Below is a visual from a 2016 paper "A new view of the tree of life." In this paper this visual comes underneath a headline "A current view of the tree of life." You may notice that the strange shape has no actual resemblance to a tree, although it looks a little like some erupting fireworks sparkler stick that I would use as a young boy on the fourth of July.
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Our future, our universe, and other weighty topics
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
The Science-Flavored Guesswork Known as Phylogenetics
Below is a visual from a 2016 paper "A new view of the tree of life." In this paper this visual comes underneath a headline "A current view of the tree of life." You may notice that the strange shape has no actual resemblance to a tree, although it looks a little like some erupting fireworks sparkler stick that I would use as a young boy on the fourth of July.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
The Two Kings: A Science Fiction Story
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
When Minds Seem to Borrow Bodies
- Near-death experiences
(reports of inexplicable events experienced by people who had a
close encounter with death, but who survived)
- Deathbed visions
(reports of visions of dead relatives or a world beyond by people
who did die soon after making such reports), such as reported by Barrett and as reported by Osis and Haraldsson
- Apparition sightings such as those abundantly reported in Chapter 3 of the superb book The Unknown by Flammarion, one of the most well-known astronomers of his day, and also very abundantly documented by the massive work Phantasms of the Living
- Laboratory tests of
extrasensory perception, such as the convincing evidence gathered at universities by professors such as Rhine and Riess
- Incidental accounts of
extrasensory perception, which are quite commonly reported (you can find many examples here in Chapter 6 of The Unknown by Flammarion, and also in the book The Gift)
- Inexplicable physical
manifestations (such as materializations) occurring near mediums or during seances
- Cases of people who seem to receive literary content through "automatic writing" or Ouija boards, the most interesting one being that of Pearl Curran, who (despite a lack of a high-school education) produced some very high quality literary works in such a way, works displaying a mastery of language we would expect only a college graduate to have
- Inexplicable information
retrievals occurring during sessions with mediums (such as the case
of Leonora Piper)
- Cases of children who
report living past lives, such as the cases very well documented by Ian Stevenson
- Cases of people who are
hypnotically regressed, and report past lives
- Evidence for remote viewing, which was gathered by the US government, which funded
remote research for many years, mainly because it seemed to be
producing inexplicable results
- Photographs of mysterious orbs,
including my photographs of 500+ striped orbs which often have strongly repeating patterns, and my photos of 700+ speeding orbs
- The "Global Consciousness Effect," a six-sigma effect in random number generators (relating to historical events) described here and here
- Cases of apparent
spiritual possession, in which one person's body seemed to be
possessed by the mind or spirit of a different person
Let's take a look at the last of these items. In the literature of paranormal phenomena, there are countless cases of mediums or "channelers" who seemed to briefly go into a trance state or an abnormal mental state, and then spoke as if some other mind had borrowed their body. I speak here of cases in which a person's body rather appears to be borrowed for a relatively brief time, such as a number of minutes or a few hours. Such an apparent "borrower" of the person's body may be identified as a "spirit control." In some cases the person may start speaking as if he or she is a particular deceased historical person, or some unknown figure. A fascinating example was the case of Jane Roberts, who would often seem to be possessed by a mind identified as Seth. Several interesting books (sometimes called the Seth Material) were compiled from the utterances of this "Seth" personality that seemed to borrow Roberts' body.
Another similar case was that of the Brazilian healer Arigo, who would very often act as if he was possessed by the spirit of a German doctor. Speaking in a heavy German accent at such times, Arigo (who lacked medical training) apparently performed countless cures and successful surgical operations.
What is much less common are cases in which a person's mind and personality seems to vanish for many days, apparently to be replaced by the mind of a deceased person. One occurred in the US, and another in India. Neither was reported as a case of demonic possession, meaning both cases were free from the intellectual baggage associated with that idea.
The case in the US was the case reported in the book “The Wasekea Wonder” written by E.W. Stevens, and published in 1878. You can read the original account at this location. The account describes events that occurred in Watseka, Illinois in 1877 and 1878. In a case like this, the fact that we can read a contemporaneous account written soon after the events is a fact bolstering the credibility of the evidence.
