Evolution of Man

RE: Evolution of Man

Oh SS, you didn’t even say how lovely and entertaining by creation myth quotes were… I work so hard to put a wry smile on yer face, do I get so much as the slightest gestured nod in my direction… not on your Nellie…I’m a little hurt.:)

Also, as you are clearly close to geology and have good knowledge in the cutting of rock I thought you’d at least take a look at answering my question re: the Mitchell Hedges Skull, but you didn’t…[:-]

Anyway back to your responses,
You said
Re: Living molecules: -

“Maybe they HAVE been created in the lab and we're too thick too realise”

So we agree at least that despite how unpalatable it is to you – due solely to the lack of proof to the contrary - that it most definitely remains a possibility – even to you?

You also concluded in your last post with

“What I do not see in science is any sign of a turning away from the force / particle / mechanistic view of reality to a spiritual one. I don't actually see how science could make such a shift and remain science”

And therein lies the division of our differing points of view, as that is all it boils down to at this stage.

Both of us claiming that the evidence only goes further to galvanise our personal ‘viewpoints’.
For you, all of it only continually contributes more & more so to the (unproven) spontaneous chemical ‘birth’ of life; whilst I feel it only ever serves to demonstrate that the further and deeper we delve, try as we might – we have not & cannot uncover the “secret” until we (find a way within Science) to accept that there is a (call it) ‘spiritual’ missing element - also equally (but no more so) unproven.
Yet both schools if we are brutally honest refuse to try, or cannot or will not mix ideas (although I have to say, I am starting to hear a lot of “maybe” and “don’t knows from you now SS!)
Anyway, such people do exist, one such man who has managed to study both sides and merge them (albeit that it’s mainly Astronomy & the Universe and was also a Vendenta monk for 23 years before being kicked out for playing with telescopes too much) is John Dobson … but then he laughs at The Big Bang Theory… so where does that leave us?

Of course the conclusions will go on changing- but within limits.

Haha don’t bet your house on it SS, now, shall I fetch a napkin sir? 😉 (don't b hatin' - just trying to make you smile)
Rgds
roger

RE: Evolution of Man

Hi 'V',

ORIGINAL: venetian
Conspiritualist, I missed your last post here till now. An amazing link! I find it hard to see how anyone could doubt from all that, that ancient India had an extremely advanced science and civilisation, with a science in some ways surpassing our.

Yeah it’s good ain’t it? But I’m sure that you also noticed that there is a kinda general superior tone about the whole site so treat accordingly.

However, the translations if even toyed with a little make it still hard to consider as a piece of fantasy writing.
One of the things that intrigued me most was why go to the trouble of differentiating between craft that fly within our atmosphere and those that fly out of it and operate in space. Moreover, going to the trouble of citing the difference between what sound like aircraft & what sound like space travelling rockets – what I mean is (if it’s Sci Fi) why bother, why not just say that they can travel within the atmosphere and space, it’s a) got to be easier and b) why would they even consider that there would need to be a difference - considering what stage of technological advancement the were supposed to have been at?:eek:

Edited to add: the importer of books from India can be found @ www.starpublic.com - give em a call, they're pretty good

Rgds,
roger

RE: Evolution of Man

ORIGINAL: Conspiritualist

Hi 'V',

But I’m sure that you also noticed that there is a kinda general superior tone about the whole site so treat accordingly.

I've come across that quite a lot from Indian writing. "We were the place where every science began." And "Hinduism is the source of all other religions." I know what they mean but -- they probably got their science from elsewhere too, and the "We are the origin of all religion" is a Sufi statement also for example. Then different parts of India e.g. Tamils say they are the origin, not the rest of India!

However, I agree with you on the tone of the writings on aircraft - it doesn't read like myth or fiction, but in parts is very matter-of-fact and nuts-and-bolts. Now, today's science isn't even going to take time to look at this (which is unscientific), but apparently ancient India had a well-developed science of particle physics also, which I must look into more some time.

