Author Topic: EP264: St. Darwin’s Spirituals  (Read 25391 times)

stePH

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Reply #25 on: November 02, 2010, 03:25:29 PM
Darwin's theories are just that, theories. This doesn't mean (as IDers are wont to believe) that it has no weight. It does mean that it isn't written in stone, and frankly, it might be wrong. Sure, all of modern Biology stops making sense without evolution... but you know, all of modern physics doesn't make a lot of  sense in light of some stuff the quark-botherers have discovered.

Yeah, Darwin's theory of evolution is just a theory. So is electron theory, theory of gravity, theory of relativity, and the germ theory of disease.

"Theory" in science basically means "truth", as far as we can call something in science "true"... what Gould describes as "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." It doesn't mean "a guess as to how it might work"; that would be a hypothesis which is subsequently tested, and if experimentation repeatedly supports it, then we call it a theory.

(Similar to blueeyeddevil, the misunderstanding or misrepresentation of science really gets my fur up.)

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ElectricPaladin

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Reply #26 on: November 02, 2010, 04:00:11 PM
Darwin's theories are just that, theories. This doesn't mean (as IDers are wont to believe) that it has no weight. It does mean that it isn't written in stone, and frankly, it might be wrong. Sure, all of modern Biology stops making sense without evolution... but you know, all of modern physics doesn't make a lot of  sense in light of some stuff the quark-botherers have discovered.

Yeah, Darwin's theory of evolution is just a theory. So is electron theory, theory of gravity, theory of relativity, and the germ theory of disease.

"Theory" in science basically means "truth", as far as we can call something in science "true"... what Gould describes as "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." It doesn't mean "a guess as to how it might work"; that would be a hypothesis which is subsequently tested, and if experimentation repeatedly supports it, then we call it a theory.

(Similar to blueeyeddevil, the misunderstanding or misrepresentation of science really gets my fur up.)

Jeez. I know that. It's also annoying when people take theories and present them as honest truth. Pop science does this BS all the time. The point I'm making isn't that evolution isn't true, it's that it isn't the end of the world to make fun of Darwin once in a while. I'm saying that just because we deal with Creationist whackjobs doesn't mean that we have to treat Darwin's theories as sacred, never poke fun at them, and never question them.

Because that's not how science works.

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Loz

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Reply #27 on: November 02, 2010, 06:37:54 PM
Can I just say that I love Electric Paladin right now?



ElectricPaladin

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Reply #28 on: November 02, 2010, 07:04:26 PM
Can I just say that I love Electric Paladin right now?

I just got married, but I'm flattered, really.

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Corydon

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Reply #29 on: November 03, 2010, 11:41:06 AM
But why Darwin?  Why not Einstein or Newton or Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr or Teddy Roosevelt or just a name that's not famous in our world?  There's got to be a reason why Darwin in particular was chosen, and it MUST have been very important because his name is mentioned right in the title.

I agree with this, and it felt like a missed opportunity- it's hard to see anything particularly Darwinian in the story.  It's too bad, because a story that blended ghosts and Darwinian evolution would be so cool.  I kept looking for something to tie everything together-- maybe that the monster was an example of supernatural selection?-- but it never happened.  Just a ghost story.



Loz

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Reply #30 on: November 03, 2010, 05:16:25 PM
Can I just say that I love Electric Paladin right now?

I just got married, but I'm flattered, really.

 :'(
 ;)



DKT

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Reply #31 on: November 03, 2010, 06:46:49 PM
Hey all - it's a bit funny to be commenting on my own story here, but I wanted to drop in and say thanks to everyone for listening. And I really do mean everyone. It's always nice to hear people liked something you wrote, but I do appreciate people who didn't like it chiming in. Really - just - thanks for listening, and taking the time to talk about my story :)

Regarding "Why Darwin?" - Electric Paladin explained some of it, but I'll add a little more. Going beyond physical science to spiritual science seemed to me like a natural (er, maybe supernatural?) progression of Darwin's theories to me, and a fun one to play with. When I started gearing up to write a steampunk story, I knew I wanted it to have supernatural/spiritualistic elements, and I really liked the idea of Darwin writing a follow-up to Origin of the Species that tried to scientifically discuss and theorize what happens after life ends, as well as categorizing other supernatural oddities. (I realize a lot of that's implied. I've always meant to write a longer story about Darwin in particular - not to mention more stories in this world in general.)

