Spookiest Years, Part 7: The Years 1860-1861

In previous posts in this intermittently appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog (here, here, here, here, here and here), I had looked at some very spooky events reported between 1848 and 1855. Let me pick up the thread and discuss some spooky events reported in 1860 and 1861.

Between 1860 and 1861 slavery in the US was near its end that would occur in 1865, and among those helping to bring its downfall were the newspapers reporting paranormal phenomena. The January 21, 1860 edition of The Spiritual Telegraph strongly denounced slavery on page 458. 

In an 1861 book we hear these remarkable claims: 

 "I spent the evening at Judge Edmund's house, and was introduced to his daughter, Miss Laura Edmonds, his soul companion. Both are cheerful, very genial, and interesting persons. Miss Edmond's health is very delicate, and for that reason the exercise of her remarkable mediumship is not now encouraged. Her gifts are various : she is a writing medium ; and the spirits speak through her in the trance state; she sees spirits in her normal condition ; and she can sometimes at will project her spirit : appearing in form and delivering messages to friends in sympathy with her, even though living at a distance — in proof of which she cited two or three instances. The power of the spirit to leave the natural body and to present itself in visible form and identity to another, though rare, is not an attribute of Miss Edmonds' mediumship only; as I am acquainted with a lady resident in London who has the same power, and who has exercised it several times, This lady told me that on one occasion having a young friend staying on a visit with her, a gentleman who called to see them, in the course of conversation ridiculed the belief in apparitions, and said that he would give anything to see a ghost. He laughed at her assertion that her spirit could appear to him that very night if he pleased, and dared her to try it, which she agreed to do. In the course of the night, she told her friend that she had been to Mr. ----'s bedside, and that finding him asleep, she awoke him by a box on his ear; and then, after repeating to him a verse from a poem of Keat's, came away. The gentleman called on the ladies early on the following morning, corroborated her statement, and acknowledged himself perforce a convert at all events to that phase of spiritual manifestations."

On another page the author becomes one of very many who claimed the most astonishing auditory manifestations around Catherine Fox (the same as Kate Fox). Describing a method by which a person calls out the alphabet and waits for raps, writing down the letters followed by raps, he states this:

"The rappings in her presence are very loud and precise. When I  called on her one morning, the room resounded on all sides as if a host were giving me a joyous welcome. I asked if the spirits who were present would give us their names, and the names of Harry, Isabel, and Sylvester were spelt out, no names having been mentioned by me in Miss Fox's presence, and of course I and my family relations were wholly unknown to her. These were followed by other names of friends, spelt out in full, and one, a relative of my wife's said, 'Let me speak.' A message followed, of a specially significant and touching character, which I am precluded from giving, as it relates to private family affairs; but I may mention that the tenor of the message is an actual apology offered for an assumed injustice done to me during her life-time, now 20 years ago."

Many distinguished witnesses gave similar reports testifying to the most inexplicable auditory phenomena occurring from a great variety of different directions and objects when Kate Fox (Catherine Fox) was nearby. For example, in 1874 in a scientific paper the world-class scientist William Crookes stated this:

"These sounds are noticed with almost every medium, each having a special peculiarity; they are more varied with Mr. Home, but for power and certainty I have met with no one who at all approached Miss Kate Fox. For several months I enjoyed almost unlimited opportunity of testing the various phenomena occurring in the presence of this lady, and I especially examined the phenomena of these sounds. With mediums, generally, it is necessary to sit for a formal séance before anything is heard; but, in the case of Miss Fox it seems only necessary for her to place her hand on any substance for loud thuds to be heard in it, like a triple pulsation, sometimes loud enough to be heard several rooms off. In this manner I have heard them in a living tree—on a sheet of glass—on a stretched iron wire—on a stretched membrane—a tambourine—on the roof of a cab—and on the floor of a theatre. Moreover, actual contact is not always necessary; I have had these sounds proceeding from the floor, walls, &c., when the medium’s hands and feet were held—when she was standing on a chair—when she was suspended in a swing from the ceiling—when she was enclosed in a wire cage—and when she had fallen fainting on a sofa. I have heard them on a glass harmonicon—I have felt them on my own shoulder and under my own hands. I have heard them on a sheet of paper, held between the fingers by a piece of thread passed through one corner. With a full knowledge of the numerous theories which have been started, chiefly in America, to explain these sounds, I have tested them in every way that I could devise, until there has been no escape from the conviction that they were true objective occurrences not produced by trickery or mechanical means."

See the quote here and the next several pages for identical testimony by a former US congressman, who testified to hearing such inexplicable noises in a huge variety of places, coming from many different directions and different objects,  particularly whenever Kate Fox was around.    On the page here, that congressman says that Kate Fox was "one of the most simple-minded" persons he had ever met, and that she was "as incapable of framing, or carrying on, any deliberate scheme of imposition as a ten year-old child is of administering a government." See the last few paragraphs of my post here for an 1855 account by Susanna Moodie of similar wonders occurring  when she visited Kate Fox, including Kate identifying very specific names, dates and facts known to Moodie but unknown to Kate (an account similar to the one quoted above about Kate Fox). The evidence for paranormal effects around Kate Fox is overwhelming, and comes from numerous corroborating witnesses (some very  distinguished) who give very similar reports in different years of seeing and hearing effects around Kate Fox that no magician of her time could have produced.  

