Miss M. Kept Passing Very Rigorous Tests of Clairvoyance

The four-part series "Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena" is a fascinating set of books that can be read for free at www.archive.org, even by those who have not registered at the site. Perhaps the highlight of the four-part series is pages 33 to 76 of Volume 3, where we read a long narrative of the most astonishing series of successes by a woman who underwent what were some of the most rigorous series of tests ever applied to someone with apparent paranormal power.  The woman is identified merely as Miss M. The 38-pages are rather off-topic, given the title of the book series.  Some of the most astonishing clairvoyants in history were those who produced their results only after being hypnotized (an example being Osty's subject Mrs. Morel, discussed here).  But Miss M. apparently produced most or all her more amazing results in a normal waking consciousness, without requiring someone to hypnotize her first. We do hear, though, of some doctor using "suggestion" with her, so it is rather unclear whether any hypnosis was involved. 

We read on page 33 that the main investigator of Miss M. was "Dr. A. N. Khovrin, the superintendent of the Hospital for Mental Diseases in Tambov, a city with a population of about 50,000 and situated between Moscow and Saratov, some 300 miles south-east of Moscow." On page 38 we read of an event that got Khovrin interested in Miss M.:

"Khovrin happened to be with her just at the moment when a letter was delivered to her. It was from one of her sisters, but she did not open it and was just holding it in her hand when she became very sad and started crying. She declared that her sister’s little boy had died and her sister also was very ill. This indeed proved to be the news contained in the letter. Khovrin thought that this might have been a coincidence, but when she was asked how she guessed it, Miss M. replied that very often she knew what was inside a letter from her relatives even before opening it. After hearing this reply, Khovrin decided on a series of experiments, for, he argued to himself, if Miss M. was able to ' read ' letters from her relatives in this way, then why not other letters as well ?"

We read of a clairvoyance experiment with a Miss M., done by a Russian investigator:

"The first experiment in this series took place on 21 March 1892 at 20.00 hours. Khovrin took half a sheet of writing-paper, wrote a sentence on it, folded it in four, carefully sealed it in an ordinary envelope and proposed to Miss M. that she should try to read what was inside. After repeated refusals, she finally yielded to his persuasion, having first stated, however, that nothing would come of it. Indeed, she continued to talk on other subjects while already holding the letter, until he asked her directly to concentrate on her problem. Then she began looking attentively at the envelope and moving it between her fingers, as if she were receiving some sensations which she was trying to define. After two or three minutes of concentration she said that it seemed to her that there were the words ' Sofia Aleksandrovna' and also something more, but she was so exhausted that the experiment had to be interrupted. Since these words were in fact in the letter Khovrin became interested, and upon leaving her suggested to her that she should try to find out what was in the envelope and tell him the next morning. Next day, she sent him the envelope on which she wrote ‘ Sofia Aleksandrovna, you should recover'.  This, indeed was the sentence he had written. After careful inspection of the envelope through a magnifying-glass, Khovrin was unable to detect any traces of it having been opened. Moreover, when looking at it against the light, he was unable to see a single word."

A bit later in the same work we read of an equally striking success:

"The next experiment, however, which was carried out under much stricter conditions, gave no less decisive results. The text was written on standard writing-paper with the sheet folded in such a manner that there were five layers between the written words and the surface of the envelope ; not the slightest trace of writing was visible when the envelope was held up against the light. Having sealed the envelope carefully, he made across the flaps a number of signs in black ink which, he believed, would certainly be affected if the envelope were to be steamed or dampened. Having thus prepared the envelope he gave it to Miss M. at noon, asking her to try to read the text. Two hours later she came to his apartment, imploring him to release her from this experiment, as she was quite unable to read it. Khovrin examined the envelope through a magnifying-glass and found no visible traces of any attempt to open it. Then, regardless of Miss M's reluctance to proceed, he asked her to continue with the experiment. She unwillingly gave her consent and immediately applied herself to it."

After apparently quite a bit of struggling, pauses and rather convulsive behavior from Miss M., this result occurred:

"All at once she wrote on the envelope the following sentence,  'Field-surgeon M-v poisoned himself with morphia out of love for his first cousin'. This sentence corresponded exactly to the text in the sealed envelope."

We next read this:

"A series of new experiments was undertaken with every precaution against any attempt at fraud and, without going into particulars, he stated that these experiments convinced him that Miss M. possessed a singular faculty which he believed was nothing other than an extraordinary acuity of certain sense organs which enabled her to receive sensory impressions from sources that would not be perceived by normal people. Further, these unconsciously received impressions appeared later in her consciousness in the form of fantastic pictorial images which, however, corresponded with the objects producing these impressions."

We then read about an elaborate testing protocol:

"Two of them, he writes, were reported at length in the journal Voprosy Filosofi [Philosophical Problems] and in the protocols of the St. Petersburg Society of Experimental Psychology, 1892 and 1893.  In the protocol of this society for 3 November 1893 it is recorded that, after an exhaustive discussion of the problem as to how best to conduct the experiment and conceal from the clairvoyant the text that she was supposed to read, the meeting unanimously accepted the following procedure. Each of the nine members at the meeting wrote on a sheet of standard paper a short sentence of two or three lines in such a way that no one knew what the others had written. This sheet was then folded, wrapped in another sheet of paper and put into an envelope. All the envelopes were then placed in a hat, from which the Vice-president, Mr. Fisher, took one at random and burned the others. The envelope picked out by Mr. Fisher was then put into another thick envelope and glued to it inside in two places. This envelope also was glued and stapled in four places across the flaps with special clips. As a further precaution against fraud a seal of the society, similar to those used by public notaries, was placed on the middle of the envelope. The letters on the seal were arranged in relation to two points made on the envelope by a pin and visible only under a magnifying-glass, and beneath the seal, but invisible from the outside, was placed a tiny piece of hair. If either Miss M. or anyone else removed the seal, the hair would also be removed without being noticed and if the envelope were exchanged a counterfeit of the society’s seal would have to be made, which itself would be a difficult task.... After several sittings, Miss M. wrote on the outer envelope that what she saw in the text was ' I’m convinced that you will read my letter easily and without trouble and that afterwards you will feel magnificent. Petersburg, L. G. Korchagin.' She said that this text was written on unlined paper occupying three and a half lines, the handwriting being medium sized and uniform.

As soon as Miss M. had solved the problem Khovrin sent the result to St. Petersburg and at a sitting of the Society of Experimental Psychology on 3 April, 1893, the outer envelope was examined by an expert who declared that no traces of fraudulent handling were to be found. Then both the envelopes were opened and the original text compared with Miss M's reading, which proved to be entirely correct. Consequently the members at the sitting came to the following conclusion, which was drafted in these terms : 'It is highly probable that the fact of clairvoyance in this particular case was authentic and it is therefore most desirable that the experiments with Miss M. should be continued' ."

