Scientists have discovered the oldest and most complete fossil of a human ancestor.
An incredible 95 percent complete fossil of a 47-million-year-old human ancestor dubbed Ida has been discovered and, after two years of secret study, an international team of scientists has revealed it to the world. The fossil’s remarkable state of preservation allows an unprecedented glimpse into early human evolution. Discovered in Messel Pit, Germany, it represents the moment before anthropoid primates (the group that would later evolve into humans, apes and monkeys) began to split from lemurs and other prosimian primates. This groundbreaking discovery fills in a critical gap in human and primate evolution.
The 12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism Evaluating intelligent design creation science and their opposition to material science or methodological naturalism.
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Paleontology in its early days was a difficult discipline. We had to devise a way to test and confirm the claims that were made because 19th Century pioneers were often confused by their own preconceptions, and often made simple mistakes that went undiscovered for decades. Unwary professors were sometimes made the victims of pranks, and not every respected scientist was entirely honest.
For example, Sir Richard Owen was a celebrated biologist and the foremost authority on paleofauna in the world in his time. He was credited with the establishment of the British Museum of Natural History, and of inventing the word, “dinosaur”, but he did so by suppressing the work of other scientists and taking credit for their discoveries himself. Owen was not well-liked. He had a reputation of never admitting his own mistakes, and he was often described as dishonest, malicious, and hateful. He was devoutly religious, but he was also a leading anatomist and zoologist, respected and unrivaled in each of these fields, and he was both Darwin’s superior and fiercest adversary. Unlike Darwin, Owen believed religion should guide and even override scientific research.
Throughout history, there have been many scientists who believed the universe was “created” in the same sense that Christian proponents of natural sciences still believe today. But those men who believed in God and made historic contributions to science still relied on necessarily natural methodology because that is the only way science can progress. In many cases, they found natural explanations for things previously believed to be miraculous, and they only succeeded when they did not allow religious convictions to subvert or inhibit their inquiry. None of them were able to vindicate the Bible stories, and their efforts to do so only ever indicated another origin. Thus these men wouldn’t have supported creationism as we know it today, and many of them wouldn’t have been creationists if they’d understood evolution. But Richard Owen was a creation scientist –both in the sense that he preferred magical manifestations to material mechanisms, and because he deliberately misrepresented evidence in an attempt to mislead others into believing as he did.
For example, Darwin said that if his theory were true, then we should find a sort of proto-bird with unfused wing fingers, and two years later, we did. Confronted with this, Owen admitted that Archaeopteryx was a “peculiar” bird, but he dismissed it as ‘just’ a bird, and not exactly what Darwin had predicted. He couldn’t honestly accept or admit a transitional species. So Owen largely ignored Archaeopteryx’s saurian features and went on to argue how it couldn’t have evolved from reptiles by distinguishing its anatomy from pterosaurs rather than from dinosaurs. Thomas Huxley immediately exposed Owen’s deceptive analysis when he published his own counter examination.
Owen also promised his religious fellows that he would succeed where Linnaeus had failed, in finding some physical trait to distinguish humans from apes, whether it was really the case or not. First he presented similarities as differences, and when he couldn’t find any legitimate differences, he made up entirely fictitious ones. As if his authority would always remain unquestioned, he proclaimed amid other scientists in peer-review, that the hippocampus minor was a uniquely human lobe of the brain and absent among apes. Such an expert as he couldn’t have made such an obvious mistake, and his curious inability to concede any error except by way of evasive maneuver finally allowed Huxley to indict him for perjury.
Although Owen gave many lectures, wrote hundreds of scientific papers, and received honors, lands, and titles from the crown, he was also accused throughout his career of deliberate deceit, of “lying for God and for malice”, and even of writing anonymous letters to the press praising himself -in third person- while raving disdain against his colleagues. Finally, Sir Richard Owen was dismissed from the Royal Society's Zoological Council amid myriad charges of plagiarism spanning the entirety of his career.
Owen believed in common archetypes rather than a common ancestor, and his conduct presents an archetype of the modern creation scientists, except that they submit to peer review rarely, (if ever) and none of them are experts in anything. They’ve never produced any research indicative of their position. They cannot substantiate any of their assertions, and they’ve never successfully refuted anyone else’s hypotheses either. But every argument of evidence they’ve ever made in favor of creation has been refuted immediately and repeatedly. All they’ve ever been able to do was criticize real science, and even then the absolute best arguments they’ve ever come up with were all disproved in a court of law with mountains of research standing against their every allegation. Yet creationists still use those same ridiculous rationalizations because they will never accept where their beliefs are in error! Their only notable strength is how anyone can be so consistently proven to be absolutely wrong about absolutely everything, 100% of the time, for such a long time, and still make-believe theirs is the absolute truth.