An 1861 speech by Thomas Pallister Barkas to a large audience made these startling claims about things that happened in the previous dozen years:

"In an incredibly short space of time, the manifestations increased in number and variety ; and in addition to those which consisted merely of responses to questions produced by tables rising and rapping on the floor, to indicate letters pointed out on the alphabet, or expressed viva voce there occurred knockings on the tables, chairs, floors, and walls of the rooms... the knockings being heard in places quite beyond the reach of any one present. The rising of tables entirely from the floor, and the dancing of the same in the air, the hands of the operators being on the tops of the tables ; ringing of bells ; dotting of handkerchiefs ; pulling of clothes ; pinching of the bodies of those in the rooms ; tables, chairs...moving without contact, and quite beyond the influence of mediums and spectators; writing automatically by mediums; independent spirit writings, — no visible person or thing touching either pencil or paper ; music played on guitars, concertinas, pianos, &c. — no one touching the keys or strings of the instruments ; appearances of spirit hands, such hands occasionally shaking those of the persons forming the circles; spirit drawing, by automatic action, through mediums ; trance, and impressional speaking ; ponderous bodies, such, for example, as tables and chairs, floating in the air, — and not only without any visible person or agent aiding their flight, but when full grown men sat down upon them, for the purpose of preventing their movements, — on several occasions tables, chairs, and men have floated about the rooms : spelling out the names of long series of persons living in this world, and those who have departed to the spirit world ; forwarding of communications to very distant places, and almost immediately returning with messages that weeks after have been verified ; — these, and myriads of other occurrences, have taken place without any mechanical contrivance or collusion, and under every variety of circumstances, — the great majority of the mediums being private and unprofessional. These extraordinary phenomena continue of frequent occurrence in all the States of America."

In the January 21, 1860 edition of Banner of Light, we hear an account by J. W. Hitchcock M.D. of apparition sightings in Terre Haute, Indiana. We read this account of a Mr. H. seeing apparitions in his house:

"He saw three men standing near the middle of the floor. It was a bright moonlight night, and sufficient light was admitted into the room by three large windows on the south and west sides. The men were engaged in earnest conversation, and he heard their voice, but could not distinguish what was said. Supposing, very naturally, that they were there for no good purpose, and, of course, fully prepared for offense or defense, Mr. H. felt that his situation was anything but agreeable; however, before he had resolved what to say or do, the three figures faded away, and he neither saw nor heard them again."

The same account tells us this:

"Mr. B. had his attention called to unaccountable noises in the back part of the house, and going thither to look to the matter, he saw a man come out of the cellar-way, and stood facing him within a few feet. Before he had recovered from his surprise, the apparition melted away."

On page 3 of the March 17, 1860 edition of Banner of Light, we have this remarkable account of sleepwalking (somnambulism):

"An extraordinary instance of somnambulism occurred in Stamford, shortly after midnight, on Monday last. About one o’clock, Sergeant Harrison, while on duty at the lock-up, observed a person, clothed in white, walking toward St. Paul street. Supposing it to be some one who had assumed a disguise for the purpose of playing a joke, he walked up to the individual, whom he found to be the wife of Mr, J. Oliver, cabinet-maker, having nothing on but her night-dress. She was walking about with her eyes wide open, apparently awake, but in reality in a state of perfect somnambulism. She was taken to her home, which was close at hand, and her husband aroused, by whom she was placed in bed. It appears that she got up, walked down stairs, unlocked the front door, and went into the street, without either disturbing her husband or arousing herself; nor was she conscious of what had taken place when she awoke in the morning. But the most remarkable feature in this case is, that, although she had been unable to walk without crutches or assistance for the last year or two, she was, when discovered, walking as well as any other person, and without either the support of the wall or a crutch."

On page 6 of the March 24, 1860 edition of Banner of Light, we have a story called "A Dead Woman Brought to Life," told by D. M. Lapham of Springfield, Illinois. He tells us this:

"Mrs. D.R. Judkins (medium) has the written certificates of persons who were present on the occasion, testifying to the truth of the following:  A woman came to this city, last spring. Her name was Elizabeth Cordell. Soon after arriving here she was taken very sick. One night, about nine o'clock, the girl who had been attending her went to the house of Mrs. D. R. Judkins, and told her the woman was dead, and asked her if she would go and help lay out the corpse. Mrs. J. said she would willingly do so. Arriving at the house, she found several persons congregated in the room. They said she had been dead about one half hour. As soon as Mrs. J. stepped into the room, she felt the power of the spirit with her, and was immediately controlled to make three passes from the head to the feet of the inanimate form before her, then took the hands in her own for a short time, when they became lifelike and limber. The medium's hands were then raised above her head, and brought together with a quick, sharp slap, accompanying the act with the words, 'Come out;' when, strange and miraculous as it may seem, the eyes were thrown open, She began to breathe and talk, and from that time gradually recovered her usual health. There were some half dozen persons present, who had examined the condition of the body, and pronounced it dead. The names of three witnesses of this manifestation are: Wm Trow, A. T. Wilkins, Julia A. Trow. These persons all live in this city."

