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Member (Idle past 5791 days) Posts: 185 From: alexandria va usa Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Evolution and paranormal things | |||||||||||||||||||||||
redwolf Member (Idle past 5791 days) Posts: 185 From: alexandria va usa Joined: |
I would like to propose a new thread/topic.
As difficult as it would be for things like flight feathers, whalebone, or marine sonar to evolve, there is a class of things which would be significantly more difficult, and these are things which are typically classified as "paranormal". In at least one group of instances i.e. the work of Rupert Sheldrake, some of these phenomena have been studied more rigorously than in the past, using good experimental design and statistical methodology. Granted Sheldrake is public enemy #1 to the CSICOP crowd, his methods are unassailable and his credentials are simply better than those of anybody connected to CSICOP. There are other instances of such things in the news these days as well. The question becomes, how would any of these "paranormal" capabilities "evolve"?
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AdminSylas Inactive Member |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1467 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
The question becomes, how would any of these "paranormal" capabilities "evolve"? Random mutation and natural selection. Duh. If you want to get more specific, then you need to explain the exact mechanism for how these abilities function.
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Wounded King Member Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
It is completely non-relevant to the quality of the work Sheldrake has produced but I'm not convinced that his credentials are superior to those of anyone affiliated to CSICOP. This is a page listing the Fellows associated with CSICOP, which includes at least a couple of Nobel laureates.
TTFN, WK
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redwolf Member (Idle past 5791 days) Posts: 185 From: alexandria va usa Joined: |
I don't have any particular reason to believe or disbelieve in reincarnation. Nonetheless, something which appears for all the world to be a certifiable case of reincarnation has come up in the news (ABC) recently:
http://abcnews.go.com/...time/US/reincarnation_040415-1.html Now, whether or not you'd argue that this was or wasn't reincarnation, SOMETHING appears to be happening here. Possibilities would seem to include:
Now, I wouldn't want to HAVE to bet it but, if I had to, my money would be on item 3. Nonetheless, either of the two choices other than fraud would seem to contradict the model of reality which we receive from guys like Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, Engels et. al, i.e. that there is matter and energy in the universe and **** rolls downhill, and everything we see around us is some manifestation of those two concepts. The question is, how would this kid's ability to do something like that "evolve", and for what purpose?
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.7 |
Hang on a second, Red, aren't you a Christian?
Re-incarnation, if true, would prove Christian theology false.
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redwolf Member (Idle past 5791 days) Posts: 185 From: alexandria va usa Joined: |
Like I say, there are at least two possible explanations other than fraud, and it's not clear that the second such explanation is damaging to Christianity.
The question is, what would something like that do for evolution(ism)?
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
The third and by far the most likely explanation is that the observers have simply totally misread the information and that the kid is simply a kid. So far, all of the evidence appears to be just the parents and adults.
It would have been very easy to test the theory but notice that conveniently, his memories are starting to fade. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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redwolf Member (Idle past 5791 days) Posts: 185 From: alexandria va usa Joined: |
>It would have been very easy to test the theory but notice that conveniently, his memories are starting to fade.
Who wants to remember getting shot down....
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Not germain to my post.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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redwolf Member (Idle past 5791 days) Posts: 185 From: alexandria va usa Joined: |
Many if not most paranormal things would fall under the general category of what Julian Jaynes termed "bicameral phenomena". My own take on bicameral phenomena is that they were bound up with static electrical phenomena, which were simply more common in the ancient world than they are now:
http://www.bearfabrique.org/babel.html And that these kinds of phenomena which are rare now, used to be common. There is reason to believe that the human mind was originally hardwired for a kind of communications capability about as far above our present electronic communications world, as that is above smoke signals. Again, the question is, how does that sort of thing "evolve"?
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Is there ANY evidence that static electric phenomena were once common?
But the underlying issue, is so far NO ONE has been able to show that ANY paranormal things exist. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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redwolf Member (Idle past 5791 days) Posts: 185 From: alexandria va usa Joined: |
>>But the underlying issue, is so far NO ONE has been able to show that ANY paranormal things exist.
Not in the sense of saying 'Here is a paranormal thing, right before your very eyes and, as you can plainly see on this handy dandy Cenco scale, it weights 13.2778 pounds. Nonetheless there are other ways of demonstrating that something exists which are totally valid. The science of statistics as we understand it was developed mainly in our ag-econ (landgrant) schools for the purpose of discerning what effect if any various crop treatments might have on certain crops and that is also something which, despite being totally real, cannot be measured or weighed on scales. In particular, Sheldrake's use of statistical methodology is entirely sound and, when he tells you that there is a 99.999% certainty that some particular "paranormal" thing is real, he's not making it up.
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redwolf Member (Idle past 5791 days) Posts: 185 From: alexandria va usa Joined: |
>Is there ANY evidence that static electric phenomena were once common?
That is the main focus of a couple of small works by Al DeGrazia and Hugh Crossthwaite, which are available free of charge: DeGrazia
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1467 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
dupe post
[This message has been edited crashfrog, 05-04-2004]
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