We then read of another test that was equally successful:

"Miss M. agreed to make another similar experiment with stricter controls and particularly with the assistance of a person familiar with such matters. He therefore asked an expert from the post office, Mr. S. A. Stroganov, who had never before met Miss M., to prepare for her a problem according to his own requirements. On 13 April, therefore, Stroganov gave Khovrin an envelope, closed with his own wax seal and with a number of various signs across the flaps. On 17 April Miss M. returned the envelope, on which she had written, ' There are things in this world we never dreamt of'. The envelope was at once passed to Stroganov and on the next day the following statement was received from him.  'After minute examination of the outer envelope by myself and other experts, it was found to be in the same state as when I gave it to you. My personal seal placed across the flaps did not show the slightest traces of being handled, or the flaps of being dampened or steamed. The figures and signs on the envelope, even the finest ones, have been examined through a magnifying-glass and show the same state as before the experiment. After the envelope was cut open, the interior was again examined and found free from any handling : the letter itself was glued to the envelope precisely as I did it myself and a very thin tape made from special material that was used to tie the inner envelope crosswise was also intact, together with its ends glued to the envelope. Obviously, if the letter were taken out of the envelope, it would have been torn out and the tape binding would have been torn out also, but no traces of this have been discovered. The sentence I had written was as follows, 'There are things in this world the wisest men did not dream of'. The sheet of paper was folded in such a manner that even if there were a possibility to look at it against the light the words of one line were covered with the words of another and were entirely unreadable. This sheet was wrapped in another clean sheet, which was also folded in four and the envelope itself was of very thick paper so that reading the text against the light seems to me absolutely impossible. 1 cannot refrain from expressing my amazement as to how Miss M. could guess my text under such unnatural conditions.' ”

A different type of test is described on this page. The test involved reading a sealed envelope containing a piece of undeveloped film, and a piece of paper mentioning the burning of a building. The test was run by an authority who was convinced that if any trickery had somehow opened the sealed envelope, the film would have been exposed to light, in a way that would have given away the trickery. Miss M. stated that the envelope produced in her a vision of a burning building. The film was developed, and no sign was found that it had been exposed to light. 

A student used these precautions in preparing an envelope to test the clairvoyance of Miss M.:

"My text was written on a half sheet of standard paper, folded in two. I wrapped this in a sheet of yellow paper, so that the first sheet could not even be seen without first unwrapping it. Then, from the same yellow paper I made an envelope of irregular shape, gluing it with carpenter’s glue and putting six seals from the mental hospital library across the flaps. Inside, the first envelope was glued to the yellow paper. The outer envelope was then put into an ordinary postal envelope and sealed with eleven seals of various kinds, both wax and otherwise and imprinted by a certain gadget from the laboratory.”

Miss M. brought back the sealed envelope, and had written these words on its outside:

" Large country road ; trees on the side of the road ; one can see a coach (farantass) and there seem to be two persons sitting in it ; one, it seems to me, is an elderly man who wears some sort of heavy coat, next to him is a woman with a white umbrella above her head."

After getting the envelope back, the student who prepared this test wrote the following:

"After a most thorough examination of the seals, and of the envelopes, I am able to conclude that it was positively impossible for Miss M. to open the envelope, read the text, and put it back, forging all the seals. It is necessary to admit that she has indeed some special faculty for reading hidden texts and for imagining very realistically (even to the point of hallucination) pictures corresponding to what the experimenter had written. My text consisted of the following sentences. ‘A large country road, with trees growing on both sides. In the distance one can see horses drawing a coach—a tarantass. There are two passengers sitting in the coach : an old man in a heavy coat and a young woman in a summer suit, with a white umbrella above her head.” 

On page 51 we read of this experimental success with Miss M.:

"As these trials gave positive results, Khovrin went on to more regular experiments and one of the more complicated ones will here be described.  He had prepared a number of tests written on identical pieces of standard paper in his ordinary handwriting. Each sheet was covered with a similar blank sheet, both folded in two and put into thick, heavy envelopes, entirely opaque when held against the light. He then picked up at random one of these envelopes and destroyed the others, so that he himself had no idea which text Miss M. was going to work at. During all these sittings, Miss M. held the envelope only in his presence ; otherwise it was hidden in a place which was known only to himself. This experiment took altogether five days, owing mainly to the fact that after fifteen to twenty minutes Miss M. became too exhausted to continue....The usual proceeding was that Miss M. tried to concentrate, holding the envelope between her fingers or against her head. Each time she saw a fragmentary hallucination until at a later sitting on 1 June it culminated finally into a distinct and more complete picture. After a few moments she came to herself and then wrote on the envelope ' I saw a large room brightly illuminated with many candles and a chandelier ; many people are walking about in couples dressed as for a ball. There is a stage in this room : one of the ladies in a white dress goes up on the platform ; she is holding something in her hands and mounting the stage and gesticulating ; I seem to hear her singing. I do not know whether she is really singing or whether it is in my imagination. The people stopped moving about and they seem to be applauding. S. M., 1 June 1893.”

"This task was quite perfectly solved, for Khovrin’s text was : 'A large hall brightly lighted with lamps and chandeliers, ladies and gentlemen in evening-dress walk around in groups. One of the ladies, in ball dress, with a fan in her hands, mounts the stage and remains standing there. Then she begins to sing in a pleasant voice, "Out in the Storm". The audience applauds.' ”

We then read of other tests successfully passed by Miss M.,  in which the experimenters were careful to keep the sealed envelope in their sight at all times, or in a combination of their sight or a locked container which only the experimenters had the key to.

Experimenters of the time tried to explain these results by postulating a "hyperacuity" of the senses.  But a writer explains why this explanation does not work:

"It may be of interest to give the views of a modern physicist on the interpretation of Khovrin’s experiments from the physiological point of view. He points out that there are three directions in which normal sight can be possibly developed beyond the usual limits. Firstly, seeing in near ultra-violet, or near infra-red light ; secondly, seeing in near darkness ; and thirdly, high definition, such as seeing very small print at a very long distance. There are physiological limits to all three. Reading through opaque matter does not come into this category at all. Opacity is the result of reflection, refraction and diffraction of light. As the opacity increases, the contrast between the signal and the diffused light decreases. At a certain point the contrast becomes insignificant and no amount of extra lighting, magnification or exposure in the case of photography will help. Under normal circumstances a single sheet of blotting-paper is perfectly opaque, and no amount of ' hyperacuity' of sight will make it less so, because as the intensity of the signal increases so does the diffusion of light, and the ratio remains the same." 

You can easily demonstrate this with a simple test like the one below. First, I wrote the name "Thomas Jefferson" on a piece of paper using an ordinary ball-point pen:

I then folded the paper twice, and stuck it in an ordinary envelope, one I had got from a letter sent to me by some health care agency. I held the envelope up to a bright electric light, a light so bright that it leaves an after-image in my closed eyes if I look at the light and then close my eyes. I could not see any of the letters when holding the letter up to the bright light:

Even after playing around with various image parameters such as Gamma Correction and Contrast, none of the letters were visible. Playing around with the Contrast parameter caused the lines on the paper to be very faintly visible, but not the letters written on the paper.

