Life in B Flat(Science and Spirituality): Video

Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts

Monday, September 15, 2014

Video: Darwinism on Trial with University of California Berkley law professor Phillip E. Johnson

Darwinism on Trial, is a video with University of California Berkley law professor Phillip E. Johnson author of the book Darwin on Trial.

The video discusses some of the problems with Darwinism and also how Darwinists control the debate on natural selection. As a law professor, Johnson's area of expertise is debate and rhetoric and in this video he brings clarity to the debate on Darwinism.

For example, Johnson points out how Darwinists often use shifting definitions when making arguments. Darwinists will assert that science disproves the biblical account of creation and then act as if they have refuted all other possible modes of creation. Darwinists also point to evidence of microevolution as proof of evolution and then incorrectly claim macroevolution is proved.

Another example of poor logic Darwinists use is the argument from analogy to artificial selection. Darwinists incorrectly use examples from artificial selection as proof of macroevolution by natural selection. Artificial selection, such as breeding different types of dogs, uses the variations that currently exist in the gene pool, and therefore has a very limited ability to create changes in a species. Macroevolution involves major changes to an organism like the evolution of an organ such as an eye or a substantial change in an animal type such as the evolution from a land mammal to a whale. Macroevolution requires huge amounts of new genetic information which is a completely different mode of evolution than artificial selection which uses existing genes. Furthermore, artificial selection is not "natural" it is accomplished by intelligence and is purposeful.

Another flaw in Darwinism which Johnson points out is that mutations often have multiple effects. When trying to understand how some feature of an organism evolved, a Darwinist will propose that a mutation occurred as a first small step toward that feature and provided a survival advantage. Johnson says that this type of hypothetical speculation ignores the fact that most mutations have multiple effects and some may reduce the survival advantage so this speculation is not logically valid. But Darwinists accept their brand of logic because they have already assumed the truth of what they are trying to prove so they know there must have been beneficial mutations because the feature exists and must have arisen through natural selection.

Johnson lists four flaws in the theory of evolution by natural selection:

You don't know if the necessary mutations will arise in the right order at the right time.
Artificial selection is not natural selection.
Mutations have multiple effects so beneficial mutations are unlikely.
The fossil record is not consistent with what you would expect if evolution by natural selection is true.

Natural selection requires step by step gradual changes over long periods of time but the fossil record shows stasis over millions of years through environmental changes and there is an absence of transitional fossils. When your theory requires small step by step changes over long periods of time and you have millions of years of stasis with no evidence of transitions, you ought to realize your theory is wrong.

The missing transitions can't be explained by saying the fossil record is incomplete. There are millions of years of fossils that show stasis when they should be showing gradual change. Natural selection requires many small changes each providing a selective advantage. A key feature of natural selection, the engine that makes it work, is that these changes provide a selective advantage that cause them to become predominant throughout the population. This is important because beneficial mutations are rare and if you want a sequence of mutations to occur, each new mutation has to become predominant through out the population. This is necessary to provide a large enough population with one mutation for another mutation to become probable within that population. If the engine of Darwinism was really the cause evolution, the fossil record would show gradual change not millions of years of stasis with significant changes occurring suddenly in an improbably short time for which there are no fossils. The fossil record falsifies Darwinism.

There is no other theory to explain how evolution could occur naturally except by a series of small changes. (Punctuated equilibrium is not a theory it is a description.)

Johnson went on to explain how Darwinists prevent debate about whether Darwinism is wrong.

Darwinists define science as the study of natural and material processes, and as the pursuit of ever more improved natural explanations. Critics of Darwinism are dismissed if they don't have an alternative to natural selection: "They don't know how science works". Darwinists do not recognize that not knowing something is valid scientific position. They prefer a wrong theory to no theory. The way Darwinist science really works in practice is that they make an assumption and assert it is a fact.

Johnson then goes on to show that Darwinists misuse the mantle of science to give the theory of natural selection authority is doesn't deserve. He points out that technology produced by science is impressive. But technology is based on repeatable phenomena. Evolution is a scientific consensus not a repeatable experiment and therefore it is not reliable. Johnson illustrates this with a hypothetical example based on the Challenger explosion. He says that if a panel of rocket scientists agreed the Challenge mission would be successful, any outsider who disagreed would be ridiculed ... until the launch and explosion of the space shuttle that tested the panel's conclusions.

