some things. As a result, many theists and atheists have agreed that a being could not have that property. A number of attempts to work out an account of omnipotence have ensued. (Cowan 2003, Flint and Freddoso 1983, Hoffman and Rosenkrantz 1988 and 2006, Mavrodes 1977, Ramsey 1956, Sobel 2004, Savage 1967, and Wierenga 1989 for examples). It has also been argued that omniscience is impossible, and that the most knowledge that can possibly be had is not enough to be fitting of God. One of the central problems has been that God cannot have knowledge of indexical claims such as, I am here now. It has also been argued that God cannot know future free choices, or God cannot know future contingent propositions, or that Cantors and Gdel proofs imply that the notion of a set of all truths cannot be made coherent. (Everitt 2004, Grim 1985, 1988, 1984, Pucetti 1963, and Sobel 2004). See the article on Omniscience and Divine Foreknowledge for more details.

The logical coherence of eternality, personhood, moral perfection, causal agency, and many others have been challenged in the deductive atheology literature.

Another form of deductive atheological argument attempts to show the logical incompatibility of two or more properties that God is thought to possess. A long list of properties have been the subject of multiple property disproofs, transcendence and personhood, justice and mercy, immutability and omniscience, immutability and omnibenevolence, omnipresence and agency, perfection and love, eternality and omniscience, eternality and creator of the universe, omnipresence and consciousness. (Blumenfeld 2003, Drange 1998b, Flew 1955, Grim 2007, Kretzmann 1966, and McCormick 2000 and 2003)

The combination of omnipotence and omniscience have received a great deal of attention. To possess all knowledge, for instance, would include knowing all of the particular ways in which one will exercise ones power, or all of the decisions that one will make, or all of the decisions that one has made in the past. But knowing any of those entails that the known proposition is true. So does God have the power to act in some fashion that he has not foreseen, or differently than he already has without compromising his omniscience? It has also been argued that God cannot be both unsurpassably good and free. (Rowe 2004).

When attempts to provide evidence or arguments in favor of the existence of something fail, a legitimate and important question is whether anything except the failure of those arguments can be inferred. That is, does positive atheism follow from the failure of arguments for theism? A number of authors have concluded that it does. They taken the view that unless some case for the existence of God succeeds, we should believe that there is no God.

Many have taken an argument J.M. Findlay (1948) to be pivotal. Findlay, like many others, argues that in order to be worthy of the label God, and in order to be worthy of a worshipful attitude of reverence, emulation, and abandoned admiration, the being that is the object of that attitude must be inescapable, necessary, and unsurpassably supreme. (Martin 1990, Sobel 2004). If a being like God were to exist, his existence would be necessary. And his existence would be manifest as an a priori, conceptual truth. That is to say that of all the approaches to Gods existence, the ontological argument is the strategy that we would expect to be successful were there a God, and if they do not succeed, then we can conclude that there is no God, Findlay argues.As most see it these attempts to prove God have not met with success, Findlay says, The general philosophical verdict is that none of these proofs is truly compelling.

The view that there is no God or gods has been criticized on the grounds that it is not possible to prove a negative. No matter how exhaustive and careful our analysis, there could always be some proof, some piece of evidence, or some consideration that we have not considered. God could be something that we have not conceived, or God exists in some form or fashion that has escaped our investigation. Positive atheism draws a stronger conclusion than any of the problems with arguments for Gods existence alone could justify. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Findlay and the deductive atheological arguments attempt to address these concerns, but a central question put to atheists has been about the possibility of giving inductive or probabilistic justifications for negative existential claims. The response to the, You cannot prove a negative criticism has been that it invokes an artificially high epistemological standard of justification that creates a much broader set of problems not confined to atheism.

The general principle seems to be that one is not epistemically entitled to believe a proposition unless you have exhausted all of the possibilities and proven beyond any doubt that a claim is true. Or put negatively, one is not justified in disbelieving unless you have proven with absolute certainty that the thing in question does not exist. The problem is that we do not have a priori disproof that many things do not exist, yet it is reasonable and justified to believe that they do not: the Dodo bird is extinct, unicorns are not real, there is no teapot orbiting the Earth on the opposite side of the Sun, there is no Santa Claus, ghosts are not real, a defendant is not guilty, a patient does not have a particular disease, so on. There are a wide range of other circumstances under which we take it that believing that X does not exist is reasonable even though no logical impossibility is manifest. None of these achieve the level of deductive, a priori or conceptual proof.

The objection to inductive atheism undermines itself in that it generates a broad, pernicious skepticism against far more than religious or irreligious beliefs. Mackie (1982) says, It will not be sufficient to criticize each argument on its own by saying that it does not prove the intended conclusion, that is, does not put it beyond all doubt. That follows at once from the admission that the argument is non-deductive, and it is absurd to try to confine our knowledge and belief to matters which are conclusively established by sound deductive arguments. The demand for certainty will inevitably be disappointed, leaving skepticism in command of almost every issue (p. 7). If the atheist is unjustified for lacking deductive proof, then it is argued, it would appear that so are the beliefs that planes fly, fish swim, or that there exists a mind-independent world.

The atheist can also wonder what the point of the objection is. When we lack deductive disproof that X exists, should we be agnostic about it? Is it permissible to believe that it does exist? Clearly, that would not be appropriate. Gravity may be the work of invisible, undetectable elves with sticky shoes. We dont have any certain disproof of the elvesphysicists are still struggling with an explanation of gravity. But surely someone who accepts the sticky-shoed elves view until they have deductive disproof is being unreasonable. It is also clear that if you are a positive atheist about the gravity elves, you would not be unreasonable. You would not be overstepping your epistemic entitlement by believing that no such things exist. On the contrary, believing that they exist or even being agnostic about their existence on the basis of their mere possibility would not be justified. So there appear to be a number of precedents and epistemic principles at work in our belief structures that provide room for inductive atheism. However, these issues in the epistemology of atheism and recent work by Graham Oppy (2006) suggest that more attention must be paid to the principles that describe epistemic permissibility, culpability, reasonableness, and justification with regard to the theist, atheist, and agnostic categories.

Below we will consider several groups of influential inductive atheological arguments .

Martin (1990) offers this general principle to describe the criteria that render the belief, X does not exist justified:

A person is justified in believing that X does not exist if

(1) all the available evidence used to support the view that X exists is shown to be inadequate; and

(2) X is the sort of entity that, if X exists, then there is a presumption that would be evidence adequate to support the view that X exists; and

(3) this presumption has not been defeated although serious efforts have been made to do so; and

(4) the area where evidence would appear, if there were any, has been comprehensively examined; and

(5) there are no acceptable beneficial reasons to believe that X exists. (p. 283)

Many of the major works in philosophical atheism that address the full range of recent arguments for Gods existence (Gale 1991, Mackie 1982, Martin 1990, Sobel 2004, Everitt 2004, and Weisberger 1999) can be seen as providing evidence to satisfy the first, fourth and fifth conditions. A substantial body of articles with narrower scope (see References and Further Reading) can also be understood to play this role in justifying atheism. A large group of discussions of Pascals Wager and related prudential justifications in the literature can also be seen as relevant to the satisfaction of the fifth condition.

One of the interesting and important questions in the epistemology of philosophy of religion has been whether the second and third conditions are satisfied concerning God. If there were a God, how and in what ways would we expect him to show in the world? Empirically? Conceptually? Would he be hidden? Martin argues, and many others have accepted implicitly or explicitly, that God is the sort of thing that would manifest in some discernible fashion to our inquiries. Martin concludes, therefore, that God satisfied all of the conditions, so, positive narrow atheism is justified.

The existence of widespread human and non-human animal suffering has been seen by many to be compelling evidence that a being with all power, all knowledge, and all goodness does not exist. Many of those arguments have been deductive: See the article on The Logical Problem of Evil. In the 21st century, several inductive arguments from evil for the non-existence of God have received a great deal of attention. See The Evidential Problem of Evil.

Questions about the origins of the universe and cosmology have been the focus for many inductive atheism arguments. We can distinguish four recent views about God and the cosmos:

Naturalism: On naturalistic view, the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.7 billion years ago, the Earth formed out of cosmic matter about 4.6 billion years ago, and life forms on Earth, unaided by any supernatural forces about 4 billion years ago. Various physical (non-God) hypotheses are currently being explored about the cause or explanation of the Big Bang such as the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary condition model, brane cosmology models, string theoretic models, ekpyrotic models, cyclic models, chaotic inflation, and so on.

Big Bang Theism: We can call the view that God caused about the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago Big Bang Theism.

Intelligent Design Theism: There are many variations, but most often the view is that God created the universe, perhaps with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, and then beginning with the appearance of life 4 billion years ago. God supernaturally guided the formation and development of life into the forms we see today.

Creationism: Finally, there is a group of people who for the most part denies the occurrence of the Big Bang and of evolution altogether; God created the universe, the Earth, and all of the life on Earth in its more or less present form 6,000-10,000 years ago.

Taking a broad view, many atheists have concluded that neither Big Bang Theism, Intelligent Design Theism, nor Creationism is the most reasonable description of the history of the universe. Before the theory of evolution and recent developments in modern astronomy, a view wherein God did not play a large role in the creation and unfolding of the cosmos would have been hard to justify. Now, internal problems with those views and the evidence from cosmology and biology indicate that naturalism is the best explanation. Justifications for Big Bang Theism have focused on modern versions of the Cosmological and Kalam arguments. Since everything that comes into being must have a cause, including the universe, then God was the cause of the Big Bang. (Craig 1995)

The objections to these arguments have been numerous and vigorously argued. Critics have challenged the inference to a supernatural cause to fill gaps in the natural account, as well as the inferences that the first cause must be a single, personal, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good being. It is not clear that any of the properties of God as classically conceived in orthodox monotheism can be inferred from what we know about the Big Bang without first accepting a number of theistic assumptions. Infinite power and knowledge do not appear to be required to bring about a Big Bangwhat if our Big Bang was the only act that a being could perform? There appears to be consensus that infinite goodness or moral perfection cannot be inferred as a necessary part of the cause of the Big Bangtheists have focused their efforts in the problem of evil, discussions just attempting to prove that it is possible that God is infinitely good given the state of the world. Big Bang Theism would need to show that no other sort of cause besides a morally perfect one could explain the universe we find ourselves in. Critics have also doubted whether we can know that some supernatural force that caused the Big Bang is still in existence or is the same entity as identified and worshipped in any particular religious tradition. Even if major concessions are granted in the cosmological argument, all that it would seem to suggest is that there was a first cause or causes, but widely accepted arguments from that first cause or causes to the fully articulated God of Christianity or Islam, for instance, have not been forthcoming.

In some cases, atheists have taken the argument a step further. They have offered cosmological arguments for the nonexistence of God on the basis of considerations from physics, astronomy, and subatomic theory. These arguments are quite technical, so they are given brief attention. God, if he exists, knowing all and having all power, would only employ those means to his ends that are rational, effective, efficient, and optimal. If God were the creator, then he was the cause of the Big Bang, but cosmological atheists have argued that the singularity that produced the Big Bang and events that unfold thereafter preclude a rational divine agent from achieving particular ends with the Big Bang as the means. The Big Bang would not have been the route God would have chosen to this world as a result. (Stenger 2007, Smith 1993, Everitt 2004.)

In William Paleys famous analysis, he argues by analogy that the presence of order in the universe, like the features we find in a watch, are indicative of the existence of a designer who is responsible for the artifact. Many authorsDavid Hume (1935), Wesley Salmon (1978), Michael Martin (1990)have argued that a better case can be made for the nonexistence of God from the evidence.

Salmon, giving a modern Bayesian version of an argument that begins with Hume, argues that the likelihood that the ordered universe was created by intelligence is very low. In general, instances of biologically or mechanically caused generation without intelligence are far more common than instances of creation from intelligence. Furthermore, the probability that something that is generated by a biological or mechanical cause will exhibit order is quite high. Among those things that are designed, the probability that they exhibit order may be quite high, but that is not the same as asserting that among the things that exhibit order the probability that they were designed is high. Among dogs, the incidence of fur may be high, but it is not true that among furred things the incidence of dogs is high. Furthermore, intelligent design and careful planning very frequently produces disorderwar, industrial pollution, insecticides, and so on.

So we can conclude that the probability that an unspecified entity (like the universe), which came into being and exhibits order, was produced by intelligent design is very low and that the empirical evidence indicates that there was no designer.

See the article on Design Arguments for the Existence of God for more details about the history of the argument and standard objections that have motivated atheism.

Another recent group of inductive atheistic arguments has focused on widespread nonbelief itself as evidence that atheism is justified. The common thread in these arguments is that something as significant in the universe as God could hardly be overlooked. The ultimate creator of the universe and a being with infinite knowledge, power, and love would not escape our attention, particularly since humans have devoted such staggering amounts of energy to the question for so many centuries. Perhaps more importantly, a being such as God, if he chose, could certainly make his existence manifest to us. Creating a state of affairs where his existence would be obvious, justified, or reasonable to us, or at least more obvious to more of us than it is currently, would be a trivial matter for an all-powerful being. So since our efforts have not yielded what we would expect to find if there were a God, then the most plausible explanation is that there is no God.

One might argue that we should not assume that Gods existence would be evident to us. There may be reasons, some of which we can describe, others that we do not understand, that God could have for remaining out of sight. Revealing himself is not something he desires, remaining hidden enables people to freely love, trust and obey him, remaining hidden prevents humans from reacting from improper motives, like fear of punishment, remaining hidden preserves human freewill.

The non-belief atheist has not found these speculations convincing for several reasons. In religious history, Gods revealing himself to Moses, Muhammad, Jesus disciples, and even Satan himself did not compromise their cognitive freedom in any significant way. Furthermore, attempts to explain why a universe where God exists would look just as we would expect a universe with no God have seemed ad hoc. Some of the logical positivists and non-cognitivists concerns surface here. If the believer maintains that a universe inhabited by God will look exactly like one without, then we must wonder what sort of counter-evidence would be allowed, even in principle, against the theists claim. If no state of affairs could be construed as evidence against Gods existence, then what does the claim, God exists, mean and what are its real implications?

Alternately, how can it be unreasonable to not believe in the existence of something that defies all of our attempts to corroborate or discover?

Theodore Drange (2006) has developed an argument that if God were the sort of being that wanted humans to come to believe that he exists, then he could bring it about that far more of them would believe than currently do. God would be able, he would want humans to believe, there is nothing that he would want more, and God would not be irrational. So God would bring it about that people would believe. In general, he could have brought it about that the evidence that people have is far more convincing than what they have. He could have miraculously appeared to everyone in a fashion that was far more compelling than the miracles stories that we have. It is not the case that all, nearly all, or even a majority of people believe, so there must not be a God of that sort.

J.L. Schellenberg (1993) has developed an argument based upon a number of considerations that lead us to think that if there were a loving God, then we would expect to find some manifestations of him in the world. If God is all powerful, then there would be nothing restraining him from making his presence known. And if he is omniscient, then surely he would know how to reveal himself. Perhaps, most importantly, if God is good and if God possesses an unsurpassable love for us, then God would consider each humans requests as important and seek to respond quickly. He would wish to spare those that he loves needless trauma. He would not want to give those that he loves false or misleading thoughts about his relationship to them. He would want as much personal interaction with them as possible, but of course, these conditions are not satisfied. So it is strongly indicated that there is no such God.

Schellenberg gives this telling parable:

Youre still a small child, and an amnesiac, but this time youre in the middle of a vast rain forest, dripping with dangers of various kinds. Youve been stuck there for days, trying to figure out who you are and where you came from. You dont remember having a mother who accompanied you into this jungle, but in your moments of deepest pain and misery you call for her anyway,Mooooommmmmmm! Over and over again. For days and days the last time when a jaguar comes at you out of nowhere but with no response. What should you think in this situation? In your dying moments, what should cross your mind? Would the thought that you have a mother who cares about you and hears your cry and could come to you but chooses not to even make it onto the list? (2006, p. 31)

Like Drange, Schellenberg argues that there are many people who are epistemically inculpable in believing that there is no God. That is, many people have carefully considered the evidence available to them, and have actively sought out more in order to determine what is reasonable concerning God. They have fulfilled all relevant epistemic duties they might have in their inquiry into the question and they have arrived at a justified belief that there is no God. If there were a God, however, evidence sufficient to form a reasonable belief in his existence would be available. So the occurrence of widespread epistemically inculpable nonbelief itself shows that there is no God.

The final family of inductive arguments we will consider involves drawing a positive atheistic conclusion from broad, naturalized grounds. See the article on Naturalism for background about the position and relevant arguments. Comments here will be confined to naturalism as it relates to atheism.

Methodological naturalism can be understood as the view that the best or the only way to acquire knowledge within science is by adopting the assumption that all physical phenomena have physical causes. This presumption by itself does not commit one to the view that only physical entities and causes exist, or that all knowledge must be acquired through scientific methods. Methodological naturalism, therefore, is typically not seen as being in direct conflict with theism or having any particular implications for the existence or non-existence of God.

Ontological naturalism, however, is usually seen as taking a stronger view about the existence of God. Ontological naturalism is the additional view that all and only physical entities and causes exist.

Among its theistic critics, there has been a tendency to portray ontological naturalism as a dogmatic ideological commitment that is more the product of a recent intellectual fashion than science or reasoned argument. But two developments have contributed to a broad argument in favor of ontological naturalism as the correct description of what sorts of things exist and are causally efficacious. First, there is a substantial history of the exploration and rejection of a variety of non-physical causal hypotheses in the history of science. Over the centuries, the possibility that some class of physical events could be caused by a supernatural source, a spiritual source, psychic energy, mental forces, or vital causes have been entertained and found wanting. Second, evidence for the law of the conservation of energy has provided significant support to physical closure, or the view that the natural world is a complete closed system in which physical events have physical causes. At the very least, atheists have argued, the ruins of so many supernatural explanations that have been found wanting in the history of science has created an enormous burden of proof that must be met before any claim about the existence of another worldly spiritual being can have credence. Ontological naturalism should not be seen as a dogmatic commitment, its defenders have insisted, but rather as a defeasible hypothesis that is supported by centuries of inquiry into the supernatural.

As scientific explanations have expanded to include more details about the workings of natural objects and laws, there has been less and less room or need for invoking God as an explanation. It is not clear that expansion of scientific knowledge disproves the existence of God in any formal sense any more than it has disproven the existence of fairies, the atheistic naturalist argues. However, physical explanations have increasingly rendered God explanations extraneous and anomalous. For example, when Laplace, the famous 18th century French mathematician and astronomer, presented his work on celestial mechanics to Napoleon, the Emperor asked him about the role of a divine creator in his system Laplace is reported to have said, I have no need for that hypothesis.

In many cases, science has shown that particular ancillary theses of traditional religious doctrine are mistaken. Blind, petitionary prayer has been investigated and found to have no effect on the health of its recipients, although praying itself may have some positive effects on the person who prayers (Benson, 2006). Geology, biology, and cosmology have discovered that the Earth formed approximately 3 billion years ago out of cosmic dust, and life evolved gradually over billions of years. The Earth, humans, and other life forms were not created in their present form some 6,000-10,000 years ago and the atheistic naturalist will point to numerous alleged miraculous events have been investigated and debunked.

Wide, positive atheism, the view that there are no gods whatsoever, might appear to be the most difficult atheistic thesis to defend, but ontological naturalists have responded that the case for no gods is parallel to the case for no elves, pixies, dwarves, fairies, goblins, or other creates. A decisive proof against every possible supernatural being is not necessary for the conclusion that none of them are real to be justified. The ontological naturalist atheist believes that once we have devoted sufficient investigation into enough particular cases and the general considerations about natural laws, magic, and supernatural entities, it becomes reasonable to conclude that the whole enterprise is an explanatory dead end for figuring out what sort of things there are in the world.