Our scientists should search out and test people who report paranormal effects such as being able to tell the contents of sealed hand-written letters before opening them, an effect very clearly reported by many witnesses such as Mark Twain, as described here. When they are done in the right way, such tests suggest something profoundly important about the human mind: that it is something much different and much more than a product of the brain. But alas, for every scientist trying to do such tests, there are probably 100 scientists who waste the government's money running the "Rodent Racket" of doing worthless poorly-designed experiments involving rodents, memory and fear. Such experiments tell us nothing reliable about memory or rodents, because they involve a variety of very poor research practices such as using way-too-small study group sizes (insufficient to show correlation), a failure to follow a blinding protocol, and the use of unreliable subjective techniques for judging rodent fear ("freezing behavior" judgments) rather than reliable techniques for measuring rodent fear such as measuring heart rate spikes.  Modern academia has incentives for such junk science studies, but penalizes and shames those who run-well designed studies demonstrating paranormal effects. And so we end up with so many junk science rodent memory studies that can be fairly described as suitable for wrapping fish or lining the bottoms of bird cages. 

Professor Explanations for Nature's Fine-Tuning Are Way Too Thin or Way Too Fat

"Science appears no longer to be characterised by accurate observation, carefully conducted experiment, and precision of thought, but to run riot in the wildest of all wild speculations, and, leaving knowledge far behind, to soar away into flights of imagination that may well vie with ancient mythology....The unbearable dogmatism and arrogant presumption of some of the men who, in modern times, pride themselves on being the champions of science, would be amusing, were the results not so mischievous to society at large." 

The Spiritual Magazine, 1875

The biggest problem for the person wishing to believe in a purposeless universe is that nature seems to have a vast abundance of fine-tuning all over the place, so much that the person denying purposeful teleology in nature seems like a person in a rowboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean who denies the existence of water. A large part of that abundance is to be found in biology. Biological organisms very strongly resemble the products of design. In fact, in biological organisms we see a degree of organization and functional complexity beyond anything humans have ever been able to achieve through technology or manufacturing activity.

Consider, for example, the simple case of a speck-sized fertilized human ovum that progresses to become a full-grown human being. Humans have never built anything that accomplishes that type of progression. The equivalent in a technological product would be if you could buy a tiny little “car pill,” plant it in your back yard, and then watch it grow into a full-sized car. Similarly, all of human technological ingenuity is unable to produce something with even one tenth the functional intelligence of a human being. While the human genome does not contain all that much data, if you were to fully specify all the information needed to create from chemical raw materials a human body or an elephant, that would require more detailed instructions than you would need to specify how to make a modern car. The incredibly intricate complexity of a human organism is shown in the fact that modern biochemistry textbooks may run to 1000 pages in length, and do not at all fully specify the complexity of human biochemistry.

Fine-tuning in biological organisms is only half of the fine-tuning we see in nature. There is also a vast amount of fine-tuning to be seen in the physics and laws of the universe. Against all odds, the fundamental constants have values that allow the existence of long-lived stars, planets and living beings. Make minor changes in any of a dozen places in the universe's fundamental constants and laws, and observers such as us would be impossible.

An example (one of many discussed here) is the exact numerical equality of the absolute value of the proton charge and the electron charge. Given that each proton has a mass 1836 times greater than the mass of each electron, we would not at all expect these two fundamental particles to have electric charges that are exactly equal or exactly opposite. But according to modern science the electric charge of each electron in the universe is the exact opposite of the electric charge of each proton in the universe. The equality has been proven to be an exact match to at least 18 decimal places. We would not expect a coincidence like this to occur in 1 in a trillion random universes.  On pages 64-65 of his book "The Symbiotic Universe," astronomer George Greenstein (a professor emeritus at Amherst College) said this about the equality of the proton and electron charges (which have precisely the same absolute value): 

"Relatively small things like stones, people, and the like would fly apart if the two charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Large structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion."

There are countless other examples of fine-tuning to be found by studying cosmology and physics. One involves the strong nuclear force. If it were about five percent larger or smaller, we would not be living in a habitable universe. If the physics of the universe had not been just right, very precisely fine-tuned, the Big Bang would have resulted in a universe that either would have collapsed in on itself before galaxies or formed, or a universe that would have expanded too fast for galaxies to form.

People wishing to explain away such natural fine-tuning have offered two theories that try to sweep nature's fine tuning under the rug. The first of these theories is pretty much the thinnest and flimsiest explanation ever offered by scientists. The second of these theories is the fattest and bulkiest theory ever offered by scientists. One of the theories is way too thin, and the other is way too fat.

The theory that is way too thin is Darwinism, the theory of macroevolution by random mutations. This theory is offered by scientists to explain away all the fine-tuning in biological organisms. The explanatory part of Darwinism is one of the flimsiest explanations ever advanced by scientists. It's so lightweight and simple you can state it in a single sentence like this: random variations occur in organisms, causing some to be fitter, and fitter organisms reproduce more, tending to cause lucky variations to spread around and be preserved in a population. That's an idea so simple you could easily explain it to someone while riding up in an elevator to the top floor of a ten-story building. 

As an explanation, Darwinism is incredibly thin because it doesn't postulate anything that wasn't already known long before Darwin lived. It has been known for most of human history that minor variations occur in organisms. It was also known by many long before Darwin that fit organisms reproduce more. For example, it must have occurred to quite a few of the spectators at the Colosseum that the more fit a gladiator is, the more likely he is to survive long enough to father children.

Darwinism doesn't work as a credible explanation for complex biological innovations resembling design products. There are several different ways of explaining why random mutations and so-called "natural selection" do not work to effectively explain complex biological innovations. One way to explain it is to simply point out that the type of random mutations that occur in organisms are merely tiny fragments of complex biological innovations. If a random mutation were to produce a sizable fraction of a complex biological innovation such as a vision system, there might be some hope of explaining complex biological innovations in the Darwinian manner. But sadly when random mutations occur, they are much less than a thousandth of what is needed for a complex biological innovation. Similarly, if a monkey makes a random strike on a keyboard, that is less than a thousandth of what is needed for a complex new computer program. A random mutation will typically change or add a single nucleotide base pair in a gene  that specifies a protein, and such a gene typically requires more than a thousand such nucleotide base pairs, all arranged in the right way to produce a functional purpose. Moreover a complex biological innovation almost always requires much more than just a single new gene or a single new protein corresponding to such a gene. 

Strip away all the jargon and digressions someone may use when arguing for Darwinism, and all the thick multi-syllabic verbiage designed to impress us, and you have at the core of Darwinism an explanation with the intellectual depth of a fortune cookie slogan. The explanation offered by Darwinism is basically "great luck occurs, and luck spreads around and piles up," which would work fine as a fortune cookie slogan. Every time someone tries to explain mountainous amounts of complex organization and functional fine-tuning in biological organisms by using Darwin's tissue-thin explanation of "random variations occur, and fitter things reproduce more,"  the question we should always ask such a person is: "Is that all you got?"

An opposite extreme can be found in the attempt scientists make to explain the fine-tuning we see in physics and cosmology. The explanation offered is that of the multiverse. This is the fattest explanation in intellectual history, and the person who advances it is like someone swimming in the middle of an ocean filled with whale blubber. The multiverse idea is that there is some vast collection of universes, perhaps an infinite number of them. This does nothing to explain the fine-tuning of fundamental constants and natural laws in our universe.  You do not increase the likelihood of our universe being habitable by imagining some infinity or near infinity of other universes, just as you do not increase the chance of you winning the Powerball lottery if you postulate an infinity of lotteries and an infinity of lottery players. 