Johnson also points out that philosophies that attach themselves to science do not have a good track record and lists Marxism and Freudian psychology as examples, claiming Darwinism belongs with the other two as being unfalsifiable - anything that happens within their domain can be explained by these philosophies.

Another rhetorical device used by Darwinists is to reject the existence of God because nature is cruel or because some features of organisms seem poorly designed or are vestigial. Darwinists assert this is evidence that macroevolution by natural selection is true. This is not science, it is a theological argument. It is also a false dichotomy between God and Darwinism. A scientific approach would be to attempt to refute the criticisms of Darwinism by experiment, observation, or mathematically precise theoretical work.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Video: Life could not have formed by natural means. Biomolecules naturally react to form tar.

Edward T. Peltzer did his PhD research studying organic compounds found in meteorites. He was hoping to find clues to the origin of life on earth. In the video below Peltzer explains why life could not have arisen by natural means.

In the video, Edward Peltzer explains that when biomolecules such as amino acids and sugars are produced naturally, they are intermediates in a multi-step reaction and are consumed as quickly as they are produced. That reaction does not produce the biopolymers needed for life such as proteins or nucleic acids, instead the reaction produces tar.

Biopolymers cannot be produced naturally because without the cellular structures that compartmentalize biomolecules and control how they interact, the subunits will not form biopolymers, they will react randomly and form gunk. Even if by chance several subunits do form a biopolymer, that polymer is still going to go on to form gunk.

In the video, Peltzer discusses various origin of life theories including "protein first", "protein and nucleotides together", metabolism first, membranes first, clay, and RNA world and panspermia. None of these can explain how life could originate. Proteins do not polymerize naturally, they form gunk. This is why cataracts form in lens of the eye. The same is true for nucleotides. If one hypothesizes membranes formed spontaneously to protect biomolecules from the environment, then the reactants of polymerization will be used up without any means of replenishment. If the membranes are leaky, then you have the same problems as with no membrane at all. If you mix biomolecules with clay, they stick to the clay and stay there, they are removed from solution and cannot carry out any biological functions. Panspermia, the theory that life came to earth from space, doesn't solve anything unless the laws of chemistry are different elsewhere in the universe.

Peltzer concludes you can't produce a cell unless you already have a cell.

Video: A Critique of Darwinist Icons

In the video A Critique of Darwinist Icons, Jonathan Wells explains why the evidence most often offered as proof of Darwinian evolution doesn't actually prove Darwinian evolution. These misleading examples are often repeated because there really isn't any good evidence for evolution. Wells also explains that the reason these misleading examples are used is that evolutionary biology as taught in schools is really teaching atheism. Neither physics nor chemistry text books make statements about God or religion. Those books just discuss the evidence and the science. It is only in evolutionary biology where statements are made asserting that science makes belief in God and religion unnecessary, and since there is no good evidence to support that point of view, they have to resort to making misleading statements to do it.

The video contains the most important examples of bogus evidence of evolution found in the book Icons of Evolution also by Jonathan Wells. Some of these examples are discussed in Survival of the Fakest by Jonathan Wells. And some of the examples in the book but not covered in the video or Survival of the Fakest can be found in these articles:

Briefly the examples in the video include:

The evolutionary tree is false: The evolutionary tree shows the relatedness of different organisms. It is possible to produce a tree by comparing the DNA sequence of a gene in different organisms. However, using different genes produces different trees. The Cambrian explosion is also evidence against common descent because the major animal phyla appeared at the same time and there is no evidence they evolved from a common ancestor.
Homology in vertebrate limbs: Does not support common descent because it doesn't rule out common design. Homology only looks like evidence of evolution if you assume what you are trying to prove, ie. that homology is evidence of evolution.
Vertebrate embryos: The classic diagrams showing similarities in embryos were faked.
Peppered moths: Supposedly peppered moths evolved darker protective coloration in response to air pollution making tree trunks darker in color. However, peppered moths don't normally rest on tree trunks. Once pollution decreased, the peppered moths became lighter in color, but this began before the tree trunks became lighter.
Darwin's finches: A one year drought caused changes in beak morphology, but the beaks reverted after the drought. This is at best microevolution caused by a change in the frequency of existing genes in the population. It is not evidence of macroevolution - substantial changes in organisms such as the development of an eye or land mammals evolving into a whale.
Four-winged fruit files: Do not show that natural selection can cause changes in organisms because the flies were created by scientists, the extra wings had no muscles to move them, and they made the files less fit for survival.

