A Challenge to The System
Be that as it may, out of the many voices who raised doubts on our view of History - or at least our interpretation of it is a brilliant Scholar whose background is not paleontology or Geology but rather journalism, enter the ring Graham Hancock.
This was at a time that I now realize, I personally entered into a stream of consciousness at the time just as the wave began to gather strength.
Graham Hancock's main argument is centered around his conviction that we are a "Species with Amnesia"
Here's his famous quote:
"I believe we are a species with Amnesia. I think we have forgotten our roots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And we live in a society that invests large amounts of money and vast amounts of energy in ensuring that we stay lost. A society that invests in creating unconsciousness, which invests in keeping people asleep so that we are just passive consumers or products and not really asking any of the questions."
Where did Graham Hancock get his information from? His research was really spearheaded by one of those 'independent Scholars' back in the day who were writing in the 'fringe'.
His key proposal was that in historical times mankind witnessed global catastrophes of cosmic origin.
In 1982, Velikovsky published "Mankind in Amnesia," a work focused on the psychological condition and case history of the human race.
"Virtually every aspect of human behavior, every pattern in human history, and every article of human belief, suggests how human thought and action might have been shaped and molded by repressed collective memories of cosmic catastrophes that befell our ancestors as recently as one hundred generations ago."
This idea was propagated by a highly respected and very eminent scientist and zoologist we have already looked at with regard to Irreducible complexity, brilliant groundbreaking scientist Georges Cuvier
He developed basic methods of biostratigraphy by studying sedimentary rock layers and fossil succession. He began the popular field of comparative anatomy by studying the bones of modern elephants and ancient mammoths. He named the first flying reptile, the pterodactyl, and he even has five living animals named after him.
This was widely accepted among Geologists at the time, how is it that these ideas ended up becoming rejected and marginalized?
Was this because of the evidence, or because Darwinism needed a specific world view that better suited their theory?
Yes I admit, thats a bit of a leap but it's not hard to see where this was going. . .
This becomes a big problem for the Darwinists, so they needed a better concept in which natural selection could take place. Most fortuitously the concept had already been formulated in the mind of James Hutton. He proposed the idea that the features of the earth had developed very slowly over vast ranges of time.
In this theory The erosion of landforms, the deposition of sediments, the drifting of continents and the eruption of volcanoes - all of these were happening long ago, on roughly the same scale and at roughly the same rate as they are today.
This was picked up on by Charles Lyell who published Principles of Geology in the 1830's. It was this book that had such a major influence on Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Since then this approach was adopted as the basis for modern Geology and the theories of Cuvier sidelined. Today this has formed the foundation for our modern Paradigm of reality.
A neatly ordered concept of a materialistic reality that dovetails comfortably into a progressive development of History that moves from simple to complex and from Dumb to Smart.
Its a worldview that makes man the center of the universe. . . I say this because it is encapsulated in an understanding of reality that is completely limited to man and his 5 senses at the apex of this sensory Universe obviously is man since we are smarter than the animals.
There are so many obvious problems with this, the most obvious one is if we are so great why are we wrecking the planet and developing technologies that kill other people more efficiently? Isn't there something terribly wrong with us?
We will explore more of this later
Also, it is a safe option, anything that happens outside of this parameter is to be rejected and totally ignored. And of course this is what we witness. . .
It is a very inwardly focussed - it ignores possibilities that perhaps we are wrong on certain issues, it assumes we have arrived at conclusions that are now closed and may not be questioned. Like a religious orthodoxy it claims to have arrived at the truth and there can be nothing added. As we learn and grow we need to make room for the possibility that new discoveries may force us to rewrite our science and, our History. But what we witness in reality is not a determined attempt to fight for the truth no matter where it leads, but rather an entrenched community that will only rewrite information when it reinforces their pre-existing conclusions.
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor
In a nutshell, as random genetic mutations occur within an organism's genetic code, the beneficial mutations are preserved because they aid survival this is called "natural selection."
These beneficial mutations are passed on to the next generation. Over time, beneficial mutations accumulate and the result is an entirely different organism
While Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a relatively young archetype, the evolutionary worldview itself is not that new.