The Lady Elgin was a steamship which was "rammed in a gale by the schooner Augusta in the early hours of September 8, 1860."  The ship sunk in Lake Michigan with the loss of about 300 people, according to the article here. On page 4 of the September 29, 1860 edition of Banner of Light, we read a quotation from the Columbus State Journal speaking of some paranormal events related to this disaster. We get this quotation:

"In Milwaukee, on the morning of the disaster, and about the very hour of its occurrence, the Chief of Police was awakened from sleep by the sense of a terrible calamity, so that he rose and visited all the police stations of the city, to see that nothing should happen which his care could avert, and at daylight returned to bis room with the same vague yet fearful presentiment depressing him. When he arose again at nine, the news of the wreck had thrilled the whole city. During the night, a lady whose husband was lost on the Elgin, was warned of his death in a dream. The wife of Capt. Barry dreamed that she saw the Elgin wrecked and her husband sink, as actually befell. A lady, who had no friends on the ill-fated vessel, awoke in the night with the feeling that, as she expressed it, 'something dreadful was happening,’ and was so wrought upon by terror that she could not sleep again, and rose and waited till the news of the catastrophe interpreted her forebodings. A mother who was lost gave her child in charge of a friend before going upon the excursion, with the injunction to place it with the Sisters of Mercy if she should not return. This request was, made playfully, as if the mother attached no particular importance to it; at the same time she would not leave until she had exacted a solemn promise to that effect."

The Lady Elgin, which sunk with about 300 dead

On page 6 of the October 13, 1860 edition of the Banner of Light, we read this:

"The Schenectady News vouches for the truth of the following:— 'A very remarkable case of presentiment, bordering on the supernatural, has just been told us by a gentleman nearly related to the persons concerned. Mr. W----- .... about three weeks ago, was awakened from his sleep by au unusual noise, which he thought proceeded from the adjoining room. More surprised than alarmed, he lighted a candle and went into the apartment, which was used as a spare bedroom. As he opened the door his light went out with the current of air, and he was in total darkness. Presently, however, ns ho turned to grope his way back, the room grew light as a cellar on a rainy afternoon, through a ground glass overhead, and Mr. W----- dimly saw his oldest son on the bed, clad in the habiliments of death, and the coffin beside him, resting on two chairs across the foot end. In a moment the illusion vanished, and Mr. W---- returned to his own room and struck another match, and again entered the spare bed-room, but everything seemed natural as usual.  Little was thought of the optical illusion, but last week the eldest son of Mr. W------was taken ill, and he died last Friday. He was a bright boy of some ten summers."

Page 5 of the December 29, 1860 edition of Banner of Light is a report by William Henry Burr dated December 17, 1860, and describing what Burr witnessed on December 13, 1860. Burr says that he saw in the presence of a medium named Mrs. French a seemingly paranormal production of drawings, made with incredible speed. We have this description of the drawings made, and the speed in which they were made:

"No. 1. Bird and bird’s nest—half a dozen flowers, leaves and stems. Time, eight seconds.

No, 2.—Rose on moss—three buds—seven leaves, Time, six seconds.

No. 3. Flowers—serpent coiled about one of the stems. Time, ten seconds.

No. 4. Two birds on branches— two flowers and thirteen leaves. Time, eight seconds.

No. 5. Basket of flowers, various kinds, light and dark. Time, eight seconds.

No. 6. Lake scene -- a row boat with men in it— Three sailing vessels— Mountains and Sky—Dimensions , seven inches by eleven —a perfect rectangle. Time, ten seconds.

No. 7. Storm at sea — a vessel wrecked and nearly submerged—Dimensions, ten inches by thirteen. Time seven seconds."

In the May 18, 1861 edition of Banner of Light, page 4, we have a May 3, 1861 account signed by eleven witnesses who claim to have seen this (among quite a few other wonders) on May 1, 1861:

"A large bright spot, an inch and a half in diameter, was now made upon the back of the violin by rubbing it with phosphorus. The light was put out, and very soon the violin rose six or seven feet above the floor and floated rapidly around in the air,  making a largo sweep at times, of seven or eight feet. In its movements it could easily be followed by the eye, as the phosphorescent spot made upon it ; was distinctly visible; it was also easily followed by the ear, as its strings were thrumbed upon during its flight. As the violin floated around, the medium repeatedly exclaimed, in a loud voice: ' I am  here, I am here,' giving us the assurance that he was still in his chair and not following the violin in its movements. The light was called for, and the medium was found tied, as already described, and his feet within the pencil lines."

Robert Dale Owen was once a US congressman. In an 1872 book he describes events of July 10, 1861:

"On the tenth of July, 1861, I joined a few friends in an excursion from the city of New York, by steamboat, to the Highlands of Neversink ; Mr. and Mrs. Underhill being of the party. It occurred to me, while sitting on deck by Mrs. Underhill, to ask if we could have the raps there. Instantly they were distinctly heard first, from the deck; then I heard them, and quite plainly felt them on the wooden stool on which I sat. In the afternoon our party went out in a sailing-boat, fifteen or twenty feet long. There, again at my suggestion, we had them, sounding from under the floor of the boat. It had a centre-board, or sliding keel, and we had raps from within the long, narrow box that inclosed it. At any part of this box where we called for the raps, we obtained them.... I proposed to try if we could have raps from the ground : and immediately I plainly heard them from beneath the ground on which we trod : it was a dull sound, as if blows struck on the earth. Then I asked Mrs. Underhill to touch one of the trees with the tips of her fingers, and, applying my ear to the tree, I heard the raps from beneath the bark. Other persons of our party verified this, as I had done." 