An aside to sceptics about whether hard science is 'the' truth and the esoteric is fairy loo-lah land would be from me that from 1895 Leadbeater and Besant were observing and describing every element in the table of elements in terms of how they were made up of chiral colour quarks - they saw the quarks through a special form of clairvoyance described by them and also described by Patanjali of India, and they got the number exactly right for each atom of each element according to modern quark theory.

So, er, how? This was decades before science even thought of quarks. Look up in any online search: "Occult Chemistry".

V

RE: Evolution of Man

hi guys,

i think i am keeping up here... so i thought i'd pop in and say i am living and learning. could someone solve it soon though please? i cant wait for the answer! 😀

RE: Evolution of Man

Roger- Sorry. I seem to have completely missed a whole chunk of your earlier post. I just went back now to re-read it.

Creation myths- Well, people are the best storytellers in the known universe.
Our current exemplar involves chemistry, is certainly incomplete and may be wrong, but I reckon even in it's current state it's more informative than most prescientific versions. (I like the idea of making a clot though. Most apt.)

I have not heard of the skull you mention. There's a lovely quartz vase in the public museum in Athens which I once admired for many minutes.
Very hard stuff, quartz. 7 on Moh's arbitrary mineral scale. How then does one cut it?

With more quartz. Specifically with a slurry of sand and water, moving to very fine sand for final polishing. Much the same way lenses were ground in Europe up till the 18th century. I ground a telescope mirror this way once. Took me a month. (I finished it with jeweller's rouge. Crushed haematite will do nicely)

There's nothing difficult about it. It just takes a long time. In our frenetic age we forget that in slave cultures labour is cheap. If it takes ten man years to sculpt a vase, you put a hundred men on the job, twenty four hours a day. You still don't get any vases for five years, but then you have a steady supply.

Cutting and polishing granite with hand tools is actually easier than cutting pure quartz, as the other constituents, mica, feldspars and metal oxides are softer than the quartz. Again, it takes time and skill. So does building cathedrals and pyramids. Folks way back had the skills. So do modern stonemasons, though their tools are better.

Try it for yourself. Pick up a bit of granite from a monumental mason and grind a flat on it using a quartz slurry. You'll lose a few fingernails and get a few callouses, but it isn't rocket science.

On maybe and don't know- Believe me, I say those a lot. I'm not one of those who claim science has the answers to everything, far less that I have. Where we differ is that I have a working method for improving knowledge and testing hypotheses. You prefer to make a leap of faith to an untested and possibly untestable unknown variable. I'm not allowed to do that until all the likely routes are proven to be dead ends.

It is a fallacious argument to say that we must study the spiritual effect by making science realise that it exists. First prove that it exists, then study it.
No matter how convinced you (or anyone ) may be that an effect exists, there is no reproducible evidence for it. Chemistry, on the other hand , works so reliably, even terrorist morons can use it.

On living molecules being created in the lab; I'm not sure why you think I would find that unpalatable. On the contrary, I would love it. I just find no evidence for it in the literature. What these experiments tend to end up with is a mix of smaller amino acids and other organic gook. There is no preferred sorting into chiral types, which as you know seems to be characteristic of life. But that characteristic is a selective process. Until selection gets going, there is no reason for it to happen and selection is not going to happen in a lab flask. (The organics in carbonaceous chondrites look similar- snall molecules and "tar"). Whether some of these actually are precursors of true life is unknown.

I would ask you to ponder this- if a lab experiment did produce universally accepted evidence for spontaneous generation of living creatures by chemical means, how would the scientist be able to convince you that "the spirit" had not entered into the flask? Is this hypothesis disprovable in principle?

To have any chance of answering the oreigin of life question we need to define life.
Is DNA alive? RNA? What about the sugar molecules which form their spines? What about the constituents of the sugars?
Can these constituents form abiotically?
Yes.
Are they alive?

Your opinion is as good as mine.

Edit to respond to David.
Asimov wrote a nice essay ("The Relativity of Wrong" on th