Ancient Greek philosophers such as Anaximander postulated the development of life from non-life and the evolutionary descent of man from animal.
Charles Darwin was interested in finding out a mechanism for evolution, so came up with the idea of "natural selection."
This mechanism acts to preserve and accumulate minor advantageous genetic mutations. A fish learns to walk on dry land, its offspring would inherit that advantage and pass it on. The inferior (disadvantaged) members of the same species would gradually die out, leaving only the superior (advantaged) members of the species.
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is by necessity a slow gradual process. Darwin wrote, ". . . Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps.
The different shapes of the finches beaks was the initial observation Darwin made that gave him the "evidence" he sought to demonstrate natural selection.
Of course adaptation within a species is aeons away from Speciation in which adaptation over a few "days of eternity" becomes a new species altogether (dinosaur becomes a bird etc. etc.). . .
But at least the concept was established in the imagination of Darwin and he disclosed this in his book "origin of species".
This process takes place within a uniformitarian system in which the factors in the environment stay essentially the same year after year for millions upon millions of years. Everything that exists today that we understand as our materialistic reality has always been this way with relatively minor changes over the billions of years the earth is supposed to have been around.
Of course relativism comes to mind and we find ourselves realizing that this measure of time is once again worked out in relation to man. Our life times are four score and ten as the Biblical phrase states and we measure all around us in humanistic comparisons. The universe is very large. . . in comparison to our size. Millions of years is very long. . . compared to our lifetimes.
Any consciousness that is not restricted by a human life span or a particular dimension, might not consider a million years very long or the universe to be particularly large.
Which Brings me to the next Book that plays a role in my thinking. . .
When "the commander of the Vl'Hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts. . .faces off with his arch nemesis over something inconsequential, but of course is ironically an inconsolable affront for certain kinds of intergalactic species. . .and now there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.
. . . the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
And we chuckle at the irony but it beautifully illustrates the problems we have to deal with time and scale.
Hendrik Willem van Loon wrote about the same problem with his parable from "The Story of Mankind" interesting parable that illustrates the slow passage of a uniformitarian time scale in the process of evolution.
Many of these 'single days' are what is required for the alchemy of evolution to take place. But when considers the enormity of the "single day," we become conscious how the concept is restricted to our mere human scale, Douglas Adams could have included a story of a creature on a distant planet that takes thousands of years to blink, this would be and impossibly long period of time, but to who? Not the creature whose blink lasted a millisecond in its own unique timeframe. Is man the measure of all things? The idea of a "Vast Universe"only has this meaning when compared to us.
There is a problem with this sense of scale and time - to illustrate - In the "Men in Black" movie spoof.
A cat walks around with an entire galaxy hanging around its neck. And at the opposite end of the scale, at the end of the movie the camera pans out through vistas of endless space until the entire universe is encapsulated in a single marble that is being played with by two aliens, who have a whole bag full of them. . .!
These 'Aliens' are not aware of themselves as being particularly large, so the whole situation is completely relative. The concept of size becomes taken to a vast extreme in this demonstration. . . But it is not limitless. Darwinian man believes in a very big, but enclosed system.
The idea of endless and timeless is addressed in all three examples, but this issue is always compared with man, and makes the assumption that reality can only be understood in the mind of men, since we don't know of any higher reality or any other consciousness greater than ours.
But this is a highly debatable humanist idea and just like our other establishment concepts it too, deserves to be challenged. The ideas of size and scale and time and space are essentially mental constructs.
Douglas Adams was so right it the absurdism of his Hitch-hiker's guide, but he had no other recourse, how many variations on these themes could he make before running out of absurdism? The problem is these ideas all exist within the confines of an enclosed system.
I first read Fingerprints of the Gods back in the mid 90's. . .
This was at a time that I now realize, I personally entered into a stream of consciousness at the time just as the wave began to gather strength.
Graham Hancock's main argument is centered around his conviction that we are a "Species with Amnesia"
Here's his famous quote:
"I believe we are a species with Amnesia. I think we have forgotten our roots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And we live in a society that invests large amounts of money and vast amounts of energy in ensuring that we stay lost. A society that invests in creating unconsciousness, which invests in keeping people asleep so that we are just passive consumers or products and not really asking any of the questions."
