I want expose some things that the scientific community will hide from the general population so they can continue to propagate the notion that the mechanism for evolution is random gene mutations and natural selection, and that life arose from a baron earth. But I'm perfectly willing to allow Darwinists the opportunity to come up with Darwinian explanations for a series of threads I will start (this being the 1st). I'd love to see them grapple with this one, particularly since this is a firsthand observation by Alfred Wallace, one of the inventors of evolution through natural selection and Darwin's coauthor. So read it, and either admit that Darwinian theory is nonsense, or explain how this can be explained by the theory. Eventually I want to make a video about the failure of Darwinian theory, so watch your comments as they may be used against you, such as displaying denial, lack of logic, or bringing up irrelevant points.

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Wallace (1905) gave this account of what happened: “It was a bright summer afternoon, and everything happened in the full light of day. After a little conversation, Mr. Monk (a nonconformist clergyman), who was dressed in the usual clerical black, appeared to go into a trance; then stood up a few feet in front of us, and after a little while pointed to his side, saying, ‘Look.’ We saw there a faint white patch on his coat on the left side. This grew brighter, and seemed to flicker, and extend both upwards and downwards, till very gradually it formed a cloudy pillar extending from his shoulder to his feet and close to his body. Then he shifted himself a little sideways, the cloudy figure standing still, but appearing joined to him by a cloudy band at the height at which it had first begun to form. Then, after a few minutes more, Monk again said ‘Look,’ and passed his hand through the connecting band, severing it. He and the figure then moved away from each other till they were about five or six feet apart. The figure had now assumed the appearance of a thickly draped female form, with arms and hands just visible. Monk looked towards it and again said to us ‘Look,’ and then clapped his hands. On which the figure put out her hands, clapped them as he had done, and we all distinctly heard here clap following his, but fainter. The figure then moved slowly back to him, grew fainter and shorter, and was apparently absorbed into his body as it had grown out of it.”

Author Michael Cremo writes: Broad daylight rules out clever puppetry. That Monk was standing only a few feet from Wallace, in the middle of an ordinary room, rules out the production of the form by stage apparatus. Wedgwood told Wallace that on other occasions a tall, robed, male figure appeared alongside Monk. This figure would remain for up to half an hour, and allowed himself to be touched by Wedgwood and his colleagues, who carefully examined his body and cloths. Furthermore, the figure could exert force on material objects.
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Yeah, er, what the hell has this got to do with evolution?

So a cleric can make cloudy apparitions appear. What has that got to with the price of fish this Saturday? Interesting story, granted, but naff all to do with evolution.

I see what you were trying to say but it does not prove a thing other than the guy was probably fraudulent in certain occasions. Science stands on its own, and whether this guy believes in one thing and flip-flops in other matters does not make the evidence of science stand down.

Now, I wish it were so because good evidence is all most atheists ask for, but clearly faith needs a bit more than a contradiction of beliefs in one man to justify turning the tides.

Another one of those christian fundis

If you believe that the bible is gods word then explain to me how the south american sloth and koala bears got on the ark?

If you cant then you can talk all about how evolution is wrong but im not going to believe a word your saying

I think we should always differentiate between fact and theory. The theory of evolution seems to fit a lot of scientific discoveries but it is still a theory that has used scientific deduction and therefore has to be revised if a portion of it can be falsified. The struggle comes from tracing back our human lineage back to its logical origin - a pair of humans. Also it comes from tracing back language to its common origins - a single proto-language. There is also a struggle in the explanation of how the brain seems to have a level of consciousness higher than a supercomputer.

The OP was not quite clear Elhardt. Are you saying that Wallace believed in other life-forms apart from humans or believed that humans had a soul? I think that these thoughts could be interpreted as mutually exclusive from Natural Selection/Evolution. Alternatively, it could suggest that humans have a different evolution from animals and I could agree with this hypothesis readily. Animals evolved:humans might not have evolved.

Originally posted by Heronumber0
The struggle comes from tracing back our human lineage back to its logical origin - a pair of humans.

But that isn't a logical conclusion. You seem to be under the impression new species just "appear". The change is gradual. You don't just have monkey's one day then all of a sudden a monkey gives birth to a human. So attempting to trace back to a pair of humans would lead you no where, as this is not what happened.

Originally posted by Heronumber0
Also it comes from tracing back language to its common origins - a single proto-language.

Language, again, would have been a gradual process. Many animals today have a variety of sounds and calls that mean things. As time goes on and the animals abilities increase, they would naturally increase these sounds and calls to encomapss other meanings.