The next few pages tells a similar account. On pages 350 to 352 Owen describes a mysterious light floating around in the presence of himself and others.  On page 362 Owen gives this account of a seance that produced the levitation of a table weighing 120 pounds:

"Our session was on the evening of October 12, 1860, lasting from half-past nine till eleven. It was held in the same room and at the same table mentioned above, and by gas-light. Present Mr. and Mrs. Ubnderhill, Kate Fox, Mr. Harrison Gray Dyar, of New York, and myself. We had very loud rappings, from various parts of the room and on the chairs. Then, while our hands were on the table, it began to move, sometimes with a rotary motion, sometimes rising up on one side, until finally it rose from the ground all but one leg.....After a time we asked whether, if we removed our fingers from the table-top, while it was in the air, it could still remain suspended ; and the reply (by rapping) being in the affirmative, after aiding it to rise as before, we withdrew our fingers entirely, raising them above it. The table then remained, nearly level, suspended without any human support whatever, during the space of five or six seconds ; and then gradually settled down, without jar or sudden dropping, to the floor.

Then, anxious to advance a step farther, we asked if the table could not be raised from the floor without any aid or contact whatever. The reply being in the affirmative, we stood up and placed all our hands over it, at the distance of three or four inches from the table-top : when it rose of itself, following our hands as we gradually raised them, till it hung in the air about the same distance from the ground as before. There it remained six or seven seconds, preserving its horizontal, and almost as steady as when it rested on the ground : then it slowly descended, still preserving the horizontal, until the feet reached the carpet. As before, there was no jar or sudden dropping. The same experiment was repeated, next evening in the presence of Robert Chambers, after we had completed our tests with the steelyard; and with exactly the same result."

Fossil Exhibit Shenanigans of the Natural History Museums

The religions of the world (including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Jainism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Scientology and many others) have many very diverse forms, and only some of them require or are centered around a belief in a deity or deities. You can read my posts here and here and here for a discussion of the many similarities between today's professors of biology and the clergy, and the many similarities between the social structures of university science departments and organized religions. There are many reasons for suspecting that Darwinist materialism is a kind of stealth religion, a kind of religion-in-all-but-name. The sacred legends of Darwinism (mainly the legend that Darwin explained the wonders of biology) are passed on by biology professors performing a dogma indoctrination role similar to the dogma indoctrination role of priests, nuns and ministers.  

This type of Darwinist indoctrination in a dogmatic creed is massively successful, largely because the indoctrination is sold as "science education" rather than ideology evangelization. 

Certain physically impressive buildings such as natural history museums seem like cathedrals of Darwinism. One of the shameful practices long going on at natural history museums has been to display  misleading fossil exhibits that are largely or entirely fake.  An article tells us about some of the fakery going on in natural history museums:

" 'Back in the day —  and when I say that, I mean as far back as the 1800s — museums originally used plaster of paris,' Storrs says. 'It was about 40 years ago that resins came into wider use.'  For smaller bones and casts for exhibits within the museum —  plants or fish, for example —  museum staff use urethane foams to cast and sculpt the replicas themselves, says Dave Might, exhibits coordinator/artist at the Cincinnati Museum Center...Alternatively, some entire skeletons can be purchased 'off-the-shelf' from RCI. 'For example, take Tyrannosaurus rexes,' Fair says. 'There are only about 29 or so skeletons in the world, and that’s not nearly enough for all of the museums and theme parks that want one. So we produce 100% composite T. rexes.' ”

Here the "100% composite" means "100% fake." We read in the same article about "a fiberglass/polyester Allosaurus on display at the American Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C." That's a fake. On a page of the American Museum of Natural History we read "Eighty-five percent of specimens are actual fossils, as opposed to casts or reproductions." That means at least 15% of the fossils displayed are fake. We can reasonably suspect that much more than 15% of the fossils can be called fake or semi-fake.  The semi-fake fossils would be those consisting of mixtures of bones and artificial material such as plaster of Paris, fiberglass, resin or a mixture of baking soda and superglue. A page of the American Museum of Natural History tells us its displayed T. Rex fossil "is about 45 percent real fossils."  The page makes this confession hard to discover. To get to this confession, you have to click on all of the little + icons next to a picture of the T. Rex.  I would imagine that 99% of the visitors to the museum never learn that most of its T. Rex exhibit is fake.  

It is very rare for scientists to discover a complete fossil skeleton or skull. What they most often find are fragments. Then, very frequently, bone fragments are mixed with artificial filler material that might be made by mixing superglue and baking soda. The results are passed off as a single fossil, although this can be extremely misleading.  We don't know whether an organism ever actually had bone material corresponding to the filler material. And very often we also don't know whether the fragments came from a single organism, or were fragments from multiple organisms living in different times, possibly organisms from different species. We often don't know whether the resulting fossil display corresponds to the skeleton or skull of some organism that ever lived. This kind of funny business is a very big deal whenever the concocted "composite" displays are used to try to back up claims of evolutionary progressions that have never been well-established. Fakes and partial fakes should not be part of the evidence cited or displayed to back up such claims. 

A long recent article at www.undark.org ("Fossils Are Shaped by People. Does That Matter?" by Asher Elbein) is a great piece of "pull back the Wizard's curtain" journalism, a shocking expose of the shenanigans going on with the fossil exhibits of natural history museums. The subtitle tells us "Preparing a fossil is often more of an art than a science." We read about some of the fraud and fakery that is going on, although the language is generously chosen so that such words are not directly used. We read this about what started to go on in the late nineteenth century:

"The culture of scientific achievement soon merged with one of showmanship and display — goals that coexisted uneasily. The solution, Rieppel said, was to mount genuine bones liberally (but increasingly quietly) reconstructed with plaster, creating 'awe inspiring, eye-catching sculptures that pretended not to be sculptures at all.' "

That makes it sounds like plaster was secretly being used, to fool people into thinking full fossils from a single organism had been discovered.  Later we read about all the guesswork and gluing that is going on when someone called a "fossil preparator" gets some bones-in-a-rock or box of bones, and hopes to produce a compelling fossil exhibit:

"Fossils sometimes arrive in a broken or jumbled state, often with hidden facets waiting to be discovered. Uncovering them requires painstakingly isolating fossil from stone, using fine tools such as dental picks and pneumatic chisels, and alternating applications of solvent and adhesives. At every step, preparators must make choices. Some are basic: How much rock should be removed? Others are trickier: If the preparator decides one piece of bone belongs with another, do they attach it, and if so, with what glue? Should incomplete bones be rebuilt with a best guess?"