More amazing still is how often they will actually lie in defense of their alleged truth. Every publication promoting creation over any avenue of actual science contains misquotes, misdefinitions, and misrepresented misinformation, while their every appeal to reason is based entirely on erroneous assumptions and logical fallacies. There is a madness to their method, but it is naught but propaganda.
“We don’t believe in evolution. Evolution is an idea some people have to explain life without God.”
No, evolution is science, and as such it’s a way of explaining life without magic; there’s a difference. Even at the kindergarten level, science is defined as a way of learning about the natural world; “natural” meaning, “in accordance with the laws of nature”. “Nature” is further defined as the sum of all forces or phenomenon in the entirety of perceptible reality. Everything that really exists has properties, and anything that can be objectively indicated, measured or tested is therefore natural. The supernatural is contrasted with this, being defined as that which is beyond the material universe, outside our reality, a transcendent dream-like dimension indistinguishable from the illusions of imagination, independent of, and even defiant of physical laws, and thus neither detectable nor describable by science. The evocation of inexplicable paranormal forces or supernatural entities to influence natural events or phenomenon are usually described as “miracles” but are also clearly “magic” by definition.
Creationists contend that they don’t believe in magic. But “speaking” anything into existence is an incantation, and the Bible is full of spells of one sort or another. Animating golems, or conjuring interdependent systems, and causing complex organisms to appear out of thin air -are each logically implausible and physically impossible according to everything we know about anything at all, yet this is exactly what religiously-motivated pseudoscientists actually promote!
How do we test these ideas? How can we tell them apart from any of the thousands of fables men have concocted for the ghosts and gods of other religions? How can we tell whether any of this is even real, and not something someone just made up? Because despite anyone’s assertions of personal conviction, it is impossible to distinguish miracles from subjective impressions imagined out of nothing. In the realm of fantasy, it’s easy to demonstrate psionic talents, astral entities, and magical manifestations. Until they do that in reality too, then science has nothing but nature to work with.
Those who know the necessity of naturalism can list millions of practical advantages that continue to come from that. So science requires a way to weed fiction from function through independent verification and the process of elimination.
Natural science works; creation science doesn’t. That’s why faith healers don’t work in hospitals.
The National Academy of Sciences, defines it as the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories, –a definition further endorsed by the Academic Press Dictionary of Science & Technology. Fraudulent evangelical charlatans often say that creationism is scientific, but there’s utterly no verifiably accurate evidence behind any of their assertions, and no way to construct any hypotheses to explain any of their claims because no experiments could possibly support them, and faith prohibits believers from ever admitting when their notions would be falsified. Creationists are therefore unable to add to the sum of knowledge and instead only offer excuses trying to actually reduce what we already know. They’ve no way to recognize their own flaws and won’t correct them, so they can neither confirm nor improve their accuracy. But that’s all real science is or does.
Consequently, since the dawn of rational thought, the advancement of science has been retarded by the minions of mysticism, and profound revelations have often been opposed or suppressed by the greater part of the dominant religion, because dogmatic faith is not based on reason and zealots will not be reasoned with.
“So this is a war of the world views, and all science is creation science. Would you agree with that this evening? All science is...? Creation science. All truth is ...? God’s truth! And certainly science is the search for...? Truth!”
Science is a search for truth –whatever the truth may turn out to be, even if it’s evidently not what we wanted to believe it was. In science, it doesn’t matter what you believe; all that matters is why you believe it. This is why real science disallows faith, promising instead to remain objective, to follow wherever the evidence leads, and either correct or reject any and all errors along the way even if it challenges whatever we think we know now. But creationist organizations post written declarations of their unwavering obligation to uphold and defend their preconceived notions, declaring in advance their refusal to ever to let their minds be changed by any amount of evidence that is ever revealed. Anti-science evangelists display their statement of faith proudly on their own forums, as if admitting to a closed and dishonest mind wasn’t something to ashamed of or beg forgiveness for.
