Relics of Eden

Relics of Eden, by Daniel J. Fairbanks

I read most of this book a couple of months back, although not all because the library wanted it back (I tend to stack-read my books).

Simply put, this book is a must-read for those who wish to prove to themselves and to others that Apes and Humans have common ancestors.

The book is both scientifically accurate, well-references, AND readable. First, it introduces concepts like junk DNA, then explains how some of it is created by viruses and self-splicing elements inserting themselves at random into the coding DNA. So for example, a sejunkntence might havjunke the word "junk" injunkserted at junk random places.

Now while you might think that a sentence like: "This sentences describes how to make an eyeball" could have been written by an intelligent designer in all species that have eyeballs, it is a little harder to think that an omnipotent designer would have written: "This senjunktence describesjunk how to make an eyejunkball", BUT IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to conceive how two seperate species having the same sentence "This senjunktence describesjunk how to make an eyejunkball" are not inheriting this material from each other. Why would God include the same junk DNA at the same places in both sentences?

And yes - we do know its junk, because we see this same word "junk" littered throughout our genome thousands of times, inserted all over the place.

More deeply, the word "junk" isnt a 4-letter word, but a 50-letter word, most of which have been changed slightly through the millennia, so it may read like:
"iamjunkpleasecopimealloveryourdna" in one place, "iamjunkpleasecopymealloveryuurdna"in a second place, and "iamdjunkpleasecopymealloveryourdna" in a third.
When you compare these, you can reconstruct the original junk word:
"iamjunkpleasecopymealloveryourdna"
And lo and behold, when you do this, the junk word starts acting like a computer virus, spreading copies of itself through the genome. So we see what this word is - its an infectious piece of DNA that copies itself - so no surprise that we see it littering itself through the genome.

Now when we compare Chimp and Gorilla DNA, we might see
"I am an ape, I havjunke two hands andjunk two feet" in both their DNA sequences.
But if we look at human DNA, it reads:"I ajunkm an ape, I havjunke two hands andjunk two feet"

Now its clear from this that humans have evolved from the same ancestors as chimps and gorillas, and that humans have had a new instance of "junk" added since we diverged from them.

This is all explained much more clearly in the book.

Another argument is that whereas the other apes have 24 pairs of Chromosomes, humans have 23. Now chromosomes have a definite structure:

endakdjhflsdjkfhcenter;asdkfjlsdkfjend

You can see the word "end" at the ends, and the word "center" at the center.

Now most of our chromosomes and those of apes are similar, except that whereas apes have two:

endblahblahcentertalkend and
endfunnycentergooberend

we have just one

endblahblahcentertalkeendfunnycentergooberend

It doesnt take a massive stretch of the imagination to see what has happened: the two ape chromosomes fused to create a single human chromosome.

You can see that clearly because just as you would expect, there is an "end" within the chromosome, and two "center"s. Furthermore, one side is the same as one ape chromosome, and the other side is the same as the other ape chromosome. You can even see the join: "eend". Here, two "end"s got stuck together, losing and "nd" in the process.

To argue that evolution hasnt occurred, and that all these are just coincidences - the happenstance occurrence of junk at identical places, apparent fusion events - is to say that any designer has loaded the genome with so many false leads to pretend to mankind that he has evolved from apes, and that therefore the designer is vindictive and purposefully misleading.

The alternative is to accept that we simply evolved from ape-like creatures.

DISCLAIMER

Dear Readers;
I have just decided to try out a popular affiliate program. Blogger recommends ["You may also want to disclose to your readers that you will earn a commission on their purchase — some readers even prefer knowing that you benefit from their business."] that I let you guys know that I will make a pittance should you purchase a book using the links at the bottom of the posts, although their partner who runs the affilate program says that I cant publicly announce my relationship with them in their agreement form. Some of you may even prefer to buy using my links knowing that I'm more likely to update this blog more regularly if it pays, no matter how small said pittance. Note that if you wish to avoid subsidizing me, just navigate away after finding the page, and then come back. I wont get a sous unless you clink on the link below the post and follow through to a purchase directly.
I doubt that the partner will mind this announcement, but just to be safe, I'm not mentioning their name.

However; I am including these links primarily as a service to you, so that you can find the books I'm talking about.

I do not endorse any particular vendors, and indeed, under the terms, I appear to be forbidden from linking to products "offered on [any] other site". I'm going to risk stating in this disclaimer that I prefer to use my taxpayer-funded, socialist local library service, and failing that, to browse second-hand booksellers.

I am never going to endorse any products simply because I plan to make money - believe me, I doubt I will get a dime off this, so there would be no point in me prostituting myself in this way.

I'm using this program primarily, as I say, as a way of linking to the material, at a site where you can read other reviews; secondarily, I'm just playing with this to test it out. Gotta catch up with this internet thingy.

Disclaimer over.

Now back to the books.

Racing Towards Armageddon

Racing toward Armageddon, Michael Baigent, ISBN 9780061363184

An interesting book, in which the author of the books that the "Da Vinci Code" is based on waxes poetic about the suicidal drive to bring about the end times by the major monotheistic religions.