There is only one good thing that can be said about the explanation of Darwinism, that it is economical. If we give scientific theories separate grades on economy and explanatory power, rating thin theories well for their economy and fat theories poorly, then we can give Darwinism an economy grade of A, but an explanatory power grade of F+ or D-. Contrary to the groundless boasts of its overly enthused disciples, who often resemble eager apostles of a religion, Darwinism can only explain a few very minor effects in nature, almost all merely superficial effects such as the darkening of moths. The grades that we must give to the multiverse theory are an economy grade of F and an explanatory power grade of F. Nothing whatsoever in our universe is actually explained by imagining some great multitude of other universes, and no explanation has ever been less economical.

Even when I was a teenage boy of only about fifteen, I was extremely interested in philosophical problems, and would spend endless hours trying to figure out some of them. When I was about fifteen, way before the term "multiverse" had been coined, I created in my mind  some theory of something like the idea of some infinity of universes, having a vast variety of properties. I was very pleased with myself, foolishly imagining I had come up with some brilliant solution to some long-standing philosophical problems.  By about the time I was in my twenties, I had realized that this youthful idea was of no explanatory value, and was just a bit of teenage silliness that had gone on in my mind. 

Archaeologists Shoot Themselves in the Feet Responding to Hancock's Mild Criticism

In my long post "Scientists and Clergy Have Much in Common," I cite quite a few similarities between scientists and clergy (people such as ministers and priests).  In his paper "The Scholarly Atmosphere: A Magnificent Deception?"  (well worth a full read) Neil J. Flinders makes some related points:

"Scholarship is entangled in a magnificent deception; quietly generation after generation is led into mindsets that function as religious orders without their being recognized as such....All universities, in addition to housing the tools of scholarship, function as religious solariums where devotees of selected orders and potential members for these 'sacred' orders gather together in a clustered if not cloistered community. These are individuals dedicated to or in search of some means of transformation, whether it be actualization, recognition, certification, graduation or some other academic symbol or process. The search, when dutifully followed, results in subtle or overt commitments that invite the scholar to give singular recognition to a particular mental paradigm accepted by the community....Characteristically, academic work is ritual work in the service of some belief system--overtly or covertly....Each scholar's fundamental allegiance, loyalty, and commitment resides in some 'church'; and the scholar, like the laborer, cannot serve two masters equally....Characteristics common to such recognized religions as Judaism, Christianity, Islam or Hinduism are clearly discernible in their literature and in the behavior of the respective disciples. And the same general characteristics are equally self evident in the literature and disciples of physical science, social science, linguistics, law, medicine, and other forms of scholarship. These parallel orders display similar if not identical elements; robes, rituals, sacrifices, rites of entry and levels of priestly authority....The experience of a committed graduate student and a novitiate in any of the traditional religious orders are very similar. The focus and sacrifice, submission and performance, obstacles and language, ceremonies and rewards are common components. And the places assigned in the resulting hierarchy reflect a shared pattern....Meetings, numerous and regular meetings, are conducted to define, disseminate, and direct the work of these ministries of modern academe. Prospective members are recruited, instructed, and formally accepted into the various orders. This process seems very normal, natural and easy to accept because the 'new orders' are not called religions; they are perceived as secular scholarly associations....Recognition and advancement are ceremoniously bestowed. Loyalty, commitment, and devotion to the order are prescribed and carefully monitored. Once accepted, adherents are expected to be supportive witnesses and valiant defenders of their designated 'faith'...Among the 'churches' that emerge around scholars a common article of faith is that each of these orders insists on being its own highest court of appeal; its own expertise is the supreme authority in its chartered domain. All who question this authority are pretenders to a throne which holds unquestioned dominion. As scholars build these 'churches' unto themselves, they function as laws unto themselves."

In my post "Scientists and Clergy Have Much in Common," I make no mention of archaeologists. But recently some archaeologists have been showing up on social media and science news sites, sadly acting in an appalling manner, like some intolerant medieval clerics.  Very strangely, the immoderate fury of such archaeologists has been provoked by an unlikely source: the mild-mannered archaeology scholar Graham Hancock. What provoked this rage from these archaeologists? It is merely that Graham Hancock has a Netflix TV series called "Ancient Apocalypse," in which Hancock occasionally offers some mild criticism of archaeologists (while spending almost all of his time talking about ruins and cultures originating very long ago). Hancock does not criticize any specific archaeologists, and says nothing very strong against archaeologists. He says little more against archaeologists than to occasionally accuse them of being too dogmatic and to accuse them of not paying attention to some evidence that they should study more carefully. 

This mild criticism has provoked the most enraged response from some archaeologists, who have done the rhetorical equivalent of trying to burn Hancock at the stake. Such archaeologists have made groundless accusations against Hancock, such as claiming that he is promoting racism or advancing conspiracy theories. As far as I can see, such claims have no merit, and are merely cases of libelous mud-slinging.  

Anyone watching the Netflix "Ancient Apocalypse" series or reading Hancock's books will find a subject that defies the scurrilous caricature of him painted in these livid archaeologist depictions of him. On TV we see a very calm and soft-spoken old man speaking the King's English in a crisp British accent, someone who seems many times more interested in discussing old archaeological sites than saying anything about archaeologists. Graham's theory is one that is unproven but quite reasonable. He theorizes that before the Ice Age ended about 10,000 BC there was an advanced civilization, contrary to the claims of archaeologists who claim that there were merely hunter-gatherers at such a time.  

The Netflix series shows Hancock traveling around to various archaeological sites around the world, in places such as Indonesia, Mexico and the island of Malta. For example, Hancock examines a site in Indonesia, talking to an investigator who thinks that parts of the site may date from before 10,000 BC. Hancock visits or mentions various pyramid sites around the world, noting the physical similarity of different pyramid sites in such widely scattered locations, including similar functions they served. He doubts that the similarities are coincidental, and suspects that they may reflect engineering know-how or building habits that have a common source, perhaps stemming from some lost civilization that rather quickly declined or disappeared, with remnants of it scattering around the globe.  Hancock pays attention to some cataclysm legends told long ago, and suggests that such stories may offer clues as to the origin of some of these structures, or may be faint traces of some ancient apocalypse causing the destruction of some civilization existing very long before the pyramids of Egypt were built. 

Chichen Itza structure in Mexico

There is nothing very radical about such ideas. They are far more conservative and much less speculative than the "Ancient Aliens" ideas advanced by another TV series.  The long-running "Ancient Aliens" series has long advanced the idea that archaeological anomalies can be explained by imagining visitors from other planets.  Hancock advances an idea much less speculative: the mere idea that some of the anomalies can be explained if a lost human civilization existed prior to the end of the Ice Age. Around the 30:00 mark in Episode 1, he speculates that such a civilization may have been mostly wiped out by "a massive global cataclysm about 12,500 years ago." One of his books cites a scientific paper suggesting some cataclysm may have occurred around such a time, and we know that the rather cataclysmic Ice Age occurred around that time. Hancock mentions things such as volcanic eruptions and collisions with a comet (or comet fragments) that might have caused some great civilization to collapse about 12,000 years ago. Interestingly, on the page here Hancock cites an ancient Egyptian historian who apparently gave a chronology indicating a history of Egyptian rulers going back more than 20,000 years. My guess is that Hancock's theory is somewhat unlikely to be true, but I would not at all be surprised if it is correct.  My opinion on this matter counts for little, because I am not a student of archaeology. 