My description will be drawn purely from Stevens' original 1878 account. On page 1 of the Stevens account we are told that Mary Lurancy Vennum was born April 16, 1864 to Thomas and Lurinda Vennum. The Vennum family moved to Waseka, Illinois in 1871, locating “40 rods” (about 200 meters) from the residence of A.B. Roff. Page 1 tells us the following:
The only acquaintance ever had been between the two families during the season, was simply one brief call of Mrs. Roff, for a few minutes, on Mrs. Vennum, which call was never returned; and a formal speaking acquaintance between the two gentlemen. Since 1871, the Vennum family had lived entirely away from the vicinity of Mr. Roff's, and never nearer than now, on extreme opposite limits of the city.
From July 1877 to January 1878 Mary Lurancy Vennum had various bizarre sicknesses and trances, claiming to see heaven, angels and spirits. On February 1, 1878, Mary's father reported something astonishing (according to page 4 of the Stevens account):
On the following morning, Friday, February first, Mr. Vennum called at the office of Mr. Roff and informed him that the girl claimed to be Mary Roff and wanted to go home. To use Mr. Vennum's wards: “She seems like a child real homesick, wanting to see her pa and ma and her brothers."
Who was this Mary Roff? On page 4 of the Stevens account, we are told that Mary Roff, the daughter of Asa and Ann Roff, was born on the eighth day of October, 1846, in Indiana. On page 6 we are told that Mary Roff died on July 5, 1865, the year after the year that Mary Lurancy Vennum was born. So when Mary Lurancy Vennum claimed to be Mary Roff in February, 1878, she was claiming to be someone who had died 13 years ago.
On page 6 of the Stevens account, we are told the following:
About a week after she took control of the body, Mrs. A. B. Roff and her daughter, Mrs. Minerva Alter, Mary's sister, hearing of the remarkable change, went to see the girl. As they came in sight, far down the street, Mary, looking out of the window, exclaimed exultingly, "There comes my ma and sister Nervie!" the name by which Mary used to call Mrs. Alter in girlhood. As they came into the house, she caught them around the necks, wept and cried for joy, and seemed so happy to meet them. From this time on she seemed more homesick than before. At times she seemed almost frantic to go home.
On page 7 Stevens tells us that the following happened a few days later:
On the eleventh day of February, 1878, they sent the girl to Mr. Roff's, where she met her “pa and ma," and each member of the family, with the most gratifying expressions of love and affection, by words and embraces. On being asked how long she would stay, she said, "The angels will let me stay till sometime in May;" and she made it her home there till May twenty-first three months and ten days, a happy contented daughter and sister in a borrowed body.
For three months the teenager with the body of Mary Lurancy Vennum acted just like the deceased Mary Roff, and as if she no longer had the mind of Mary Lurancy Vennum. Referring to the Roff home, and using the phrase “everything that Mary knew” to refer to everything that Mary Roff knew, the Stevens account on page 7 tells us this about the teenager:
The girl now in her new home, seemed perfectly happy and content, knowing every person and everything that Mary knew when in her original body, twelve years to twenty-five years ago, recognizing and calling by name those who were friends and neighbors of the family from 1852 to 1865, when Mary died, calling attention to scores, yes, hundreds of incidents that transpired during her natural life. During all the period of her sojourn at Mr. Roff's she had no knowledge of, and did not recognize any of Mr. Vennum's family or neighbors, yet Mr. and Mrs. Vennum and their children visited her and Mr. Roff's people, she being introduced to them as to any strangers.
On page 8 Stevens says that Mr. Roff (the father of the deceased Mary Roff) wrote him on February 19, 1878, about three weeks after the apparent “mind switch,” saying the following (referring to Mary Lurancy Vennum):
Mary is perfectly happy; she recognizes everybody and everything that she knew when in her body twelve or more years ago. She knows nobody nor anything whatever that is known by Lurancy.
After some three months, there seemed to occur strange oscillations in which the body of Mary Lurancy Vennum seemed to switch between the mind or soul of Mary Roff and the mind or soul of Mary Lurancy Vennum. Before returning to normal, the teenager bid a tearful farewell to Mr. Roff. Soon thereafter the astonishing “switch” was over. Now identifying herself as the original Mary Lurancy Vennum, the teenager joyously greeted her parents, like someone who had been away for the summer in a summer camp.
Although it was called a "singularity" by one writer, the astonishing case of Mary Lurancy Vennum (the Watseka Wonder) is not unique. A distinguished researcher has documented a similar case that occurred in India. The case is described in the paper "A Case of the Possession Type in India With Evidence of Paranormal Knowledge" by Ian Stevenson and two other researchers (Pasricha and McClean-Rice). There is the remarkable detail that a woman named Sumitra seemed to die or fall into a coma, and then awoke claiming to be a no-longer-living person named Shiva who lived 100 kilometers away.
