Old Koreelah

...Time itself is one of the greatest mysteries of all.

I know a time traveller. He wears a big cowboy hat and walks from his cottage to the sheltered workshop each day. On the way he is often seen to stop and retrace his steps a number of times. Maybe he liked that bit so much he wanted to do it again.

 

 

...Most scary thing was our Dashound Jake, he would be sitting beside us up stairs and then all of a sudden he would go ballistic barking and looking up at someone or something, his hair would stand up on the back of his spine as he bailed up the ghost or spirit or what ever it was. He used to growl at them and his eyes would follow the thing around the room. He would bailed it up in the corner of the lounge room once and go absolutely ape $hit at it. Of course we couldn't see anything."...

 

I must say, we were glad to get out of the joint.

 

These type of events would happen two or three times a week. We kind of got used to it.

It seems that quite a few people experience unexplainable things like this. Their reaction says more about them than the experience itself.

 

 

Can anybody here give me concrete proof that GOD ...

I'll answer a similar question, Dazza. On Xmas Eve, on our annual family visit to church, a stunningly gorgeous young blonde walked past. After recovering my composure I informed my church-going wife that, yes there is a God.

 

The bandages come off next week.

 

 

Doesn't the Platypus stuff up the natural selection theory ??

Any body ??

...Irrefutable proof that the Creater smokes weed. (With apologies to Robin Williams)

 

 

...in the sand they found the stumps of stone pillars and fragments of half worked rock, the same stone and rock that they themselves had been excavating. they dug further and found coins, the petrified wooden handles of hammers, and pieces of other petrified wooden tools. Finally they came to a large wooden board, seven or eight feet long and an inch thick. like the wooden tools, it had also been petrified into a form of agate and it had been broken into pieces. When the pieces were reassembled, the workmen saw before them a quarryman's board of exactly the same kind they themselves used, worn in just the same way as their own boards were, with rounded, wavy edges..

Fascinating, Rank. I hope to get to Europe one day, so where can I see these artefacts?

 

 

Actually the religious folks almost got it right - when they say "God created man", the only thing wrong with that statement is that the subject and object are reversed.

The standard saying is that God created man in his image- and man sure returned the favour!

 

 

...Incredibly fascinating, incredibly expensive and incredibly useless.

Think more about that reaction, Bex. Our whole technological way of life is based on exploring new discoveries.

 

 

Of course the speed of light varies according to what it's passing through - that's the fundamental principle of refraction. Your glasses, your camera lens, the reason you need to wear goggles to see under water, rainbows, etc. Scientific dogma, horse ****.

Sheldrake claims that measurements of this and other "constants" vary constantly. Either he is wrong or science is ignoring an opportunity for new discoveries.

 

 

...Why do you claim this OK? Charles Darwin* himself stated that transitional fossils ought to be the most abundant types found and acknowledged that his theory rested on this being the case. So you disagree with him?....

His perception of how "transition" occurred may be different to mine. Time will tell which of Darwin's ideas was right. There are still a lot of fossils to be discovered.

 

 

...I doubt that Shelldrake's theories could be disproven or that a serious scientist would consider it worth his/her while to invest time into trying.

Why the hostility to a new idea? No wonder few scientists will stand with Sheldrake. Not good for their careers. Perhaps like Gallileo all over again.

 

There are several well-documented phenomena that "standard science" cannot explain. Sheldrake took an interest in these. After decades of study he believes he has an explanation. Why can people not give him a decent hearing?

 

 

Old K,

I have trouble taking anyone seriously who turns up in bare feet and a suit. That just put my b/s radar on full power but has nothing to do with an analysis of what he is propounding...

Most charlatans and con-men dress in suits (and shoes). That gives the well-dressed a bad name.

 

...His main thesis that he repeated many times is to me completely false and based on claim of fact that cannot be sustained...

...then science should disprove him.

 

...It is the dogmatic who go looking for "facts" that fit their ideology...

If only this were true. Scientists are human and I'm sure many do exactly that.

 

....whereas Science looks at the evidence and draws logical conclusions...Science, by definitions, is always open to new ideas...

That's as it should be, but what about the evidence that science cannot explain? Anyone who comes up with a plausible explanation that doesn't fit " standard science" is ridiculed. Sheldrake is one example.

 

...Often Science has been severely constrained by religious dogma...

...and Sheldrake is saying the same has happened with science.

 

...Rupert Shelldrake strikes me as an intellectual fraud. Again, adopting the trappings of Science and Philosophy to promote some lunatic theory...

You might find he has done decades of fair-dinkum research before publicising his theories.

 

...What Science would say about most things like Morphic Resonance and Chiropractic and all the pathies (homo, osteo, etc.) is not that it is utterly impossible and stupid but that it is simply unproven. Do the studies, have them peer reviewed and accepted and they are no longer old wives tales.

This is where we agree, Don. Why is Sheldrake speaking out? He wants more proper research done.

 

 

Rupert Sheldrake looks/sounds (to me) to be a little like that Erich van Daniken chappie who created a furor (created being the operative word) with his quasi-scientific novel "Chariots of the Gods?) ....after that bit I stopped watching...

That's a disappointing reaction, Geoff. I wish you could sit thru the whole talk, and a few more of his.

 

Any scientist would be offended if they were compared to von Daniken (whose convictions for fraud are on public record).

 

Who was ridiculed? Sheldrake must be one of the most mild-mannered people I have ever heard. His theories are based on a lifetime of careful research. What he says is revolutionary and deserving of more study. I would be interested to know if any of his ideas has been disproven by science.