Of several archaeologist responses I read, none of them attempted to make a substantive response to Hancock's theory. Instead such archaeologists mainly engaged in the crudest and clumsiest attempts at character assassination. These included the following:

• Groundless accusations that Graham is a conspiracy theorist. There are no conspiracy theories advanced on Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series, and I could find no such theories in three books of Hancock that I read. The idea that there was a civilization lost before the end of the Ice Age is not a conspiracy theory.  A conspiracy theory is a theory of people alive today or in recent times plotting some evil.
• Groundless accusations that Hancock's ideas are racist or helpful to racists.  The reasoning I read trying to support such accusations was some of the worst reasoning I have ever heard. One person tried to make Hancock's ideas sound racist on the grounds that some Nazis supposedly believed in a lost civilization like Atlantis. This is reasoning is absurd as claiming that people who like listening to Wagner's operas are racist because such operas were also enjoyed by the racist Nazis.   
• Groundless attempts to link Hancock's work to far-right extremists.  Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series is actually completely unpolitical, and I read nothing political or racist-sounding in three books of Hancock that I read. Hancock seems hundreds of times more interested in what happened many thousands of years ago than in any current political events.   

Although archaeologists have recently senselessly painted Hancock as some kind of uninformed kook or crank, anyone reading his books will find the work of a calm, cautious, very studious and reasonable-sounding scholar of extremely broad and deep knowledge,  a reality very much at odds with recent mud-slinging portrayals of him. So why was the vicious fury of archaeologists provoked? We can chalk this up to a few possible factors:

• Archaeologists may be furious that the mild-mannered Hancock has offered some gentle suggestions for how archaeologists can improve their work by considering evidence they have ignored.
• Archaeologists may be enraged and jealous that Hancock sold  millions of books while their papers typically get very little readership.
• Archaeologists may be furious that someone is daring to question their dogmas.
• Archaeologists may bitterly resent anyone who has become a successful archaeology scholar without being anointed as a member of their exclusive priesthood of PhD's. 

Archaeologists have misspoke by claiming that Hancock is not an archaeologist. The Cambridge Dictionary defines an archaeologist as

"someone who studies the buildings, graves, tools, and other objects of people who lived in the past." Hancock has been doing just that for decades, while traveling to archaeology sites all over the world, meaning he does qualify as an archaeologist. The amount of study he has put into archaeology over his decades of writings on the topic is probably at least twice as much as the amount of archaeology study by a newly minted archaeology PhD. I suspect archaeologists would not have objected to works such as Hancock's if they had been written by an archaeology PhD; but it rather seems that when those not officially anointed by the conformist archaeology sect dare to do archaeology scholarship, that's a sin the elite insiders cannot forgive. 

The seething responses of some archaeologists to Hancock's TV series is a case of some archaeologists shooting themselves in the feet. By responding to Hancock with groundless character assassination mudslinging and by acting like prickly thin-skinned hypersensitive people enraged by a little constructive criticism, such archaeologists have done more to damage the reputation of archaeologists than anything Hancock said.  In the article here, Hancock replies his critics.

Examining the Main Book of the Spirit-Seeker of Netflix's "Kardec"

On Netflix I viewed a movie Kardec based on the life of writer Allan Kardec. Kardec was a very influential writer who developed a philosophical system he called spiritism.  Gaining little traction in Kardec's native France, Kardec's philosophy became quite popular in Brazil. So it is no surprise that the movie is a Brazilian production. But you can watch the movie on Netflix with some good English dubbing, as well as English subtitles. 

Spiritism as taught by Kardec is similar to spiritualism, which is mainly the idea that the spirits of the dead survive and that it is possible for humans to sometimes communicate with them, largely through the use of mediums. The main difference between the two is that spiritism teaches a doctrine of reincarnation that most spiritualists reject. Spiritism teaches the dreary doctrine that it is necessary for a soul to undergo many incarnations for the sake of purification or perfection, or as punishment for previous sins.  

Allan Kardec was the pen name of Leon-Denizarth-Hippolyte Rivail, born in France in 1804. The Netflix movie about Kardec starts out with Kardec as a teacher of young boys. We seem to see Kardec encouraging the children to think boldly, based on observations, without clinging to dogmas not supported by observations. Then a dour-looking Catholic cleric enters Kardec's classroom, announcing that now the children will have their weekly instruction in the Catholic catechism.  A catechism is a book teaching the doctrines of a religion in question and answer format. 

We see Kardec strongly complaining about the requirement that the children have to be instructed in the Catholic catechism. He resigns his teaching post. Then apparently having quite a bit of free time on his hands, he begins (roughly around 1850) to look into reports of the paranormal phenomenon called table-turning or table tipping. The depiction of this phenomenon may baffle readers because in Europe and the United States academia has swept under the rug this historical reality, tending to make either no mention of it, or making only brief, distorted, inaccurate depictions of it. 

Table turning (also called table tipping) was reported with very great frequency by a host of distinguished observers in the middle of the nineteenth century. People would get together, put their hands on a table, and the table would very often turn dramatically, or begin rotating, or rise up in the air. The movie correctly suggests how widespread such reports were. At the 10:02 mark some academic authority says, "In cafes, salons, in all of Paris, or rather, in all of Europe, people are going mad over these tables, and now they come to us for explanations." 

Phrases such as "table turning" or "table tipping" do not capture the stranger results, which were very often reports of table levitations.  Attempts by men such as Michael Faraday to explain such results as "involuntary muscle action" were mere hand waving, because they failed to explain any of the more dramatic results very frequently reported, such as tables spinning around when no one touched them, and tables levitating with or without people touching them. As I discuss here and here, scientists such as Harvard chemistry professor Robert Hare, the German scientist Johann Zollner and Count Agenor de Gasparin provided literary works supporting the reality of an inexplicable phenomenon going on in many cases involving table turning or table levitation. 

In the Netflix movie, Kardec begins to investigate table turning, at first very skeptically. At around the 21:45 mark Kardec says, "We need to have rational controlled experiments, observable facts, natural laws." But then he sees things he cannot explain, such as a table levitation. Kardec also has some experiences with mediums who produce writings while in trance. Kardec becomes convinced that it is possible to communicate with spirits. Kardec produces a book that the movie depicts as the outcome of his spiritual investigations. It is a book called "The Spirits' Book."  At the end of the movie we are told that in Brazil the book ended up being bought by 30 million people. 

The story we are told in the Netflix movie is one of Kardec gathering up spirit teaching coming from seances and mediums, and then publishing his magnum opus "The Spirits' Book" to compile such teachings.  We get a depiction of the extreme hostility that Kardec got from conventional scientists, most of whom refused to seriously study the reports people were producing of paranormal phenomena. We also get a depiction of the extreme hostility that Kardec got from the Catholic Church. We have a scene of some Catholic authorities burning large numbers of Kardec's books. 