Where did Graham Hancock get his information from? His research was really spearheaded by one of those 'independent Scholars' back in the day who were writing in the 'fringe'.
Immanuel Velikovsky
His key proposal was that in historical times mankind witnessed global catastrophes of cosmic origin.
In 1982, Velikovsky published "Mankind in Amnesia," a work focused on the psychological condition and case history of the human race.
"Virtually every aspect of human behavior, every pattern in human history, and every article of human belief, suggests how human thought and action might have been shaped and molded by repressed collective memories of cosmic catastrophes that befell our ancestors as recently as one hundred generations ago."
Catastrophism
One of the interesting references Hancock makes is with regard to a World Wide Flood which has obvious links to the Old Testament. Graham Hancock is not a believer but he agrees that the story of the Biblical flood is a huge catastrophic event that is embedded in the consciousness of mankind. As evidence of this he refers to the countless myths and legends that closely mirror the Biblical story.This idea was propagated by a highly respected and very eminent scientist and zoologist we have already looked at with regard to Irreducible complexity, brilliant groundbreaking scientist Georges Cuvier
He developed basic methods of biostratigraphy by studying sedimentary rock layers and fossil succession. He began the popular field of comparative anatomy by studying the bones of modern elephants and ancient mammoths. He named the first flying reptile, the pterodactyl, and he even has five living animals named after him.
 |
| In his observations about the fossil record, Cuvier noticed some mysterious gaps, certain species would show up for long periods of geologic time and then suddenly disappear. Combined with his impressions of the violent natural disasters recounted in the Bible, Cuvier's observations made him believe that most of Earth's history was characterized by geologic catastrophe. |
This was widely accepted among Geologists at the time, how is it that these ideas ended up becoming rejected and marginalized?
Was this because of the evidence, or because Darwinism needed a specific world view that better suited their theory?
Yes I admit, thats a bit of a leap but it's not hard to see where this was going. . .
This becomes a big problem for the Darwinists, so they needed a better concept in which natural selection could take place. Most fortuitously the concept had already been formulated in the mind of James Hutton. He proposed the idea that the features of the earth had developed very slowly over vast ranges of time.
In this theory The erosion of landforms, the deposition of sediments, the drifting of continents and the eruption of volcanoes - all of these were happening long ago, on roughly the same scale and at roughly the same rate as they are today.
This was picked up on by Charles Lyell who published Principles of Geology in the 1830's. It was this book that had such a major influence on Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Since then this approach was adopted as the basis for modern Geology and the theories of Cuvier sidelined. Today this has formed the foundation for our modern Paradigm of reality.
The Accepted Paradigm
In which Anthropologists Archeologists and Historians work within. . .A neatly ordered concept of a materialistic reality that dovetails comfortably into a progressive development of History that moves from simple to complex and from Dumb to Smart.
Its a worldview that makes man the center of the universe. . . I say this because it is encapsulated in an understanding of reality that is completely limited to man and his 5 senses at the apex of this sensory Universe obviously is man since we are smarter than the animals.
We will explore more of this later
Also, it is a safe option, anything that happens outside of this parameter is to be rejected and totally ignored. And of course this is what we witness. . .
It is a very inwardly focussed - it ignores possibilities that perhaps we are wrong on certain issues, it assumes we have arrived at conclusions that are now closed and may not be questioned. Like a religious orthodoxy it claims to have arrived at the truth and there can be nothing added. As we learn and grow we need to make room for the possibility that new discoveries may force us to rewrite our science and, our History. But what we witness in reality is not a determined attempt to fight for the truth no matter where it leads, but rather an entrenched community that will only rewrite information when it reinforces their pre-existing conclusions.
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor
This is the dominant view in Education and Government Today.
Darwin's general theory presumes the development of life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic (undirected) "descent with modification".In a nutshell, as random genetic mutations occur within an organism's genetic code, the beneficial mutations are preserved because they aid survival this is called "natural selection."
