Into the Void

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

This would be funny if it weren’t so plausible.

“Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work,” Carson said. “What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that ‘gravity waves’ and ‘gravitons’ are just secular words for ‘God can do whatever He wants.’”
–Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry.

I occasionally interfere in the perpetual misconception that science is
somehow more than a quasi-objective reality check. The other day a
questioner postulated that the continued existence of homosexuality
effectively disproves “survival of the fittest” I give the fellow credit
for understanding that homosexuality is more than a lifestyle choice.
Nonetheless, I left a steaming pile for the questioner to ponder. I’ll go
back next week and vote for myself.

Survival of the Fittest applies at the population level, not at an individual level. It isn’t a “rule” in the way you’d think of a rule, it is about how environmental factors affect the diversity in a population. For instance, there has been an upsurge in asthma deaths since the US has relaxed air pollution standards.

Homosexuality is a continuum of desires whose expression is modulated largely by social forces. (I’m purposely leaving out the nature-vs.-nurture aspect. The jury is still out on genetics and in-utero exposure to hormones.) At one low point in our history, there was wholesale witch burning using homosexuals as faggots to light the fire.

For all you know, you are completely surrounded by homosexuals who are maintaining heterosexual relationships and reproducing just to “fit in.” You’re familiar with the concept of a “beard,” right?

I think this is a perfect adaptation, one that Evolution would be proud of if Evolution had intelligence. What intelligence is killing asthmatic children, again?

Modern women often prefer sensitive guys. Who knows? Maybe homosexuality confers a great breeding advantage on men who carry the trait.

;-)

“Vocatus atque non vocatus… deus aderit
Called or not called , GOD will be present.”
– Inscription on Gravestone of Professor Dr. Carl G. Jung, Kusnacht, Switzerland
Quoted from Heaven’s Register

Have you read any Jung? Jung was a medical doctor whose father was a philospher and pastor. Jung believed that God is not “out there” but is inside us all. God is our subconscious mind! You feel deep down what is right, now don’t you?

Jung pointed out that God evolved morally over the course of biblical history. That’s right, God got better and better. He had to, to keep up with his children’s moral evolution.

Being the firstborn is a curse for a lot of reasons, and it didn’t start with that whole “Dad forgot to paint the lintels” thing.

It can be deduced from the concept of a morally evolving God that Jesus Christ was the manifestation of this evolution. the “God made flesh.” God hoped that a physical manifestation would convince the Pharisees, the NT version of the Religious Right, to evolve too. It didn’t work, though. The Pharisees, like any hierarchical structure heavenly or temporal, were notoriously inflexible. Anything the Pharisees disagreed with was a sin, Evil, abomination. As a child Jesus was almost stoned for breaking one of the old rules.

If God is within us, then the fight between good and evil is going on inside us too. In Jung’s words, “from the psychological point of view demons are nothing other than intruders from the unconscious, spontaneous irruptions of unconscious complexes into the continuity of the conscious process.”

Here’s a simplification derived from Alan Watts‘ Tribute to Carl Jung. Satan isn’t in me, it can’t be, because I am Good. The Evil and the hate must be over there in you! (That’s the non-self-aware speaking, the one with Blind Faith and no reason.)

Look in your heart. Both good and evil are right there inside your own subconscious, making you act out their presence. Like a projector you are shining your own ugly thoughts onto the blank screens of the A-theists. This is the psychology of evil.

And until you discover your self-contradictions, you will always hate anyone who disagrees with you.

As for me, I’m not afraid of the guru. I’m afraid of the people who threaten me with eternal torture in his name.

I have to give a speech on evolution…help? - Yahoo! Answers

My nephew would tell you that a shark doesn’t turn into a chair.

Darwin and Wallace were the first guys to write about evolution.

Darwin got his ideas while traveling around the world and seeing all kinds of animals. The ship was called the “Beagle.” You’ll want to talk about Galapagos Island, where he saw different species of birds in a place so far from the continent that they had to have all come from one ancestor. He thought that their beaks were shaped by what food their ancestors ate. Seeds vs. berries vs. bugs, etc. Don’t forget the tortoises.

There are different theories of how evolution occurs.

**Lamarck** said that species evolve because acquired traits are passed down through the generations. Like giraffes stretching their necks up to get leaves makes their offspring have longer necks. (not true)

Darwin believed that evolution was a slow process of population drifting in response to the environment. The average height of a giraffe changes each generation because the short ones all died. (closer, but not quite)

Basically, evolution occurs when something in the environment - Nature - kills off certain animals and let others live. So if the short-necked giraffes always died there would only be taller giraffes left to reproduce. But the next valley over the trees might be really short so the tall giraffes have trouble reaching down and after a couple of generations only short giraffes are left. So now there are two different animals. This is called “Natural Selection.”