And when I figured out that he could give brass and leather goggles a purpose for being in steampunk, instead of them just being a cool aesthetic, I had to go all the way. (So to speak.)

Anyway, thanks again for listening! Unless anyone has specific questions for me, I'll probably be less visible in this thread than others, but I appreciate all the discussion, and look forward to reading more of it :)


ElectricPaladin

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Reply #32 on: November 03, 2010, 07:00:43 PM
Regarding "Why Darwin?"...

Another think DKT either didn't mention - or didn't know - is that Darwin was actually a fervent anti-spiritualist. He apparently spent some time debunking spiritualism. But what if his scientific exploration of the matter turned up real evidence of spirits? Being a good scientist, he'd have written a paper about them, I'm sure.

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DKT

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Reply #33 on: November 03, 2010, 07:58:01 PM
I did know that, actually  ;D Thanks for mentioning it!

In my mind, that discovery is where the story's reality and our own split.


Dem

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Reply #34 on: November 03, 2010, 08:47:47 PM
More stories in this world, definitely. I hadn't quite made the steampunk connection but now that I have, it adds another layer to my appreciation. I realise I didn't say much about the story itself before - all tied up with the reading/listening experience - but I found it curiously engaging even though I'm not usually that keen on recognisable historical characters turning up in fiction. I'd thought it was going down the Jack the Ripper track (well, maybe it was actually) so to have a different kind of outcome was gratifying. Yes, more please! :)

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Reply #35 on: November 03, 2010, 11:22:41 PM
 I know very little about Steampunk, but it seems like nice fertile ground for some brand new cockney slang.

Just trying to think of something akin to 'ghostgasm', but all I can manage is "Miss Ladycock's ladybird". :(





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Reply #36 on: November 04, 2010, 02:35:42 AM
I think it's because Darwin...
a) existed at a time when spiritualism was popular, and the story takes advantage of the culture of spiritualism.
b) is already known for making one controversial discovery, so it was easy to add another controversial discovery (that of ghosts) to his resume.

That was pretty much my take on it too. And I loved, loved, loved the statue of St. Darwin holding the two equally important but juxtaposing books, one in each hand. How iconic!



ibabox

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Reply #37 on: November 05, 2010, 01:11:23 AM
Ghost sex now that's a porn genre that I think I can make my millions in.




Hysteria

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Reply #38 on: November 07, 2010, 05:49:38 PM
On the whole, this wasn't that bad of a story. I have to admit, I've never been that enthralled with the Steampunk genre, usually because the writer is trying to establish an alternate history or world, and so I'm trying to figure out what the ground rules of this new world are like as the story is going on. Granted, it's not that different than science fiction, but at least for me it can be a little jarring to be dropped into a steampunk world as opposed to a straight sci-fi one. Go figure.

Aside from that, this was a good story. It combines steampunk and horror pretty well, although there are a lot of questions to be answered, stuff that the people in the world take for granted that is new to the reader. Are the golems magical? How are ghosts treated as citizens? One thing I found very interesting is that Darwin is held up as a saint and a paragon of science, yet the world is populated by some very paranormal entities. At least from an early 21th century perspective, where science usually equals skepticism, I thought this was something that could be touched on a little more.

If I wanted to engage in literary snobbery, I could yawn and say "Oh, another Jack the Ripper story." This one, though, was different. I kept waiting to figure out just what this monster was, and the fact that it was such a weird monster was unique in and of itself. Plus, well...I have a certain affection for Jack the Ripper stories. :)



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Reply #39 on: November 09, 2010, 05:49:02 AM
I see where it wanted to take me but just could not follow. The end made me want to reread of buffy season 8's "Wolves at the Gate".  to quote Dracula
    "My boy... I was never an ordinary vampire. Or did you forget what I used to be? I've killed more men than God's plagues combined. And that was before I started eating people for fun. The fields of Europe used to steam with the blood of my enemies. Trust me... the vampire's the least of your concerns. It's the old man you need to worry about."
   