We are told that most of these fossil exhibit preparators are not scientists, and that a "wide range of people do this work, including volunteers, professional freelancers, institutional employees, and commercial contractors." No doubt, a large fraction of the fossil exhibits involve wild guesses by people who are not scientists, but were mainly hoping to make a compelling exhibit.  Did such people usually follow a rule of "do not glue bones together unless you think  they probably came from the same species, or the same organism?" Very probably not.  We are told, "By the early 20th century, for example, preparators — often under the direction of a principal investigator — physically manipulated bone surfaces and added speculative plaster to fill out the suspected shapes of incomplete limbs and skulls, which influenced interpretations of dinosaurs like Dilophosaurus." 

We are told, "Very occasionally, independent commercial preparators have intentionally created fake or exaggerated remains to sell."  Actually, the faking of fossils seems to be a kind of cottage industry in certain foreign lands, so that "very occasionally" might reasonably be replaced with "quite often." A Scientific American article in entitled "How Fake Fossils Pervert Paleontology." The subtitle is "A nebulous trade in forged and illegal fossils is an ever-growing headache for paleontologists." We hear about poor people in distant lands who first heard that you can get lots of cash by finding a good fossil, and who then started to make fake fossils in hopes of getting lots of money

We can imagine here what typically goes on. Bone fragments may be dug up from various spots at a location, perhaps with some fragments gathered from 30 meters or 50 meters away from others. The fragments are then boxed up and sent to a fossil preparator, along with a drawing of the desired output. The problem is that the fragments may be from different organisms, so the end result fossil exhibit may profoundly mislead us, creating a skeleton or skull unlike any that ever existed. The famous "Lucy" image (of bones arranged as if they belonged to one organism) is one of paleontology's most famous images.  There is a large chance the bones consist of bones from multiple species, for reasons discussed here. 

We read this about fossil exhibits:

"Many of these are prepared by commercial contractors like Triebold Paleontology. They’re often casts that contain no real bone. They represent a specific interpretation of incomplete fossils, available for a price: Triebold has provided reconstructed casts of Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis— an east-coast relative of Tyrannosaurus rex — to two separate southeastern museums, with arms of varying sizes based on different scientists’ interpretation of the original limited material."

It seems natural history museums are paying huge sums for these shady exhibits, and turning a blind eye to all the fakery and guesswork. We read this:

"Such prices are largely based on the notion that the lucky winner is receiving a mostly real skeleton, Brown noted, and although that’s sometimes true, other times they’re really receiving something akin to a reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a few scraps of the original painting stitched in. A person might think they’re buying a dinosaur for millions, he said, 'but mostly what you bought is plastic.' ” 

We are told that these fossil preparators that make the fossil exhibits for museums "tend to have broader backgrounds, with no standard license, training, or methods." So why are we putting their gluing plaster-in-the-gaps guesswork inside buildings called science museums?

US taxpayer funds are still being used to support the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, one guilty of displaying fossil exhibits produced by the unreliable practices describes above.  The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins in that museum is filled with speculative artistic representations of previous species, containing heads and shoulders looking like wax museum creations. A kind of "glorious path to whiteness" is depicted. We do not know that any of the organisms displayed by such artwork actually looked how they are depicted. These artworks were created by artist John Gurche, who is not a scientist. A web page on the site of the  Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has a page calling these "Reconstructions of Early Humans." The art works depict organisms that are mostly not humans. The hallmark characteristic of humans is the use of speech and the use of symbols.  The word "human" should never be used to describe some species that has never been shown to have used speech or symbols.  The use of "human" or "early human" to refer to species that probably did not use speech or symbols (and were therefore not actually human) is one of the most misleading tactics of Darwinist propaganda. Web pages of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History contain other examples of the most misleading claims of Darwinist propaganda, but I will have to leave a discussion of that for a separate post. 

I don't know why US taxpayer dollars are being used to support a museum such as the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, involved in or relying on the kind of shady practices described above, and involved in ideological propaganda sounding like attempts to indoctrinate us in what is arguably a religion-in-all-but-name (Darwinist materialism), contrary to the First Amendment saying there shall be no establishment of a state religion. It would be a good idea to reorganize the museum building, along lines such as these:

• Rename the museum as a Museum of Biology or a Museum of Science.
• Remove all the fossil exhibits that are fake or partially fake, or that were produced using guesswork, gluing and plaster,  leaving only fossil exhibits consisting 100% of authentic bones found in the same very small area such as five meters wide, very likely to be from a single organism, or single-piece rocks capturing the shape of some organism that died when the rock formed. Whenever there is any doubt about whether the bones all came from a single organism, have a sign clearly alerting visitors that the displayed skeleton is a speculative exhibit that may consist of fragments glued together from different organism of a single species, or perhaps fragments from different species. 
• Use some of the freed-up space in the museum to show exhibits far more important than exhibits about extinct species, such as exhibits educating people about the enormous complexities of the human body, exhibits about climate change and other important facts of biology and science. 
• Get rid of the speculation and guesswork and ideological propaganda, and concentrate on exhibits telling us about undisputed facts.  