They don’t want to do science. They want to un-do science! They try to segregate experimental science from historical science, ignoring the fact that both are based on empirical observations and both can be checked with testable hypotheses. Worse, they want to redefine science in general so that astrology, subjective convictions of faith, and excuses of magic can supplant the scientific method whenever necessary in defense of their beliefs. They’re only open to critical inquiry so long as that is not permitted to challenge the sacred scriptures nor vindicate any of the fields of study to which they’re already opposed. In short, everything science stands for, -or hopes to achieve- is threatened by the political agenda of these superstitious subversives.
You can believe whatever you like. As long as you admit that it is a belief, you don’t have to defend it. But if you assert your belief as a statement of fact, then you do have to defend it! Stating anything as definitely true when there is insufficient evidence to back it –is dishonest. Making such positive proclamations without any evidence at all is a matter of faith. And promising in advance to forever defend an unsupportable a-priori preference even against an avalanche of evidence against it -is apologetics, which is all creation “science” really is. www.darwinwasright.homestead.com
The Spirit Molecule weaves an account of Dr. Rick Strassman’s groundbreaking DMT research through a multifaceted approach to this intriguing hallucinogen found in the human brain and hundreds of plants. Utilizing interviews with a variety of experts to explain their thoughts and experiences with DMT within their respective fields, and discussions with Strassman’s research volunteers brings to life the awesome effects of this compound, and far-reaching theories regarding its role in human consciousness.
Several themes explored include possible roles for endogenous DMT; its theoretical role in near-death and birth experiences, alien-abduction experiences; and the uncanny similarities in Biblical prophetic texts describing DMT-like experiences. Our expert contributors offer a comprehensive collection of information, opinions, and speculation about indigenous use of DMT, the history and future of psychedelic research, and current DMT research. All this, to help us understand the nature of the DMT experience, and its role in human society and evolution.
The subtle combination of science, spirituality, and philosophy within the film’s approach sheds light on an array of ideas that could considerably alter the way humans understand the universe and their relationship to it.
Watch Documentary; The Spirit Molecule
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Evolution of Life On Other Planets: Even the Gods Have Gods
A comprehensive review of scientific findings, published in prestigious scientific journals, is presented to explain how life from other planets evolved on Earth. These first Earthlings (archae, bacteria, and cyanobacteria) contained the genes and the genetic information for altering the environment, the “evolution” of multicellular eukaryotes, and the metamorphosis of all subsequent species.
These included exons, introns, transposable elements, informational and operational genes, RNA, ribozomes, mitochondria, and all the core genetic machinery for translating, expressing, and repeatedly duplicating genes and the entire genome. Prokaryotic genes were initially combined to fashion the first eukaryotes and/or were donated and transferred to unicellular then multicellular eukaryotes and then subsequently expressed in response to biologically engineered environmental influences, often in busts of explosive evolutionary change, as typified by the Cambrian Explosion.
Genes biologically alter the environment such as via the secretion of waste products, e.g. methane, oxygen, calcium carbonate, sulphides, ferrous iron, etc., which acts on gene expression. However, these genes and life on Earth did not randomly evolve. Evolution is metamorphosis. These genes were inherited from ancestral species who acquired these genes and these genetic instructions from living creatures that long ago lived on other planets.
BBC Documentary on the conflict between Darwin's Origin of Species theory and Religious belief.
When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution nearly 150 years ago, he shattered the dominant belief of his day – that humans were the product of divine creation. Through his observations of nature, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This caused uproar. After all, if the story of creation could be doubted, so too could the existence of the creator. Ever since its proposal, this cornerstone of biology has sustained wave after wave of attack. Now some scientists fear it is facing the most formidable challenge yet: a controversial new theory called intelligent design.
In the late 1980s Phillip Johnson, a renowned lawyer and born-again Christian, began to develop a strategy to challenge Darwin. To Johnson, the evidence for natural selection was poor. He also believed that by explaining the world only through material processes was inherently atheistic. If there was a god, science would never be able to discover it.
Johnson recruited other Darwin doubters, including biochemist Professor Michael Behe, mathematician Dr William Dembski, and philosopher of science Dr Stephen Meyer. These scientists developed the theory of intelligent design (ID) which claims that certain features of the natural world are best explained as the result of an intelligent being. To him, the presence of miniature machines and digital information found in living cells are evidence of a supernatural creator. Throughout the 90s, the ID movement took to disseminating articles, books and DVDs and organising conferences all over the world.
To its supporters, intelligent design heralds a revolution in science and the movement is fast gaining political clout. Not only does it have the support of the President of the United States, it is on the verge of being introduced to science classes across the nation. However, its many critics, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, fear that it cloaks a religious motive – to replace science with god.