Below is Stevenson's summary of the case:
A young married woman, Sumitra, in a village of northern India, apparently died and then revived. After a period of confusion she stated that she was one Shiva who had been murdered in another village. She gave enough details to permit verification of her statements, which corresponded to facts in the life of another young married woman called Shiva. Shiva had lived in a place about 100 km away, and she had died violently there-either by suicide or murder-about two months before Sumitra's apparent death and revival. Subsequently, Sumitra recognized 23 persons (in person or in photographs) known to Shiva. She also showed in several respects new behavior that accorded with Shiva's personality and attainments. For example, Shiva's family were Brahmins (high caste), whereas Sumitra's were Thakurs (second caste); after the change in her personality Sumitra showed Brahmin habits that were strange in her family. Extensive interviews with 53 informants satisfied the investigators that the families concerned had been, as they claimed, completely unknown to each other before the case developed and that Sumitra had had no normal knowledge of the people and events in Shiva's life. The authors conclude that the subject demonstrated knowledge of another person's life obtained paranormally.
While Mary Lurancy Vennum spent only three months claiming to be the late Mary Roff, before assuming her original personality, in the case of Sumitra she seemed to have the mind of the deceased Shiva for more than two years.
The Sumitra case is perhaps even better as evidence than the Mary Lurancy Vennum case. The family of Mary Roff had a slight interaction with the family of Mary Lurancy Vennum (but without conversation between the one Mary who died a year after the other Mary was born), prior to the alleged "mind switch" in which Mary Lurancy Vennum started acting like Mary Roff. But prior to the time that Sumitra started acting like Shiva, there was no interaction between Sumitra or her family and Shiva or her family, who lived 100 kilometers away. In 1985 there was no Internet allowing anyone to find out details about someone living 100 kilometers away. The Stevenson paper reported that Sumitra was able to make 12 identifications of Shiva's family members and friends under conditions which "excluded cueing."
Both the Mary Lurancy Vennum case and the Sumitra case were written up by medical professionals who thoroughly interviewed the persons interacting with the case not long after the events occurred. For example, Stevenson's co-author Satwant Pasricha (a clinical psychologist) interviewed some members of the family of Sumitra and Shiva in 1985, the same year Sumitra's "spiritual possession" began; and Stevenson (a professor of medicine and psychiatry) and his co-authors interviewed 24 members of the family of Sumitra and the family of Shiva in 1986 and 1987. The Mary Lurancy Vennum case was documented by a physician (Stevens) who interviewed the relevant persons in the same year the events occurred. In both cases, every fact documented seemed to support the astonishing hypothesis of a body being long borrowed by another mind, the mind of a real person who had died.
You can read about this fascinating case here.
"In 1933 she was taken over by a spirit who identified herself as a 41-year-old Spanish charwoman named LucÃa Altarez de Salvio. LucÃa did not leave Iris, as earlier communicators had done. She spoke Spanish, understood no Hungarian, and only gradually learned German, the language spoken by Iris’s family. She said that she had died three months before in Madrid, leaving a husband and numerous children. After the transformation, Iris found a new talent in cooking and enjoyed singing Spanish songs and flamenco dancing....Iris was nearly eighty at the time of the last interviews, but still identified herself as LucÃa."
The case is also described here, where it explicitly states that Iris had never learned Spanish, but spoke it well. We are told "LucÃa’s mastery of Spanish in the Madrilene dialect was precise." The case resembles the astonishing case of Mary Lurancy Vennum. But in that case Mary Lurancy Vennum for only three months claimed to be someone else (Mary Roff, who had died a year after Mary Lurancy Vennum was born). In the case of Iris Farczády, we have someone who apparently claimed to be a different person (LucÃa Altarez de Salvio) for more than sixty years.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
The Myths and Mystery of Morphogenesis
We can compare the genetic code used by DNA to a tiny little “sandwich language” in which the only words are the names of sandwich ingredients: words such as “bread,” “tomato,” "salami," “cheese,” and “ham.” With such a tiny little language, you can specify any number of sandwiches, but you can't specify something like the anatomy of an eye or the anatomy of a mammal. Similarly, with its “poor man's language,” DNA can specify the linear arrangement of amino acids in a protein, and the contents of RNA molecules, but that's about it.