The Netflix film is clearly made by an admirer of Kardec. Kardec is depicted as a virtuous investigator who plods forward against the intolerant and dogmatic forces of materialist academia and the Catholic Church. But how can we can judge whether Kardec deserved so laudatory a treatment? The best way is to take a close look at Kardec's main book, published in the 1850's, with a Second Edition published in 1857.  Luckily, you can read the full book at www.archive.org (without even having a login) by using the link here. The book is entitled "Spiritualist philosophy : the spirits' book : containing the principles of spiritist doctrine" and is subtitled "THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL: THE NATURE OF SPIRITS AND THEIR RELATIONS WITH MEN: THE MORAL LAW: THE PRESENT LIFE, THE FUTURE LIFE, AND THE DESTINY OF THE HUMAN RACE. ACCORDING TO THE TEACHINGS OF SPIRITS OF HIGH DEGREE, TRANSMITTED THROUGH VARIOUS MEDIUMS, COLLECTED AND SET IN ORDER BY ALLAN KARDEC."

The book makes a very interesting read, so interesting that it is easy to understand why the book sold so many copies. The book is written in a question-and-answer "catechism" format that makes it very easy to read. But it seems that Kardec's method had some serious shortfalls. 

If you make the generous assumption that Kardec did not simply write himself most of the supposed "spirit answers" in his book,  Kardec's method seems to have worked like this:

(1) Gather up writings or statements produced by mediums, or statements produced during seances, in response to questions. 

(2) Arrange these responses into a "question and answer" format. 

(3) Claim the resulting questions and answers are teachings of spirits. On the page here, Kardec claims his book "has been  written  by  the  order  and  under  the  dictation  of  spirits of  high  degree,  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  the  bases  of a  rational  philosophy,  free  from  the  influence  of  prejudice, and  of  preconceived  opinion."

Unfortunately, the technique has some serious shortcomings. In particular we never get any indication of when a particular answer was received, who it came from, or who produced it. We can contrast this with an alternate method in which each and every answer would be followed by a statement of exactly how that statement was received, who produced it, and when it was received. For example, after quoting a particular answer, we might have a statement in brackets such as this: "This answer was received through the table rapping method during the seance of July 12, 1862, at the house of John Hippolyte, there being also present Mary Adams, Frank Peterson and David Waters."  Or after quoting another answer, we might  have a statement in brackets such as this: "This statement was produced by automatic writing, while the medium Jane Franklin was in a state of trance on August 18, 1871."  No such statements appear in Kardec's book. 

He simply gives hundreds of pages of supposed "spirit answers" without ever telling us how any particular one of these answers was obtained. Unfortunately, this means we should have some doubts about the answers given, whenever they seem implausible or unsubstantiated. In particular:

(1) We do not know whether any particular answer came from some process that was so impressive that we should tend to believe that it is actually the production of any spirit not living on Earth. 

(2) We do not know whether some of the answers were mere speculations produced by mediums writing answers.

(3) We do not know whether some or most of the answers were simply written by Kardec himself, possibly while thinking that his pen was "inspired by spirits," or that he could call his own writing an output from a spirit on the grounds that he himself was a spirit or soul. 

(4) We do not know whether Kardec got disagreeing answers while asking his questions to mediums or during seances, and simply chose to preserve whichever answer he liked best, throwing away other answers that disagreed with such an answer. 

You can imagine some type of paranormal communication that might inspire someone to accept on authority some paranormal  communication. Suppose a particular psychic or medium showed numerous times either some miraculous or inexplicable ability to produce mysterious physical phenomena, or suppose that such a psychic or medium seemed to repeatedly show knowledge of many things that should have been unknown to such a person through normal means.  Then, if we could identify particular statements about the nature of reality made by such a psychic or medium, we might have a cause for accepting such statements on some basis of a "special authority." But nothing like that goes on in Kardec's "Spirit's Book" opus. He mainly gives very many supposed "spirit answers" to particular questions, without explaining how he got particular answers to such questions. 

The movie has some depiction of incidents that may have persuaded Kardec that some of the answers that he had got came from spirits. For example, at the 38:25 mark we see two young girls (Julie and Caroline) who are apparently mediums. They claim to be able to see spirits around them.  The two girls write things down supposedly sent by spirits. But we may ask: were these writings from spirits, or just words from the minds of the girls?

Allan Kardec

I can give some other reasons for questioning the contents in Kardec's "Spirits' Book" opus:

(1) A wrong answer is given to an astronomical question. The question is, "Are all the globes that revolve in space inhabited?" The answer given is, "Yes."  But we know that globes such as Mercury, Venus and Mars are not inhabited. 

(2) A wrong answer is given to the question "Is  matter  formed  of  one  element  or  of  several  elements?" The answer is, " Of  one  primitive  element." Matter is made up of more than 100 elements such as hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. 

(3) A wrong answer is given to the question, "Do  any  living  beings  come  into  existence  spontaneously at  the  present  day?" The answer given is this:

"Yes  ;  but  the  primal  germs  of  these  already  existed  in a  latent  state.  You  are  constantly  witnesses  of  this  phenomenon. Do  not  the  tissues  of  the  human  body  and  of animals  contain  the  germs  of  a  multitude  of  parasites,  that only  await  for  their  development  the  occurrence  of  the putrid  fermentation  necessary  to  their  life?"

This is the doctrine of spontaneous generation, widely believed around 1850, but  disproved by the eminent scientist Louis Pasteur around 1858. 

(4) The book claims that "according  to  the  statements  of  spirits... Mars  is  stated  to  be  at  a point  even  lower  than  that  of  the  earth,  and  Jupiter  to  be  greatly superior  to  the  earth  in  every  respect."  We read, "The  souls  of  many  persons  well  known  in  this  earth  are  said  to  be reincarnated  in  Jupiter." We now know that Jupiter is an uninhabitable ball of gas.  Citing "the statements of spirits" the book also says, "Venus  is  said  to  be more  advanced  than  the  earth." We now know that Venus is an uninhabitable planet with an average temperature of about 847 degrees F. 

(5) In the book we read the question, "In  the  production  of  certain  phenomena,  of  storms, for  example,  is  it  a  single  spirit  that  acts,  or  a  mass  of  spirits  ?" We get this answer: "A  mass  of  spirits ;  or,  rather,  innumerable  masses  of spirits." Since about roughly the time the kinetic theory of gases was developed around 1860 by scientists such as Clausius, Boltzmann and Maxwell,  scientists have known that storms are caused by mere imbalances of air pressure, not spirits. Wind simply flows from regions of higher air pressure to regions of lower air pressure; and the larger the difference between the pressures, the greater the tendency for very high winds.

(6) On one page the book tells us that there are frivolous spirits who "reply  to  every  question  without paying  any  attention  to  truth." Similarly on another page the book tells us that there are spirits that  "can  give  only  false  and  incomplete  notions  of  the  spirit- world." But if that is true, how can we have confidence in the answers given in Kardec's "Spirits' Book" opus? How could we know that Kardec was not getting some of his most important answers from such frivolous misleading spirits, rather than truth-telling spirits?