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Natural History documentary with Sir David Attenborough
David Attenborough asks three key questions: how and why did Darwin come up with his theory of evolution? Why do we think he was right? And why is it more important now than ever before?
David starts his journey in Darwin's home at Down House in Kent, where Darwin worried and puzzled over the origins of life. David goes back to his roots in Leicestershire, where he hunted for fossils as a child, and where another schoolboy unearthed a significant find in the 1950s.
And he revisits Cambridge University, where both he and Darwin studied, and where many years later the DNA double helix was discovered, providing the foundations for genetics.
At the end of his journey in the Natural History Museum in London, David concludes that Darwin's great insight revolutionised the way in which we see the world. We now understand why there are so many different species, and why they are distributed in the way they are. But above all, Darwin has shown us that we are not set apart from the natural world, and do not have dominion over it. We are subject to its laws and processes, as are all other animals on earth to which, indeed, we are related.
Watch now - Evolution
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Exploring the frontiers of Consciousness, creativity and the Brain - a discourse by Professor John Hagelin Phd. Professor Hagelin is one of the present day's Geniuses as far as understanding Consciousness from both scientific and Spiritual perspectives goes. Professor Hagelin is also a member of the Maharishi Foundation.
John Hagelin (born June 9, 1954) is an American scientist who was a researcher at the European Center for Particle Physics (CERN) and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), is an educator and author, and has been the Natural Law Party candidate for President of the United States three times. Hagelin is Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management, Executive Director of the International Center for Invincible Defense, President of the US Peace Government, Raja of Invincible America, and executive director of Global Financial Capital
Watch Lecture - Exploring the frontiers of Consciousness, creativity and the Brain
In 1981, Hagelin received his Ph.D. from Harvard, having already published five serious papers on particle theory. That same year, Hagelin won a postdoctoral research appointment at CERN (the European Center for Particle Physics) in Switzerland, and in 1983 was recruited by SLAC (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), CERN's North American counterpart.
In 1984, Hagelin shifted his appointment from SLAC to Maharishi International University (MIU), where he continued his research in physics, pursued a long-time interest in brain and cognitive science research, and established an accredited doctoral program in theoretical physics. Hagelin’s move to MIU in 1984 surprised and puzzled his colleagues. Howard Georgi and John Ellis tried to talk him out of it. But, according to Georgi, Hagelin "continued to do good physics anyway.” Nobel Laureate, Sheldon Glashow was quoted in a 1992 article as saying, “His papers are outstanding. We read them before he went to MIU and we read them now.” Hagelin remained in contact with colleagues from Harvard, Stanford, and CERN, and continued to collaborate with them. While at MIU, his contributions to the field of theoretical physics were supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.
Currently, Hagelin teaches physics as Professor of Physics at Maharishi University of Management (formerly MIU) and serves as Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at that institution. Hagelin is also identified as the Founding President of Maharishi Central University, which was announced in 2007. Central University was under construction in Smith Center, Kansas at the site of a previously-announced Peace Palace until early 2008, when, according to Hagelin, the project was put on hold while the TM Organization dealt with the death of the Maharishi.
In 1987 and 1989, Hagelin published two papers in the MUM's Journal of Modern Science and Vedic Science on the relationship between physics and consciousness.These papers discuss the Vedic understanding of consciousness as a field and compare it with theories of the unified field derived by modern physics. Hagelin argues that these two fields have almost identical properties and quantitative structure, and he presents other theoretical and empirical arguments that the two fields are actually one and the same—specifically, that the experience of unity at the basis of the mind achieved during the meditative state is the subjective experience of the very same fundamental unity of existence revealed by unified field theories.
Part of the evidence Hagelin presents for this explanation is the body of research on the effects that practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation technique and of the more advanced TM-Sidhi program (which includes a practice called "Yogic Flying") have on measured parameters in society. This phenomenon is called the "Maharishi Effect". In these two papers he cites numerous studies of such effects, and in the summer of 1993, he himself conducted a large scale study of this type. Hagelin recruited approximately 4,000 TM-Sidhi program practitioners to the Washington D.C. area, where they practiced the TM Sidhi techniques twice daily in a group. Using data obtained from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department for 1993 and the preceding five years (1988–1992), Hagelin and collaborators followed the changes in crime rates for the area before, during, and after the 6 weeks the group was gathered in Washington DC. In 1999, the study, which showed a highly statistically significant drop in predicted crime, controlling for effects of temperature changes, was published in Social Indicators Research.