Darwin, like most people of his time, believed that offspring were a blend of their parents traits, like a black cat and a white cat have grey kittens and after that all kittens are grey. (not true) He had trouble believing his own theory, and waited many years to publish it. Actually, he published it only after he found out that Wallace had the same ideas.

**Mendel** came up with modern genetics, where there are dominant and recessive genes. So black cats can have white kittens, orange tabby kittens, and black kittens.

Another theory is that small mutations - like birth defects - might make an animal better suited. Maybe a horse had a long-necked colt that could eat from taller trees so it survived. After enough generations the mutations add up until the horse looks like a giraffe. Obviously some mutations don’t help at all, or even kill. It’s random. Some folks can’t handle randomness - everything has to be planned in advance or they freak out.

Still another theory is that small changes aren’t good enough - there had to be a miracle to change one species to another. They always say that the eye had to be a miracle because it’s so complex, but they forget to tell you about lizards with light-sensing patches in their skin instead of eyeballs, or about lower mammals whose species can’t see colors yet. ANY eye is an evolutionary advantage over no eyes at all, even if it’s only a light-sensing patch.

The main thing is that to be scientific, you have to be willing to change your theory to match what you observe. It’s not enough for some scientist to tell you “THIS IS TRUE.” You get to go out and prove it for yourself - or even disprove it! Anybody who doesn’t let you question their theory is trying to control your mind. And that, my young friend, is politics.

Darwin loves you, man.

Technorati: Charles+Darwin evolution LaMarck Galagapos+Island Origin+of+Species acquired+traits mutations natural+selection Gregor+Mendel genetics scientific+theory

Ancient devil frog may have eaten baby dinosaurs | U.S. | Reuters

Beelzebufo ampinga was a frog that lived in Madagascar 70 million years ago. At 16 inches long and weighing in at an estimated 10 pounds, this bad boy was so mean he may have fed on newly-hatched dinosaurs.

The largest living frog species is the goliath frog of West Africa, a mere 12.5 inches long and 7.2 pounds.

Graphic by Kazvorpal.

Paleontologist David Krause of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, is one of the scientists who discovered the bones in 1993. They pieced together Beelzebufo’s skeleton and recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Beelzebufo took down lizards and mammals and smaller frogs, and even — considering its size — possibly hatchling dinosaurs,” Krause said in a telephone interview.

Beelzebufo has some modern relatives in South America, more evidence supporting the theory that there may once have been a land bridge linking Madagascar to Antarctica and South America. These relatives, the Argentine Horned Frog, are nicknamed the “PacMan Toad” because of the size of their mouths and the way they hunt.

Recently an acquaintance tried to convince me that the Witch Trials were totally due to social forces. Of course there were social forces at work, but in the end the Evils that occurred during that time frame were the final chapter in the Church’s 600-year war on Serpent Knowledge. She had been completely blinded to some very important concepts.

First, this was Christians murdering people, not “social forces” in the abstract. Read the Malleus Maleficarum, the infamous “Hammer of Witches” that the Inquisitors used to determine whether a person was a witch and what to do when the Inquisitors found out they were. It was written by two Dominican priests.

In predomininantly Catholic areas, the Inquisitors killed Protestants. In countries that were about equally Catholic and Protestant, they killed Jews. There was a huge collaboration between kings and the Church to get rid of anyone who was inconvenient. This is a good argument for the separation of church and state.

The witchcraft scare followed 600 years of torture and murder in the name of Love. You’ve probably heard of the Inquisition. It wasn’t until around the 16th century that they were burning more witches than heretics.

England was Anglican by the time the witch-burnings rolled around, by the way.

The first victims of the Inquisition were not witches but scientists, usually Christian. The Inquisition was used to suppress scientific advancement. Church dogma mandated belief in a flat earth and in Creationism. Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian astronomer and physicist, was one of those tried for heresy. He recanted his scientific views in order to avoid being murdered by his own Church.

The Pope issued an apology in 2002 for “errors of his church for the last 2000 years.” So, yes, religion was an important part of it.

A lot of cultists are re-writing history, probably in preparation for a new generation of Inquisitors. Next they’ll be burning the Harry Potter books.

As for the social forces, the switch from heresy to witchcraft started with some cults with strict behavioral requirements. They used the witchcraft accusation to get rid of people who didn’t meet their prudish standards, then started throwing in dissidents, subversive herbalists and the occasional adulterer just for kicks. Fortunately there was already a tradition of torture and murder so they hitched a ride on that.

There’s an interesting article about misogeny and homophobia and witch burning called “The Kindling Effect.” It explains why we call homosexuals “bundles of sticks.”