Shortly after saying this Richardson states the following, negating the very claims that he has just assured us are so widespread:
The full quote by Noble (from this interview) is as follows:
"I think that as a gene-centric view of evolution, the modern synthesis has got causality in biology wrong. Genes, after all, if they’re defined as DNA sequences, are purely passive. DNA on its own does absolutely nothing until activated by the rest of the system through transcription factors, markers of one kind or another, interactions with the proteins. So on its own, DNA is not a cause in an active sense. I think it is better described as a passive data base which is used by the organism to enable it to make the proteins that it requires."
Shockingly, in the same interview, this distinguished biologist refers to speciation (the origin of a new species), and says, "So I go along with the view that there has been no really clear proof that speciation occurred via gradual mutation followed by selection." Here we have an admission that the central dogma of modern Darwinism has "no really clear proof." Noble here mirrors what was stated in the book Evolution and Ecology: The Pace of Life by Cambridge University biology professor K. D. Bennett. Bennett says on page 175, "Natural selection has been shown to have occurred (for example, among populations of Darwin's finches), but there is no evidence that it accumulates over longer periods of time to produce speciation in the Darwinian sense."
Inexplicable by any reductionist or "bottom-up" explanation, the development of a human body from a fertilized egg strongly suggests that there is some unfathomable "top-down" effect causing biological organisms to assume their forms -- some gigantic facet of reality beyond our ken. As for the idea that instructions created "on the hoof" (an expression meaning "without thought or preparation") might act "far more intelligently," that makes no sense whatsoever. Instructions created "on the hoof" by mindless chemical units would be random nonsense, not something "far more intelligent."
A recent Science Daily article reveals that scientists have not actually observed any chemical or biological instructions giving rise to the tissues and organs in a body, contrary to what Richardson has insinuated. The article states, "As cells divide to form tissues and organs in multicell organisms, they move to where they belong, informed by a series of cues that scientists have yet to observe or fully understand." Notice the phrase "have yet to observe" in that sentence.
To try to explain his bad new myth of morphogenesis, Richardson uses analogies which don't make any sense in the context of his account. He compares cells that billions of times move in just the right way at just the right time to a "glorious ballet." But ballet dancers don't produce a glorious ballet like The Nutcracker by "talking to each other" during their dance, or free-wheeling it in some spontaneous "on the hoof" manner; they follow the instructions of a choreographer who has planned out their dances. Richardson also suggests the analogy of an orchestra working without a conductor. That analogy does not fit his claims, as orchestras work from sheet music previously designed by a composer. A symphony orchestra in which musicians are playing their instruments "on the hoof" would produce just noise, not an organized symphony.
Trying to explain a hundred biological wonders like the extremely intricate functional anatomy and biochemistry of the eye by citing "statistical patterns" is rather amusing. Evoking "statistical patterns" to explain something is the kind of empty bluff people use when they don't have an explanation for something, as illustrated in the conversation below.
Jim: Why did Trump win the 2016 election?
Dave: That was just statistical patterns.
Jim: And why did the stock market crash in 2008?
Dave: That was also just statistical patterns.
Jim: And how do such beautiful spiral galaxies form in space?
Dave: Once again, statistical patterns explain it.
Jim: And why do really bad wars start up a few times in a lifetime?
Dave: Again, it's just statistical patterns.
Jim: Why, Dave you're a genius! You can explain almost anything.
I may note that Richardson does a rather poor job of accounting for the lineage of his “DNA cannot be a blueprint or recipe” assertions. He rather makes it sound as if such a thing is a fairly recent development. But the transparent absurdity of claiming that DNA is a recipe or blueprint or program has long been pointed out by various critics of biological orthodoxy. The idea that DNA is not a blueprint or recipe or program for making a human, and cannot account for human development, was forcefully argued at length in my February 2016 post “The Gigantic Missing Link of Biological Life.” But a much earlier statement of the idea can be found in a 1987 paper by contrarian biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who stated the following:
When a child has learned how a human egg is fertilized through sexual intercourse, people say that such a child has learned how babies originate. But the child has not actually learned such a thing. For neither any children nor any adults can actually explain how babies originate in the sense of explaining how a fertilized egg is able to progress to become a baby.