These beneficial mutations are passed on to the next generation. Over time, beneficial mutations accumulate and the result is an entirely different organism
Natural Selection
While Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a relatively young archetype, the evolutionary worldview itself is not that new.
Ancient Greek philosophers such as Anaximander postulated the development of life from non-life and the evolutionary descent of man from animal.
Charles Darwin was interested in finding out a mechanism for evolution, so came up with the idea of "natural selection."
This mechanism acts to preserve and accumulate minor advantageous genetic mutations. A fish learns to walk on dry land, its offspring would inherit that advantage and pass it on. The inferior (disadvantaged) members of the same species would gradually die out, leaving only the superior (advantaged) members of the species.
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is by necessity a slow gradual process. Darwin wrote, ". . . Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps.
The different shapes of the finches beaks was the initial observation Darwin made that gave him the "evidence" he sought to demonstrate natural selection.
Of course adaptation within a species is aeons away from Speciation in which adaptation over a few "days of eternity" becomes a new species altogether (dinosaur becomes a bird etc. etc.). . .
But at least the concept was established in the imagination of Darwin and he disclosed this in his book "origin of species".
Uniformitarianism
This process takes place within a uniformitarian system in which the factors in the environment stay essentially the same year after year for millions upon millions of years. Everything that exists today that we understand as our materialistic reality has always been this way with relatively minor changes over the billions of years the earth is supposed to have been around.
Of course relativism comes to mind and we find ourselves realizing that this measure of time is once again worked out in relation to man. Our life times are four score and ten as the Biblical phrase states and we measure all around us in humanistic comparisons. The universe is very large. . . in comparison to our size. Millions of years is very long. . . compared to our lifetimes.
Any consciousness that is not restricted by a human life span or a particular dimension, might not consider a million years very long or the universe to be particularly large.
Which Brings me to the next Book that plays a role in my thinking. . .
The HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy
This was demonstrated brilliantly in Douglass Adams "hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy which is a brilliant parody of the whole darwinian philosophical system. . .
When "the commander of the Vl'Hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts. . .faces off with his arch nemesis over something inconsequential, but of course is ironically an inconsolable affront for certain kinds of intergalactic species. . .and now there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.
. . . the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
And we chuckle at the irony but it beautifully illustrates the problems we have to deal with time and scale.
Hendrik Willem van Loon wrote about the same problem with his parable from "The Story of Mankind" interesting parable that illustrates the slow passage of a uniformitarian time scale in the process of evolution.
Many of these 'single days' are what is required for the alchemy of evolution to take place. But when considers the enormity of the "single day," we become conscious how the concept is restricted to our mere human scale, Douglas Adams could have included a story of a creature on a distant planet that takes thousands of years to blink, this would be and impossibly long period of time, but to who? Not the creature whose blink lasted a millisecond in its own unique timeframe. Is man the measure of all things? The idea of a "Vast Universe"only has this meaning when compared to us.
There is a problem with this sense of scale and time - to illustrate - In the "Men in Black" movie spoof.
A cat walks around with an entire galaxy hanging around its neck. And at the opposite end of the scale, at the end of the movie the camera pans out through vistas of endless space until the entire universe is encapsulated in a single marble that is being played with by two aliens, who have a whole bag full of them. . .!
These 'Aliens' are not aware of themselves as being particularly large, so the whole situation is completely relative. The concept of size becomes taken to a vast extreme in this demonstration. . . But it is not limitless. Darwinian man believes in a very big, but enclosed system.
The idea of endless and timeless is addressed in all three examples, but this issue is always compared with man, and makes the assumption that reality can only be understood in the mind of men, since we don't know of any higher reality or any other consciousness greater than ours.
But this is a highly debatable humanist idea and just like our other establishment concepts it too, deserves to be challenged. The ideas of size and scale and time and space are essentially mental constructs.
Douglas Adams was so right it the absurdism of his Hitch-hiker's guide, but he had no other recourse, how many variations on these themes could he make before running out of absurdism? The problem is these ideas all exist within the confines of an enclosed system.
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Even Children can have a concept of the infinite - our conceptions of infinity may be more real than mere thoughts, and can it be that our physical reality is also sustained by our concept of it.
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