I can imagine a great exhibit for such a museum. Suspended from the ceiling, there would be a huge translucent glass or plastic object about 25 meters wide that was a realistic model of a cell like that in the human body. Looking inside the object you would be able to see countless thousands of little parts, each of which would represent one of the organelles of the cell. There might be some deal where visitors could press any of a series of buttons. So by pressing a "ribosome" button you could cause all of the many thousands of parts of the display representing ribosomes to light up (along with an explanation of how each of the tiny ribosomes is a kind of protein factory); and by pressing a "mitochondria" button you could see all of the thousands of parts of the display representing mitochondria to light up (along with an explanation of how each of these is like a little power factory).  By visiting such a display, visitors might understand how misleading are 99% of cell diagrams ever published, diagrams that make cells look thousands of times simpler than they are. 

But I don't think we will ever see an exhibit like that in one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institute. Such an exhibit would too clearly help to show the enormous organization and functional complexity of the human body, something that Darwinism enthusiasts like to hide by reductionist speech. The reason is that the credibility of any claim of an unguided origins of humans is inversely proportional to the discovered amount of hierarchical organization and component interdependence and information-rich functional complexity of the human body and the discovered richness of observed capabilities of the human mind, with the first decreasing as the second increases. 

During the Middle Ages for centuries there was a great enthusiasm for collecting the bones and teeth of saints, or anything that could be called that. For centuries people would dig up bones or teeth (often just little bits of bone), and claim that they had magnificent healing powers on the grounds that they belonged to a canonized Catholic saint. Such relics would be displayed in churches, and people would make pilgrimages to see them.  There was no doubt a great deal of faking or wishful thinking going on. Probably bones that were not the bones of saints were labeled in churches as the bones of a saint, and probably in many cases bones from different people were joined together to make a "saint skeleton." There was a huge financial motivation for such shenanigans. When people made pilgrimages to some church or monastery or cathedral, they would end up donating to the institution, so any such institution with a claimed "saint skeleton" or "saint skull" or "saint teeth" or "saint bone" might end up with a financial bonanza. Plus all the claims of miracle cures from the saint bones helped to spread the underlying religion (Roman Catholicism).  On pages 743 - 744 of Will Durant's The Age of Faith we read some of the details:

"With so many saints there had to be many relics- their bones, hair, clothing, and any thing that they had used...All relics were credited with supernatural powers, and a hundred thousand tales were told of their miracles. Men and women eagerly sought even the slightest relic, or relic of a relic, to wear as a magic talisman—a thread from a saint’s robe, some dust from a reliquary, a drop of oil from a sanctuary lamp in the shrine. Monasteries vied and disputed with one another in gathering relics and exhibiting them to generous worshipers, for the possession of famous relics made the fortune of an abbey or a church...So profitable a business enlisted many practitioners; thousands of spurious relics were sold to churches and individuals; and monasteries were tempted to 'discover' new relics when in need of funds."  

The medieval shenanigans involving the bones of saints remind me of the shenanigans that lead to fossil exhibits at natural history museums. In both cases there was "funny business" involving bones, done for financial profit and also to help spread a dogma-laden ideology.  The main difference is that the medieval enthusiasm for saint bone collecting actually seemed to do some good, because endless people reported miracle cures after touching or seeing one of the supposed saint bones or saint skulls or saint teeth (possibly largely because of a placebo effect).  But the modern day "funny business" involving fossil exhibits does not do any good to ordinary people. It merely helps fool them into believing a denialist ideology under which they are dehumanized and senselessly depicted as accidents or animals, with much of the evidence that humans are so much more than animals being branded as taboo and off-limits, and with the witnesses or analysts of such evidence being shamed, gaslighted and stigmatized.   

Postscript: A recent news story about the alleged prehuman species Homo naledi is entitled "Extraordinary Claims About Small-Brained Human Ancestor Overhyped, Say Experts." It's a story insinuating paleontologist pareidolia, where scientists with vivid imaginations seem to see what they want to see.  A visual gives us an example of one of the dubious main tactics of paleontologists: arranging bones into a skeleton shape, giving us the impression they all came from the same organism (although we have no way of knowing that they came from either the same organism or the same species).  Contrary to the headline, we do not know that Homo naledi is an ancestor of humans. 

The word you must always remember when pondering fossil exhibits is the rarely used word "provenance," a word art collectors use to mean "a record of ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality."  A proper paleontological provenance of a fossil exhibit would include things such as:

(1) An exact account of how and when and where the bones were gathered, and over what area of space they were gathered, and who gathered them. 

(2)  An exact account of how the fossil exhibit was prepared, how much gluing or plaster work was done, who made the exhibit, what qualifications they had, and how much guesswork they were doing. 

A fossil exhibit is pretty worthless as evidence without proper provenance documentation. But rarely do we get such provenance documentation.  

A Better Analogy for Multiverse Illogic Than the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy Analogy

 I was rather surprised to see on the site The Conversation an article by philosopher Philip Goff entitled "Many physicists assume we must live in a multiverse – but their basic maths may be wrong." I was surprised because  The Conversation site (https://theconversation.com/) tends to serve up materialist propaganda, but in this case we had an article trying to debunk the idea (currently popular among many materialists) that the idea of a multiverse (some vast collection of universes) does something to explain the very precise fine-tuning of our universe. 