(7) The quoted answers (supposedly from spirits) all speak with a literary style seeming to match those of the questions, and also Kardec's smaller-print elaborations of such answers.  This should cause people to wonder whether Kardec was the real author of most or many of these quotations supposedly coming from spirits. 

Kardec's "Spirits' Book" opus ends up being another dogmatic catechism, which ironically is the type of thing Kardec denounces near the beginning of the Netflix movie, where we have a scene where Kardec resigns his teaching position because a dogmatic Catholic catechism is being taught to children. But the book makes an interesting read presenting some ideas well worthy of serious consideration. The long book has a high moral tone, and very much of it is devoted to ethics. The ethical ideas advanced seem in general quite praiseworthy, and are often ahead of their time. Kardec was quite the organizer, and took steps to make sure that his teachings would be widely spread by a society he organized. He died suddenly of an aneurysm in 1869.  

I find some of Kardec's main metaphysical teachings to be quite dreary, and I am puzzled by why so many in Brazil would be attracted to his depressing notions. Teaching that people have to undergo many reincarnations for the sake of purification and sin punishment and making the soul more perfect, Kardec's book teaches that an earthly life need not be followed by immediate reincarnation. As an answer to the question of "what  becomes  of  the  soul  in  the  intervals  between its  successive  incarnations?" we get this answer: 

"It  becomes  an  errant  or  wandering  spirit,  aspiring  after a  new  destiny.     Its  state  is  one  of  waiting  and  expectancy." 

To the next question "How  long  may  these  intervals  last?" we read "From  a  few  hours  to  thousands  of  ages."  This sounds like a doctrine that each person has to experience a cycle of reincarnations, with each reincarnation interrupted by periods of a kind of limbo or purgatory (although some later answers describe such periods in more positive terms).  We can only wonder whether such a teaching was inspired by Catholic teachings about purgatory commonly taught in the country that Kardec was raised (France). The idea above is inconsistent with the testimony of those having near-death experiences, who tend to report brushes with some realm of very great happiness, not some purgatory, and who repeatedly say they were very disappointed when having to go back to earthly life. 

I am skeptical about the doctrine taught in Kardec's "Spirits' Book" that it is necessary for each person to undergo many incarnations by reincarnation.  The book fails to give any weighty or subtle explanation for why such a thing would be necessary, other than the rather shallow-sounding explanation that such a thing is needed for "purification" or "perfection" of the soul, or to punish people for earthly sins (something that could be accomplished without repeated incarnations). In near-death experiences people often report seeing their deceased relatives in some afterlife state of existence, and such observations tend to conflict with ideas that people undergo reincarnation upon death (although they may be consistent with ideas that reincarnation occurs after long interludes between earthly incarnations). I have had more than 300 dreams seeming to suggest the idea of life after death, and none of them ever suggested the idea of reincarnation. Such dreams often suggest a much more cheerful idea that dying results in some great bonanza that is like winning the lottery. 

There are many untrue statements that materialists keep repeating when they discuss paranormal phenomena. One is the simply untrue claim that there is no evidence for such phenomena, which is like saying there is no evidence for meteors or electrocution by lightning.  Another claim frequently made is that we can reject all claims of communications from disembodied spirits, on the grounds that such communications are all childish "twaddle." Kardec's main book shows such a claim is not correct. We have in it a weighty intelligent-sounding philosophical treatise that is on the same intellectual level as a book that a philosophy professor might produce. It is also a book mainly consisting of quotes supposedly coming from spirits.  The only problem is that it is very hard or impossible to tell how much of it came from spirits as Kardec claimed. It could well be that Kardec simply wrote most of the answers himself, after deriving them from speculation; and that he presented such answers as "spirit written" to make his answers sound more authoritative. Since Kardec's believed that he himself was a spirit undergoing an earthly incarnation, he could have described his own written answers to be part of answers from "spirits of high degree" without lying, if he believed himself to be a spirit of a "high degree."  He only claimed that his answers came from spirits, not that they all came from immaterial spirits or spirits living beyond our planet.   

Postscript: On page 165 of the October 1, 1875 edition of The Spiritualist, we have a letter from the famous medium Daniel Dunglas Home, on the topic of Kardec. He states this:

"I think it my duty to say here that in my dressing-room one morning, in the presence of the present Earl of Dunraven, Allan Kardec came and said, ' Je regret d'avoir enseigner la doctrine spirite.' (' I regret to have taught the spirite doctrine.') The fact is that this was the day following his departure from earth, and I was not then aware that he had passed away. I need not explain the difference between ' Spirite' and ' Spiritualism;' of course the former are reinearnationists."

The next edition of The Spiritualist has this critique of the catechism question and answer style of Kardec's main book:

"The chief feature of the method of argument in the book is, that it is exactly the reverse of ordinary scientific procedure in dealing with any truths new or old. A scientific thinker, lecturer, or writer, first collects a great mass of facts and has fierce battles with opponents over nearly every one of those facts, so that a certain number only pass through the fire, and are admitted both by friend and foe to be true and unanswerable. After this preliminary work, which may occupy the time of half a generation, a very few conclusions are drawn from these indisputable facts, which it is impossible lo deny. Allan Kardec, in his hook, reverses this process. He gives us more than. 400 pages of closely-printed assertions, with scarcely a solitary fact;, to prove any one of them, and the few facts he does mention are open to grave question in the matter of reliability. Thus the Spirits’ Book is pre-eminently a theological and not a scientific work; its readers must accept its statements on the ground of authority, or because in their own minds they think that it explains certain problems of life which had never been so clearly elucidated on any other hypothesis...[Kardec] advances numberless assertions in the most authoritative manner, without deigning to give an atom of proof. Some of the disciples of Allan Kardec say that reincarnation is a matter of revelation; that the spirits must know best, and that those spirits who do not teach the doctrine are of a lower order, less intelligent than the others. If the authority of supposed spirit teachings is appealed to, we, who have attended probably more seances with different mediums than anybody in Europe, emphatically pronounce such a position to be most unsafe. Practically speaking, the doctrine has not, up to the present time, been taught through any medium of any kind residing in England, and those doctrines which have been taught here have usually (with a few striking exceptions) been strongly coloured by the opinions of the medium, or those of the sitters ; in short, it may be laid down as a general principle that about ninety per cent, of spirit messages contain more of the thoughts of the medium than of the thoughts of the communicating spirit."

Stupid Answers of Those Billed as "Great Minds"

It sometimes seems like the grand lords of academia never learned such simple virtues as humility and modesty. For example, if you do a Google search for the Science 2.0 (www.science20.com), you will get this tagline:

"The world's best scientists. The internet's smartest readers."

Funny, but looking at today's version of the site, I don't see any articles written by the "world's best scientists." I merely see articles written by little known figures such as W. Glen Pyle, Anton Lucanus, Robert H. Olley, Tommaso Dorigo and Irena Soljic.  There's an odd thing about these "world's best scientists" supposedly working for the Science 2.0 site: they can't even manage to get the sorting right on that website. Whenever you look up the articles in a particular category, you will find the articles sorted in reverse chronological order, with the oldest articles (dating back to 2007) shown first.  Trying to find the latest science news by clicking on a link such as "Neuroscience," you'll always get instead the oldest science news: articles backing back to 2007. 