 

 

Transitional species: why have they not been found? By their very nature they would be impossibly rare. From the millions of generations of a species we find a few dozen fossils, and yet we are a expecting to also find, preserved thru all the ages, that most rare of all: transitional species! Stamp collectors might illustrate this: millions of perfect copies of a stamp are printed, but a short print run has a small error. The few that are recovered are prized by collectors- but most are lost to time. So it is with transitional species.

 

Like the search for civilisations on other planets, finding the needle in the haystack...which haystack amoung billions?

 

We assume that complex organisms are a single living thing. Not really correct. They are actually colonies of mutually-supportive organisms. Most of the cells in you or I belong to other species. This might mean that flowers and other complex structures developed in relative isolation and were later assembled (like Lego) into larger organisms.

 

To butcher Mark Twain's famous line, rumours of the death of Darwinism are greatly exaggerated. That his theory is incomplete is easily acknowledged-but it's still the nearest thing to an explanation of what we see in nature. Those who come to bury Darwin should offer up a better alternative.

 

Surely we cannot bury the king until there is new one?

 

Many of us need some stability, some framework on which we can hang our sense of reality; if not Darwinism, then what? For some it is religion. I envy them their faith. For me, until something better comes along, it is Rupert Sheldrake. His theories of Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance make a lot of sense, and explain much that conventional science cannot.

 

 

Well I reckon Australia should buy a few Sukhoi SU-27's instead of that moneysink F-35, but that ain't going to happen either.

Governments would fall!

 

 

... the evidence is so strong that climate change is happening...How come there are so many disbelievers? ...

Perhaps genetic variation leaves a good proportion of us very resistant to change. I still refuse to get on Facebook, etc.

 

We'd be a sick society if everyone agreed, and a very dangerous one if everybody was easily convinced.

 

 

did you see that show on SBS about the gulf stream and the northern hemisphere's crap weather? very interesting

Thanks for that FT. I didn't know about that show. I'll look for it on iView.

 

Over the years that I have been banging on about climate change, I have included that scenario. With so much fresh water being release by the collapse of glaciers in western Greenland, a flush of fresh cold water into the Labrador Current could put the Gulf Stream right out of wack. Result: Britain has the same climate as Labrador, and the knock-on effects are enormous. Enough to end civilisations. Our planet's climate is pretty complicated.

 

 

...All religions think they have the right one and consequently all the others are not correct. Therefore to most thousands of religions don't make the grade....

Reminds me of this gem: it's old, but it's gold.

 

http://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/hell-a-scientific-explanation.125832/

 

 

Not sure what you are trying to say; atheism is a state of mind, not a religion. Do atheists have a church where they assemble to NOT believe in God? Don't be bloody silly!...

Actually Dafydd, meeting places for atheists have been opened in recent times. It seems the human need for communal "worship" is satisfied by gathering and singing songs about the best in human nature.

 

 

Hard to generalise on line losses but it is more likely less than 10% .

...probably true on average Don, but over the long distances we have in Australia the line losses must be substantially more.

 

Years ago the pioneering solar power station at White Cliffs in western NSW was in need of refurbishing. The relevant government Minister decreed that it be closed and a power line built from Broken Hill, which apparently cost more.

 

The transmission losses over that great distance would also have been substantial.

 

The plonker was eventually given a golden parachute to a cushy position in London.

 

 

...hopefully, it is replaced by nuclear fusion (not filthy fission).

Free, clean energy from nuclear fusion is already widely available, especially in Australia. We just need to collect a lot more of it.

 

 

...atheist organizations in the west (like the ABC here) are quite accepting of and active in promoting Islam. I believe they serve the same boss.

Crickey GG, I'd missed that! You mean Auntie is a front for the Islamisation of Oz? Next time I watch an episode if Compass I'll have to be on my guard.

 

 

...Theists who are people who have been told by people they trust that there is a God and they better follow certain practices or they will burn in hell for all eternity...

 

But what is true is unarguable is that every Christian, Muslim and Jew, every buddhist, Daoist and Scientologist is one because, usually, at an early age they were brainwashed. No Christian is allowed to reach the age of reason and work out for themselves what makes sense.

I agree with your epistle Don, but could imagine it causing affront to some. As a lapsed/lost member of one religion I have seen wonderful acts of humanity by professed believers as well as plenty of hypocracy.

 

I've also seen the same among unbelievers. Good character is not confined to those with expressed religious faith.

 

Perhaps the bravest are those who speak out rather than going blindly along with the mob. They are the true heroes.

 

 

I imagine that there would be as much as 50% loss of energy during the conversion from the pumping.

...similar to the losses involved in pumping electricity over long distances.

 

 

There seems to some confusion about this, stand alone does work 24 hours because batteries are used, it is the system that feeds into the grid which does not. The problem is stand alone only suits some people and cannot replace the grid.

I know of new home builders very keen to go off grid- in the suburbs. That must have the power companies a might concerned; some already have limited the amount of roof-top solar you can feed back into the grid.

 

 

I agree that solar is lovely............ BUT ...Stand alone Solar does not work! You must use the necessary back up and it will. Now that, at the moment is coal fired power stations....

..."at the moment" - Australia's energy system will be frozen in time unless Governments stop protecting the vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby. Time to let new, clean, locally-owned players in and give them the sort of support that coal has always enjoyed.