The disagreement between atheists and theists continues on two fronts. Within the arena of science and the natural world, some believers have persisted in arguing that material explanations are inadequate to explain all of the particular events and phenomena that we observe. Some philosophers and scientists have argued that for phenomena like consciousness, human morality, and some instances of biological complexity, explanations in terms of natural or evolutionary theses have not and will not be able to provide us with a complete picture. Therefore, the inference to some supernatural force is warranted. While some of these attempts have received social and political support, within the scientific community the arguments that causal closure is false and that God as a cause is a superior scientific hypothesis to naturalistic explanations have not received significant support. Science can cite a history of replacing spiritual, supernatural, or divine explanations of phenomena with natural ones from bad weather as the wrath of angry gods to disease as demon possession. The assumption for many is that there are no substantial reasons to doubt that those areas of the natural world that have not been adequately explained scientifically will be given enough time. ( Madden and Hare 1968, Papineau, Manson, Nielsen 2001, and Stenger.) Increasingly, with what they perceive as the failure of attempts to justify theism, atheists have moved towards naturalized accounts of religious belief that give causal and evolutionary explanations of the prevalence of belief. (See Atrans, Boyer, Dennett 2006)

In 20th century moral theory, a view about the nature of moral value claims arose that has an analogue in discussions of atheism. Moral non-cognitivists have denied that moral utterances should be treated as ordinary propositions that are either true or false and subject to evidential analysis. On their view, when someone makes a moral claim like, Cheating is wrong, what they are doing is more akin to saying something like, I have negative feelings about cheating. I want you to share those negative feelings. Cheating. Bad.

A non-cognitivist atheist denies that religious utterances are propositions. They are not the sort of speech act that have a truth value. They are more like emoting, singing, poetry, or cheering. They express personal desires, feelings of subjugation, admiration, humility, and love. As such, they cannot and should not be dealt with by denials or arguments any more than I can argue with you over whether or not a poem moves you. There is an appeal to this approach when we consider common religious utterances such as, Jesus loves you. Jesus died for your sins. God be with you. What these mean, according to the non-cognitivist, is something like, I have sympathy for your plight, we are all in a similar situation and in need of paternalistic comforting, you can have it if you perform certain kinds of behaviors and adopt a certain kind of personal posture with regard to your place in the world. When I do these things I feel joyful, I want you to feel joyful too.

So the non-cognitivist atheist does not claim that the sentence, God exists is false, as such. Rather, when people make these sorts of claims, their behavior is best understood as a complicated publicizing of a particular sort of subjective sensations. Strictly speaking, the claims do not mean anything in terms of assertions about what sorts of entities do or do not exist in the world independent of human cognitive and emotional states. The non-cognitivist characterization of many religious speech acts and behaviors has seemed to some to be the most accurate description. For the most part, atheists appear to be cognitivist atheists. They assume that religious utterances do express propositions that are either true or false. Positive atheists will argue that there are compelling reasons or evidence for concluding that in fact those claims are false. (Drange 2006, Diamond and Lizenbury 1975, Nielsen 1985)

Few would disagree that many religious utterances are non-cognitive such as religious ceremonies, rituals, and liturgies. Non-cognitivists have argued that many believers are confused when their speech acts and behavior slips from being non-cognitive to something resembling cognitive assertions about God. The problem with the non-cognitivist view is that many religious utterances are clearly treated as cognitive by their speakersthey are meant to be treated as true or false claims, they are treated as making a difference, and they clearly have an impact on peoples lives and beliefs beyond the mere expression of a special category of emotions. Insisting that those claims simply have no cognitive content despite the intentions and arguments to the contrary of the speaker is an ineffectual means of addressing them. So non-cognitivism does not appear to completely address belief in God.

20th century developments in epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, and philosophy of language indicate that many of the presumptions that supported old fashioned natural theology and atheology are mistaken. It appears that even our most abstract, a priori, and deductively certain methods for determining truth are subject to revision in the light of empirical discoveries and theoretical analyses of the principles that underlie those methods. Certainty, reasoning, and theology, after Bayes work on probability, Wittgensteins fideism, Quines naturalism, and Kripkes work on necessity are not what they used to be. The prospects for a simple, confined argument for atheism (or theism) that achieves widespread support or that settles the question are dim. That is because, in part, the prospects for any argument that decisively settles a philosophical question where a great deal seems to be at stake are dim.

The existence or non-existence of any non-observable entity in the world is not settled by any single argument or consideration. Every premise is based upon other concepts and principles that themselves must be justified. So ultimately, the adequacy of atheism as an explanatory hypothesis about what is real will depend upon the overall coherence, internal consistency, empirical confirmation, and explanatory success of a whole worldview within which atheism is only one small part. The question of whether or not there is a God sprawls onto related issues and positions about biology, physics, metaphysics, explanation, philosophy of science, ethics, philosophy of language, and epistemology. The reasonableness of atheism depends upon the overall adequacy of a whole conceptual and explanatory description of the world.

Matt McCormickEmail: mccormick@csus.eduCalifornia State University, SacramentoU. S. A.

Follow this link:

Atheism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

What is Atheism? A Lack of Belief in Gods – Center for Inquiry

Posted on by

Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods. Thats it. Despite common stereotypes, atheists arent necessarily anti-religion, nor do they worship themselves instead of a god.

Atheists dont hate Godits impossible to hate something if you dont believe it exists. Atheism indicates what someone does not believe, but it says nothing about what someone does believe.

For that, other terms like naturalist, secular humanist, and even Pastafarian connote a rejection of religion while also defining the substance of an individuals philosophy or worldview.

Atheism is avaluable critique of outmoded, regressive religious systems with its vision of a universe upon which meaning was never imposed from above.

Atheism and freethought trace their roots to ancient Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on rational inquiry and curiosity about the workings of nature.Other sources included early Chinese Confucianism, ancient Indian materialists, and Roman Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics. Submerged during the Dark Ages, freethought re-emerged in the Renaissance.

TheRichard Dawkins Foundation is one of the premier atheist and secular organizations in the world. RDFs mission is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values and have been a division of CFI since2016.

If you found this definition helpful you can help the Center for Inquiry by sharing on Facebook or Twitter

View original post here:

What is Atheism? A Lack of Belief in Gods - Center for Inquiry

Why I’m An Atheist – 13 Reasons & Arguments For Atheism

Posted on by

, where I briefly explained some of the reasons why I don't believe in god. That post, which was long over due at the time, needs an update. With each passing year I get much better at understanding the arguments for and against the existence of god, and since that post came out I've created several new arguments of my own. Rather than write it in essay form, which I did in the original post, I'll instead outline the main reasons and arguments briefly, one by one. So here we go.

I'm an atheist because....

In order to even consider the possibility that a god exists, we first need a coherent concept of god. The traditional notion of god in classical theism is that of a timeless, changeless, immaterial mind, who also must be infinitely good, infinitely wise, and can do anything logically possible. There are some variations on this concept, but almost all traditional or classical theistic gods have these basic characteristics. The problem is that a timeless, changeless being by definition cannot

anything; it's necessarily causally impotent and nonfunctional. Change requires time, and time requires change. This is logically certain. And to

something. Doing requires a change, regardless of whether that change is mental or physical. A being that cannot do anything cannot be omnipotent. As a result, the traditional notion of god is self contradictory. The theist's only resort here is special pleading. That's why I like to get all theists to agree beforehand that god is not beyond logic. That is, god cannot

the logically impossible. Once a theist agrees with this, they've cut themselves off from special pleading as an option. Some theists think god is atemporal

creating the universe. But it isn't logically possible to exist timelessly and then suddenly jolt yourself into time out of your own will, because your will was timeless and frozen. It couldn't change into the state to want to change.

Given the necessary rules of logic the traditional attributes of god are incoherent:

P1. It is logically impossible to do something without doing something. P2. It is logically impossible to do something without change (even if everything is immaterial). P3. It is logically impossible for change to exist without time.C. As such, a timeless, changeless being cannot do anything.

The failure of theists to come up with a coherent description of god is enough by itself to warrant atheism, but there's many more reasons to think no gods exist.

Since god is considered the creator and sustainer of the universe, it's helpful to point out that the universe doesn't need a creator or sustainer because it's eternal

is true. Special and General Relativity both entail that every moment of the universethe past, present, and futureall physically exist in an eternal block universe, a 4 dimensional spacetime manifold. An eternal universe

by definition be created, since it didn't begin to exist in the regular understanding of begin to exist (which assumes

is true).

(If at this point you're thinking that the big bang proves our universe has a finite past, and therefore cannot be eternal, let me remind you again that eternalism means that the past, present, and futureall physically exist in an eternal block universe, and therefore the universe can have a finite number of moments since the big bang and be eternal because all moments of time never begin to exist, nor cease to exist. Eternalism is also different from the Steady State theory of the universe. Those who don't understand this do not understand special and general relativity properly.)

Now it would be foolish of me to make such grand claims without providing any evidence why eternalism is true. That would be making a faith claim, like the religious do. Well I've written several arguments for why eternalism is true, perhaps more than any other blogger online.

Therefore, all the theological "first cause" arguments fail because they all assume an antiquated concept of causality that has been falsified by modern science.

For more clarification and a deeper explanation of what I mean by this and what I don't mean, read Causality Doesn't Exist In The Way We Typically Think It Does: A Further Explanation

Now of course it is always possible that there was spacetime prior to the big bang. If there's an infinite amount of spacetime prior to our universe's big bang, then the question of how do you get something from nothing is moot. And if there is a finite amount of spacetime prior to our universe's big bang, the same principle applies to the absolute origin.

So the first cause arguments not only get causality wrong, they get the big bang wrong as well. As a result, all first-cause arguments from apologists ranging from Aquinas to William Lane Craig fail for this reason.

I've created an infograph describing this with some visual representations in a new post Why Almost Everyone Gets The Big Bang Wrong: Infograph

The 5% of the universe that makes up ordinary matter are made of fermions and bosons.Bosons make up force fields. An example would be the Higgs field, which gives particles matter. Fermions make up the objects of matter that you and I are made of.

There are basically only three kinds of matter particles and three forces that you and I are made up of. Protons and neutrons, which make up the nucleus of atoms, and orbiting electrons, are the three matter particles. Then there are the three forces in the Standard Model: the strong and the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism. The strong force binds the nucleus of atoms together (and the quarks that make up protons and neutrons), the weak force allows interaction with neutrinos and are carried by W and Z bosons, and electromagnetism binds electrons with the nucleus.

Then there's gravity, for which we use the General Theory of Relativity to describe. Gravity is a very weak force and is very simple: everything pulls on everything else. It could be said that gravity isn't really a force per se, but is rather the curvature of spacetime. Regardless, it's just easier to describe it as a force. There are two other generations of fermions but they decay rather quickly and aren't particularly relevant for describing the stuff that you and I are made of and interact with.

So that makes up everything you experience in your everyday lives, without exception. When we combine all this knowledge into a single theory, we get what is called Core Theory. It was developed and named by Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek. And there's an equation that describes Core Theory:

So we can argue:

Pr(CT N) > (CT T)

Or more simply:

Pr(CT & N) > (CT & T)

Since most religions include a some notion of dualism where humans have a soul (even Thomistic hylomorphic dualism still posits an immaterial "intellect" having causal effect on the physical body), from modern science have very good reasons to think no souls of any kind exist. The burden of proof would be on any person who believes a soul or intellect that has a causal effect on the body. The theist, for example, denying this would have to show how a soul can effect the body without violating the law of the conservation of energy and momentum.

For a full description of the argument, see The Argument From Core Theory

6) Libertarian free will is incoherentLibertarian free will requires at least 3 things:(1) We are in control of our will;(2) Our mind is causally effective;(3) In the same situation we could have done otherwise. But logically that's impossible, because:

In order for our thoughts to be truly free in the libertarian sense, they'd have to be uncaused, and something uncaused will have no necessary connection to anything that came before it. It would have to be just a coincidence that they had any connection to reality. Furthermore, you cannot by definition have control over something uncaused. So libertarian free will would require your thoughts to be metaphysically random and spontaneous eruptions with no causal connection to reality. Thus only determinism can actually make sense of having thoughts that reliably correspond to reality.

(The Kalam Cosmological Argument's first premise "Anything that begins to exist has a cause" also entails determinism, which negates free will.)

For the full logical argument see here:Logical Argument Against Free Will

In addition to this, there's plenty of neuroscientific evidence against free will.

Another way to put it more succinctly is this: Why does god timelessly and eternally exist with desire X rather than desire Y, when neither desire X or Y are logically necessary or logically impossible?The Mnchhausen trilemma, along with this dilemma, show that brute facts not only make sense, they're unavoidable even if we posit god's existence. Thus we could argue more formally:

But no theist can argue successfully that it is logically necessary for god to have willed our particular universe. Since it's not logically necessary for god to have eternally willed our universe rather than another one, or no universe, the principle of sufficient reason requires that god's eternal will be explained by something contingent (which will lead to either an infinite regress of contingent explanations) or something else that is logically necessary. And since the logically necessary option is not available to the Thomist, the only two realistic options are an infinite regress of contingent explanations, or a brute fact. See the logical flow chart below for a better understanding.

For the full logical argument see here:Why Brute Facts Are Unavoidable

All this and I haven't even gotten to the problem of evil yet. Now the version of the argument from evil I find most inspiring is an argument from natural evil.

When you look at the full picture of evolution and you consider the 3.5 billion years during which this unfolding drama played out, when there were millions and millions of species that evolved only to be snuffed out and pushed into evolutionary dead ends, and during which time there was at least 5 mass extinctions in which some 70-95 percent of all the living species on earth at that time went extinct, I'm being asked by theists to believe that this was all part of a divine creator's plan who was sitting back and taking pleasure in watching millions of species (whose evolution he allegedly guided) get wiped out one after the other, and then starting all over again, and then wiped them out again and repeated this process over and over, until finally getting around to evolving human beings which I'm told was the whole purpose of this cruel and clumsy process.

I created an evolutionary argument against god a few years ago, where I analyze the logical possibilities between the suffering required by evolution with the popular belief now among scientifically inclined theists that god used evolution to create human beings. We can argue:

Furthermore, since animals are usually unaware of the deeper questions of why they're suffering, they have no ability to grow morally from any of it. They lack the intellect to grow but still have the capacity to suffer.C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, "So far as we know beasts are incapable either of sin or virtue: therefore they can neither deserve pain nor be improved by it." Suffering also afflicts humans in ways that make little sense to soul building. It afflicts babies, the righteous and unrighteous, those spiritually fulfilled and unfulfilled alike.

If omnibenevolence is compatible with millions of years of beingssuffering that couldn't be improved by it, then what isn't compatible? What logical argument shows exactly what an omnibenevolent being can and cannot do? Is a billion years of suffering compatible? What about a trillion? Without a logical doctrine it makes the term "omnibenevolence" meaningless and unintelligible.

And any creator god does not merely allow suffering suffering is built into the design. God is unavoidably directly responsible for all natural suffering in the universe:

In other words you can't claim that god is the creator and designer of the physical universe, including the laws that govern it which is what every theist insists and not also accept that natural evil is a direct byproduct of those laws. Natural evil cannot therefore be due to demons tinkering with god's plan. Demons would be the ones who actually created and designed the universe if that were the case.

So the suffering and haphazardness of the evolutionary process gives us good reason to believe there can be no omnibenevolence and therefore no traditional notion of god (which many theists say is the only kind of god that can exist). Furthermore, the fact that libertarian free will is incoherent prevents the theist from using the "free will defense" as an argument against moral evil. Take that away, and they've got nothing.

This doesn't disprove god per se, but it shows that none of the concepts of god in any existing religion can even meet the standards of greatest conceivable being, and therefore none can be god.

But the Euthyphro dilemma is actually not the end of the conversation, because there is technically a third option.The theist can claim its a false dilemma and that god commands something because god is good. They can say god is the standard of moral values: goodness and god are the same. But theres a problem with this. This third option only opens up a further dilemma. If the claims is that god is the source of the good, I can ask, "Is god good because of the properties that he has, or are the properties that god has good because he has them?" Basically, if god is good because hes loving and kind, then those properties are good independently of god, and thus goodness and morality would have to exist independently of god. But if the properties god has are good because god has them, then god has to be good logically prior to any properties he has, and that makes gods goodness unintelligible. How can god be good prior to being loving or kind, or having any good making properties?

So the Euthyphro dilemma really is just a starting point that terminates in a trilemma for the theist. The theist cannot attempt to ground morality in god without hitting this trilemma:

Evolution has embedded the predilection to notice patterns and to invoke agents when there aren't any, in a phenomena known as patternicity and agenticity, respectively. Our hominid ancestors lived in a world of danger, and they weren't yet the top of the food chain. If a noise was heard in the grass it was better to assume it might be a dangerous predator than just the wind. If they were wrong, they made a false positive, that is they incorrectly thought something was there that actually wasn't, and no harm was done. If, however, they assumed it was just the wind and it turned out it was a predator, they made a false negative, that is they incorrectly assumed there wasn't something there when there was, and they likely lost their life as a result of it. So evolution has made it so that false positives are much better to have than false negatives.

This means that we have a naturalistic, evolutionary basis for why we believe in gods. It isn't a mystery why most people and most cultures believe in gods. Science explains it. It's called the hyper active agency detection device. (For any claim that it's a just so story, read here.)

Those are the most common and the most sophisticated arguments for god that exist. Although there are many others, they all fail due to incorrect understandings of science, or they have internal contradictions and/or contradictions with other arguments.

13) All religions appear man made

If there was indeed an all-knowing creator who revealed himself, why would he do it in such a way that contained all the ignorance extant of that time? Why not include a few detailed verses about something like evolution, DNA or germs which no one knew about at that time? The excuses I've heard for this vary and are all laughable. Some theists say for example, that god wouldn't to give us too much evidence, because then we couldn't reject him. What?!? So god purposely makes his revelations ridiculous and unbelievable to test our faith? This is just an apologetic attempt to make the religion unfalsifiable by arguing that the less evidence we have and the less plausible it sounds, the more it's got to be true. It's not worth any intelligent person's consideration.

[Updated Jan 2018 to include new links, images, and logical arguments]

Here is the original post:

Why I'm An Atheist - 13 Reasons & Arguments For Atheism

Iguana Island – Nicaragua, Central America – Private Islands

Posted on by

The sound of the Caribbean Sea lapping against the shoreline provides the daily soundtrack on Iguana Island, a volcanic island 12 miles off the coast of Bluefields, Nicaragua. Clear blue-green water dominates sight lines in all directions, and the regions spectacular sunrises and sunsets make the views all the more dramatic at daybreak and nightfall. This five-acre retreat, cloaked in coconut palms and banana trees for maximum privacy, ...

The sound of the Caribbean Sea lapping against the shoreline provides the daily soundtrack on Iguana Island, a volcanic island 12 miles off the coast of Bluefields, Nicaragua. Clear blue-green water dominates sight lines in all directions, and the regions spectacular sunrises and sunsets make the views all the more dramatic at daybreak and nightfall. This five-acre retreat, cloaked in coconut palms and banana trees for maximum privacy, combines a turnkey, freehold property with a very affordable price tag something rarely found in a tropical setting this close to the United States.

As previously showcased on an episode of the HGTV series Island Hunters hosted by Private Islands CEO Chris Krolow, Iguana Island features a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with wraparound porch, dining room, bar and living area, plus additional accommodations for staff on the other side of the island, all built to modern standards by an American developer. A boardwalk meanders around the property to encourage leisurely strolls among the foliage, home to migrating butterflies; a 28-foot observation tower allows visitors to gaze across the ocean to the rainforests in the distance.

There is ample room to add a swimming pool, but a refreshing dip is as simple as wading into the sea on the calm west side of the island near the dock. This part of Nicaragua earns raves for its fishing, and anglers can cast off the dock for snapper, mackerel and barracuda, venture offshore for tuna, billfish and wahoo or delve into the virgin jungle rivers of the mainland to pursue trophy-size tarpon and snook. Abundant tropical fish on the surrounding reefs will appeal to snorkeling and scuba enthusiasts.