Nearly a century ago, the physician Gustave Geley stated that the facts of morphogenesis and embryonic development force upon us the idea that biological changes in an organism must come from some directing exterior force or "dynamism" outside of the body. He stated the following:
We take for granted the miracle of morphogenesis simply because we observe it happening invariably. It's a rather a rule that anything that is observed invariably occurring will always be taken for granted, no matter how inexplicable or seemingly providential such a thing may be. Let us imagine a strange planet on which there are many volcanoes. But let us suppose that on this odd planet instead of volcanoes ejecting rocks and lava randomly all over the place, volcanoes only eject rocks and lava that conveniently form into habitable houses, some multi-storied. On such a planet the scientists would probably regard such a thing as just being a "law of nature" rather than some wonderful blessing. On that planet we might hear conversations like this:
Professor: So when volcanoes erupt, they shoot out lava and rocks that always conveniently form into habitable houses and buildings. We call this law of nature "the law of convenient volcanoes."
Pupil: My father says that such a law is a sign of some purposeful intelligence working for our behalf.
Professor: Superstitious nonsense! The "law of convenient volcanoes" is simply the way blind nature has always worked. No doubt such a law of nature prevails on all inhabited planets.
Similarly, today's earthly scientists, who have no real explanation for how a human progresses from an egg to an adult, typically assume that a similar wonder occurs on many other planets to produce full-grown extraterrestrial beings.
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Closed Minds of a Professorial Priesthood
Graduate programs for scientist training may be compared to the seminary education by which people become priests. To become a Catholic priest you must send four years studying in a seminary, and then spend one year as a transitional deacon. To get a PhD in some branch of science, you must spend four or more years in some graduate program, and often as long as seven years or more. A Catholic seminary is an ideological enclave in which all the instructors share a very specific dogmatic belief system. Many a university graduate program is also an ideological enclave in which all the instructors share a very specific dogmatic belief system.
At a Catholic seminary you are taught to unquestioningly accept dogmas such as the Trinity, the physical resurrection of Jesus, and papal infallibility. At a university graduate program you may be taught to unquestioningly accept dogmas such as the dogma that life appeared through chance combinations of chemicals, the dogma that random mutations and natural selection caused the origin of each species, the dogma that brains produce minds, the dogma that synapses store memories, and the dogma that no can have any special psychic powers or psychic experiences beyond the explanation of neuroscientists.
A good system of scientist education is one that would train scientists to be very humble, and to recognize that their knowledge of nature is merely fragmentary. Our system of scientist education is one that leads scientists to think they are great lords of explanation who pretty much have things figured out. And so we have a neuroscientist like Kandel ending a recent book with a chapter claiming that consciousness is the “last great mystery” of the brain, thereby overestimating his knowledge of the mind and brain by many times, and failing to recognize the countless mysteries on this topic scientists have not solved. Pretentious conceit about your level of knowledge about nature cannot co-exist with open-mindedness.
Very closed-minded scientists sometimes hypocritically lecture us on the virtue of open-mindedness. An example of this is a post on the Real Clear Science site entitled “What It Really Means to Be Open-Minded.” In that post we hear a quote from neuroscientist Steven Novella telling us it is important for scientists to be open-minded. He states the following:
"Scientists, critical thinkers, and skeptics can and should be completely open-minded, which means being open to the evidence and logic whatever it says. If the evidence supports a view, then we will accept that view in proportion to the evidence."
Such a statement of principles is very amusing coming from Novella, who over the years in his blog posts has shown himself to be an extremely closed-minded thinker who automatically rejects any evidence that seems to clash with the tenets of neuroscience orthodoxy, as reflexively as a man may jerk his knee after it is struck with a wooden hammer. An example of Novella's inappropriate closed-minded thinking is a statement he made in a blog post last year:
Yesterday on the Psychology Today web site, we had a surprisingly good summary of the overwhelming evidence for psi, presented by Steve Taylor PhD. Taylor tells us, "The evidence for psi is already very convincing," and refers us to this recent review published in the mainstream scientific journal American Psychologist, a review which tells us, "The evidence for psi is comparable to that for established phenomena in psychology and other disciplines."
A person may be intimidated by the thundering sounds of scientists telling us, "This is our consensus," or "We say this is impossible," as intimidated as Dorothy was when she first saw the scowling floating head of the Wizard of Oz. But when we understand the sociological and ideological factors which often are the stilts which support such opinions, and that the pronouncements of scientists are often merely the articles of faith of a belief community, then there may occur a certain "Toto pulling back the Wizard's curtain" moment in which intimidation is reduced.