It's not as if Og and Ug woke up one day and suddenly turned to each other and went "fancy a pint?". That sentence, the grammar and the meanings would have evolved from simple animal calls to more complex sounds bundled together until it became a language.

Originally posted by Heronumber0
There is also a struggle in the explanation of how the brain seems to have a level of consciousness higher than a supercomputer.

The brain is more analogous to a quantum computer, rather than the current configuration of computer cores, be they "super" or not.

The human mind can think up abstract thoughts, plan for different outcomes and imagine possibilities beyond what the current input is telling it. A computer can only go on what it has been told can happen.

till very gradually it formed a cloudy pillar extending from his shoulder to his feet and close to his body. Then he shifted himself a little sideways, the cloudy figure standing still, but appearing joined to him by a cloudy band at the height at which it had first begun to form.

This form a charlatanism was all the rage in this time period.
Look it up, its called spiritism.

This however had nothing to do with evolution.

The OP should be taken out and horsewhipped for misleading us.
Horsewhipping is in the T&C isn't it?

Originally posted by stumason

Way to go on completely misunderstanding something there!

That does not in any way prove we are descended from some Adam and Eve pairing. Obviously, humans as we see them today had an original parent, but the mutations happened over generations. A monkey did not just give birth to a human. The population that eventually led to the rise of our species had been evolving for eons. That isn't to say the population of said animals was small.

Each genetic mutation, that conferred an advantage, would have survived within the population and been spread. As time passed, additional mutations, that conferred advantages, would also have been added and kept in the population. So over time, you have a gradually evolving population. A small population actually speeds up genetic mutation, and thus, evolution. So it stands to reason.

It is actually summised that the Human species came out of a small enclave of early humans that had a distinct advantage, thus spreading out.

It could also be the case that the early population of humans was almost wiped out by some sort of disaster or disease. This would also account for the mitochondrial DNA study done.

OK, let's take your point of view. You have made rather a sweeping statement about the evolution of humans without a shred of proof. You are just repeating the dogma of small mutation changes incrementally leading to improvement of the human to its final form. Just a couple of objections: are most human mutations not detrimental to the carriers? I could mention a few: fragile X chromosome, Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis, thalassaemia... These mutations do not provide, IMHO, a selective advantage. In fact I will research how many mutations I can find where a mutation has not conferred a selective advantage.

The Eve Theory is disputed due to the date suggested for the small progenitor group - 200, 000 years ago, but it is compelling until replaced by other theories.

If I was to take a baby human and deprive them of linguistic input for the first 25 years of their life, they would have no concept of language. That isn't proof of lack of consciousness, mind you.

However, one could still communicate at a basic level initially with the person and, if you so wished, develop and entirely new language out of the interactions between you.

Language isn't proof of consciousness and lack of language doesn't mean your a mindless animal. Gorilla's and Chimpanzees can be taught sign language and communicated with at a fairly advanced level.

Ape language is far simpler and reflects far simpler thought. If we take the act of thought as a predicate to language then human language demands a complexity of thought that is not present in other hominids. I would hazard a guess that apes are not capable of recursive thought which is a good indicator for a certain level of sophistication in consciousness. Consciousness and complex language IMO must have developed in tandem.

You do know what a quantum computer is, don't you? I already said standard 1=1, 0=0 computers won't be able to do what a human mind does, so your proving my point.

A Quantum computer is entirely different, so who cares what Penrose say's. That link you provided was written in 1989. He hasn't a clue back then of what is being thought of now.

I don't know if Penrose is clueless but his original tiling problem still stands. We agree that the brain is a quantum computer. Good. Then we can posit that the conscious moment or qualia is an event that demands enormous computational calculations. In fact Penrose et al leave open the possibility that a soul, God or even the classical pathways could lead to this mystery called consciousness. We could argue that consciousness was an accidental event made of many coincidences or...

Originally posted by Fett Pinkus
Another one of those christian fundis

If you believe that the bible is gods word then explain to me how the south american sloth and koala bears got on the ark?

If you cant then you can talk all about how evolution is wrong but im not going to believe a word your saying

And here we go already. I'm not a Christian Fundi, nor did I mention religion anywhere. I didn't say it disproved evolution, but that it contradicted or possibly disproved the Darwinian mechanism for evolution. Already the assumptions and misreading is starting. There are many agnostic and atheist scientists that are doubting and outright denying the Darwinian mechanism. There's plenty of scientific evidence to suggest it's not the explanation, which is what I want to bring to light in later posts.