The reliable longtime island staff, which includes an on-site manager and caretakers, is willing to stay on with Iguana Islands new owners. A back-up generator, septic system and water catchment system add to the islands self-sufficiency. Water tanks on towers pressurize the faucets and toilets. Television, internet and cell service are available as well. The proximity to Bluefields, which has the largest population center on Nicaraguas east coast, means that supplies are more readily reachable than they are in many other Central American or Caribbean island locales. Iguana Island is also safely below the hurricane belt with pleasant year-round temperatures and a noticeable lack of biting insects.

Nicaraguas country profile remains on the rise, thanks to a system that doesnt tax foreign-sourced income, the low cost of living, and an increasing number of travelers drawn to its relaxed beauty. The World Travel & Tourism Council projects growth in international tourist arrivals to Nicaragua for at least the next decade, with numbers exceeding 2.7 million visitors by 2027.

Numerous daily flights connect between the United States and Managua, Nicaraguas capital, and then its a 45-minute hop by plane to Bluefields for a boat transfer to Iguana Island from one of the towns many public or private docks. The island has an area suitable for building a helipad, which would further reduce transit time.

With its well-maintained infrastructure and small monthly maintenance fees, Iguana Island easily could be reimagined into a retreat for an organization or transformed into a source of rental income with more competitive rates than other island areas of Nicaragua. (Private Islands can assist with setting up a rental plan.) It could also provide a safe, idyllic place to retire on a much smaller budget than youd find on comparable tropical islands. Due to a death in the family, the current owner has Iguana Island on the market at a reduced rate and all reasonable offers will be taken into consideration.

The sound of the Caribbean Sea lapping against the shoreline provides the daily soundtrack on Iguana Island, a volcanic island 12 miles off the coast of Bluefields, Nicaragua. Clear blue-green water dominates sight lines in all directions, and the regions spectacular sunrises and sunsets make the views all the more dramatic at daybreak and nightfall. This five-acre retreat, cloaked in coconut palms and banana trees for maximum privacy, combines a turnkey, freehold property with a very affordable price tag something rarely found in a tropical setting this close to the United States.

As previously showcased on an episode of the HGTV series Island Hunters hosted by Private Islands CEO Chris Krolow, Iguana Island features a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with wraparound porch, dining room, bar and living area, plus additional accommodations for staff on the other side of the island, all built to modern standards by an American developer. A boardwalk meanders around the property to encourage leisurely strolls among the foliage, home to migrating butterflies; a 28-foot observation tower allows visitors to gaze across the ocean to the rainforests in the distance.

There is ample room to add a swimming pool, but a refreshing dip is as simple as wading into the sea on the calm west side of the island near the dock. This part of Nicaragua earns raves for its fishing, and anglers can cast off the dock for snapper, mackerel and barracuda, venture offshore for tuna, billfish and wahoo or delve into the virgin jungle rivers of the mainland to pursue trophy-size tarpon and snook. Abundant tropical fish on the surrounding reefs will appeal to snorkeling and scuba enthusiasts.

The reliable longtime island staff, which includes an on-site manager and caretakers, is willing to stay on with Iguana Islands new owners. A back-up generator, septic system and water catchment system add to the islands self-sufficiency. Water tanks on towers pressurize the faucets and toilets. Television, internet and cell service are available as well. The proximity to Bluefields, which has the largest population center on Nicaraguas east coast, means that supplies are more readily reachable than they are in many other Central American or Caribbean island locales. Iguana Island is also safely below the hurricane belt with pleasant year-round temperatures and a noticeable lack of biting insects.

Nicaraguas country profile remains on the rise, thanks to a system that doesnt tax foreign-sourced income, the low cost of living, and an increasing number of travelers drawn to its relaxed beauty. The World Travel & Tourism Council projects growth in international tourist arrivals to Nicaragua for at least the next decade, with numbers exceeding 2.7 million visitors by 2027.

Numerous daily flights connect between the United States and Managua, Nicaraguas capital, and then its a 45-minute hop by plane to Bluefields for a boat transfer to Iguana Island from one of the towns many public or private docks. The island has an area suitable for building a helipad, which would further reduce transit time.

With its well-maintained infrastructure and small monthly maintenance fees, Iguana Island easily could be reimagined into a retreat for an organization or transformed into a source of rental income with more competitive rates than other island areas of Nicaragua. (Private Islands can assist with setting up a rental plan.) It could also provide a safe, idyllic place to retire on a much smaller budget than youd find on comparable tropical islands. Due to a death in the family, the current owner has Iguana Island on the market at a reduced rate and all reasonable offers will be taken into consideration.

Originally posted here:

Iguana Island - Nicaragua, Central America - Private Islands

Waldron Island – Washington, United States – Private Islands

Posted on by

Waldron Island is 2900 acres with a population of 120, a very quiet private community. They mostly are retired or grow flowers and vegetables for the other islands.

There is a school house, a post office and one public dock. There are scheduled ferrys and water taxis that service the Island. There is a 1700 Ft. grass airstrip that is public, (10 acres of this parcel are adjacent t the airstrip so a hangar would be secure.)

...

Waldron Island is 2900 acres with a population of 120, a very quiet private community. They mostly are retired or grow flowers and vegetables for the other islands.

There is a school house, a post office and one public dock. There are scheduled ferrys and water taxis that service the Island. There is a 1700 Ft. grass airstrip that is public, (10 acres of this parcel are adjacent t the airstrip so a hangar would be secure.)

This parcel comes with 750 Feet of beachfront and shares a private dock with the Carlsons. There can be no more docks built due to the non-development clause in the communitys bylaws. This insures privacy and lack of public access into the future.

It is a spectacular, one of a kind property in the San Juans.

Waldron Island is 2900 acres with a population of 120, a very quiet private community. They mostly are retired or grow flowers and vegetables for the other islands.

There is a school house, a post office and one public dock. There are scheduled ferrys and water taxis that service the Island. There is a 1700 Ft. grass airstrip that is public, (10 acres of this parcel are adjacent t the airstrip so a hangar would be secure.)

This parcel comes with 750 Feet of beachfront and shares a private dock with the Carlsons. There can be no more docks built due to the non-development clause in the communitys bylaws. This insures privacy and lack of public access into the future.

It is a spectacular, one of a kind property in the San Juans.

The rest is here:

Waldron Island - Washington, United States - Private Islands

Private Islands for Sale Under $500K | Islands

Posted on by

Just the thought of owning a private island seems like a childhood dream made into reality. It harkens back to adolescent days of building furniture-based forts with blanket roofing only, this time, youre building your own fort on a private island.

Exclusivity and, of course, land arent cheap, though, especially when it comes to private islands. Luckily, we have our list of the 10 islands you can buy for $500K or less.

Perhaps youre looking for cheap islands for sale that are smaller and more manageable: check. Or you can buy an island cheap off the market that spans closer to 20 acres: check. Maybe you want an island free of real estate development so you can start from scratch. No matter what youre looking for, read on for the cheapest islands for sale available.

Location: BelizeCost: $225,000Size: 1.41 acresMove-in ready? This undeveloped island has no structures (that will be up to you to build) and sits on the eastern side of the Turneffe Atoll, making fishing, snorkeling, diving and kayaking easily accessible.

Location: French PolynesiaCost: $249,000Size: 1.8 acresMove-in ready? One hour by boat from Rangiroa airport, this undeveloped Tahitian islet features swaying palms and a white-sand beach the perfect spot for your new beach house.

Location: PanamaCost: $380,000Size: 0.75 acresMove-in ready? Located in the Bocas del Toro region, this move-in ready island is self-powered and features a two-bedroom home, a party shack, a private beach, a boathouse and a swim dock.

Location: BelizeCost: $249,000Size: 0.7 acresMove-in ready? This white-sand, fringed island in the Turneffe Atoll is currently undeveloped. Its close proximity to the reef means its near some of Belizes best fishing and diving spots.

Location: TongaCost: $317,000Size: 1.09 acresMove-in ready? Set in the Vavaua island group of Tonga, the undeveloped Tahifehifa Island would make the perfect spot for your own personal overwater bungalow.

Location: NicaraguaCost: $500,000Size: 2.5 acresMove-in ready? Located about three miles off Nicaraguas Caribbean coast, Pink Pearl Island features a main house, three cabanas, a fishermans style shack and a bar/restaurant. The island is currently being run as a turnkey tourism business but could easily be used as a personal retreat.

Location: BelizeCost: $300,000Size: 2.3 acresMove-in ready? This undeveloped island located at the southern tip of Saddle Caye features abundant coral in the surrounding waters and a stretch of sand that will be perfect for sunning and splashing once you build.

Location: French PolynesiaCost: $354,500Size: 3.608 acresMove-in ready? This undeveloped island in the Tuamotus, bordered by vibrant, turquoise waters, is an unspoiled tranquil spot to reconnect with nature.

Location: BelizeCost: $350,000Size: 1 acreMove-in ready? Located on the northern tip of the Turneffe Atoll and featuring a tiny cottage, Turneffe Point Caye is a dream location for flats fishermen.

Location: French PolynesiaCost: $446,500Size: 18.86 acresMove-in ready? This large, undeveloped island located in the Raraka Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago is home to a coconut grove and white-sand beaches. Build a beach bungalow, and make it your home.

View post:

Private Islands for Sale Under $500K | Islands

Sailing the Greek Islands Greece sailing vacations

Posted on by

Greece yacht vacations are your gateway to exploring the Cyclades, Well take you to the worlds outstanding cruising grounds of the Cyclades, south of Greece, whichare considered some of the most beautiful islands in the world. Mountains, white cubistic villages and black and golden sand beaches combine to make the islands picture postcard-perfect.

There are 220Cyclades islands, small or big ones. Thats why the Cyclades islands are the main sailing destination area when we are talking about sailing vacationsin Greece.

Chartering a small yacht in Greece for private sailing around the Greek islands, you can customize your itinerary according to your tastes. Your skipper will be happy to guide you around the finest secluded coves, charming tiny harbors, or more crowded islands. Visit pilgrimage sites, experience secluded pearls, crystal clear waters, and warm evenings.

Some of our boats are available only for 7 days private Greek island sailing trips and some others also for short sailing holidays(5 days, 4 days or 1-day private sailing cruise from Paros the Cyclades Greece)

Starting from Paros we suggest the following cruises in the Greek Islands On Your Private Yacht

View post:

Sailing the Greek Islands Greece sailing vacations

Islands for Sale in Canada – Private Islands Online

Posted on by

ISLANDS FOR SALE IN

Island buffs acknowledge Canada as the place with more private islands for sale than any other country in the world. Unlike many island regions around the globe, foreign ownership is always secure and Canada's political climate remains stable at all times. Further, Canada has almost no res... + Read Moretrictions on foreigners purchasing property and the process is relatively simple. While the procedure for buying an island in Canada is fairly straight forward, it is always advisable to retain the services of a qualified lawyer and a knowledgeable real estate agent or broker.

Canada's islands cost a fraction of properties located in the U.S. and provide ideal opportunities for owners seeking friendly locals, efficient transportation and stable infrastructure. Canada's hot summers and temperate spring and fall facilitate every variety of water sport, especially fishing and sailing. Canada's coasts and lakes are dotted with accommodating yacht clubs and marinas. Land lubbers can enjoy Canada's spectacular hiking, abundant wildlife, or numerous golf courses.

Canada has an East and West coast with literally thousands of lakes in between. On the West coast, the majority of islands are located in the Gulf Islands, between Vancouver Island and the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. In central Canada, the archipelagos of Ontario's Georgian Bay on Lake Huron, the Lake of the Woods and the Thousand Islands regions boast spectacular fresh water island properties. Nova Scotia's peninsular Atlantic coast is a popular market with islands available around the more remote Cape Breton island and the more affluent South Shore. - Read Less

See original here:

Islands for Sale in Canada - Private Islands Online

What Is Cryonics? – How Cryonics Works | HowStuffWorks

Posted on by

Cryonics is the practice of preserving human bodies in extremely cold temperatures with the hope of reviving them sometime in the future. The idea is that, if someone has "died" from a disease that is incurable today, he or she can be "frozen" and then revived in the future when a cure has been discovered. A person preserved this way is said to be in cryonic suspension.

To understand the technology behind cryonics, think about the news stories you've heard of people who have fallen into an icy lake and have been submerged for up to an hour in the frigid water before being rescued. The ones who survived did so because the icy water put their body into a sort of suspended animation, slowing down their metabolism and brain function to the point where they needed almost no oxygen.

Cryonics is a bit different from being resuscitated after falling into an icy lake, though. First of all, it's illegal to perform cryonic suspension on someone who is still alive. People who undergo this procedure must first be pronounced legally dead -- that is, their heart must have stopped beating. But if they're dead, how can they ever be revived? According to scientists who perform cryonics, "legally dead" is not the same as "totally dead." Total death, they say, is the point at which all brain function ceases. Legal death occurs when the heart has stopped beating, but some cellular brain function remains. Cryonics preserves the little cell function that remains so that, theoretically, the person can be resuscitated in the future.

Visit link:

What Is Cryonics? - How Cryonics Works | HowStuffWorks

Ted Williams – Wikipedia

Posted on by

American baseball player (19182002)

Baseball player

Williams in 1949

As manager

Theodore Samuel Williams (August 30, 1918 July 5, 2002) was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career, primarily as a left fielder, for the Boston Red Sox from 1939 to 1960; his career was interrupted by military service during World War II and the Korean War. Nicknamed "Teddy Ballgame", "the Kid", "the Splendid Splinter", and "The Thumper", Williams is regarded as one of the greatest hitters in baseball history and to date is the last player to hit over .400 in a season.

Williams was a nineteen-time All-Star,[1] a two-time recipient of the American League (AL) Most Valuable Player Award, a six-time AL batting champion, and a two-time Triple Crown winner. He finished his playing career with a .344 batting average, 521 home runs, and a .482 on-base percentage, the highest of all time. His career batting average is the highest of any MLB player whose career was played primarily in the live-ball era, and ranks tied for 7th all-time (with Billy Hamilton).

Born and raised in San Diego, Williams played baseball throughout his youth. After joining the Red Sox in 1939, he immediately emerged as one of the sport's best hitters. In 1941, Williams posted a .406 batting average; he is the last MLB player to bat over .400 in a season. He followed this up by winning his first Triple Crown in 1942. Williams was required to interrupt his baseball career in 1943 to serve three years in the United States Navy and Marine Corps during World War II. Upon returning to MLB in 1946, Williams won his first AL MVP Award and played in his only World Series. In 1947, he won his second Triple Crown. Williams was returned to active military duty for portions of the 1952 and 1953 seasons to serve as a Marine combat aviator in the Korean War. In 1957 and 1958 at the ages of 39 and 40, respectively, he was the AL batting champion for the fifth and sixth time.

Williams retired from playing in 1960. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, in his first year of eligibility.[2] Williams managed the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers franchise from 1969 to 1972. An avid sport fisherman, he hosted a television program about fishing, and was inducted into the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame.[3] Williams's involvement in the Jimmy Fund helped raise millions in dollars for cancer care and research. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush presented Williams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award bestowed by the United States government. He was selected for the Major League Baseball All-Time Team in 1997 and the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999.

Williams was born in San Diego on August 30, 1918,[4] and named Theodore Samuel Williams after former president Theodore Roosevelt as well as his father, Samuel Stuart Williams.[5] He later amended his birth certificate, removing his middle name,[5] which he claimed originated from a maternal uncle (whose actual name was Daniel Venzor), who had been killed in World War I.[6] His father was a soldier, sheriff, and photographer from Ardsley, New York,[7] while his mother, May Venzor, a Spanish-Mexican-American from El Paso, Texas, was an evangelist and lifelong soldier in the Salvation Army.[5] Williams resented his mother's long hours working in the Salvation Army,[8] and Williams and his brother cringed when she took them to the Army's street-corner revivals.[9]

Williams's paternal ancestors were a mix of Welsh, English, and Irish. The maternal, Spanish-Mexican side of Williams's family was quite diverse, having Spanish (Basque), Russian, and American Indian roots.[10] Of his Mexican ancestry he said that "If I had my mother's name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, [considering] the prejudices people had in Southern California."[11]

Williams lived in San Diego's North Park neighborhood (4121 Utah Street).[12] At the age of eight, he was taught how to throw a baseball by his uncle, Saul Venzor. Saul was one of his mother's four brothers, as well as a former semi-professional baseball player who had pitched against Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe Gordon in an exhibition game.[13][14] As a child, Williams's heroes were Pepper Martin of the St. Louis Cardinals and Bill Terry of the New York Giants.[15] Williams graduated from Herbert Hoover High School in San Diego, where he played baseball as a pitcher and was the star of the team.[16] During this time, he also played American Legion Baseball, later being named the 1960 American Legion Baseball Graduate of the Year.[17]

Though he had offers from the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees while he was still in high school,[18] his mother thought he was too young to leave home, so he signed up with the local minor league club, the San Diego Padres.[19]

Throughout his career, Williams stated his goal was to have people point to him and remark, "There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived."[20]

Williams played back-up behind Vince DiMaggio and Ivey Shiver on the (then) Pacific Coast League's San Diego Padres. While in the Pacific Coast League in 1936, Williams met future teammates and friends Dom DiMaggio and Bobby Doerr, who were on the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals.[21] When Shiver announced he was quitting to become a high school football coach in Savannah, Georgia, the job, by default, was open for Williams.[22] Williams posted a .271 batting average on 107 at bats in 42 games for the Padres in 1936.[22] Unknown to Williams, he had caught the eye of the Boston Red Sox's general manager, Eddie Collins, while Collins was scouting Bobby Doerr and the shortstop George Myatt in August 1936.[22][23] Collins later explained, "It wasn't hard to find Ted Williams. He stood out like a brown cow in a field of white cows."[22] In the 1937 season, after graduating from Hoover High in the winter, Williams finally broke into the line-up on June 22, when he hit an inside-the-park home run to help the Padres win 32. The Padres ended up winning the PCL title, while Williams ended up hitting .291 with 23 home runs.[22] Meanwhile, Collins kept in touch with Padres general manager Bill Lane, calling him two times throughout the season. In December 1937, during the winter meetings, the deal was made between Lane and Collins, sending Williams to the Boston Red Sox and giving Lane $35,000 and two major leaguers, Dom D'Allessandro and Al Niemiec, and two other minor leaguers.[24][25]

In 1938, the 19-year-old Williams was 10 days late to spring training camp in Sarasota, Florida, because of a flood in California that blocked the railroads. Williams had to borrow $200 from a bank to make the trip from San Diego to Sarasota.[26] Also during spring training Williams was nicknamed "the Kid" by Red Sox equipment manager Johnny Orlando, who after Williams arrived to Sarasota for the first time, said, "'The Kid' has arrived". Orlando still called Williams "the Kid" 20 years later,[26] and the nickname stuck with Williams the rest of his life.[27] Williams remained in major league spring training for about a week.[26] Williams was then sent to the Double-A-league Minneapolis Millers.[28] While in the Millers training camp for the springtime, Williams met Rogers Hornsby, who had hit over .400 three times, including a .424 average in 1924.[29] Hornsby, who was a coach for the Millers that spring,[29] gave Williams useful advice, including how to "get a good pitch to hit".[28] Talking with the game's greats would become a pattern for Williams, who also talked with Hugh Duffy, who hit .438 in 1894, Bill Terry who hit .401 in 1930, and Ty Cobb with whom he would argue that a batter should hit up on the ball, opposed to Cobb's view that a batter should hit down on the ball.[30]

While in Minnesota, Williams quickly became the team's star.[31] He collected his first hit in the Millers' first game of the season, as well as his first and second home runs during his third game. Both were inside-the-park home runs, with the second traveling an estimated 500 feet (150m) on the fly to a 512-foot (156m) center field fence.[31] Williams later had a 22 game hitting streak that lasted from Memorial Day through mid-June.[31] While the Millers ended up sixth place in an eight-team race,[31] Williams ended up hitting .366 with 46 home runs and 142 RBIs. He received the American Association's Triple Crown and finished second in the voting for Most Valuable Player.[32]