Technorati: Witch+Trials social+forces Hammer+of+Witches Catholic heretics Creationism Galileo The+Pope homophobia faggot

Of course the soul is energy. The body - the vessel we live in - runs on electrochemical reactions that have EM fields around them just like any other electrical conductor does. Halo, aura, nimbus.

“The Egyptians recognized many degrees of immortality. The Ren and the Sekem and the Khu are relatively immortal, but still subject to injury. The other souls who survive physical death are much more precariously situated. Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast? If humans and animal souls are seen as electromagnetic force fields, such fields could be totally disrupted by a nuclear explosion. The mummy’s nightmare: disintegration of souls, and this is precisely the ultrasecret and supersensitive function of the atom bomb: a Soul Killer, to alleviate an escalating soul glut.”
– William S. Burroughs & Material, Soul Killer from the Seven Souls CD.

RealMagick Article: The Seven Shaman Principles by Serge Kahill King

Thought for the Day:

Hallucination means “your dream doesn’t match my dream.”

Speaking of the screwfly, remember the big push to eradicate the screwfly back in the 60s or 70s? This fly lays its eggs on an open sore, the maggots hatch and go through a series of instars, pupate and become flies. The flesh is further damaged by this activity, making more open sores for more flies. Screwflies can devour an infested animal in a matter of days. They also infest babies eyes, so there was a huge effort to control them. This is a fascinating story about using pheromones to exterminate a species.

Ok, since you asked… The screwfly gets its name by its mating habits. When screwflies mate, they line up head-to-tail. The female emits a pheromone that triggers the male to turn around - hence screwfly - and then they mate. To control screwflies, entomologists came up with a chemical that interfered with the female’s chemical message. Instead of turning around, the male happily mated with her head. Sounds like some guys I’ve known.

This sort of thing was the basis of an interesting sci-fi story in which aliens who wanted to colonize the Earth sprayed something that brought out the aggressive component of male sexual desire and suppressed the sexual component. All of the women were killed, of course. Too bad it didn’t turn the women into human Preying Mantises instead.

Here’s a fun parasite: the Guinea worm. These 3-foot-long parasites have been with us for so long that some Egyptian mummies have them. They feed only upon humans.

You get guinea worms by drinking contaminated water. The worms then chew their way out and orient themselves so that their genitals dangle outside the flesh, usually the flesh of the foot, but they can really show up in any part of the body. The lesion burns like mad, so sufferers douse it with cold water to ease the pain. In the parts of the world where the Guinea worm is found, the sufferers recontaminate the water supply.

So now you have a three-foot long worm embedded in your body. The locals used to burn the exposed parts with cigarettes to try to kill the worm. Unfortunately, this often resulted in infection or even a massive allergic reaction when the three-foot long worm died. The worms are more safely removed by wrapping the exposed parts around a small stick then slowly drawing the worm out over days or weeks. The medical symbol the Rod of Asclepius may represent this procedure.

The caduceus with its two snakes is similar to the Rod of Asclepius, but is probably a symbol of wisdom rather than of medicine in particular.

The snake is a symbol of wisdom in cultures where knowledge is encouraged. In cultures where Blind Faith is enforced, the snake is Evil Incarnate. Serpent knowledge is the source of Original Sin, and it is knowledge that brings about the Fall. In this mythology, our progenitor Adam is infested with guinea worms. They can’t possibly have evolved into human parasites from something else, right?

Damn, there I go spouting heresy again. Burn the witch!

An apple a day keeps the doctor away!

About a year ago there was a video circulating on the net about a computer game. You all know I’m too boring for computer games, but this one had a tie-in with physical, cultural and technological evolution. You can’t beat that.

[The name, Leslie, tell them the name!] The game is called Spore. Better pre-order that puppy. It’s going to sell out fast.

You know you want it. If you think you don’t want it, go grab another can of Monster, sit your hyper little butt down and watch the 36-minute video below. In the video, developer Will Wright demonstrates an alpha version of Spore at the 2005 Game Developer’s Conference. You’ve never seen anything like this before!

So why is so cool about Spore? Well, you get to design one-celled organisms. The fun is in configuring your creations and watching them feed and grow and evolve. Give them a new limb, watch them figure out how to use it, that is, watch the software figure out how to use it! Put them together, watch them build a community, watch them build a nation. Give them technology and they’ll incorporate it into their culture.

Plus the game is published by Electronic Arts, the folks who brought us The Sims. These guys have been creating games since Commodore 64 days. I can’t remember being this psyched over a silly computer game. I pre-ordered it and am waiting waiting waiting impatiently for the release date.

Technorati: evolution Geekess Spore The+Sims Will+Wright