GENIUS FORUMS

Cory Patrick wrote:Evolutionary theory doesnt totally make sense to me. How does something come from nothing?

Cause and effect seems so barren and desolate.

The 'life' element is inexplicable.

Orthodox Cause and effect mechanical explanations work just fine when explaining how species differ according to features they had 'lost' over time.

But 'gaining' eyes? wings? the ability to 'glow'?

I said, "yes, but how can they mutate so orderly and with such sophistication

Mutations that bring a species into a 'higher order' are perhaps triggered by an agency of intelligence tampering/tweaking with the DNA of the species.

Cory Patrick wrote:I attribute 'gains' such as eyes, wings, glowing, and highly advanced brains, to spontaneous 'mutations'. A friend of mine once argued that these mutations are random and can beget orderly species that go onto survive. I said, "yes, but how can they mutate so orderly and with such sophistication without some sort of intelligent experimentation, without some sort of guiding trigger?" He said: "well, right now, in some labratories, they are playing with certain genes and chemicals in hopes of triggering random mutations to prove that this is possible.....and any day now they prove it is all random and by chance.....". So you see, he argued himself into a corner. The scientists tried to prove that mutations happened randomly and mechanically.........absurdly they tried to prove randomness and chance by using their 'reason' to experiment and artifically produce a mutation....and even then they failed at bringing into being anything other than severe disorder.

cosmic_prostitute wrote:Child: Can I put an engine on my bike daddy?

Dad: No son, that will not work. Your bike is designed to be a bike. And my motorcycle is designed to be a motorcycle. You cannot magically transform your bike into my motorcycle.

Hades,

The cruelty of the world suggest that this cosmic intelligence is not at all supremely wise and compassionate and perhaps is concerned with aesthetics and creating exotic things of beauty that co-exist with remarkable harmony (when it works, it is ineffable genius -- when it fails, it is wretched).

If you see my point of view as faulty, Please, by all means, bring me to my senses.

(Hades, if I recall correctly - -I believe you liked UG krishnamurti - -- the biological transformation that he claims to have undergone...

ken wrote:hades,
I have a theory, relative to the evolution human consciousness and the philosphy of aesthetics. When it comes to ( human )creation, the genius is lord.

Not sure exactly what your point was.... but historically, motorcycles did very nearly evolve from bicycles. Many early motorcycles were nothing more than a bicycle with an engine strapped on, and some motorcycle manufacturers got their start making such engines (e.g., Ducati with the Cucciolo). Many early motorcycles had pedals (partly because of the unreliability and low power of early engines).

cosmic_prostitute wrote:I suspect creative intelligence is necessary to create these sort of subtle beauty, it is not a random process.

Lennyrizzo wrote:

Cory Patrick wrote:(Hades, if I recall correctly - -I believe you liked UG krishnamurti - -- the biological transformation that he claims to have undergone...would it be random mutation? Or was his Dna tampered with to create a superior product? If UG Krishnamurti is a con like quinn says -- he is the greatest con to have ever walked the earth. A very intriguiging man. The etymological root meaning of the word intrigue is: 'to lure into harms way.' ) !

What's that? How about more on this bio-trans.....

All kinds of funny things happened to me. I remember when I rubbed my body like this, there was a sparkle, like a phosphorous glow, on the body. She used to run out of her bedroom to see—she thought there were cars going that way in the middle of the night. Every time I rolled in my bed there was a sparkling of light, (Laughs) and it was so funny for me—"What is this?" It was electricity—that is why I say it is an electromagnetic field. At first I thought it was because of my nylon clothes and static electricity; but then I stopped using nylon. I was a very skeptical heretic, to the tips of my toes; I never believed in anything; even if I saw some miracle happen before me, I didn't accept that at all—such was the make-up of this man. It never occurred to me that anything of that sort was in the making for me.(...)

The whole thing is finished for me and that's all. The linking gets broken and once it is broken it is finished. Then it is not once that thought explodes—every time a thought arises it explodes. The division cannot stay there, it's a physical impossibility. You don't have to do a thing about it. That is why I say that when this explosion takes place (I use the word explosion because it's like a nuclear explosion) it leaves behind chain-reactions. Every cell in your body has to undergo this change.

It's an irreversible change. There's no question of your going back. It is like a nuclear explosion. It shatters the whole body. It is not an easy thing. It is the end of the man, such a shattering thing that it blasts every cell, every nerve in your body. I went through terrible physical torture at that moment; not that you experience the explosion—you can't experience the explosion—but its after-effects. The fallout is the thing that changes the whole chemistry of your body. The senses are operating now without any coordinator or center, that's all I can say. Unless that alchemy or change in the whole chemistry takes place, there is no way of freeing this organism from thought, from the continuity of thought.