Williams came to spring training three days late in 1939, thanks to Williams driving from California to Florida, as well as respiratory problems, the latter of which would plague Williams for the rest of his career.[33] In the winter, the Red Sox traded right fielder Ben Chapman to the Cleveland Indians to make room for Williams on the roster, even though Chapman had hit .340 in the previous season.[34][35] This led Boston Globe sports journalist Gerry Moore to quip, "Not since Joe DiMaggio broke in with the Yankees by "five for five" in St. Petersburg in 1936 has any baseball rookie received the nationwide publicity that has been accorded this spring to Theodore Francis [sic] Williams".[33] Williams inherited Chapman's number 9 on his uniform as opposed to Williams's number 5 in the previous spring training. He made his major league debut against the New York Yankees on April 20,[36] going 1-for-4 against Yankee pitcher Red Ruffing. This was the only game which featured both Williams and Lou Gehrig playing against one another.[37] In his first series at Fenway Park, Williams hit a double, a home run, and a triple, the first two against Cotton Pippen, who gave Williams his first strikeout as a professional while Williams had been in San Diego.[38] By July, Williams was hitting just .280, but leading the league in RBIs.[38] Johnny Orlando, now Williams's friend, then gave Williams a quick pep talk, telling Williams that he should hit .335 with 35 home runs and he would drive in 150 runs. Williams said he would buy Orlando a Cadillac if this all came true.[39] Williams ended up hitting .327 with 31 home runs and 145 RBIs,[36] leading the league in the latter category, the first rookie to lead the league in RBIs[40] and finishing fourth in MVP voting.[41] He also led the AL in walks, with 107, a rookie record. Even though there was not a Rookie of the Year award yet in 1939, Babe Ruth declared Williams to be the Rookie of the Year, which Williams later said was "good enough for me".[42]

Williams's pay doubled in 1940, going from $5,000 to $10,000.[43] A new bullpen was added in right field of Fenway Park, reducing the distance from home plate from 400 feet to 380 feet and earning the nickname "Williamsburg" for being "obviously designed for Williams".[44] Williams was then switched from right field to left field, as there would be less sun in his eyes, and it would give Dom DiMaggio a chance to play center. Finally, Williams was flip-flopped in the order with the great slugger Jimmie Foxx, with the idea that Williams would get more pitches to hit.[44] Pitchers, though, proved willing to pitch around the eagle-eyed Williams in favor of facing the 32-year-old Foxx, the reigning AL home run champion, followed by the still highly productive 33-year-old Joe Cronin, the player-manager.[45] Williams also made his first of 16 All-Star Game appearances[46] in 1940, going 0-for-2.[47] Although Williams hit .344, his power and runs batted in were down from the previous season, with 23 home runs and 113 RBIs.[36] Williams also caused a controversy in mid-August when he called his salary "peanuts", along with saying he hated the city of Boston and reporters, leading reporters to lash back at him, saying that he should be traded.[48] Williams said that the "only real fun" he had in 1940 was being able to pitch once on August 24, when he pitched the last two innings in a 121 loss to the Detroit Tigers, allowing one earned run on three hits, while striking out one batter, Rudy York.[49][50]

In the second week of spring training in 1941, Williams broke a bone in his right ankle, limiting him to pinch hitting for the first two weeks of the season.[51] Bobby Doerr later claimed that the injury would be the foundation of Williams's season, as it forced him to put less pressure on his right foot for the rest of the season.[52] Against the Chicago White Sox on May 7, in extra innings, Williams told the Red Sox pitcher, Charlie Wagner, to hold the White Sox, since he was going to hit a home run. In the 11th inning, Williams's prediction came true, as he hit a big blast to help the Red Sox win. The home run is still considered to be the longest home run ever hit in the old Comiskey Park, some saying that it went 600 feet (180m).[53] Williams's average slowly climbed in the first half of May, and on May 15, he started a 22-game hitting streak. From May 17 to June 1, Williams batted .536, with his season average going above .400 on May 25 and then continuing up to .430.[54] By the All-Star break, Williams was hitting .406 with 62 RBIs and 16 home runs.[55]

In the 1941 All-Star Game, Williams batted fourth behind Joe DiMaggio, who was in the midst of his record-breaking hitting streak, having hit safely in 48 consecutive games.[56] In the fourth inning Williams doubled to drive in a run.[57] With the National League (NL) leading 52 in the eighth inning, Williams struck out in the middle of an American League (AL) rally.[56] In the ninth inning the AL still trailed 53; Ken Keltner and Joe Gordon singled, and Cecil Travis walked to load the bases.[57] DiMaggio grounded to the infield and Billy Herman, attempting to complete a double play, threw wide of first base, allowing Keltner to score.[57] With the score 54 and runners on first and third, Williams homered with his eyes closed to secure a 75 AL win.[57][58] Williams later said that that game-winning home run "remains to this day the most thrilling hit of my life".[59]

In late August, Williams was hitting .402.[59] Williams said that "just about everybody was rooting for me" to hit .400 in the season, including Yankee fans, who gave pitcher Lefty Gomez a "hell of a boo" after walking Williams with the bases loaded after Williams had gotten three straight hits one game in September.[60] In mid-September, Williams was hitting .413, but dropped a point a game from then on.[59] Before the final two games on September 28, a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Athletics, he was batting .39955, which would have been officially rounded up to .400.[59] Red Sox manager Joe Cronin offered him the chance to sit out the final day, but he declined. "If I'm going to be a .400 hitter", he said at the time, "I want more than my toenails on the line."[61] Williams went 6-for-8 on the day, finishing the season at .406.[62] (Sacrifice flies were counted as at-bats in 1941; under today's rules, Williams would have hit between .411 and .419, based on contemporaneous game accounts.[61]) Philadelphia fans ran out on the field to surround Williams after the game, forcing him to protect his hat from being stolen; he was helped into the clubhouse by his teammates.[63] Along with his .406 average, Williams also hit 37 home runs and batted in 120 runs, missing the triple crown by five RBI.[36][61]

Williams's 1941 season is often considered to be the best offensive season of all time, though the MVP award would go to DiMaggio. The .406 batting averagehis first of six batting championshipsis still the highest single-season average in Red Sox history and the highest batting average in the major leagues since 1924, and the last time any major league player has hit over .400 for a season after averaging at least 3.1 plate appearances per game. ("If I had known hitting .400 was going to be such a big deal", he quipped in 1991, "I would have done it again."[61]) Williams's on-base percentage of .553 and slugging percentage of .735 that season are both also the highest single-season averages in Red Sox history. The .553 OBP stood as a major league record until it was broken by Barry Bonds in 2002 and his .735 slugging percentage was the highest mark in the major leagues between 1932 and 1994. His OPS of 1.287 that year, a Red Sox record, was the highest in the major leagues between 1923 and 2001. Despite playing in only 143 games that year, Williams led the league with 135 runs scored and 37 home runs, and he finished third with 335 total bases, the most home runs, runs scored, and total bases by a Red Sox player since Jimmie Foxx's in 1938.[64] Williams placed second in MVP voting; DiMaggio won, 291 votes to 254,[65] on the strength of his record-breaking 56-game hitting streak and league-leading 125 RBI.[62]

In January 1942, just over 2 years after World War II began,[66][67] Williams was drafted into the military, being put into Class 1-A. A friend of Williams suggested that Williams see the advisor of the governor's Selective Service Appeal Agent, since Williams was the sole support of his mother, arguing that Williams should not have been placed in Class 1-A, and said Williams should be reclassified to Class 3-A.[66] Williams was reclassified to 3-A ten days later.[68] Afterwards, the public reaction was extremely negative,[69] even though the baseball book Season of '42 states only four All-Stars and one first-line pitcher entered military service during the 1942 season. (Many more MLB players would enter service during the 1943 season.)[70]

Quaker Oats stopped sponsoring Williams, and Williams, who previously had eaten Quaker products "all the time", never "[ate] one since" the company stopped sponsoring him.[68]

Despite the trouble with the draft board, Williams had a new salary of $30,000 in 1942.[68] In the season, Williams won the Triple Crown,[62] with a .356 batting average, 36 home runs, and 137 RBIs.[36] On May 21, Williams also hit his 100th career home run.[71] He was the third Red Sox player to hit 100 home runs with the team, following his teammates Jimmie Foxx and Joe Cronin.[citation needed] Despite winning the Triple Crown, Williams came in second in the MVP voting, losing to Joe Gordon of the Yankees. Williams felt that he should have gotten a "little more consideration" because of winning the Triple Crown, and he thought that "the reason I didn't get more consideration was because of the trouble I had with the draft [boards]".[62]

Williams joined the Navy Reserve on May 22, 1942, went on active duty in 1943, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps as a Naval Aviator on May 2, 1944. Williams also played on the baseball team in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, along with his Red Sox teammate Johnny Pesky in pre-flight training, after eight weeks in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Civilian Pilot Training Course.[72] While on the baseball team, Williams was sent back to Fenway Park on July 12, 1943, to play on an All-Star team managed by Babe Ruth. The newspapers reported that Babe Ruth said when finally meeting Williams, "Hiya, kid. You remind me a lot of myself. I love to hit. You're one of the most natural ballplayers I've ever seen. And if my record is broken, I hope you're the one to do it".[73] Williams later said he was "flabbergasted" by the incident, as "after all, it was Babe Ruth".[73] In the game, Williams hit a 425-foot home run to help give the American League All-Stars a 98 win.[74]

On September 2, 1945, when the war ended, Lt. Williams was in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii awaiting orders as a replacement pilot. While in Pearl Harbor, Williams played baseball in the Navy League. Also in that eight-team league were Joe DiMaggio, Joe Gordon, and Stan Musial. The Service World Series with the Army versus the Navy attracted crowds of 40,000 for each game. The players said it was even better than the actual World Series being played between the Detroit Tigers and Chicago Cubs that year.[75]

Williams was discharged by the Marine Corps on January 28, 1946, in time to begin preparations for the upcoming pro baseball season.[76][77] He joined the Red Sox again in 1946, signing a $37,500 contract.[78] On July 14, after Williams hit three home runs and eight RBIs in the first game of a doubleheader, Lou Boudreau, inspired by Williams's consistent pull hitting to right field, created what would later be known as the Boudreau shift (also Williams shift) against Williams, having only one player on the left side of second base (the left fielder). Ignoring the shift, Williams walked twice, doubled, and grounded out to the shortstop, who was positioned in between first and second base.[79][80] Also during 1946, the All-Star Game was held in Fenway Park. In the game, Williams homered in the fourth inning against Kirby Higbe, singled in a run in the fifth inning, singled in the seventh inning, and hit a three-run home run against Rip Sewell's "eephus pitch" in the eighth inning[81] to help the American League win 120.[82]

For the 1946 season, Williams hit .342 with 38 home runs and 123 RBIs,[36] helping the Red Sox win the pennant on September 13. During the season, Williams hit the only inside-the-park home run in his Major League career in a September 10 win at Cleveland,[83][84] and in June hit what is considered the longest home run in Fenway Park history, at 502 feet (153m) and subsequently marked with a lone red seat in the Fenway bleachers.[85] Williams ran away as the winner in the MVP voting.[86] During an exhibition game in Fenway Park against an All-Star team during early October, Williams was hit on the elbow by a curveball by the Washington Senators' pitcher Mickey Haefner. Williams was immediately taken out of the game, and X-rays of his arm showed no damage, but his arm was "swelled up like a boiled egg", according to Williams.[87] Williams could not swing a bat again until four days later, one day before the World Series, when he reported the arm as "sore".[87] During the series, Williams batted .200, going 5-for-25 with no home runs and just one RBI. The Red Sox lost in seven games,[88] with Williams going 0-for-4 in the last game.[89] Fifty years later when asked what one thing he would have done different in his life, Williams replied, "I'd have done better in the '46 World Series. God, I would".[87] The 1946 World Series was the only World Series Williams ever appeared in.[90]

Williams signed a $70,000 contract in 1947.[91] Williams was also almost traded for Joe DiMaggio in 1947. In late April, Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey and Yankees owner Dan Topping agreed to swap the players, but a day later canceled the deal when Yawkey requested that Yogi Berra come with DiMaggio.[92] In May, Williams was hitting .337.[93] Williams won the Triple Crown in 1947, but lost the MVP award to Joe DiMaggio, 202 points to 201 points. One writer left Williams off his ballot. Williams thought it was Mel Webb, whom Williams called a "grouchy old guy",[94] although it now appears it was not Webb.[95]

Williams was the third major league player to have had at least four 30-home run and 100-RBI seasons in their first five years, joining Chuck Klein and Joe DiMaggio, and followed by Ralph Kiner, Mark Teixeira, Albert Pujols, and Ryan Braun through 2011.[96]

In 1948, under their new manager, the ex-New York Yankee great skipper Joe McCarthy,[97] Williams hit a league-leading .369 with 25 home runs and 127 RBIs,[36] and was third in MVP voting.[98] On April 29, Williams hit his 200th career home run. He became just the second player to hit 200 home runs in a Red Sox uniform, joining his former teammate Jimmie Foxx.[64] On October 2, against the Yankees, Williams hit his 222nd career home run, tying Foxx for the Red Sox all-time record.[99] In the Red Sox' final two games of the regular schedule, they beat the Yankees (to force a one-game playoff against the Cleveland Indians) and Williams got on base eight times out of ten plate appearances.[97] In the playoff, Williams went 1-for-4,[100] with the Red Sox losing 83.

In 1949, Williams received a new salary of $100,000 ($1,139,000 in current dollar terms).[101] He hit .343 (losing the AL batting title by just .0002 to the Tigers' George Kell, thus missing the Triple Crown that year), hitting 43 home runs, his career high, and driving in 159 runs, tied for highest in the league, and at one point, he got on base in 84 straight games, an MLB record that still stands today, helping him win the MVP trophy.[36][102] On April 28, Williams hit his 223rd career home run, breaking the record for most home runs in a Red Sox uniform, passing Jimmie Foxx.[103] Williams is still the Red Sox career home run leader.[64] However, despite being ahead of the Yankees by one game just beforea 2-game series against them (last regular-season games for both teams),[97] the Red Sox lost both of those games.[104] The Yankees won the first of what would be five straight World Series titles in 1949.[105] For the rest of Williams's career, the Yankees won nine pennants and six World Series titles, while the Red Sox never finished better than third place.[105]

In 1950, Williams was playing in his eighth All-Star Game. In the first inning, Williams caught a line drive by Ralph Kiner, slamming into the Comiskey Park scoreboard and breaking his left arm.[46] Williams played the rest of the game, and he even singled in a run to give the American League the lead in the fifth inning, but by that time Williams's arm was a "balloon" and he was in great pain, so he left the game.[106] Both of the doctors who X-rayed Williams held little hope for a full recovery. The doctors operated on Williams for two hours.[107] When Williams took his cast off, he could only extend the arm to within four inches of his right arm.[108] Williams only played 89 games in 1950.[36] After the baseball season, Williams's elbow hurt so much he considered retirement, since he thought he would never be able to hit again. Tom Yawkey, the Red Sox owner, then sent Jack Fadden to Williams's Florida home to talk to Williams. Williams later thanked Fadden for saving his career.[109]

In 1951, Williams "struggled" to hit .318, with his elbow still hurting.[110] Williams also played in 148 games, 60 more than Williams had played the previous season, 30 home runs, two more than he had hit in 1950, and 126 RBIs, twenty-nine more than 1950.[36][110] Despite his lower-than-usual production at bat, Williams made the All-Star team.[47] On May 15, 1951, Williams became the 11th player in major league history to hit 300 career home runs. On May 21, Williams passed Chuck Klein for 10th place, on May 25 Williams passed Hornsby for ninth place, and on July 5 Williams passed Al Simmons for eighth place all-time in career home runs.[111] After the season, manager Steve O'Neill was fired, with Lou Boudreau replacing him. Boudreau's first announcement as manager was that all Red Sox players were "expendable", including Williams.[110]

Williams's name was called from a list of inactive reserves to serve on active duty in the Korean War on January 9, 1952. Williams, who was livid at his recalling, had a physical scheduled for April 2.[112] Williams passed his physical and in May, after only playing in six major league games, began refresher flight training and qualification prior to service in Korea. Right before he left for Korea, the Red Sox had a "Ted Williams Day" in Fenway Park. Friends of Williams gave him a Cadillac, and the Red Sox gave Williams a memory book that was signed by 400,000 fans. The governor of Massachusetts and mayor of Boston were there, along with a Korean War veteran named Frederick Wolf who used a wheelchair for mobility.[113] At the end of the ceremony, everyone in the park held hands and sang "Auld Lang Syne" to Williams, a moment which he later said "moved me quite a bit."[114] Private Wolf (an injured Korean veteran from Brooklyn) presented gifts from wounded veterans to Ted Williams. Ted choked and was only able to say,"... ok kid...".[115] The Red Sox went on to win the game 53, thanks to a two-run home run by Williams in the seventh inning.[114]

In August 1953, Williams practiced with the Red Sox for ten days before playing in his first game, garnering a large ovation from the crowd and hitting a home run in the eighth inning.[116] In the season, Williams ended up hitting .407 with 13 home runs and 34 RBIs in 37 games and 110 at bats (not nearly enough plate appearances to qualify for that season's batting title).[36] On September 6, Williams hit his 332nd career home run, passing Hank Greenberg for seventh all-time.[117]

On the first day of spring training in 1954, Williams broke his collarbone running after a line drive.[116] Williams was out for six weeks, and in April he wrote an article with Joe Reichler of the Saturday Evening Post saying that he intended to retire at the end of the season.[118] Williams returned to the Red Sox lineup on May 7, and he hit .345 with 386 at bats in 117 games, although Bobby vila, who had hit .341, won the batting championship. This was because it was required then that a batter needed 400 at bats, despite Lou Boudreau's attempt to bat Williams second in the lineup to get more at-bats. Williams led the league in base on balls with 136 which kept him from qualifying under the rules at the time. By today's standards (plate appearances) he would have been the champion. The rule was changed shortly thereafter to keep this from happening again.[36][119] On August 25, Williams passed Johnny Mize for sixth place, and on September 3, Williams passed Joe DiMaggio for fifth all-time in career home runs with his 362nd career home run. He finished the season with 366 career home runs.[120] On September 26, Williams "retired" after the Red Sox's final game of the season.[121]

During the off-season of 1954, Williams was offered the chance to be manager of the Red Sox. Williams declined, and he suggested that Pinky Higgins, who had previously played on the 1946 Red Sox team as the third baseman, become the manager of the team. Higgins later was hired as the Red Sox manager in 1955.[122] Williams sat out the first month of the 1955 season due to a divorce settlement with his wife, Doris. When Williams returned, he signed a $98,000 contract on May 13. Williams batted .356 in 320 at bats on the season, lacking enough at bats to win the batting title over Al Kaline, who batted .340.[123] Williams hit 28 home runs and drove in 83 runs[36] while being named the "Comeback Player of the Year."[124]

On July 17, 1956, Williams became the fifth player to hit 400 home runs, following Mel Ott in 1941, Jimmie Foxx in 1938, Lou Gehrig in 1936, and Babe Ruth in 1927.[125][126] Three weeks later at home against the Yankees on August7, after Williams was booed for dropping a fly ball from Mickey Mantle, he spat at one of the fans who was taunting him on the top of the dugout;[127] Williams was fined $5,000 for the incident.[128][129] The following night against Baltimore, Williams was greeted by a large ovation, and received an even larger one when he hit a home run in the sixth inning to break a 22 tie. In The Boston Globe, the publishers ran a "What Globe Readers Say About Ted" section made out of letters about Williams, which were either the sportswriters or the "loud mouths" in the stands. Williams explained years later, "From '56 on, I realized that people were for me. The writers had written that the fans should show me they didn't want me, and I got the biggest ovation yet".[130] Williams lost the batting title to Mickey Mantle in 1956, batting .345 to Mantle's .353, with Mantle on his way to winning the Triple Crown.[131]

In 1957, Williams batted .388 to lead the majors, then signed a contract in February 1958 for a record high $125,000 (or $135,000).[132][133] At age forty that season, he again led the American League with a .328 batting average.[134]

When Pumpsie Green became the first black player on the Red Soxthe last major league team to integratein 1959, Williams openly welcomed Green.[135]

Williams ended his career with a home run in his last at-bat on September 28, 1960. He refused to salute the fans as he returned the dugout after he crossed home plate or after he was replaced in left field by Carroll Hardy. An essay written by John Updike the following month for The New Yorker, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu", chronicles this event.[136]

Williams is one of only 29 players in baseball history to date to have appeared in Major League games in four decades.[137]

Williams was an obsessive student of hitting. He famously used a lighter bat than most sluggers, because it generated a faster swing.[138] In 1970, he wrote a book on the subject, The Science of Hitting (revised 1986), which is still read by many baseball players.[138] The book describes his theory of swinging only at pitches that came into ideal areas of his strike zone, a strategy Williams credited with his success as a hitter. Pitchers apparently feared Williams; his bases-on-balls-to-plate-appearances ratio (.2065) is still the highest of any player in the Hall of Fame.