Critique;
Physicist Victor J. Stenger wrote in The Humanist that John Hagelin talks about "quantum consciousness" and that quantum consciousness is a "myth" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns, and dragons as yet another product of the fantasies of people unwilling to accept what science, reason, and their own eyes tell them about the world."
Peter Woit writes in his book, Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory And The Search For Unity In Physical Law, that "Virtually every theoretical physicist in the world" rejects Hagelin's attempt to identify the "unified field" of superstring theory with the Maharishi's "unified field of consciousness" as "utter nonsense, and the work of a crackpot"
Awards;
In 1992, Hagelin was honored with a Kilby International Award for his work in particle physics leading to the development of supersymmetric grand unified field theories, for his innovative applications of advanced principles from control systems theory and optimization theory to digital sound reproduction, and for his research on human consciousness. Chris Anderson questioned the value of the award in an article about Hagelin published in Nature.
In 1994, Hagelin was selected for the Ig Nobel Prize for Peace, an annual parody award given for achievements that “first make people laugh and then make them think." The award was given for the experimental conclusions drawn from the Washington, D.C. study.
How the Brain Encodes Reward - a lecture by Okihide Hikosaka
May 7, 2009 - Running Time: 0:51:02
About the Lecture
As Ann Graybiel puts it, “basal ganglia were dark basement structures” until Okihide Hikosaka began his classic 1980s research demonstrating how these neuronal clusters influenced eye movements. Hikosaka has deepened and broadened his work in this once neglected area of the brain, and brings a McGovern audience up to date on his latest discoveries.
Hikosaka briefly sketches what is known about the basic pathways leading in, around and out of the basal ganglia, circuits that have been associated with stress, pain, mood, memory and arousal. This specialized cluster of neurons seems especially attuned to the neurotransmitter dopamine, and Hikosaka has been investigating “a number of unsolved questions,” including how dopamine neurons form circuits for movement control, whether such neurons encode “motivational values,” and what other parts of the brain guide them.
Hikosaka describes research demonstrating that certain dopamine neurons become excited if a visual cue indicates a future reward, and become inhibited with a visual cue indicating no reward. Dopamine also increases after an action delivers a reward and decreases when an action produces no reward. Research began to explore whether dopamine neurons “encode motivational values, including reward and punishment.” After others’ studies yielded contradictory or uncertain conclusions, Hikosaka designed a set of studies on monkeys involving classical Pavlovian conditioning, with juice rewards and air puffs as aversive stimuli.
Among Hikosaka’s findings: some dopamine neurons were excited primarily by positive, reward-predicting stimuli, others inhibited by air puff-predicting stimuli. But he also found another group of dopamine neurons excited both by positive and negative reward-predicting stimuli (as well as the stimuli themselves). Hikosaka posited two types of neurons that react in very different ways to motivational signals, which he described as value-coding and salience-coding. He also determined that the lateral habenula, a part of the brain sitting at one end of the thalamus, seems to regulate dopamine pathways involved in some motivational responses. By sending a weak electric pulse through the lateral habenula, Hikosaka saw a very strong inhibition of the dopamine neurons that “encode mostly motivational values.”
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Aired: March 25, 2008 on BBC2. You might think that your memory is there to help you remember facts, such as birthdays or shopping lists. If so, you would be very wrong. The ability to travel back in time in your mind is, perhaps, your most remarkable ability, and develops over your lifespan. Horizon takes viewers on an extraordinary journey into the human memory. From the woman who is having her most traumatic memories wiped by a pill, to the man with no memory, this film reveals how these remarkable human stories are transforming our understanding of this unique human ability. The findings reveal the startling truth that everyone is little more than their own memory.
BBC Horizon Documentary - A War on Science(Evolution vs Intelligent Design) One of Science's greatest theories; Evolution, is under attack. The threat is emerging from the only scientific superpower on earth, provoking some of the biggest names in science to hit back...
The controversy surrounds a new explanation for the diversity found on planet earth, for many, it threatens to replace science with God.
This is the story of a battle between faith and Knowledge, and is a defining moment in the scientific landscape of of the 21st Century.
Meet the scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human – a human v2.0. It’s predicted that by 2029 computer intelligence will equal the power of the human brain. Some believe this will revolutionise humanity – we will be able to download our minds to computers extending our lives indefinitely. Others fear this will lead to oblivion by giving rise to destructive ultra intelligent machines. One thing they all agree on is that the coming of this moment – and whatever it brings – is inevitable. (Excerpt from bbc.co.uk)
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