For several decades scientists have discovered more and more examples suggesting our universe is seemingly tailor-made for life. A list of many examples is discussed here. One dramatic example is the fact that even though each proton in our universe has a mass 1836 times greater than the mass of each electron, the electric charge of each proton matches the electric charge of each electron exactly, to twenty decimal places (the only difference being that one is positive, the other negative). Were it not for this amazing "coincidence," our very planet would not hold together. But scientists have no explanation for this coincidence which seems to require luck with a probability of less than 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000. As wikipedia states, “The fact that the electric charges of electrons and protons seem to cancel each other exactly to extreme precision is essential for the existence of the macroscopic world as we know it, but this important property of elementary particles is not explained in the Standard Model of particle physics.”  In his book The Symbiotic Universe, astronomer George Greenstein (a professor emeritus at Amherst College) says this about the equality of the proton and electron charges: "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." In fact, experiments do indicate that the charge of the proton and the electron match to eighteen decimal places. 

The idea of the multiverse is to hypothesize that there is some infinity or near-infinity of universes, each with different laws of physics and fundamental constants. The multiverse reasoner then claims that with so many universes, we would expect that at least one would have accidentally had the conditions needed for life.  There are many reasons for rejecting this line of reasoning, which I explain in my posts here and here. Goff's attempt at debunking multiverse reasoning involves a claim that multiverse reasoning commits a fallacy called  the inverse gambler's fallacy. Goff states this:

"Suppose Betty is the only person playing in her local bingo hall one night, and in an incredible run of luck, all of her numbers come up in the first minute. Betty thinks to herself: 'Wow, there must be lots of people playing bingo in other bingo halls tonight!' Her reasoning is: if there are lots of people playing throughout the country, then it’s not so improbable that somebody would get all their numbers called out in the first minute.

But this is an instance of the inverse gambler’s fallacy. No matter how many people are or are not playing in other bingo halls throughout the land, probability theory says it is no more likely that Betty herself would have such a run of luck....

Multiverse theorists commit the same fallacy. They think: 'Wow, how improbable that our universe has the right numbers for life; there must be many other universes out there with the wrong numbers!' But this is just like Betty thinking she can explain her run of luck in terms of other people playing bingo. When this particular universe was created, as in a die throw, it still had a specific, low chance of getting the right numbers."

It seems to be correct that multiverse reasoners are committing the inverse gambler's fallacy. But an analogy such as Goff gives here is not a very good one to match the situation regarding our seemingly fine-tuned universe and ideas of a multiverse.  In an analogy like Goff's the relevant elements are these:

(1) A case of extremely improbable luck which was due purely to random chance. 

(2) The idea that we can explain this very improbable success by assuming a very large number of random trials (like are sometimes known to occur), in which one case of such luck would be expected to occur by chance. 

There are two reasons why Goff's "Betty's gambling" analogy  is not a close analogy for the case of our universe's seemingly fine-tuned fundamental constants and laws, and appeals to a multiverse to explain such fine-tuning:

(1) We do not know that our success of a habitable universe (so mathematically improbable to occur by chance) did occur by chance or by design.  So Betty's gambling luck at the end of playing bingo (which Goff says occur "in an incredible run of luck") is not a good analogy for our universe's apparent fine-tuning, which could be the result of either design or chance. 

(2) Since bingo is a rather popular game in the United States, it is known that there are "lots of people playing bingo in other bingo halls tonight"; so using such a claim to explain Betty's bingo luck would involve appealing to a known truth. But it is certainly not known that there are any other universes with different fundamental constants or any other universes of any type, so appealing to some vast infinity or near-infinity of universes is nothing like appealing to a known truth, but is instead appealing to some fantastically extravagant hard-to-believe claim. 

I can think of a better analogy that is a closer match to the situation involving our universe's seemingly fine-tuned laws and fundamental constants, and attempts to explain that by postulating a multiverse.  The analogy is this:

(1) Let in by Walter's daughter Jane, Daniel visits the house of an old man named Walter, and sees that on a table in Walter's house is an arrangement of cards vastly improbable to occur by chance: a triangular house of cards. On the walls are some paintings, which Jane says her father Walter painted. 

(2) Daniel then concludes that because it is so improbable that such an arrangement of cards would occur by chance, Walter must have been throwing a deck of cards into the air many times every day throughout his life, and that he stopped doing this when the thrown cards finally formed into a house of cards.  

Now we have a better analogy for multiverse reasoning. Specifically:

(1) The very well-arranged house of cards (so vastly improbable to arise by chance) resembles our seemingly fine-tuned universe, both in that the success is incredibly unlikely to occur by chance, and also in that we are not sure whether the result occurred by chance or by design.  Walter's house of cards looks like something the result of very careful willful arrangement, but it conceivably could have occurred through some vastly improbable stroke of luck, after Walter threw the deck of cards into the air.  Similarly, with so many "just-right" fundamental constants and laws allowing the existence of intelligent observers, our universe looks like something the result of very careful willful arrangement, but it conceivably could have occurred through some vastly improbable luck.

(2) Just as multiverse reasoners attempt to explain our seemingly fine-tuned universe by appealing to the wildly extravagant and far-fetched speculation of some vast number of random trials (each the appearance of a different universe with different fundamental constants and laws), Daniel has tried to explain the seemingly well-arranged set of cards (a triangular house of cards) by appealing to a wildly extravagant and far-fetched speculation involving some vast number of random trials (by speculating there was a vast number of cases in Walter's life in which he threw a deck of cards into the air). 