Man is all the monster we will ever need.



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Reply #40 on: November 09, 2010, 04:22:54 PM
I loved the characters, loved the world, loved the ideas.  That said, it fell apart a bit for me at the end.  Maybe I missed something, but it seemed to get very muddled at the end, with the monster and the plunging and the ghosts and the golems and the *GLAVEN*! [/frink]  :D  I probably just need a re-listen, and will do that soon, and will probably read the text as well.   

re: Darwin, OtooS, fiction, and religion:  Natural selection and evolution has been proven time and again to be true.  That said, EP is right, it could change, in the same way that any other science can change, given new evidence.  We are just interpreting what we see in the universe, and assigning laws to them.  The laws of physics act very weird at the very large and very small scale, and we are learning more about these extremes every day.  Even natural selection is gets a tune up now and then, with scientists discovering different ways that creatures evolve and have evolved. 
This is a fictional story, and as such, can take liberties with anything that is real.  I think blueeyeddevil may have taken the framework of their previous arguments with IDers and brought it into the conversation here, and jumped to a few conclusions. 



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malaclypse

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Reply #41 on: November 10, 2010, 01:34:09 AM
Hated this story. Too many cliches, too much porn. And why do the lesbians always have to die? "All the lesbians live, Rose! Just this once, all the lesbians live!"

Also, what's with the single-shot cartridge pistol? I mean, was it supposed to be a rolling block, or what? I guess those are kind of steampunk. Webleys are so much cooler, though. Watson had a Webley.



Talia

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Reply #42 on: November 10, 2010, 04:23:55 AM



ElectricPaladin

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Reply #43 on: November 10, 2010, 04:27:59 AM
Hated this story. Too many cliches, too much porn. And why do the lesbians always have to die? "All the lesbians live, Rose! Just this once, all the lesbians live!"

I think you get a free pass when the lesbians died at some point in the past. I mean, not every character in your story has got to die by the end, but everyone's got to die eventually. Lesbians included. I think ghost lesbians are all right.

And I can see why the one-shot pistols bothered you. If that was too much porn, you clearly have a more... intimate relationship with the Victorian era than I. Say no more, buddy. I won't break protocol.

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Wilson Fowlie

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Reply #44 on: November 10, 2010, 05:42:59 PM

"People commonly use the word 'procrastination' to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what's happening as merely not-doing-work. We don't call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working." - Paul Graham


yicheng

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Reply #45 on: November 10, 2010, 09:10:29 PM
I liked the world building here.  There's a lot of interesting tidbits, a world where ghosts are real, golem policemen, spiritual mediums, etc.  offers a lot of intriguing possibilities.  However, I felt that the plot seemed a little unfinished.  The plotline with the dead husband felt like a loose thread that ended up being distracting rather than contributing to the story.  The monster was also never fully explained.  Do ghost-eating monsters just happen along all the time, or is this some sort of new discovery?  And the implication that there are ghostly police officers would seem to imply that there must be ghostly criminals, and perhaps other things: ghostly teachers, ghostly businessmen, ghostly soldiers, ghostly spies, ghostly messengers, ghostly newspaper reporters?

Also, I would have to say ditto to the "too much pr0n" statement.  Not that I didn't appreciate it, but it felt a bit forced and gratuitous.



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Reply #46 on: November 11, 2010, 01:28:22 AM
We Are Ted Tuscadero for Porn.

We march!





stePH

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Reply #49 on: November 13, 2010, 04:30:24 PM
And I can see why the one-shot pistols bothered you. If that was too much porn, you clearly have a more... intimate relationship with the Victorian era than I. Say no more, buddy. I won't break protocol.

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