Williams nearly always took the first pitch.[139]

He helped pass his expertise of playing left-field in front of the Green Monster to his successor on the Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski.[140]

Williams was on uncomfortable terms with the Boston newspapers for nearly twenty years, as he felt they liked to discuss his personal life as much as his baseball performance. He maintained a career-long feud with Sport due to a 1948 feature article in which the reporter included a quote from Williams's mother. Insecure about his upbringing, and stubborn because of immense confidence in his own talent, Williams made up his mind that the "knights of the keyboard", as he derisively labeled the press, were against him. After having hit for the league's Triple Crown in 1947, Williams narrowly lost the MVP award in a vote where one Midwestern newspaper writer left Williams entirely off his ten-player ballot.

During his career, some sportswriters also criticized aspects of Williams's baseball performance, including what they viewed as his lackadaisical fielding and lack of clutch hitting. Williams pushed back, saying: "They're always saying that I don't hit in the clutches. Well, there are a lot [of games] when I do."[141] He also asserted that it made no sense crashing into an outfield wall to try to make a difficult catch because of the risk of injury or being out of position to make the play after missing the ball.[142]

Williams treated most of the press accordingly, as he described in his 1969 memoir My Turn at Bat. Williams also had an uneasy relationship with the Boston fans, though he could be very cordial one-to-one. He felt at times a good deal of gratitude for their passion and their knowledge of the game. On the other hand, Williams was temperamental, high-strung, and at times tactless. In his biography, Ronald Reis relates how Williams committed two fielding miscues in a doubleheader in 1950 and was roundly booed by Boston fans. He bowed three times to various sections of Fenway Park and made an obscene gesture. When he came to bat he spat in the direction of fans near the dugout. The incident caused an avalanche of negative media reaction, and inspired sportswriter Austen Lake's famous comment that when Williams's name was announced the sound was like "autumn wind moaning through an apple orchard."

Another incident occurred in 1958 in a game against the Washington Senators. Williams struck out, and as he stepped from the batter's box swung his bat violently in anger. The bat slipped from his hands, was launched into the stands and struck a 60-year-old woman who turned out to be the housekeeper of the Red Sox general manager Joe Cronin. While the incident was an accident and Williams apologized to the woman personally, to all appearances it seemed at the time that Williams had hurled the bat in a fit of temper.

Williams gave generously to those in need. He was especially linked with the Jimmy Fund of the DanaFarber Cancer Institute, which provides support for children's cancer research and treatment. Williams used his celebrity to virtually launch the fund, which raised more than $750million between 1948 and 2010. Throughout his career, Williams made countless bedside visits to children being treated for cancer, which Williams insisted go unreported. Often parents of sick children would learn at check-out time that "Mr. Williams has taken care of your bill".[143] The Fund recently stated that "Williams would travel everywhere and anywhere, no strings or paychecks attached, to support the cause... His name is synonymous with our battle against all forms of cancer."[143]

Williams demanded loyalty from those around him. He could not forgive the fickle nature of the fansbooing a player for booting a ground ball, and then turning around and roaring approval of the same player for hitting a home run. Despite the cheers and adulation of most of his fans, the occasional boos directed at him in Fenway Park led Williams to stop tipping his cap in acknowledgment after a home run.

Williams maintained this policy up to and including his swan song in 1960. After hitting a home run at Fenway Park, which would be his last career at-bat, Williams characteristically refused either to tip his cap as he circled the bases or to respond to prolonged cheers of "We want Ted!" from the crowd by making an appearance from the dugout. The Boston manager Pinky Higgins sent Williams to his fielding position in left field to start the ninth inning, but then immediately recalled him for his back-up Carroll Hardy, thus allowing Williams to receive one last ovation as he jogged onto then off the field, and he did so without reacting to the crowd. Williams's aloof attitude led the writer John Updike to observe wryly that "Gods do not answer letters."[136]

Williams's final home run did not take place during the final game of the 1960 season, but rather in the Red Sox's last home game that year. The Red Sox played three more games, but they were on the road in New York City and Williams did not appear in any of them, as it became clear that Williams's final home at-bat would be the last one of his career.

In 1991, on Ted Williams Day at Fenway Park, Williams pulled a Red Sox cap from out of his jacket and tipped it to the crowd. This was the first time that he had done so since his earliest days as a player.

A Red Smith profile from 1956 describes one Boston writer trying to convince Ted Williams that first cheering and then booing a ballplayer was no different from a moviegoer applauding a "western" movie actor one day and saying the next "He stinks! Whatever gave me the idea he could act?" Williams rejected this; when he liked a western actor like Hoot Gibson, he liked him in every picture, and would not think of booing him.

Williams once had a friendship with Ty Cobb, with whom he often had discussions about baseball. He often touted Rogers Hornsby as being the greatest right-handed hitter of all time. This assertion actually led to a split in the relationship between Ty Cobb and Ted Williams. Once during one of their yearly debate sessions on the greatest hitters of all time, Williams asserted that Hornsby was one of the greatest of all time. Cobb apparently had strong feelings about Hornsby and he threw a fit, expelling Williams from his hotel room. Their friendship effectively terminated after this altercation.[144] This story was later refuted by Ted Williams himself.[145]

Williams served as a Naval Aviator during World War II and the Korean War. Unlike many other major league players, he did not spend all of his war-time playing on service teams.[146] Williams had been classified 3-A by Selective Service prior to the war, a dependency deferment because he was his mother's sole means of financial support. When his classification was changed to 1-A following the American entry into World War II, Williams appealed to his local draft board. The draft board ruled that his draft status should not have been changed. He made a public statement that once he had built up his mother's trust fund, he intended to enlist. Even so, criticism in the media, including withdrawal of an endorsement contract by Quaker Oats, resulted in his enlistment in the U.S. Naval Reserve on May 22, 1942.

Williams did not opt for an easy assignment playing baseball for the Navy, but rather joined the V-5 program to become a Naval aviator. Williams was first sent to the Navy's Preliminary Ground School at Amherst College for six months of academic instruction in various subjects including math and navigation, where he achieved a 3.85 grade point average.

Williams was talented as a pilot, and so enjoyed it that he had to be ordered by the Navy to leave training to personally accept his American League 1942 Major League Baseball Triple Crown.[146] Williams's Red Sox teammate, Johnny Pesky, who went into the same aviation training program, said this about Williams: "He mastered intricate problems in fifteen minutes which took the average cadet an hour, and half of the other cadets there were college grads." Pesky again described Williams's acumen in the advance training, for which Pesky personally did not qualify: "I heard Ted literally tore the sleeve target to shreds with his angle dives. He'd shoot from wingovers, zooms, and barrel rolls, and after a few passes the sleeve was ribbons. At any rate, I know he broke the all-time record for hits." Ted went to Jacksonville for a course in aerial gunnery, the combat pilot's payoff test, and broke all the records in reflexes, coordination, and visual-reaction time. "From what I heard. Ted could make a plane and its six 'pianos' (machine guns) play like a symphony orchestra", Pesky says. "From what they said, his reflexes, coordination, and visual reaction made him a built-in part of the machine."[147]

Williams completed pre-flight training in Athens, Georgia, his primary training at NAS Bunker Hill, Indiana, and his advanced flight training at NAS Pensacola. He received his gold Naval Aviator wings and his commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps on May 2, 1944.

Williams served as a flight instructor at NAS Pensacola teaching young pilots to fly the complicated F4U Corsair fighter plane. Williams was in Pearl Harbor awaiting orders to join the Fleet in the Western Pacific when the War in the Pacific ended. He finished the war in Hawaii, and then he was released from active duty on January 12, 1946, but he did remain in the Marine Corps Reserve.[77]

On May 1, 1952, 14 months after his promotion to captain in the Marine Corps Reserve, Williams was recalled to active duty for service in the Korean War.[148] He had not flown any aircraft for eight years but he turned down all offers to sit out the war in comfort as a member of a service baseball team. Nevertheless, Williams was resentful of being called up, which he admitted years later, particularly regarding the Navy's policy of calling up Inactive Reservists rather than members of the Active Reserve.

Williams reported for duty on May 2, 1952. After eight weeks of refresher flight training and qualification in the F9F Panther jet fighter with VMF-223 at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, Williams was assigned to VMF-311, Marine Aircraft Group 33 (MAG-33), based at the K-3 airfield in Pohang, South Korea.[77]

On February 16, 1953, Williams, flying as the wingman for John Glenn (later an astronaut, then U.S. Senator), was part of a 35-plane raid against a tank and infantry training school just south of Pyongyang, North Korea. As the aircraft from VMF-115 and VMF-311 dove on the target, Williams's plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, a piece of flak knocked out his hydraulics and electrical systems, causing Williams to have to "limp" his plane back to K-3 air base where he made a belly landing. For his actions of this day, he was awarded the Air Medal.[149]

Williams flew 39 combat missions in Korea, earning the Air Medal with two Gold Stars representing second and third awards, before being withdrawn from flight status in June 1953 after a hospitalization for pneumonia. This resulted in the discovery of an inner ear infection that disqualified him from flight status.[150] John Glenn described Williams as one of the best pilots he knew,[146] while his wife Annie described him as the most profane man she ever met.[151] In the last half of his missions, Williams was flying as Glenn's wingman.[152]

Williams likely would have exceeded 600 career home runs if he had not served in the military, and might even have approached Babe Ruth's then record of 714. He might have set the record for career RBIs as well, exceeding Hank Aaron's total.[146] While the absences in the Marine Corps took almost five years out of his baseball career, he never publicly complained about the time devoted to service in the Marine Corps. His biographer, Leigh Montville, argued that Williams was not happy about being pressed into service in South Korea, but he did what he thought was his patriotic duty.

Following his return to the United States in August 1953, he resigned his Reserve commission to resume his baseball career.[148]

After retirement from play, Williams helped Boston's new left fielder, Carl Yastrzemski, in hitting, and was a regular visitor to the Red Sox' spring training camps from 1961 to 1966, where he worked as a special batting instructor. He served as executive assistant to Tom Yawkey (196165), then was named a team vice president (196568) upon his election to the Hall of Fame. He resumed his spring training instruction role with the club in 1978.

Beginning in 1961, he would spend summers at the Ted Williams Baseball Camp in Lakeville, Massachusetts, which he had established in 1958 with his friend Al Cassidy and two other business partners. For eight summers and parts of others after that, he would give hitting clinics and talk baseball at the camp.[5] It was not uncommon to find Williams fishing in the pond at the camp. The area now is owned by the town and a few of the buildings still stand. In the main lodge one can still see memorabilia from Williams's playing days.

Williams served as manager of the Washington Senators, from 19691971, then continued with the team when they became the Texas Rangers after the 1971 season. Williams's best season as a manager was 1969 when he led the expansion Senators to an 8676 record in the team's only winning season in Washington. He was chosen "Manager of the Year" after that season. Like many great players, Williams became impatient with ordinary athletes' abilities and attitudes, particularly those of pitchers, whom he admitted he never respected. Fellow manager Alvin Dark thought Williams "was a smart, fearless manager" who helped his hitters perform better. Williams's issue with Washington/Texas, according to Dark, was when the ownership traded away his third baseman and shortstop, making it difficult for the club to be as competitive.[153]

On the subject of pitchers, in Ted's autobiography written with John Underwood, Ted opines regarding Bob Lemon (a sinker-ball specialist) pitching for the Cleveland Indians around 1951: "I have to rate Lemon as one of the very best pitchers I ever faced. His ball was always moving, hard, sinking, fast-breaking. You could never really uhmmmph with Lemon."

Williams was much more successful in fishing. An avid and expert fly fisherman and deep-sea fisherman, he spent many summers after baseball fishing the Miramichi River, in Miramichi, New Brunswick. Williams was named to the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame in 2000. Williams, Jim Brown, Cumberland Posey, and Cal Hubbard are the only athletes to be inducted into the Halls of Fame of more than one professional sport. Williams was also known as an accomplished hunter; he was fond of pigeon-shooting for sport in Fenway Park during his career, on one occasion drawing the ire of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.[154]

Williams reached an extensive deal with Sears, lending his name and talent toward marketing, developing, and endorsing a line of in-house sports equipmentsuch as the "Ted Williams" edition Gamefisher aluminum boat and 7.5hp "Ted Williams" edition motor, as well as fishing, hunting, and baseball equipment. Williams continued his involvement in the Jimmy Fund, later losing a brother to leukemia, and spending much of his spare time, effort, and money in support of the cancer organization.

In his later years Williams became a fixture at autograph shows and card shows after his son (by his third wife), John Henry Williams, took control of his career, becoming his de facto manager. The younger Williams provided structure to his father's business affairs, exposed forgeries that were flooding the memorabilia market, and rationed his father's public appearances and memorabilia signings to maximize their earnings.

One of Ted Williams's final, and most memorable, public appearances was at the 1999 All-Star Game in Boston. Able to walk only a short distance, Williams was brought to the pitcher's mound in a golf cart. He proudly waved his cap to the crowda gesture he had never done as a player. Fans responded with a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. At the pitcher's mound he was surrounded by players from both teams, including fellow Red Sox player Nomar Garciaparra, and was assisted by Tony Gwynn in throwing out the first pitch of that year's All-Star Game. Later in the year, he was among the members of the Major League Baseball All-Century Team introduced to the crowd at Turner Field in Atlanta prior to Game Two of the World Series.

On May 4, 1944, Williams married Doris Soule, the daughter of his hunting guide. Their daughter, Barbara Joyce ("Bobbi Jo"), was born on January 28, 1948, while Williams was fishing in Florida.[155] They divorced in 1954. Williams married the socialite model Lee Howard on September 10, 1961, and they were divorced in 1967.

Williams married Dolores Wettach, a former Miss Vermont and Vogue model, in 1968. Their son John-Henry was born on August 27, 1968, followed by daughter Claudia, on October 8, 1971. They were divorced in 1972.[156]

Williams lived with Louise Kaufman for twenty years until her death in 1993. In his book, Cramer called her the love of Williams's life.[157] After his death, her sons filed suit to recover her furniture from Williams's condominium as well as a half-interest in the condominium they claimed he gave her.[158]

Williams had a strong respect for General Douglas MacArthur, referring to him as his "idol".[159] For Williams's 40th birthday, MacArthur sent him an oil painting of himself with the inscription "To Ted Williamsnot only America's greatest baseball player, but a great American who served his country. Your friend, Douglas MacArthur. General U.S. Army."[160]

Politically, Williams was a Republican,[161] and was described by one biographer as, "to the right of Attila the Hun" except when it came to Civil Rights.[162] Another writer similarly noted that while in the 1960s he had a liberal attitude on civil rights, he was pretty far right on other cultural issues of the time, calling him ultraconservative in the tradition of Barry Goldwater and John Wayne.[161]

Williams campaigned for Richard Nixon in the 1960 United States Presidential Election, and after Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy, refused several invitations from President Kennedy to gather together in Cape Cod. He supported Nixon again in 1968, and as manager of the Senators, kept a picture of him on his desk, meeting with the President several times while managing the team. In 1972 he called Nixon, the greatest president of my lifetime.[161] In the following years, Williams endorsed several other candidates in Republican Party presidential primaries, including George H. W. Bush in 1988 (whom he also campaigned for in New Hampshire),[163] Bob Dole in 1996, and George W. Bush in 2000.[164]

According to friends, Williams was an atheist[165] and this influenced his decision to be cryogenically frozen. His daughter Claudia stated "It was like a religion, something we could have faith in... no different from holding the belief that you might be reunited with your loved ones in heaven".[166]

Williams's brother Danny and his son John-Henry both died of leukemia.[167]

In his last years, Williams suffered from cardiomyopathy. He had a pacemaker implanted in November 2000 and he underwent open-heart surgery in January 2001. After suffering a series of strokes and congestive heart failure, he died of cardiac arrest at the age of 83 on July 5, 2002, at Citrus Memorial Hospital, Inverness, Florida, near his home in Citrus Hills, Florida.[168]

Though his will stated his desire to be cremated and his ashes scattered in the Florida Keys, Williams' son John-Henry and younger daughter Claudia chose to have his remains frozen cryonically.

Ted's elder daughter, Bobby-Jo Ferrell, brought a suit to have her father's wishes recognized. John-Henry's lawyer then produced an informal "family pact" signed by Ted, Claudia, and John-Henry, in which they agreed "to be put into biostasis after we die" to "be able to be together in the future, even if it is only a chance."[169] Bobby-Jo and her attorney, Spike Fitzpatrick (former attorney of Ted Williams), contended that the family pact, which was scribbled on an ink-stained napkin, was forged by John-Henry and/or Claudia.[170] Fitzpatrick and Ferrell believed that the signature was not obtained legally.[171] Laboratory analysis proved that the signature was genuine.[171] John-Henry said that his father was a believer in science and was willing to try cryonics if it held the possibility of reuniting the family.[172]

Though the family pact upset some friends, family and fans, a public plea for financial support of the lawsuit by Ferrell produced little result.[172] Citing financial difficulties, Ferrell dropped her lawsuit on the condition that a $645,000 trust fund left by Williams would immediately pay the sum out equally to the three children.[172] Inquiries to cryonics organizations increased after the publicity from the case.[170]

In Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, author Leigh Montville claims that the family cryonics pact was a practice Ted Williams autograph on a plain piece of paper, around which the agreement had later been hand written. The pact document was signed "Ted Williams", the same as his autographs, whereas he would always sign his legal documents "Theodore Williams", according to Montville. However, Claudia testified to the authenticity of the document in an affidavit.[173]

Williams body was subsequently decapitated for the neuropreservation option from Alcor.[174] Following John-Henry's unexpected illness and death from acute myeloid leukemia on March 6, 2004, John-Henry's body was also transported to Alcor, in fulfillment of the family agreement.[175]

In 1954, Williams was inducted by the San Diego Hall of Champions into the Breitbard Hall of Fame honoring San Diego's finest athletes both on and off the playing surface.[176]

Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 25, 1966.[177] In his induction speech, Williams included a statement calling for the recognition of the great Negro leagues players: "I've been a very lucky guy to have worn a baseball uniform, and I hope some day the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given a chance."[178] Williams was referring to two of the most famous names in the Negro leagues, who were not given the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Gibson died early in 1947 and thus never played in the majors; and Paige's brief major league stint came long past his prime as a player. This powerful and unprecedented statement from the Hall of Fame podium was "a first crack in the door that ultimately would open and include Paige and Gibson and other Negro league stars in the shrine."[178] Paige was the first inducted in 1971. Gibson and others followed, starting in 1972 and continued on and off into the 21st century.