Now we have a better analogy for multiverse reasoning than Goff's analogy about Betty's gambling success. And we can more clearly see the folly of multiverse reasoning. It makes no sense for Daniel to postulate the occurrence of some vast number of events of throwing a deck of cards into the air to try to explain the well-arranged house of cards. A much better explanation is that the well-arranged house of cards occurred because of deliberate willful arrangement. Similarly, it makes no sense to try to explain a seemingly very fine-tuned universe by postulating some infinity or near-infinity of random universes. A far simpler and more intelligent explanation is that our universe's seemingly fine-tuned laws and fundamental constants exist because of the purposeful arrangement of some power capable of such an effect. 

You may ask: why did I include in my analogy a mention of Walter's daughter Jane mentioning that some paintings on the wall were made by Walter? In my analogy such a thing is prima facie evidence that Walter has previously produced artistic arrangements. We don't know whether Jane is telling the truth. She might be lying, or maybe Walter told her a lie when he said he made the paintings. But the paintings are an important clue, because they provide at least  prima facie evidence that Walter previously produced artistic arrangements rather like that of the house of cards. In the light of such prima facie evidence, it is all the more unreasonable to postulate that Walter spent a lifetime throwing a deck of cards into the air as the explanation for the house of cards, rather than assuming that Walter deliberately arranged the house of cards. 

The existence of such paintings providing such prima facie evidence is analogous to some evidence we have that is very relevant to the issue of whether the universe's laws and fundamental constants were deliberately arranged. What  I refer to are the very many reasons for suspecting the existence of some higher power that could have been involved in a purposeful activity, other than the universe's fine-tuned fundamental constants and fine-tuned laws of nature. Such reasons include the following:

(1) The sudden origin of the universe about 13 billion years ago, currently not explained by any credible theory. 

(2) The existence of extremely precise fine-tuning in the origin of the universe, such as a very precise fine-tuning of the universe's early expansion rate, needed for the formation of galaxies.  

(3) The occurrence on Earth of an origin of life requiring the very special arrangement of more than 20,000 amino acids (the very special arrangement of more than 200,000 atoms), an event inexplicable through any idea of so-called natural selection (since so-called natural  selection requires life to first exist before it can occur), and also inexplicable through any theory of lucky chemical combinations (as the luck would require luck too unlikely to ever occur in the history of the universe). 

(4) The appearance of billions of different types of protein molecules in earthly organisms, each a fine-tuned arrangement of hundreds or thousands of amino acid parts, events not credibly explained by Darwinian evolution because of the very high functional thresholds of protein molecules, preventing them from arising by any process by which hundreds of tiny changes (each useful) occur. 

(5) The appearance of countless type of mammals with incredibly complex structures and vastly organized fine-tuned arrangements of matter, appearances not explicable by imagining lucky DNA mutations, because DNA does not actually specify the anatomy of any large organism or any of its organs or cells. 

(6) The appearance of human minds, with a wealth of mental capabilities and experiences that cannot be credibly explained as being caused by brain activity, for the reasons discussed in the many posts of my blog here. 

The six items above at the very least provide us with prima facie evidence for suspecting the existence of some higher power of enormous intellect, which might help to explain some of the items above.  So having such prima facie evidence, we are like the Daniel of my analogy. Told by Jane that paintings on the wall were made by Jane's father, Daniel has prima facie evidence that Jane's father Walter is someone who previously engaged in skillful artistic arrangement.  So seeing the house of cards looking so much like a deliberate artistic arrangement, it would be folly for Daniel to explain such an arrangement by assuming a lifetime of throwing cards into the air, rather than some deliberate act of arrangement. It is equally great folly to be pondering our universe of seemingly fine-tuned laws and fundamental constants, and trying to explain them not as a result of purposeful arrangement but by appealing to some infinity or near infinity of random trials (particularly given so much other evidence giving us reasons for suspecting purposeful arrangement or causation by a power higher than man). 

To some, discussing fine-tuning is taboo

What senselessly goes on is that materialists restrict their consideration to only physics when they should be considering all of the evidence. They may say to themselves, "This is a matter of physics, so let us only consider physics." That makes no sense. When biology and chemistry and physics and psychology and parapsychology and cosmology are all giving you evidence relevant to some consideration, you should be considering all of that evidence collectively, rather than "looking through a straw-hole" and considering only physics. After considering all of the relevant evidence from biology and chemistry and physics and astronomy and psychology and parapsychology and cosmology, we are left with extremely strong reasons for suspecting some higher power involved in fine-tuning our universe and biology in it, to produce or help produce a huge variety of purposeful and enormously stunning and awe-inspiring end results; and in the light of such reasons a multiverse explanation for cosmic fine-tuning is unreasonable and needlessly super-extravagant. 

The principle of very carefully studying and considering all of the possibly relevant evidence is one that you might called "the panoramic principle," as it involves studying and pondering what you see in all directions, like some person very carefully studying what he sees in all directions from the high panorama of a mountain height.  If you have one of the Big Questions, following the panoramic principle works much better than following a "straw-hole strategy" of very narrowly focusing your attention, like some person looking through a straw hole. In the posts of this blog and another blog of mine, you will find evidence that I have spent huge amounts of time studying and pondering evidence from an extremely wide variety of fields, including neuroscience, parapsychology, psychology, biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, cosmology and reports of various types of paranormal phenomena. So a reader might think that I have been following or trying to follow this "panoramic principle" that I refer to, rather than following some "straw-hole strategy" of narrowly concentrating my attention.