Originally posted by Thousand
Not only do I fail to see what this has to do at all with Darwinian evolution, but your tone and admission of your future plans leaves me both surprised and a little disgusted.

You don't see what it has to do with Darwinian evolution? I didn't see you give a Darwinian explanation which is what I asked for, so that right there says something. How do you explain what he witnessed? Was there a mutation in the ghost gene? Did that ghost-like form have DNA itself? How does the DNA in the cleric's body create another human form outside of his body? Where in the evolutionary tree do we put ghosts? Was he calling a soul to earth from the afterlife, and if so, how did that ability evolve?

As for copyright issues, it wasn't that I was going to cut and paste and use people's names. I want to see in general what explanations, denial, or excuses are given. And already looking at the other posts I'm getting just what I thought.

Originally posted by ben91069
I see what you were trying to say but it does not prove a thing other than the guy was probably fraudulent in certain occasions. Science stands on its own, and whether this guy believes in one thing and flip-flops in other matters does not make the evidence of science stand down.

Now, I wish it were so because good evidence is all most atheists ask for, but clearly faith needs a bit more than a contradiction of beliefs in one man to justify turning the tides.

The guy was fraudulent? What guy? Alfred Wallace? So let me get this straight, the theory of Natural Selection was invented by a fraud. Okay, I was actually expecting that. I find it really hard to believe that Wallace would just fabricate a fake story like the above, but maybe he was just a liar and couldn't control himself. And none of this has to do with faith, which is why I was giving a real eye witness account of something visually seen, not a blind belief. Science is about empirical evidence, and part of that is observation. What we have is an event observed by a scientist.

Originally posted by Heronumber0
The OP was not quite clear Elhardt. Are you saying that Wallace believed in other life-forms apart from humans or believed that humans had a soul? I think that these thoughts could be interpreted as mutually exclusive from Natural Selection/Evolution.

Actually it has nothing to do with what Wallace believed, but what he witnessed. Wallace however later in his life said that there were other beings and that a higher intelligence guided the development of man. But you'll have to look closer to the start of my post to see the Darwinian problems this observation had. However, as you brought up, no current evolutionary theory explains the existence or evolution of the soul, reincarnation, out of body experiences, and other things. So it's problematic on that level too.

Originally posted by Heronumber0
But that isn't a logical conclusion (responding to Heronumber0). You seem to be under the impression new species just "appear". The change is gradual. You don't just have monkey's one day then all of a sudden a monkey gives birth to a human. So attempting to trace back to a pair of humans would lead you no where, as this is not what happened.

Language, again, would have been a gradual process.

Guess what, one day you had an egg laying mammal and the next a placental mammal. All my searching for the gradual transition has led nowhere. Where are those that are 99% egg layer and 1% placental? What about 50% egg layer and %50 placental? Discontinuity was something I was going to bring up later on.

And about language. It's hard to image a gradual process for the language bees use to communicate the target location of a food source. How is that done? One day a bee came up with a way to communicate distance, but not the direction or elevation. Then thousands of generations later, one came up with a way to describe direction too. Then generations later, elevation. Then generations later bees could suddenly understand the dance the bee does to communicate that info. According to natural selection, things that aren't beneficial don't get passed on. In this bee example, the gradual steps are useless.

Originally posted by Legalizer
This form a charlatanism was all the rage in this time period. Look it up, its called spiritism.

And this is yet another response I expected. What Wallace describes is so incredible and seemingly totally impossible to hoax. But that doesn't stop people such as yourself from flippantly writing it off without any critical thought. I watch all the illusionists on TV and nothing they do comes close to seeing what Wallace saw a few feet away in broad daylight over 100 years ago. But you just call it charlatanism or spiritism without an explanation much the way somebody will right off the whole UFO phenomenon as whether balloons. Hey, I'm going to call myself a spiritulist right now and see if I can replicate the event. Hold on.... Okay back. Nope. I couldn't do it. I'd like to see somebody actually prove it was faked by either video taping themselves doing it, or at least giving a verbal explanation as to how it can be faked.


So to conclude I got the range of responses I expected, from Wallace is a liar, to the event was hoaxed but without an explanation as to how, no materialistic Darwinian explanation, and me being called a Christian Fundi. Just as I expected, nothing of substance or resolution.



[edit on 25-12-2007 by Elhardt]