On November 18, 1991, President George H. W. Bush presented Williams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the US.[179]

The Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston, Massachusetts, carrying 1.6 miles (2.6km) of the final 2.3 miles (3.7km) of Interstate 90 under Boston Harbor, opened in December 1995, and Ted Williams Parkway (California State Route 56) in San Diego County, California, opened in 1992, were named in his honor while he was still alive. In 2016, the major league San Diego Padres inducted Williams into their hall of fame for his contributions to baseball in San Diego.[180]

The Tampa Bay Rays home field, Tropicana Field, installed the Ted Williams Museum (formerly in Hernando, Florida, 19942006) behind the left field fence. From the Tampa Bay Rays website: "The Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame brings a special element to the Tropicana Field. Fans can view an array of different artifacts and pictures of the 'Greatest hitter that ever lived.' These memorable displays range from Ted Williams's days in the military through his professional playing career. This museum is dedicated to some of the greatest players to ever 'lace 'em up,' including Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris."

In 2013, the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award honored Williams as one of 37 Baseball Hall of Fame members for his service in the United States Marine Corps during World War II.[181]

At the time of his retirement, Williams ranked third all-time in home runs (behind Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx), seventh in RBIs (after Ruth, Cap Anson, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Foxx, and Mel Ott), and seventh in batting average (behind Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Lefty O'Doul, Ed Delahanty and Tris Speaker). His career batting average of .3444 is the highest of any player who played his entire career in the live-ball era following 1920.

Most modern statistical analyses[which?] place Williams, along with Ruth and Barry Bonds, among the three most potent hitters to have played the game. Williams's baseball season of 1941 is often considered favorably with the greatest seasons of Ruth and Bonds in terms of various offensive statistical measures such as slugging, on-base and "offensive winning percentage." As a further indication, of the ten best seasons for OPS, short for On-Base Plus Slugging Percentage, a popular modern measure of offensive productivity, four each were achieved by Ruth and Bonds, and two by Williams.

In 1999, Williams was ranked as number eight on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, where he was the highest-ranking left fielder.[182]

Read the original here:

Ted Williams - Wikipedia

Why the sci-fi dream of cryonics never died | MIT Technology Review

Posted on by

The environment was something of a shift for Drake, who had spent the previous seven years as the medical response director of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Though it was the longtime leader in cryonics, Alcor was still a small nonprofit. It had been freezing the bodies and brains of its members, with the idea of one day bringing them back to life, since 1976.

The foundation, and cryonics in general, had long survived outside of mainstream acceptance. Typically shunned by the scientific community, cryonics is best known for its appearance in sci-fi films like 2001: A Space Odyssey. But its adherents have held on to a dream that at some point in the future, advances in medicine will allow for resuscitation and additional years on Earth. Over decades, small, tantalizing developments in related technology, as well as high-profile frozen test subjects like Ted Williams, have kept the hope alive. Today, nearly 200 dead patients are frozen in Alcors cryogenic chambers at temperatures of 196 C, including a handful of celebrities, who have paid tens of thousands of dollars for the goal of possible revival and ultimately reintegration into society.

But its the recent involvement of Yinfeng that signals something of a new era for cryonics. With impressive financial resources, government support, and scientific staff, its one of a handful of new labs focused on expanding the consumer appeal of cryonics and trying anew to bring credibility to the long-disputed theory of human reanimation. Just a year after Drake came on board as research director of the Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute, the subsidiary of the Yinfeng Biological Group overseeing the cryonics program, the institute performed its first cryopreservation. Its storage vats now hold about a dozen clients who are paying upwards of $200,000 to preserve the whole body.

Still, the field remains rooted in faith rather than any real evidence that it works. Its a hopeless aspiration that reveals an appalling ignorance of biology, says Clive Coen, a neuroscientist and professor at Kings College London.

Even if one day you could perfectly thaw a frozen human body, you would still just have a warm dead body on your hands.

The cryonics process typically goes something like this: Upon a persons death, a response team begins the process of cooling the corpse to a low temperature and performs cardiopulmonary support to sustain blood flow to the brain and organs. Then the body is moved to a cryonics facility, where an organ preservation solution is pumped through the veins before the body is submerged in liquid nitrogen. This process should commence within one hour of deaththe longer the wait, the greater the damage to the bodys cells. Then, once the frozen cadaver is ensconced in the cryogenic chamber, the hope of the dead begins.

Since its beginnings in the late 1960s, the field has attracted opprobrium from the scientific community, particularly its more respectable cousin cryobiologythe study of how freezing and low temperatures affect living organisms and biological materials. The Society for Cryobiology even banned its members from involvement in cryonics in the 1980s, with a former society president lambasting the field as closer to fraud than either faith or science.

In recent years, though, it has grabbed the attention of the libertarian techno-optimist crowd, mostly tech moguls dreaming of their own immortality. And a number of new startups are expanding the playing field. Tomorrow Biostasis in Berlin became the first cryonics company in Western Europe in 2019, for example, and in early 2022, Southern Cryonics opened a facility in Australia.

More researchers are open to longer-term, futuristic topics than there might have been 20 years ago or so, says Tomorrow Biostasis founder Emil Kendziorra.

Visit link:

Why the sci-fi dream of cryonics never died | MIT Technology Review

Arizona cryonics facility preserves bodies to revive later

Posted on by

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Oct 12 (Reuters) - Time and death are "on pause" for some people in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Inside tanks filled with liquid nitrogen are the bodies and heads of 199 humans who opted to be cryopreserved in hopes of being revived in the future when science has advanced beyond what it is capable of today. Many of the "patients," as Alcor Life Extension Foundation calls them, were terminally ill with cancer, ALS or other diseases with no present-day cure.

Matheryn Naovaratpong, a Thai girl with brain cancer, is the youngest person to be cryopreserved, at the age of 2 in 2015.

"Both her parents were doctors and she had multiple brain surgeries and nothing worked, unfortunately. So they contacted us," said Max More, chief executive of Alcor, a nonprofit which claims to be the world leader in cryonics.

Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney, another Alcor patient, had his body cryopreserved after death from ALS in 2014.

The cryopreservation process begins after a person is declared legally dead. Blood and other fluids are removed from the patient's body and replaced with chemicals designed to prevent the formation of damaging ice crystals. Vitrified at extremely cold temperatures, Alcor patients are then placed in tanks at the Arizona facility "for as long as it takes for technology to catch up," More said.

The minimum cost is $200,000 for a body and $80,000 for the brain alone. Most of Alcor's almost 1,400 living "members" pay by making the company the beneficiary of life insurance policies equal to the cost, More said.

More's wife Natasha Vita-More likens the process to taking a trip to the future.

"The disease or injury cured or fixed, and the person has a new body cloned or a whole body prosthetic or their body reanimated and (can) meet up with their friends again," she said.

Many medical professionals disagree, said Arthur Caplan, who heads the medical ethics division at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine.

"This notion of freezing ourselves into the future is pretty science fiction and it's naive," he said. "The only group... getting excited about the possibility are people who specialize in studying the distant future or people who have a stake in wanting you to pay the money to do it."

Reporting by Liliana Salgado; Editing by Richard Chang

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

See more here:

Arizona cryonics facility preserves bodies to revive later

James Webb Discovery Helps Date Birth of Very First Galaxies – TIME

Posted on by
  1. James Webb Discovery Helps Date Birth of Very First Galaxies  TIME
  2. Discovering rare red spiral galaxy population from early universe with the James Webb Space Telescope  Science Daily
  3. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope discovers furthest galaxy  Cosmos
  4. Oldest known galaxies spotted by James Webb Space Telescope  Fox News
  5. James Webb Space Telescope 'fingerprints' earliest galaxies  BBC
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Originally posted here:

James Webb Discovery Helps Date Birth of Very First Galaxies - TIME

Roger de Montgomery – Wikipedia

Posted on by

11th-century Norman nobleman and earl in England

Roger de Montgomery (died 1094), also known as Roger the Great, was the first Earl of Shrewsbury, and Earl of Arundel, in Sussex. His father was Roger de Montgomery, seigneur of Montgomery, a member of the House of Montgomerie, and was probably a grandnephew of the Duchess Gunnor, wife of Duke Richard I of Normandy, the great-grandfather of William the Conqueror. The elder Roger had large landholdings in central Normandy, chiefly in the valley of the River Dives, which the younger Roger inherited.

Roger inherited his fathers estates in 1055. By the time of the Council of Lillebonne, which took place in about January of 1066, he was one of William the Conqueror's principal counsellors, playing a major role at the Council. He may not have fought in the initial invasion of England in 1066, instead staying behind to help govern Normandy. According to Wace's Roman de Rou, however, he commanded the Norman right flank at Hastings, returning to Normandy with King William in 1067.[1] Afterwards, he was entrusted with land in two regions critical for the defence of the Kingdom of England. At the end of 1067 or early in 1068, William gave Roger nearly all of what is now the county of West Sussex, a total of 83 manors,[2] which at the time of the Domesday Survey (1086) was an area known as the Rape of Arundel; and about 1071 Roger was granted estates in Shropshire[3] which amounted to some seven-eighths of the whole county;[2] he was also made Earl of Shrewsbury, but it is uncertain that the earldom came to him at the same time as the land, and it may have been a few years later. In 1083, Roger founded Shrewsbury Abbey.[3]

Roger was thus one of the half dozen greatest magnates in England during William the Conqueror's reign.[4] The Rape of Arundel was eventually split into two "rapes", one keeping the name of Arundel, the other being called the Rape of Chichester.[4]

Besides his estates in Sussex and Shropshire, Roger had others in Surrey (four manors), Hampshire (nine manors), Wiltshire (three manors), Middlesex (eight manors), Gloucestershire (one manor), Worcestershire (two manors), Cambridgeshire (eight manors), Warwickshire (eleven manors), and Staffordshire (thirty manors).[2] The income from Roger's estates amounted to about 2,000 per year, and in 1086 the income of all the land in England was around 72,000. The 2,000 (equivalent to several million in 2022) was almost 3 per cent of the nation's GDP.[5][6]

After William I's death in 1087, Roger joined with other rebels to overthrow the newly crowned king, William II, in the Rebellion of 1088. However, William was able to convince Roger to abandon the rebellion and to side with him. This worked out favourably for Roger, as the rebels were beaten and lost their land holdings in England. [7]

Roger married Mabel de Bellme, who was heiress to a large territory straddling the border between Normandy and Maine. The medieval chronicler Orderic Vitalis paints a picture of Mabel of Bellme being a scheming and cruel woman.[8] She was murdered by Hugh Bunel and his brothers who, possibly in December 1077, rode into her castle of Bures-sur-Dive and cut off her head as she lay in bed.[8][9] Their motive for the murder was that Mabel had deprived them of their paternal inheritance.[10] Roger and Mabel had 10 children:

Roger then married Adelaide du Puiset, by whom he had one son, Everard, who entered the Church.

After his death, Roger's estates were divided.[19] His eldest surviving son, Robert of Bellme, received the bulk of the Norman estates (as well as his mother's estates); the next son, Hugh, received the bulk of the English estates and the Earldom of Shrewsbury.[19] After Hugh's death, the elder son Robert inherited the earldom.[19]

Read the rest here:

Roger de Montgomery - Wikipedia

Video games can never be art | Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert

Posted on by

What stirs me to return to the subject? I was urged by a reader, Mark Johns, to consider a video of a TED talk given at USC by Kellee Santiago, a designer and producer of video games. I did so. I warmed to Santiago immediately. She is bright, confident, persuasive. But she is mistaken.

I propose to take an unfair advantage. She spoke extemporaneously. I have the luxury of responding after consideration. If you want to follow along, I urge you to watch her talk, which is embedded below. It's only 15 minutes long, and she makes the time pass quickly.

She begins by saying video games "already ARE art." Yet she concedes that I was correct when I wrote, "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." To which I could have added painters, composers, and so on, but my point is clear.

Then she shows a slide of a prehistoric cave painting, calling it "kind of chicken scratches on walls," and contrasts it with Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Her point is that while video games may be closer to the chicken scratch end of the spectrum, I am foolish to assume they will not evolve.

She then says speech began as a form of warning, and writing as a form of bookkeeping, but they evolved into storytelling and song. Actually, speech probably evolved into a form of storytelling and song long before writing was developed. And cave paintings were a form of storytelling, perhaps of religion, and certainly of the creation of beauty from those chicken-scratches Werner Herzog is even now filming in 3-D.

Herzog believes, in fact, that the paintings on the wall of the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in Southern France should only be looked at in the context of the shadows cast on those dark walls by the fires built behind the artists, which suggests the cave paintings, their materials of charcoal and ochre and all that went into them were the fruition of a long gestation, not the beginning of something--and that the artists were enormously gifted. They were great artists at that time, geniuses with nothing to build on, and were not in the process of becoming Michelangelo or anyone else. Any gifted artist will tell you how much he admires the "line" of those prehistoric drawers in the dark, and with what economy and wit they evoked the animals they lived among.

Read the rest here:

Video games can never be art | Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert

Life extension – Wikipedia

Posted on by

Concept of extending human lifespan by improvements in medicine or biotechnology

Life extension is the concept of extending the human lifespan, either modestly through improvements in medicine or dramatically by increasing the maximum lifespan beyond its generally-settled limit of 125 years.[1]

Several researchers in the area, along with "life extensionists", "immortalists" or "longevists" (those who wish to achieve longer lives themselves), postulate that future breakthroughs in tissue rejuvenation, stem cells, regenerative medicine, molecular repair, gene therapy, pharmaceuticals and organ replacement (such as with artificial organs or xenotransplantations) will eventually enable humans to have indefinite lifespans (agerasia[2]) through complete rejuvenation to a healthy youthful condition. The ethical ramifications, if life extension becomes a possibility, are debated by bioethicists.

The sale of purported anti-aging products such as supplements and hormone replacement is a lucrative global industry. For example, the industry that promotes the use of hormones as a treatment for consumers to slow or reverse the aging process in the US market generated about $50billion of revenue a year in 2009.[3] The use of such hormone products, however, has not been proven to be effective or safe.[3][4][5][6]

During the process of aging, an organism accumulates damage to its macromolecules, cells, tissues, and organs. Specifically, aging is characterized as and thought to be caused by "genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alterations, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient sensing, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, and altered intercellular communication."[7] Oxidation damage to cellular contents caused by free radicals is believed to contribute to aging as well.[8][9]

The longest documented human lifespan is 122 years 164 days, the case of Jeanne Calment who according to records was born in 1875 and died in 1997, whereas the maximum lifespan of a wildtype mouse, commonly used as a model in research on aging, is about three years.[10] Genetic differences between humans and mice that may account for these different aging rates include differences in efficiency of DNA repair, antioxidant defenses, energy metabolism, proteostasis maintenance, and recycling mechanisms such as autophagy.[11]

The average lifespan in a population is lowered by infant and child mortality, which are frequently linked to infectious diseases or nutrition problems. Later in life, vulnerability to accidents and age-related chronic disease such as cancer or cardiovascular disease play an increasing role in mortality. Extension of expected lifespan can often be achieved by access to improved medical care, vaccinations, good diet, exercise and avoidance of hazards such as smoking.

Maximum lifespan is determined by the rate of aging for a species inherent in its genes and by environmental factors. Widely recognized methods of extending maximum lifespan in model organisms such as nematodes, fruit flies, and mice include caloric restriction, gene manipulation, and administration of pharmaceuticals.[12] Another technique uses evolutionary pressures such as breeding from only older members or altering levels of extrinsic mortality.[13][14]Some animals such as hydra, planarian flatworms, and certain sponges, corals, and jellyfish do not die of old age and exhibit potential immortality.[15][16][17][18]

Senolytics eliminate senescent cells whereas senomorphics with candidates such as Apigenin, Everolimus and Rapamycin modulate properties of senescent cells without eliminating them, suppressing phenotypes of senescence, including the SASP.[22][23] Senomorphic effects may be one major effect mechanism of a range of prolongevity drug candidates. Such candidates are however typically not studied for just one mechanism, but multiple. There are biological databases of prolongevity drug candidates under research as well as of potential gene/protein targets. These are enhanced by longitudinal cohort studies, electronic health records, computational (drug) screening methods, computational biomarker-discovery methods and computational biodata-interpretation/personalized medicine methods.[24][25][26]

Such strategies as well as testing with model organisms and xenografts may attempt to or help address difficulties of trials with humans which have relatively long lifespans (compared to other animals) as well as the (larger) need to protect human health from early-trial-stage interventions (in clinical trials).

Besides rapamycin and senolytics, the drug-repurposing candidates studied most extensively include metformin, acarbose, spermidine (see below) and NAD+ enhancers.[27]

Many prolongevity drugs are synthetic alternatives or potential complements to existing nutraceuticals, such as various sirtuin-activating compounds under investigation like SRT2104.[28] In some cases pharmaceutical administration is combined with that of neutraceuticals such as in the case of glycine combined with NAC.[29] Often studies are strucutured based on or thematize specific prolongevity targets, listing both nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals (together or separately) such as FOXO3-activators.[30]

Researchers are also exploring ways to mitigate side-effects from such substances (possibly most notably rapamycin and its derivatives) such as via protocols of intermittent administration[31][23][22][32][33] and have called for research that helps determine optimal treatment schedules (including timing) in general.[34]

The free-radical theory of aging suggests that antioxidant supplements might extend human life. Reviews, however, have found that use of vitamin A (as -carotene) and vitamin E supplements possibly can increase mortality.[35][36] Other reviews have found no relationship between vitamin E and other vitamins with mortality.[37] Vitamin D supplementation of various dosages is investigated in trials[38] and there also is research into GlyNAC (see above).[29]

Complications of antioxidant supplementation (especially continuous high dosages far above the RDA) include that reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are mitigated by antioxidants, "have been found to be physiologically vital for signal transduction, gene regulation, and redox regulation, among others, implying that their complete elimination would be harmful". In particular, one way of multiple they can be detrimental is by inhibiting adaptation to exercise such as muscle hypertrophy (e.g. during dedicated periods of caloric surplus).[39][40][41] There is also research into stimulating/activating/fueling endogenous antioxidant generation, in particular e.g. of neutraceutical glycine and pharmaceutical NAC.[42] Antioxidants can change the oxidation status of different e.g. tissues, targets or sites each with potentially different implications, especially for different concentrations.[43][44][45][additional citation(s) needed] A review suggests mitochondria have a hormetic response to ROS, whereby low oxidative damage can be beneficial.[46]

In some studies calorie restriction has been shown to extend the life of mice, yeast, and rhesus monkeys.[47][48] However, a more recent study did not find calorie restriction to improve survival in rhesus monkeys.[49] In humans the long-term health effects of moderate caloric restriction with sufficient nutrients are unknown.[50]

According to two scientific reviews published in 2021, accumulating data suggests dietary restriction (DR) mainly intermittent fasting and caloric restriction results in many of the same beneficial changes in adult humans as in studied organisms, potentially increasing health- and lifespan beyond[51] the benefits of healthy body weight.[51][52][53][54][55][56]

Which protocols of and combinations (e.g. see caloric restriction mimetic and AMPK) with DR are effective or most effective in humans is largely unknown and is being actively researched. A geroscience field of "precision nutrigeroscience" is proposed that also considers the potential need for adjustments of nutritional interventions per individual (e.g. due to differences in genetics and age).[53] Intermittent fasting refers to periods with intervals during which no food but only water and tea/coffee (the latter reduces appetite or facilitates caloric restriction and also activates autophagy)[57][58][59][60] are ingested such as a period of daily time-restricted eating with a window of 8 to 12 hours for any caloric intake and could be combined for synergistic effects with overall caloric restriction and variants of the Mediterranean diet which usually has benefits of long-term cardiovascular health and longevity.[61]

CALERIE is a trial of prolonged continuous calorie restriction on healthy humans.[62]

Specific amino acids in the protein consumption are associated with the regulation of lifespan/ageing and their targeted restriction has been proposed for further research.[63][64][65][66]

Mechanistically, research to date has identified various nutrient sensors involved in the beneficial effects of caloric restriction as well as methionine-reduction/restriction including notably AMPK[67] (see also: mTOR inhibitors), mTOR, insulin-related pathways, sirtuins,[68][69] NAD+,[70] NFkB, and FOXO and, partly by extension, processes such as DNA repair[71][68] and autophagy.[72][73][74][51][34][71]

During periods of caloric restriction, higher protein intakes "may be required to maximize muscle retention in lean, resistance-trained subjects"[75] and "resistance training (RT) can attenuate muscle loss during caloric restriction"[76] with strength training also generally being associated with a "1017% lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD), total cancer, diabetes and lung cancer".[77] Reviews have clarified that the permanent or periodic caloric restriction is conducted in such a way that no malnutrition occurs (see below).[78][54][52]

Research suggests that increasing adherence to Mediterranean diet patterns is associated with a reduction in total and cause-specific mortality, extending health- and lifespan.[79][80][74][81] Research is identifying the key beneficial components of the Mediterranean diet.[82][83] It shares various characteristics with the similarly beneficial Okinawa diet.[84] Potential anti-aging mechanisms of various nutrients are not yet understood.[85] Shares of macronutrients[86][52] and level of caloric intake may also be of significance, including in periods when no dietary restriction occurs[86] such as not having a fat-intake that is too low[52] and not having a prolonged caloric surplus or caloric deficit that is too large.

