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I dare say the biggest regret of most of the people who feel that way is not having been able to do it to him personally while he was still alive....

I'm whelmed by the Christian charity being exhibited.

Re Gould: just last night I was reading an essay by Gould on the antennapedia complex in fruit flies. What a wonderful writer.

Placemarker.

Nearly all human morality is designed to curb the clash of priorities between the individual and the group with the preference going to the group.

He was a wonderful fiction writer. Like Darwin, he was full of it! One thing I have noticed on these threads is that while many evolutionists claim to have read his swill, not one of them is ever to give an explanation of what great argument he gave in support of evolution. It is all gibberish and feel good nonsense, pablum for atheists.

I agree with you. Gould was one of the brighter lights.

A number of disciples went to the Buddha and said, "Sir, there are living here in Savatthi many wandering hermits and scholars who indulge in constant dispute, some saying that the world is infinite and eternal and others that it is finite and not eternal, some saying that the soul dies with the body and others that it lives on forever, and so forth. What, Sir, would you say concerning them?"

The Buddha answered, "Once upon a time there was a certain raja who called to his servant and said, 'Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind... and show them an elephant.' 'Very good, sire,' replied the servant, and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there, 'Here is an elephant,' and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant.

"When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?'

"Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an elephant is like a pot.' And the men who had observed the ear replied, 'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.

"Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.

"Brethren, the raja was delighted with the scene.

"Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing.... In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus."

Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift,

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

Jainism and Buddhism.
Udana 68-69:
Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

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Stephen Jay Gould, you have added to the knowledge of the human race and we thank you. May God bless you and greet you with open arms.