The blinking of the eyes stopped and then there were changes in taste, smell and hearing. I noticed that my skin was soft like silk and had a peculiar kind of glow, a golden color.

I no longer spend time in reverie, worry, conceptualization and the other kinds of thinking that most people do when they're alone. My mind is only engaged when it's needed, for instance when you ask questions, or when I have to fix the tape-recorder or something like that. My memory is in the background and only comes into play when it's needed, automatically. When it's not needed there is no mind here, there is no thought; there is only life.

My body had gone away and it has never come back. The points of contact are all that is there for the body. Nothing else is there for me because the seeing is altogether independent of the sense of touch here. I had discovered that all my senses were without any coordination. I felt the life energy drawing to a focal point from different parts of my body. Even now it happens to me. The hands and feet become cold, the body becomes stiff, the heartbeat slows down, the breathing slows down and then there is a gasping for breath. Up to a point you are there. You breathe your last breath, as it were, and then you are finished.

What happens after that, nobody knows. How long it lasted I don't know. I can't say anything about that because the experiencer was finished. There was nobody to experience that death at all. So that was the end of it. I got up. The things that had astonished me that week had become permanent fixtures. I call all these events a calamity because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, blissful, full of love, ecstasy and all that kind of a thing, this is physical torture. Not a calamity to me but to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen.

It's something like you imagine New York. You dream about it. You want to be there. When you are actually there, nothing of it is there. It is a godforsaken place and even the devils have probably forsaken that place. It's not the thing that you had sought after and wanted so much but totally different.

What is there you really don't know. You have no way of knowing anything about that. There is no image here. Then suddenly, there was an outburst of tremendous energy shaking the whole body, vibrating. It lasted for hours. I couldn't bear it but there was nothing I could do to stop it. There was a total helplessness. This went on and on, day after day. Whenever I sat, it started—this vibration like an epileptic fit or something. Not even an epileptic fit; it went on for days. It was a very painful process because the body has limitations. It has a form, a shape of its own.

So when there is an outburst of energy which is not your energy or my energy but God's (call it by any name you like) it is like a river in spate. The energy that is operating there does not feel the limitations of the body. It is not interested. It has its own momentum. It is a very painful thing. It is not ecstatic, blissful and all that rubbish, stuff and nonsense. It is really a painful thing.

Oh I suffered for months before and after that, everybody has—a great cascade; not one but thousands. It went on and on for months. It's a very painful experience, painful in the sense that the energy has a peculiar operation of its own. It is clockwise, counterclockwise, and then it is this way, and then this way, and then this way. Like an atom, it moves inside—not in one part of your body—the whole body. It is as if a wet towel were being wrung to get rid of the water. It is like that—the whole of our body. It's such a painful thing. It goes on even now. You can't invite it. You can't ask it to come. You can't do anything. It gives you the feeling that it is enveloping you, that it is descending on you.

Every time it is new. Very strange, every time it comes in a different way. So you don't know what is happening. You lie down on your bed and suddenly it begins. It begins to move slowly like ants. I'd think there were bugs in my bed, jump out, look, see no bugs, then I'd go back, then again. The hairs are electrified. So it slowly moves. There were pains all over the body. Thought has controlled this body to such an extent that when that loosens, the whole metabolism is agog. The whole thing was changing in its own way without my doing anything. Every cell started changing and it went on and on for six months. In all, it took three years for this body to fall into a new rhythm of its own. I behaved normally, I didn't know what was happening. It was a strange situation.

The state is something natural. Do you see the swellings here? Yesterday was the new moon. The body is affected by everything that is happening around you. It is not separate. Whatever is happening there is also happening here. There is only the physical response. This is affection. Your body is affected by everything that is happening around you, and you can't prevent this for the simple reason that the armor that you have built around yourself is destroyed. So it is very vulnerable to everything that is happening there.

There are certain glands. These ductless glands are located in exactly the same spots where the Hindus speculated the chakras are. They have feelings, extraordinary feelings. There is one gland here which is called the thymus gland. Doctors tell us that is active through childhood until puberty then becomes dormant. In your natural state that gland is reactivated.