Studies suggest dietary changes are a major cause of national relative rises in life-span.[87]

Mechanistically, research suggests that the gut microbiome, which varies per person and changes throughout lifespan, is also involved in the beneficial effects, due to which various diet supplementations with prebiotics, various diverse (multi-strain) probiotics and synbiotics, and fecal microbiota transplantation are being investigated for life extension,[88][26][89] mainly for prolonging healthspan,[90][91][92] with many important questions being unresolved.[93]

Approaches to develop optimal diets for health- and lifespan (or "longevity diets")[52] include:

Beyond, research into senolytics and (synthetic) prolongevity-drugs, vitamins and antioxidants, prebiotics and probiotics, there are neutraceuticals dietary supplements and bioactive plant compounds (phytochemicals) but not pharmaceuticals[120] that are being investigated in life sciences, nutrition science and gerontology for potential health- and lifespan extension in healthy humans. Sometimes, their use is researched or recommended as a way to correct nutritional deficiencies from switching to otherwise healthy foods in particular from replacing meat consumption with a higher intake of plant-based foods.[97][121] Especially, but not only, in such cases the supplementation of minerals and various specific micronutrients is investigated. Correcting magnesium deficiency for instance could prolong life.[122] Many supplements are researched primarily for potential improvements in health and healthspan rather than for extending lifespan.

Some studies hypothesize that relative health and longevity benefits of various foods and diets can be largely or to a large part attributed to the nutraceuticals they contain.[83][123][104][124] Some studies suggest increasing the intake of specific foods (see above) based on such results, while some investigate supplementation, including of dosages that are impractical to achieve with whole foods.

Researched substances include various polyphenols such as pterostilbene[125][126][124][69] or flavonoids, notably epicatechin.[85] Some herbal-extracts like rhodiola rosea are also being investigated due to results of tests with model organisms.[127][128] Some of these are AMPK activators and hence caloric restriction mimetics (some possibly exercise mimetics[129] as well). AMPK activators include resveratrol[130][125][131][104][123][132] and berberine.[133][134][132] Many such nutraceuticals are also potent antioxidants.[123][135] Like prolongevity-drugs and bioactive compounds in general, they can have multiple potential effect mechanisms, the polyphenol resveratrol for instance also activates possibly pro-longevity sirtuin activity.[68][123]

A common issue with many already-existing natural nutraceuticals like resveratrol is their low bioavailability.[136][137] Their side-effects are often low compared to several major longevity drug candidates. On the other hand, they are considered to often have "intrinsic natural bio-compatibility and safety".[69] Some of the compounds can have a "biphasic dose response" (a trait/effect of hormesis) whereby they (can) have beneficial effects at low or moderate doses and toxic effects at high doses.[34]

Further advanced biosciences-based approaches include:

There is a need and research into the development of aging biomarkers such as the epigenetic clock "to assess the ageing process and the efficacy of interventions to bypass the need for large-scale longitudinal studies".[62][25] Such biomarkers may also include in vivo brain imaging.[152]

Reviews sometimes include structured tables that provide systematic overviews of intervention/drug candidates with a review calling for integrating "current knowledge with multi-omics, health records, and drug safety data to predict drugs that can improve health in late life" and listing major outstanding questions.[24] Biological databases of prolongevity drug candidates under research as well as of potential gene/protein targets include GenAge, DrugAge and Geroprotectors.[24][153]

A review has pointed out that the approach of "'epidemiological' comparison of how a low versus a high consumption of an isolated macronutrient and its association with health and mortality may not only fail to identify protective or detrimental nutrition patterns but may lead to misleading interpretations". It proposes a multi-pillar approach, and summarizes findings towards constructing multi-system-considering and at least age-personalized dynamic refined longevity diets. Epidemiological-type observational studies included in meta-analyses should according to the study at least be complemented by "(1) basic research focused on lifespan and healthspan, (2) carefully controlled clinical trials, and (3) studies of individuals and populations with record longevity".[52]

The anti-aging industry offers several hormone therapies. Some of these have been criticized for possible dangers and a lack of proven effect. For example, the American Medical Association has been critical of some anti-aging hormone therapies.[3]

While growth hormone (GH) decreases with age, the evidence for use of growth hormone as an anti-aging therapy is mixed and based mostly on animal studies. There are mixed reports that GH or IGF-1 modulates the aging process in humans and about whether the direction of its effect is positive or negative.[154]

Klotho[142][155] and exerkines[145] (see above) like irisin[156] are being investigated for potential pro-longevity therapies.

Loneliness/isolation, social life and support,[81][157] exercise/physical activity (partly via neurobiological effects and increased NAD+ levels),[81][158][62][66][159][160] psychological characteristics/personality (possibly highly indirectly),[161][162] sleep duration,[81] circadian rhythms (patterns of sleep, drug-administration and feeding),[163][164][165] type of leisure activities,[81] not smoking,[81] altruistic emotions and behaviors,[166][167] subjective well-being,[168] mood[81] and stress (including via heat shock protein)[81][169] are investigated as potential (modulatable) factors of life extension.

Healthy lifestyle practices and healthy diet have been suggested as "first-line function-preserving strategies, with pharmacological agents, including existing and new pharmaceuticals and novel 'nutraceutical' compounds, serving as potential complementary approaches".[170]

Collectively, addressing common causes of death could extend lifespans of populations and humanity overall. For instance, a 2020 study indicates that the global mean loss of life expectancy (LLE) from air pollution in 2015 was 2.9 years, substantially more than, for example, 0.3years from all forms of direct violence, albeit a significant fraction of the LLE (a measure similar to years of potential life lost) is considered to be unavoidable.[172]

Regular screening and doctor visits has been suggested as a lifestyle-societal intervention.[81] (See also: medical test and biomarker)

Health policy and changes to standard healthcare could support the adoption of the field's conclusions a review suggests that the longevity diet would be a "valuable complement to standard healthcare and that, taken as a preventative measure, it could aid in avoiding morbidity, sustaining health into advanced age" as a form of preventive healthcare.[52]

It has been suggested that in terms of healthy diets, Mediterranean-style diets could be promoted by countries for ensuring healthy-by-default choices ("to ensure the healthiest choice is the easiest choice") and with highly effective measures including dietary education, food checklists and recipes that are "simple, palatable, and affordable".[173]

A review suggests that "targeting the aging process per se may be a far more effective approach to prevent or delay aging-associated pathologies than treatments specifically targeted to particular clinical conditions".[174]

Low ambient temperature as a physical factor affecting free radical levels was identified as a treatment producing exceptional lifespan increase in Drosophila melanogaster and other living beings. [175]

The extension of life has been a desire of humanity and a mainstay motif in the history of scientific pursuits and ideas throughout history, from the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Egyptian Smith medical papyrus, all the way through the Taoists, Ayurveda practitioners, alchemists, hygienists such as Luigi Cornaro, Johann Cohausen and Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, and philosophers such as Francis Bacon, Ren Descartes, Benjamin Franklin and Nicolas Condorcet. However, the beginning of the modern period in this endeavor can be traced to the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century, to the so-called "fin-de-sicle" (end of the century) period, denoted as an "end of an epoch" and characterized by the rise of scientific optimism and therapeutic activism, entailing the pursuit of life extension (or life-extensionism). Among the foremost researchers of life extension at this period were the Nobel Prize winning biologist Elie Metchnikoff (1845-1916) -- the author of the cell theory of immunity and vice director of Institut Pasteur in Paris, and Charles-douard Brown-Squard (1817-1894) -- the president of the French Biological Society and one of the founders of modern endocrinology.[176]

Sociologist James Hughes claims that science has been tied to a cultural narrative of conquering death since the Age of Enlightenment. He cites Francis Bacon (15611626) as an advocate of using science and reason to extend human life, noting Bacon's novel New Atlantis, wherein scientists worked toward delaying aging and prolonging life. Robert Boyle (16271691), founding member of the Royal Society, also hoped that science would make substantial progress with life extension, according to Hughes, and proposed such experiments as "to replace the blood of the old with the blood of the young". Biologist Alexis Carrel (18731944) was inspired by a belief in indefinite human lifespan that he developed after experimenting with cells, says Hughes.[177]

Regulatory and legal struggles between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Life Extension organization included seizure of merchandise and court action.[178] In 1991, Saul Kent and Bill Faloon, the principals of the organization, were jailed for four hours and were released on $850,000 bond each.[179] After 11 years of legal battles, Kent and Faloon convinced the US Attorney's Office to dismiss all criminal indictments brought against them by the FDA.[180]

In 2003, Doubleday published "The Immortal Cell: One Scientist's Quest to Solve the Mystery of Human Aging," by Michael D. West. West emphasised the potential role of embryonic stem cells in life extension.[181]

Other modern life extensionists include writer Gennady Stolyarov, who insists that death is "the enemy of us all, to be fought with medicine, science, and technology";[182] transhumanist philosopher Zoltan Istvan, who proposes that the "transhumanist must safeguard one's own existence above all else";[183] futurist George Dvorsky, who considers aging to be a problem that desperately needs to be solved;[184] and recording artist Steve Aoki, who has been called "one of the most prolific campaigners for life extension".[185]

In 1991, the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) was formed. The American Board of Medical Specialties recognizes neither anti-aging medicine nor the A4M's professional standing.[186]

In 2003, Aubrey de Grey and David Gobel formed the Methuselah Foundation, which gives financial grants to anti-aging research projects. In 2009, de Grey and several others founded the SENS Research Foundation, a California-based scientific research organization which conducts research into aging and funds other anti-aging research projects at various universities.[187] In 2013, Google announced Calico, a new company based in San Francisco that will harness new technologies to increase scientific understanding of the biology of aging.[188] It is led by Arthur D. Levinson,[189] and its research team includes scientists such as Hal V. Barron, David Botstein, and Cynthia Kenyon. In 2014, biologist Craig Venter founded Human Longevity Inc., a company dedicated to scientific research to end aging through genomics and cell therapy. They received funding with the goal of compiling a comprehensive human genotype, microbiome, and phenotype database.[190]

Aside from private initiatives, aging research is being conducted in university laboratories, and includes universities such as Harvard and UCLA. University researchers have made a number of breakthroughs in extending the lives of mice and insects by reversing certain aspects of aging.[191][192][193][194]

Some critics dispute the portrayal of aging as a disease. For example, Leonard Hayflick, who determined that fibroblasts are limited to around 50cell divisions, reasons that aging is an unavoidable consequence of entropy. Hayflick and fellow biogerontologists Jay Olshansky and Bruce Carnes have strongly criticized the anti-aging industry in response to what they see as unscrupulous profiteering from the sale of unproven anti-aging supplements.[5]

Research by Sobh and Martin (2011) suggests that people buy anti-aging products to obtain a hoped-for self (e.g., keeping a youthful skin) or to avoid a feared-self (e.g., looking old). The research shows that when consumers pursue a hoped-for self, it is expectations of success that most strongly drive their motivation to use the product. The research also shows why doing badly when trying to avoid a feared self is more motivating than doing well. When product use is seen to fail it is more motivating than success when consumers seek to avoid a feared-self.[195]

Though many scientists state[196] that life extension and radical life extension are possible, there are still no international or national programs focused on radical life extension. There are political forces staying for and against life extension. By 2012, in Russia, the United States, Israel, and the Netherlands, the Longevity political parties started. They aimed to provide political support to radical life extension research and technologies, and ensure the fastest possible and at the same time soft transition of society to the next step life without aging and with radical life extension, and to provide access to such technologies to most currently living people.[197]

Some tech innovators and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have invested heavily into anti-aging research. This includes Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle), Peter Thiel (former PayPal CEO),[198] Larry Page (co-founder of Google), and Peter Diamandis.[199]

Leon Kass (chairman of the US President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005) has questioned whether potential exacerbation of overpopulation problems would make life extension unethical.[200] He states his opposition to life extension with the words:

"simply to covet a prolonged life span for ourselves is both a sign and a cause of our failure to open ourselves to procreation and to any higher purpose ... [The] desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one's life and keep it; it is also an expression of a childish and narcissistic wish incompatible with devotion to posterity."[201]

John Harris, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, argues that as long as life is worth living, according to the person himself, we have a powerful moral imperative to save the life and thus to develop and offer life extension therapies to those who want them.[202]

Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued that any technological advances in life extension must be equitably distributed and not restricted to a privileged few.[203] In an extended metaphor entitled "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant", Bostrom envisions death as a monstrous dragon who demands human sacrifices. In the fable, after a lengthy debate between those who believe the dragon is a fact of life and those who believe the dragon can and should be destroyed, the dragon is finally killed. Bostrom argues that political inaction allowed many preventable human deaths to occur.[204]

Controversy about life extension is due to fear of overpopulation and possible effects on society.[205] Biogerontologist Aubrey De Grey counters the overpopulation critique by pointing out that the therapy could postpone or eliminate menopause, allowing women to space out their pregnancies over more years and thus decreasing the yearly population growth rate.[206] Moreover, the philosopher and futurist Max More argues that, given the fact the worldwide population growth rate is slowing down and is projected to eventually stabilize and begin falling, superlongevity would be unlikely to contribute to overpopulation.[205]

A Spring 2013 Pew Research poll in the United States found that 38% of Americans would want life extension treatments, and 56% would reject it. However, it also found that 68% believed most people would want it and that only 4% consider an "ideal lifespan" to be more than 120 years. The median "ideal lifespan" was 91 years of age and the majority of the public (63%) viewed medical advances aimed at prolonging life as generally good. 41% of Americans believed that radical life extension (RLE) would be good for society, while 51% said they believed it would be bad for society.[207] One possibility for why 56% of Americans claim they would reject life extension treatments may be due to the cultural perception that living longer would result in a longer period of decrepitude, and that the elderly in our current society are unhealthy.[208]

Religious people are no more likely to oppose life extension than the unaffiliated,[207] though some variation exists between religious denominations.

Mainstream medical organizations and practitioners do not consider aging to be a disease. Biologist David Sinclair says: "Idon't see aging as a disease, but as a collection of quite predictable diseases caused by the deterioration of the body".[209] The two main arguments used are that aging is both inevitable and universal while diseases are not.[210] However, not everyone agrees. Harry R. Moody, director of academic affairs for AARP, notes that what is normal and what is disease strongly depend on a historical context.[211] David Gems, assistant director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing, argues that aging should be viewed as a disease.[212] In response to the universality of aging, David Gems notes that it is as misleading as arguing that Basenji are not dogs because they do not bark.[213] Because of the universality of aging he calls it a "special sort of disease". Robert M. Perlman, coined the terms "aging syndrome" and "disease complex" in 1954 to describe aging.[214]

The discussion whether aging should be viewed as a disease or not has important implications. One view is, this would stimulate pharmaceutical companies to develop life extension therapies and in the United States of America, it would also increase the regulation of the anti-aging market by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Anti-aging now falls under the regulations for cosmetic medicine which are less tight than those for drugs.[213][215]

Theoretically, extension of maximum lifespan in humans could be achieved by reducing the rate of aging damage by periodic replacement of damaged tissues, molecular repair or rejuvenation of deteriorated cells and tissues, reversal of harmful epigenetic changes, or the enhancement of enzyme telomerase activity.[216][217]

Research geared towards life extension strategies in various organisms is currently under way at a number of academic and private institutions. Since 2009, investigators have found ways to increase the lifespan of nematode worms and yeast by 10-fold; the record in nematodes was achieved through genetic engineering and the extension in yeast by a combination of genetic engineering and caloric restriction.[218] A 2009 review of longevity research noted: "Extrapolation from worms to mammals is risky at best, and it cannot be assumed that interventions will result in comparable life extension factors. Longevity gains from dietary restriction, or from mutations studied previously, yield smaller benefits to Drosophila than to nematodes, and smaller still to mammals. This is not unexpected, since mammals have evolved to live many times the worm's lifespan, and humans live nearly twice as long as the next longest-lived primate. From an evolutionary perspective, mammals and their ancestors have already undergone several hundred million years of natural selection favoring traits that could directly or indirectly favor increased longevity, and may thus have already settled on gene sequences that promote lifespan. Moreover, the very notion of a "life-extension factor" that could apply across taxa presumes a linear response rarely seen in biology."[218]

There are a number of chemicals intended to slow the aging process currently being studied in animal models.[219] One type of research is related to the observed effects of a calorie restriction (CR) diet, which has been shown to extend lifespan in some animals.[220] Based on that research, there have been attempts to develop drugs that will have the same effect on the aging process as a caloric restriction diet, which are known as caloric restriction mimetic drugs. Some drugs that are already approved for other uses have been studied for possible longevity effects on laboratory animals because of a possible CR-mimic effect; they include rapamycin for mTOR inhibition[221] and metformin for AMPK activation.[222]

Sirtuin activating polyphenols, such as resveratrol and pterostilbene,[223][224][225] and flavonoids, such as quercetin and fisetin,[226] as well as oleic acid[227] are dietary supplements that have also been studied in this context. Other popular supplements with less clear biological pathways to target aging include, lipoic acid,[228] senolytics such as curcumin,[226] and Coenzyme Q10.[229] Daily low doses of ethanol as a potential supplement in spite of its highly negative hormesis response at higher doses has also been studied.[230]

Other attempts to create anti-aging drugs have taken different research paths. One notable direction of research has been research into the possibility of using the enzyme telomerase in order to counter the process of telomere shortening.[231] However, there are potential dangers in this, since some research has also linked telomerase to cancer and to tumor growth and formation.[232]

Future advances in nanomedicine could give rise to life extension through the repair of many processes thought to be responsible for aging. K. Eric Drexler, one of the founders of nanotechnology, postulated cell repair machines, including ones operating within cells and utilizing as yet hypothetical molecular computers, in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. Raymond Kurzweil, a futurist and transhumanist, stated in his book The Singularity Is Near that he believes that advanced medical nanorobotics could completely remedy the effects of aging by 2030.[233] According to Richard Feynman, it was his former graduate student and collaborator Albert Hibbs who originally suggested to him (circa 1959) the idea of a medical use for Feynman's theoretical nanomachines (see biological machine). Hibbs suggested that certain repair machines might one day be reduced in size to the point that it would, in theory, be possible to (as Feynman put it) "swallow the doctor". The idea was incorporated into Feynman's 1959 essay There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom.[234]

Some life extensionists suggest that therapeutic cloning and stem cell research could one day provide a way to generate cells, body parts, or even entire bodies (generally referred to as reproductive cloning) that would be genetically identical to a prospective patient. Recently, the US Department of Defense initiated a program to research the possibility of growing human body parts on mice.[235] Complex biological structures, such as mammalian joints and limbs, have not yet been replicated. Dog and primate brain transplantation experiments were conducted in the mid-20th century but failed due to rejection and the inability to restore nerve connections. As of 2006, the implantation of bio-engineered bladders grown from patients' own cells has proven to be a viable treatment for bladder disease.[236] Proponents of body part replacement and cloning contend that the required biotechnologies are likely to appear earlier than other life-extension technologies.