In it, he describes actual moves being made by various evangelical, muslim extremist and zionist groups to bring Armageddon to reality. For instance, in order to rush across the Holy Mount and blow up the Golden Mosque, Zionist extremists would have to be ritually bathed in the blood of a pure red heifer for fear that they might be impure as they crossed the site of the holy of holies. Extremists in America are attempting to breed this cow so that the zionists can "pure"ly blow up the mosque and precipiate WWIII. I mean, if youre going to destroy mankind, you better be ritually pure, yes?

He also describes how Armageddon has already come to pass, in that a Christian General, Kitbuqa, acting on behalf of the Mongol hordes, razed Baghdad (Babylon) in 1258, then crossed the Euphrates and, having taken Aleppo and Damascus, took up position on the plains of Jezreel (Armageddon). A Muslim army was dispatched, and one bloody battle later, Kitbuqa's head was sent back on a pikestaff to Cairo. From the Muslim version of Revelations point of view, this was the prophecy come true (although most Christians and Muslims dont appear to be aware of it).

Baigent also makes an interesting point: Why didnt John mention Muslims anywhere in his prophecy? Unless the Muslims are not going to be fighting in the end times, its curious that he saw nothing about Islam or Mohammed in his dreams.

He also dissects Revelations in terms of what John actually meant: the beast with 7 heads (heads = hills) was Rome, and the 10 crowns were the 10 Seleucid kings from the east that he expected to defeat Rome.

Staring at the Sun

Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irvin D. Yalom ISBN 0787996688

I picked this up at the library because of my interest in spiritual growth/occult societies. That is, several occult societies purport to develop programs that favor personal growth, and the theme of this book seemed to be tangentially relevant to that.

While the book didnt give me exactly what I was looking for (rituals incorporating the facing of death for the purposes of affirming growth, for example), it did reaffirm some truths that I hold about the subject of death.

For example, it strongly reaffirms the idea of treating death as an ally (as in Carlos Castaneda's reports of Don Juan in (I think) "Tales of Power", in that having death as a constant companion will teach one to live better. This idea can also be found in the wonderful book "The book of Skulls" by Robert Silverberg, in which part of the immortality teachings of a monastic order hidden in the Sonoran desert consists of meditating on the presence of the skull beneathe the skin.

The book was a rather easy read, full of short patient anecdotes, and low on complexity, but in the end I tossed it about halfway through simply because it was quite repetitive. For me, however, it did fulfil one of my criteria for a useful book - it stimulated several trains of thought.

It also provided me with a quote to ponder, from "Zorba the Greek":

"Leave Death nothing but a burnt-out castle"

In other words, have a great party in life, and then youre not saving anything up that will only be given, in time, to Death.

It also reiterated ideas I have on the survival of the soul after death, giving it the name "rippling", which I hadnt come across before. While the idea is something I picked up years ago, he placed it in the context of using the idea to alleviate death fears. In my terms, the "soul" is the sum of our ideas, and "life after death" can be achieved by sending those ideas out to others (as I'm doing now, to you). Inasmuch as the ideas live on, so do we. Yalom is a secularist, and believes that this idea substitutes for the afterlife of the major religions, and in that, I basically agree.

This book would probably be useful for those with death anxiety, particularly atheists and agnostics who havent worked out the ideas for themselves yet.

Overall rating, 6/10 (readability/usefulness/thought-provoking)

The Bible

While the existence of a God is a tricky question, it becomes less tricky to decide about the Bible. Currently, I'm reading a book entitled: "Misquoting Jesus", which is written by a diehard born-again evangelical who went to bible college and ended up being totally convinced that its the work of man.
Probably a good place to start is to recognize that many bible verses do not exist in early copies of the bible books in question, leading anyone with half a mind to conclude that they were added later.
But overall, the book is a great place to start if you want to learn how scholars deal with these texts.

(7/10) - for readability, and as a source of information on how the Bible is written, together with tidbits to throw at biblethumpers

The crucifixion of the crucifixion of truth

Well, having examined the book, and checked its sources, its clear that the authors appear to have the only sources available for their quotes - quite suspicious. Furthermore, when you look at the books where the quotes should be, the quotes are missing. Skip.

The First Question of religion

I guess the first question regarding religion would be the question as to whether there exists a God or not. There is a first obvious answer, and that is that it is not possible to decide one way or another. Obviously, if there were an easy answer, there wouldnt still be a debate. Most people have come down to saying that Science cant prove or disprove God, and some even say that it shouldnt try.

But the closer I look at this question, the clearer it becomes to me that not only is the existence of God unprovable either way, but that it seems that the question is designed to be unprovable. What I mean by that, is that you get wierd things like the ability of meditation to give you experiences that are consistent with seeing God - boundlessness, a feeling of infinite love, ecstasy and so on - but this can be explained by science as the deadening of several brain areas that deal with defining the me/universe boundary, and so on. So you have a spiritual experience that can hypothetically be explained by science, but it seems coincidental that the brain on meditation would give this effect, and not simply send you to sleep, say, or give you horrible feelings. Why does it just "happen" to give you spiritual experiences? Most things are like this - they give god-answers, which can be explained, just enough to disprove the god-proof, but never enough to dismiss them entirely. Faith, it seems, will always be required, as proof will never be found. Yet there will always remain enough grounds for faith. Curious coincidence that. Just curious enough.