[Up and down his torso, neck and head, his friends observed swellings of various shapes and colors which came and went at intervals. On his lower abdomen, the swellings were horizontal, cigar-shaped bands. Above the navel was a hard, almond-shaped swelling. A hard, blue swelling like a large medallion in the middle of his chest was surmounted by another smaller, brownish-red, medallion-shaped swelling at the base of his throat. These were as though suspended from a varicolored, swollen ring—blue, brownish and light yellow—around his neck. His throat was swollen to a shape that made his chin seem to rest on the head of a cobra, as in the traditional images of Shiva. Just above the bridge of the nose was a white, lotus-shaped swelling. All over the head the small blood vessels expanded, forming patterns like the stylized lumps on the heads of Buddha statues. The arteries in his neck expanded and rose, blue and snake-like, into his head]

Jamesh wrote: Over at TPG they seemed to be saying that all evolution was caused by mutation of DNA. In fact this is correct, depending on what one means by the word mutation, as the only way changes can be transferred to future generations is via changed DNA, either during the life of a particular life form or as a result of erroneous matching of the genes at conception.

Everything is deterministic, so random mutation doesn't really come into play, except that localised environmental determined mutations can occur more or less randomly across a species population.

Which I guess is where this comment comes into play (That is, there may be stochastic processes, but they proceed over a population, which in general is large enough for the process to considered deterministic.) .

If non-localised mutation, say from sun radiation for example, is a very minor player, then surely this means that Lamarckian evolutionary theory is actually more relevant than the seemingly random mutation (which is what I believe).

in an environment in which animals are constantly straining their necks to reach higher leaves, the animals with longer necks are generally going to do better (in competition with other, similar organisms in the same gene pool), and the population will drift in the long-necked direction, resulting in giraffes, for instance.

Cory Patrick wrote: In the same way that you gave us an example of how giraffes emerged - - maybe you could give us an example of how 'eyes' come into being?

Kevin Soloway gave an example of how wings could come into being.....and I found it very unlikely.

It's also important to note that the environment is not a stable, fixed element; it is constantly changing. Climates may change slowly, or suddenly. Predators may become more or less common, or may develop better eyesight, or background colors may change, favoring different camoflage. Food sources may change. Each generation is reacting to a different environment. These changes are more important to evolution than mutation.

Cory Patrick wrote:Kevin Soloway gave an example of how wings could come into being.....and I found it very unlikely. If a possum was to, by chance, be born with little 'stubs' on its back

To me, both sides are wrong until they see that both sides need to be integrated into one.

light is detected by an outer membrane'

[and after light is capable of being detected by the membrane] more and more cells start to concentrate in a particular point to gather this “energy”."

Cory Patrick wrote:how did the cell come to be able to detect light?

So if anyone wants to post any explanations, do so with a good question in mind. Otherwise you’re doing us all a disservice.

Sapius, perhaps you are aware of this and you are just making highly pedantic statements in order to test the intelligence of the rest of us.

If not, that's ok.

S:light is detected by an outer membrane'

C: hold on now.............how did the cell come to be able to detect light? And are you sure it is the outer membrane that is detecting the light? Surely the outer membrane by itself is worthless. It is the relationship that the outer membrane has with other constituents (inner and outer)....that is the significant thing to mention/consider. What is important is to acknowledge the intelligent relationship the outer membrane has with everything else inside the cell and outside the cell. How did the cell come into being?

To make statements on evolution without addressing/questioning the fundamental issues is a sign of vanity more than anything.

And by behaving in this way these light sensitive cells 'inadvertently' organize themselves in such a way that creates an eyeball.......however, one must realize, the eyeball is useless without the brain.

So you have to have 2 colonies of cells (whose dynamics are about as easily to explain away as anything) - one comprising the brain, the other colony comprising the eyeball.......not to mention all the other organs (that if you were to omit from your explanation, the eyeball and the brain would be rendered meaningless to mention).......do you see the tremendous level of intelligence and cooperation that goes into making the smallest creature?

Or better, do you see the indivisibility of one creature from the complexity of its outer environment as well as its inner environment?

You have all these parts that are comprised of critters that are unconscious of what they are doing, and what they are doing, in the big picture, is composing the mselves in a way that creates larger organs and creatures. Somehow, all these organs (which are vast networks of cells) work together to create a whole creature (which in itself, unconsciously becomes a constituent towards a greater creature). To think seriously about how a creature comes to 'see' or do anything is very bizarre and logic defying.

However, it is not at all bizarre if you employ logic so feebly as to create 'a box'. Inside the box is very pedantic dull explanations and outside the box are fundamental questions about physics and consciousness.

To say that "eyes begin as light detected by an outer membrane, and from there, more and more cells begin to concentrate in a particular point to gather this “energy” is very glib and silly. It is such an incomplete thing to say - -however, perhaps it is a useful thing to say if you are willing to consider the oneness, indivisibility and dependence that the outer membrane has with all the other constituents that you failed to mention. (or perhaps it is impossible to put into words)

If you consider everything as one whole - - that leaves us only with a baffling question - - -not a logical explanation.

Logic and reason are limited. They are not instruments which in themselves can totally understand.

And hey, perhaps I’m an idiot. Please, Say what you will.