The use of human stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, is controversial. Opponents' objections generally are based on interpretations of religious teachings or ethical considerations.[citation needed] Proponents of stem cell research point out that cells are routinely formed and destroyed in a variety of contexts. Use of stem cells taken from the umbilical cord or parts of the adult body may not provoke controversy.[237]

The controversies over cloning are similar, except general public opinion in most countries stands in opposition to reproductive cloning. Some proponents of therapeutic cloning predict the production of whole bodies, lacking consciousness, for eventual brain transplantation.

Replacement of biological (susceptible to diseases) organs with mechanical ones could extend life. This is the goal of the 2045 Initiative.[238]

Cryonics is the low-temperature freezing (usually at 196C or 320.8F or 77.1K) of a human corpse, with the hope that resuscitation may be possible in the future.[239][240] It is regarded with skepticism within the mainstream scientific community and has been characterized as quackery.[241]

Another proposed life extension technology aims to combine existing and predicted future biochemical and genetic techniques. SENS proposes that rejuvenation may be obtained by removing aging damage via the use of stem cells and tissue engineering, telomere-lengthening machinery, allotopic expression of mitochondrial proteins, targeted ablation of cells, immunotherapeutic clearance, and novel lysosomal hydrolases.[242]

While some biogerontologists find these ideas "worthy of discussion",[243][244] others contend that the alleged benefits are too speculative given the current state of technology, referring to it as "fantasy rather than science".[4][6]

Genome editing, in which nucleic acid polymers are delivered as a drug and are either expressed as proteins, interfere with the expression of proteins, or correct genetic mutations, has been proposed as a future strategy to prevent aging.[245][246]

A large array of genetic modifications have been found to increase lifespan in model organisms such as yeast, nematode worms, fruit flies, and mice. As of 2013, the longest extension of life caused by a single gene manipulation was roughly 50% in mice and 10-fold in nematode worms.[247]

In July 2020 scientists, using public biological data on 1.75 m people with known lifespans overall, identify 10 genomic loci which appear to intrinsically influence healthspan, lifespan, and longevity of which half have not been reported previously at genome-wide significance and most being associated with cardiovascular disease and identify haem metabolism as a promising candidate for further research within the field. Their study suggests that high levels of iron in the blood likely reduce, and genes involved in metabolising iron likely increase healthy years of life in humans.[249][248] The same month other scientists report that yeast cells of the same genetic material and within the same environment age in two distinct ways, describe a biomolecular mechanism that can determine which process dominates during aging and genetically engineer a novel aging route with substantially extended lifespan.[250][251]

In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins describes an approach to life-extension that involves "fooling genes" into thinking the body is young.[252] Dawkins attributes inspiration for this idea to Peter Medawar. The basic idea is that our bodies are composed of genes that activate throughout our lifetimes, some when we are young and others when we are older. Presumably, these genes are activated by environmental factors, and the changes caused by these genes activating can be lethal. It is a statistical certainty that we possess more lethal genes that activate in later life than in early life. Therefore, to extend life, we should be able to prevent these genes from switching on, and we should be able to do so by "identifying changes in the internal chemical environment of a body that take place during aging... and by simulating the superficial chemical properties of a young body".[253]

One hypothetical future strategy that, as some suggest,[who?] "eliminates" the complications related to a physical body, involves the copying or transferring (e.g. by progressively replacing neurons with transistors) of a conscious mind from a biological brain to a non-biological computer system or computational device. The basic idea is to scan the structure of a particular brain in detail, and then construct a software model of it that is so faithful to the original that, when run on appropriate hardware, it will behave in essentially the same way as the original brain.[254] Whether or not an exact copy of one's mind constitutes actual life extension is matter of debate.

However, critics argue that the uploaded mind would simply be a clone and not a true continuation of a person's consciousness.[255]

Some scientists believe that the dead may one day be "resurrected" through simulation technology.[256]

Some clinics currently offer injection of blood products from young donors. The alleged benefits of the treatment, none of which have been demonstrated in a proper study, include a longer life, darker hair, better memory, better sleep, curing heart diseases, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease.[257][258][259][260][261] The approach is based on parabiosis studies such as those Irina Conboy has done on mice, but Conboy says young blood does not reverse aging (even in mice) and that those who offer those treatments have misunderstood her research.[258][259] Neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray, who also studied blood exchanges on mice as recently as 2014, said people offering those treatments are "basically abusing people's trust"[262][259] and that young blood treatments are "the scientific equivalent of fake news".[263] The treatment appeared in HBO's Silicon Valley fiction series.[262]

Two clinics in California, run by Jesse Karmazin and David C. Wright,[257] offer $8,000 injections of plasma extracted from the blood of young people. Karmazin has not published in any peer-reviewed journal and his current study does not use a control group.[263][262][257][259]

Fecal microbiota transplantation[264][265] and probiotics are being investigated as means for life and healthspan extension.[266][267][268]

Read more here:

Life extension - Wikipedia

N. Katherine Hayles – Wikipedia

Posted on by

American literary critic

Nancy Katherine Hayles (born December 16, 1943) is an American postmodern literary critic, most notable for her contribution to the fields of literature and science, electronic literature, and American literature.[1] She is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Literature, Literature, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University.[2]

Hayles was born in Saint Louis, Missouri to Edward and Thelma Bruns. She received her B.S. in chemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1966, and her M.S. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1969. She worked as a research chemist in 1966 at Xerox Corporation and as a chemical research consultant Beckman Instrument Company from 1968 to 1970. Hayles then switched fields and received her M.A. in English literature from Michigan State University in 1970, and her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Rochester in 1977.[3] She is a social and literary critic.

Her scholarship primarily focuses on the "relations between science, literature, and technology."[4][5] Hayles has taught at UCLA, University of Iowa, University of MissouriRolla, the California Institute of Technology, and Dartmouth College.[3] She was the faculty director of the Electronic Literature Organization from 2001 to 2006.[6]

From 2008 to 2018, she was a professor of English and Literature at Duke University. As of 2018, Hayles was the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Literature, Literature, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University.[7]

Hayles understands "human" and "posthuman" as constructions that emerge from historically specific understandings of technology, culture and embodiment; "human and "posthuman" views each produce unique models of subjectivity.[8] Within this framework "human" is aligned with Enlightenment notions of liberal humanism, including its emphasis on the "natural self" and the freedom of the individual.[9] Conversely, posthuman does away with the notion of a "natural" self and emerges when human intelligence is conceptualized as being co-produced with intelligent machines. According to Hayles the posthuman view privileges information over materiality, considers consciousness as an epiphenomenon and imagines the body as a prosthesis for the mind.[10] Specifically Hayles suggests that in the posthuman view "there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation..."[9] The posthuman thus emerges as a deconstruction of the liberal humanist notion of "human." Hayles disregards the idea of a form of immortality created through the preservation of human knowledge with computers, instead opting for a specification within the definition of posthuman that one embraces the possibilities of information technology without the imagined concepts of infinite power and immortality, tropes often associated with technology and dissociated with traditional humanity. This idea of the posthuman also ties in with cybernetics in the creation of the feedback loop that allows humans to interact with technology through a blackbox, linking the human and the machine as one. Thus, Hayles links this to an overall cultural perception of virtuality and a priority on information rather than materiality.

Despite drawing out the differences between "human" and "posthuman", Hayles is careful to note that both perspectives engage in the erasure of embodiment from subjectivity.[11] In the liberal humanist view, cognition takes precedence over the body, which is narrated as an object to possess and master. Meanwhile, popular conceptions of the cybernetic posthuman imagine the body as merely a container for information and code. Noting the alignment between these two perspectives, Hayles uses How We Became Posthuman to investigate the social and cultural processes and practices that led to the conceptualization of information as separate from the material that instantiates it.[12] Drawing on diverse examples, such as Turing's imitation game, Gibson's Neuromancer and cybernetic theory, Hayles traces the history of what she calls "the cultural perception that information and materiality are conceptually distinct and that information is in some sense more essential, more important and more fundamental than materiality."[13] By tracing the emergence of such thinking, and by looking at the manner in which literary and scientific texts came to imagine, for example, the possibility of downloading human consciousness into a computer, Hayles attempts to trouble the information/material separation and in her words, "...put back into the picture the flesh that continues to be erased in contemporary discussions about cybernetic subjects.[14] In this regard, the posthuman subject under the condition of virtuality is an "amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction."[15] Hayles differentiates "embodiment" from the concept of "the body" because "in contrast to the body, embodiment is contextual, enmeshed within the specifics of place, time, physiology, and culture, which together compose enactment."[16] Hayles specifically examines how various science fiction novels portray a shift in the conception of information, particularly in the dialectics of presence/absence toward pattern/randomness. She diagrams these shifts to show how ideas about abstraction and information actually have a "local habitation" and are "embodied" within the narratives. Although ideas about "information" taken out of context creates abstractions about the human "body", reading science fiction situates these same ideas in "embodied" narrative."

According to Hayles, most human cognition happens outside of consciousness/unconsciousness; cognition extends through the entire biological spectrum, including animals and plants; technical devices cognize, and in doing so profoundly influence human complex systems.[17][18] Hayles makes a distinction between thinking and cognition. In Unthought: the power of the cognitive nonconscious, she describes thinking:

"Thinking, as I use the term, refers to high-level mental operations such as reasoning abstractly, creating and using verbal languages, constructing mathematical theorems, composing music, and the like, operations associated with higher consciousness."[19]

She describes cognition:

"Cognition is a much broader capacity that extends far beyond consciousness into other neurological brain processes; it is also pervasive in other life forms and complex technical systems. Although the cognitive capacity that exists beyond consciousness goes by various names, I call it nonconscious cognition."[20]

Within the field of Posthuman Studies, Hayles' How We Became Posthuman is considered "the key text which brought posthumanism to broad international attention".[21] In the years since this book was published, it has been both praised and critiqued by scholars who have viewed her work through a variety of lenses; including those of cybernetic history, feminism, postmodernism, cultural and literary criticism, and conversations in the popular press about humans' changing relationships to technology.

Reactions to Hayles' writing style, general organization, and scope of the book have been mixed. The book is generally praised for displaying depth and scope in its combining of scientific ideas and literary criticism. Linda Brigham of Kansas State University claims that Hayles manages to lead the text "across diverse, historically contentious terrain by means of a carefully crafted and deliberate organizational structure."[22] Some scholars found her prose difficult to read or over-complicated. Andrew Pickering describes the book as "hard going" and lacking of "straightforward presentation."[23] Dennis Weiss of York College of Pennsylvania accuses Hayles of "unnecessarily complicat[ing] her framework for thinking about the body", for example by using terms such as "body" and "embodiment" ambiguously. Weiss however acknowledges as convincing her use of science fiction in order to reveal how "the narrowly focused, abstract constellation of ideas" of cybernetics circulate through a broader cultural context.[24] Craig Keating of Langara College on the contrary argues that the obscurity of some texts questions their ability to function as the conduit for scientific ideas.[25]

Several scholars reviewing How We Became Posthuman highlighted the strengths and shortcomings of her book vis a vis its relationship to feminism. Amelia Jones of University of Southern California describes Hayles' work as reacting to the misogynistic discourse of the field of cybernetics.[26] As Pickering wrote, Hayles' promotion of an "embodied posthumanism" challenges cybernetics' "equation of human-ness with disembodied information" for being "another male trick to feminists tired of the devaluation of women's bodily labor."[23] Stephanie Turner of Purdue University also described Hayles' work as an opportunity to challenge prevailing concepts of the human subject which assumed the body was white, male, and European, but suggested Hayles' dialectic method may have taken too many interpretive risks, leaving some questions open about "which interventions promise the best directions to take."[27]

Reviewers were mixed about Hayles' construction of the posthuman subject. Weiss describes Hayles' work as challenging the simplistic dichotomy of human and post-human subjects in order to "rethink the relationship between human beings and intelligent machines," however suggests that in her attempt to set her vision of the posthuman apart from the "realist, objectivist epistemology characteristic of first-wave cybernetics", she too, falls back on universalist discourse, premised this time on how cognitive science is able to reveal the "true nature of the self."[24] Jones similarly described Hayles' work as reacting to cybernetics' disembodiment of the human subject by swinging too far towards an insistence on a "physical reality" of the body apart from discourse. Jones argued that reality is rather "determined in and through the way we view, articulate, and understand the world".[26]

In terms of the strength of Hayles' arguments regarding the return of materiality to information, several scholars expressed doubt on the validity of the provided grounds, notably evolutionary psychology. Keating claims that while Hayles is following evolutionary psychological arguments in order to argue for the overcoming of the disembodiment of knowledge, she provides "no good reason to support this proposition."[25] Brigham describes Hayles' attempt to connect autopoietic circularity to "an inadequacy in Maturana's attempt to account for evolutionary change" as unjustified.[22] Weiss suggests that she makes the mistake of "adhering too closely to the realist, objectivist discourse of the sciences," the same mistake she criticizes Weiner and Maturana for committing.[24]

Go here to read the rest:

N. Katherine Hayles - Wikipedia

Book giveaway for Posthuman by M.C. Hansen Nov 14-Nov 30, 2022

Posted on by

A Disturbing, Delicious, Page-tuner, that pulls you and keeps you coming back for more.

SUSPENSE and HORROR at its best!

--

Kaufman Striker spent his who

Kaufman Striker spent his whole life learning to be unfeeling; it took hanging himself to change that. Ten years ago, he thought he'd gotten away from being the town's peculiar celebrity; thought he'd gotten away from his father's warped ideas about self-mastery, but his dogmatic dear old dad has reached out from the past to continue his education with a letter encouraging Kaufman to take his own life.

For today in Decoy, Nevada, death isn't permanent.

In an underground military facility, a top-secret resurrection project has been sabotaged. Except scientific resurrection doesn't account for everything. Not the bipedal coyotes that stalk the streets or the thousands of missing town's people, nor Kaufman's own subtle enhancements.

Part psychological thriller, part dystopian sci-fi, Posthuman is a suspense-horror novel that probes what would happen if science discovered proof of life after death and then nudged evolution to take us there. With deep themes and a rich, intricate plot, Posthuman has enough twists, turns, and surprises that once you reach the last page, youll want to start reading it all over again.

Read more:

Book giveaway for Posthuman by M.C. Hansen Nov 14-Nov 30, 2022

Posthuman – Wikipedia

Posted on by

Person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human

Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human.[1] The concept aims at addressing a variety of questions, including ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity.

Posthumanism is not to be confused with transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality.[2] The notion of the posthuman comes up both in posthumanism as well as transhumanism, but it has a special meaning in each tradition. In 2017, Penn State University Press in cooperation with Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and James Hughes established the Journal of Posthuman Studies,[3] in which all aspects of the concept "posthuman" can be analysed.[4]

In critical theory, the posthuman is a speculative being that represents or seeks to re-conceive the human. It is the object of posthumanist criticism, which critically questions humanism, a branch of humanist philosophy which claims that human nature is a universal state from which the human being emerges; human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of free will, and unified in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman position recognizes imperfectability and disunity within oneself, and understands the world through heterogeneous perspectives while seeking to maintain intellectual rigor and dedication to objective observations. Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneself through different identities. The posthuman, for critical theorists of the subject, has an emergent ontology rather than a stable one; in other words, the posthuman is not a singular, defined individual, but rather one who can "become" or embody different identities and understand the world from multiple, heterogeneous perspectives.[5]

Approaches to posthumanism are not homogeneous, and have often been very critical. The term itself is contested, with one of the foremost authors associated with posthumanism, Manuel de Landa, decrying the term as "very silly."[6] Covering the ideas of, for example, Robert Pepperell's The Posthuman Condition, and Hayles's How We Became Posthuman under a single term is distinctly problematic due to these contradictions.

The posthuman is roughly synonymous with the "cyborg" of A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway.[citation needed][7] Haraway's conception of the cyborg is an ironic take on traditional conceptions of the cyborg that inverts the traditional trope of the cyborg whose presence questions the salient line between humans and robots. Haraway's cyborg is in many ways the "beta" version of the posthuman, as her cyborg theory prompted the issue to be taken up in critical theory.[8] Following Haraway, Hayles, whose work grounds much of the critical posthuman discourse, asserts that liberal humanismwhich separates the mind from the body and thus portrays the body as a "shell" or vehicle for the mindbecomes increasingly complicated in the late 20th and 21st centuries because information technology puts the human body in question. Hayles maintains that we must be conscious of information technology advancements while understanding information as "disembodied," that is, something which cannot fundamentally replace the human body but can only be incorporated into it and human life practices.[9]

The idea of post-posthumanism (post-cyborgism) has recently been introduced.[10][11][12][13][14]This body of work outlines the after-effects of long-term adaptation to cyborg technologies and their subsequent removal, e.g., what happens after 20 years of constantly wearing computer-mediating eyeglass technologies and subsequently removing them, and of long-term adaptation to virtual worlds followed by return to "reality."[15][16] and the associated post-cyborg ethics (e.g. the ethics of forced removal of cyborg technologies by authorities, etc.).[17]

Posthuman political and natural rights have been framed on a spectrum with animal rights and human rights.[18] Posthumanism broadens the scope of what it means to be a valued life form and to be treated as such (in contrast to certain life forms being seen as less-than and being taken advantage of or killed off); it calls for a more inclusive definition of life, and a greater moral-ethical response, and responsibility, to non-human life forms in the age of species blurring and species mixing. [I]t interrogates the hierarchic ordering and subsequently exploitation and even eradication of life forms.[19]

According to transhumanist thinkers, a posthuman is a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards."[20] Posthumans primarily focus on cybernetics, the posthuman consequent and the relationship to digital technology. Steve Nichols published the Posthuman Movement manifesto in 1988. His early evolutionary theory of mind (MVT) allows development of sentient E1 brains. The emphasis is on systems. Transhumanism does not focus on either of these. Instead, transhumanism focuses on the modification of the human species via any kind of emerging science, including genetic engineering, digital technology, and bioengineering.[21] Transhumanism is sometimes criticized for not adequately addressing the scope of posthumanism and its concerns for the evolution of humanism.[22]

Posthumans could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques.[20]

As used in this article, "posthuman" does not necessarily refer to a conjectured future where humans are extinct or otherwise absent from the Earth.[23] Kevin Warwick says that both humans and posthumans will continue to exist but the latter will predominate in society over the former because of their abilities.[24] Recently, scholars have begun to speculate that posthumanism provides an alternative analysis of apocalyptic cinema and fiction,[25] often casting vampires, werewolves and even zombies as potential evolutions of the human form and being.[26]

Many science fiction authors, such as Greg Egan, H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Bruce Sterling, Frederik Pohl, Greg Bear, Charles Stross, Neal Asher, Ken MacLeod, Peter F. Hamilton and authors of the Orion's Arm Universe,[27] have written works set in posthuman futures.

A variation on the posthuman theme is the notion of a "posthuman god"; the idea that posthumans, being no longer confined to the parameters of human nature, might grow physically and mentally so powerful as to appear possibly god-like by present-day human standards.[20] This notion should not be interpreted as being related to the idea portrayed in some science fiction that a sufficiently advanced species may "ascend" to a higher plane of existencerather, it merely means that some posthuman beings may become so exceedingly intelligent and technologically sophisticated that their behaviour would not possibly be comprehensible to modern humans, purely by reason of their limited intelligence and imagination.[28]

Read the original here:

Posthuman - Wikipedia