Then there is a materialist propaganda site which proclaims in large type that it is written by "the world's greatest thinkers," but which very often contains very stupid essays. The list of people listed under this large type proclaiming "the world's greatest thinkers" are a group of people you almost certainly have never heard of:

The world's greatest thinkers? Really?

Hilariously, the error-prone writers at Quanta Magazine  call themselves "the best team in science journalism." 

A 2012 book is entitled "Big Questions from Little People -- And Simple Answers from Great Minds." Sadly some of the answers from these "great minds" were downright stupid.

On page 11 philosopher Alain de Botton attempts to answer the question "How are dreams made?" A wise answer would have been to have said something like, "I don't understand how dreams are made, and I don't even understand how thoughts are made."  Scientists understand neither of these things. Instead the philosopher discusses dubious theories about brains, and ends by saying, "Dreams show us that we're not quite the bosses of our selves."  Dreams don't show us any such thing, and we are the bosses of our selves. 

Asked on page 41 "Why can't animals talk like us," the very smart linguist Noam Chomsky makes the stupid claim that "every animal has some way of talking with other animals of the same kind." Then, as if he had realized how stupid this claim was while writing it, he immediately starts to backtrack on this answer. We do not get the wise answer we should have got, which is that animals cannot talk like us because human minds are vastly superior to the minds of animals. Experts sometimes senselessly claim the opposite, merely for the sake of trying to minimize the unsolved problem of human origins. 

On page 101, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield attempts to answer the bad question "How does my brain control me?"  That is a question that should always be answered by saying something like this: "We do not know that the brain does control you, and have no understanding of how it could control you." Instead Greenfield goes into a recitation of unfounded neuroscientist dogmas, some of which make no sense at all. She then gives this very stupid answer:

"The answer to the question, therefore, is that 'my brain' and 'me' are the same. So one cannot control the other." 

No, your brain is not your self. Many times scientists have performed hemispherectomy operations on people with severe epilepsy, to prevent them from being tortured by very frequent seizures. In such an operation half of the brain is removed. The people who had such operations did not end up with half of their former selves, but with the same selves that they had before. In other cases, the fibers connecting the two hemispheres of the brain were severed, to prevent epileptic seizures. This never resulted in two selves in the same body, but always left us with a single self.  This observational result is profoundly embarrassing for those claiming the brain is the self, and many of them have made deceptive statements about this matter. The evidence is very clear: splitting a brain into two disconnected hemispheres leaves you with a single human self, not two. 

On page 123 evolutionary biologist Yan Wong attempts to answer the question "Do monkeys and chickens have anything in common?" Yang gives us a stupid answer claiming that monkeys and chickens "inherited the same DNA -- the same set of 'building instructions.' " Monkeys and chickens do not have the same DNA, but DNA that is very substantially different (there being much difference between the genome of a chicken and a monkey). And DNA is not "building instructions" for building an organism. The claim that DNA is a blueprint or set of instructions for building organisms is an ivory tower "old wives tale" that many evolutionary biologists keep telling. DNA merely contains low-level chemical information. DNA does not specify anatomy, and does not even specify how to make the cells of an organism. 

Wong uses her answer to push the dubious dogma of common descent, that all organisms have a common ancestor. That was not the question asked. The question was what monkeys and chickens have in common, and Wong failed to tell us.  A wise answer would have been something like this:

"Monkeys and chickens have very much in common. They are both incredibly organized arrangements of matter. Subatomic particles are arranged into atoms, which are arranged into molecules called amino acids, which are arranged into protein molecules consisting of hundreds of well-arranged amino acids; and protein molecules are arranged into organelles, which are arranged into incredibly complex systems called cells, which are arranged into tissues, which are arranged into organs, which are arranged into organ systems, which (along with skeletal systems) make up the physical structure of both monkeys and chickens." 

On page 145 cosmologist Lawrence Krauss attempts to answer the simple question "What am I made of?" Krauss gives the stupid answer of "Stardust." He then immediately shows his lack of confidence in this dumb answer by then adding "Well, sort of." Krauss then gives us a lecture attempting to justify the claim that elements in the human body came from distant stars. In my post "Why 'We Are All Star Stuff' Is a Poor Slogan," I gave three reasons why it is misleading for scientists to be using such a slogan.  One reason is that scientists actually lack any very solid basis for making dogmatic claims about the origins of carbon and oxygen. Claims that such elements came from supernova explosions are speculative and doubtful. Another reason is that given the enormous physical organization of human bodies, it is extremely misleading to be referring to human bodies as "stuff" or to be making claims such as "we are stardust." Dust is disorganized matter. The human body is supremely organized matter. 

People with ideology like that of Krauss like to avoid discussing the extremely important reality that human bodies are vastly organized arrangements of matter, something that is embarrassing to them, given their worldview. An intelligent answer to the question "What are we made of?" would have been an answer like this: 

"Physically, besides the 200+ well-arranged bones in our skeletal systems,  we are mainly made of organs systems, which are made of organs, which are made of fantastically complex units called cells, which are made of extremely complex units called organelles, which are made of very complex things called protein molecules, each of which has thousands of well-arranged atoms. Cells in a way are more complicated than any machine man has made, because one cell can split into two functional cells, but no machine man has made can reproduce itself." 

On page 237 paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer attempts to answer the question "What makes me me?" He gives the following stupid and extremely misleading answer:

"The recipe that said how all the ingredients in your body would be prepared, put together and cooked in different ways, is called your genetic code. It's like a tiny but very long book of instructions for how to make you. This genetic code was in the egg that began your life, inside your mum."

This is the childish and very false answer that Darwinist biologists have told us so many times. The DNA in the fertilized egg that began your life (a zygote) contained no instructions on how to make your body or any of its cells. Such DNA merely contained low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up the protein molecules in your body. 

I'll quote just a few of more than 25 similar quotes from doctors, biologists and chemists contradicting the Stringer quote above (all 25 can be read at the end of the post here).  Geneticist Adam Rutherford states that "DNA is not a blueprint," a statement also made by biochemistry professor Keith Fox.   B.N. Queenan (the Executive Director of Research at the NSF-Simons Center for Mathematical & Statistical Analysis of Biology at Harvard University) tells us this:

"DNA is not a blueprint. A blueprint faithfully maps out each part of an envisioned structure. Unlike a battleship or a building, our bodies and minds are not static structures constructed to specification."

"The genome is not a blueprint," says Kevin Mitchell, a geneticist and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin. "It doesn't encode some specific outcome."  His statement was reiterated by another scientist. "DNA cannot be seen as the 'blueprint' for life," says Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland. He says, "It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times." On page 26 of the book The Developing Genome, Professor David S. Moore states, "The common belief that there are things inside of us that constitute a set of instructions for building bodies and minds -- things that are analogous to 'blueprints' or 'recipes' -- is undoubtedly false."