The article Fact-Checking Wikipedia on Common Descent: The Evidence from Paleontology discusses the lack of fossil evidence for intermediate stages of evolution. The excerpt below discusses the series of fossils claimed to show the evolution of the whale from a land mammal. It is not credible that they could represent a sequence of ancestor species because there is not enough time for the changes in the species to have occurred naturally.

One of the most notable problems with the evolution of the whale is the extremely abrupt timescale over which it is supposed to have occurred. The sheer force of this conundrum is only properly appreciated when one considers the multiple feats of anatomical novelty, innovative engineering and genetic rewiring necessary to change a terrestrial mammal like Pakicetus into a fully aquatic whale. Indeed, evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg has argued that even many of the relatively minor changes are extremely unlikely to have occurred in the time-frame allowed.

Other articles in the same series include:

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Video: Unlocking the Mystery of Life

Unlocking the Mystery of Life

In 1993 professor Phillip Johnson of the University of California Berkley invited a group of scientists and philosophers to a small beach town on the central coast of California. They came from major academic centers including Cambridge University and the University of Chicago to question an idea that had dominated science for 150 years.

...

The scientists who came to Pajaro Dunes set out to reexamine the history of life's origin, for each had significant doubts about widely held evolutionary ideas. Among them biochemist Michael Behe questioned how natural processes could have assembled the intricate structures found within living cells. Dean Kenyon was an evolutionary biologist who no longer though chemistry alone could account for the origin of life on earth. Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson, and William Dembski were seeking a new approach. one that could explain the origin of the genetic information encoded in living organisms. These scientists and philosophers began to formulate an alternative to the central theory of modern biology a theory born in the mind of a British naturalist his name was Charles Darwin.

The entire video is in 12 parts. The playlist is here.

Friday, August 22, 2014

The Privileged Planet: The rare confluence of conditions that allow Earth to support complex life also make the Earth the best location from which to make scientific discoveries. Those scientific discoveries reveal that the universe is understandable to humankind. All this indicates a purpose to the universe: to support intelligent life and to allow intelligent life to discover that the universe was created.

The Privileged Planet is a video about the conditions required for a planet to support intelligent life. It is based on a book by the same name by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards. The video starts out discussing the scientific discoveries that led to the belief that the earth is ordinary - the earth orbits the sun, the sun is just one of many stars in our galaxy, and our galaxy is just one of the many galaxies in the universe. But the video goes on to point out there are about twenty conditions needed for a planet to be able to support life. These conditions are not individually likely to occur by chance, and they are exceedingly unlikely to occur together. It is also an odd coincidence that planets like earth that can support complex life, ie. that can support intelligent observers, are also the best platforms for observing the universe and making scientific discoveries. Furthermore, it surprising that our complicated universe seems to be fine-tuned to support life and natural laws are discoverable to humans All of this taken together, the conditions for a planet to be able to support intelligent life are very unlikely, those same conditions that make life possible also provide the best conditions for making scientific discoveries, the universe is finely tuned to support life, and natural laws are intelligible to humankind, suggest that there is a purpose to the universe. That purpose is to support intelligent life and provide a place where intelligent life can understand the universe and ultimately understand that the universe was created.

The video is in 12 short parts included in the youtube
playlist.

Conditions necessary for a planet to support life.

The factors necessary for a planet to support complex life include:

Liquid water.
The planet must be within the circumstellar habitable zone around its star - the distance from the star that liquid water and an oxygen rich atmosphere can exist.
The planet must be in the galactic habitable zone. Being too close to the center of the galaxy would expose the planet to too much radiation. Too far from the center there are not enough heavy elements to support life.
Orbiting main sequence G2 dwarf star, which is not too hot and not too cool. A smaller star would have a habitable zone too close to itself and the gravity of the star would keep the same side of any planet within the zone constantly facing the star. The side facing the star would be too hot and receive too much radiation to support life, the side facing away from the star would be too cold.
Protected by gas giant planets that shield the inner planets from comet impacts.
Nearly circular orbit.
Oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Correct mass.
Orbited by large moon - "if the moon didn't exist, neither would we". The moon is 1/4 the size of the earth. The moon's gravity stabilizes the angle of the earth's axis insuring temperate seasonal changes. It also helps to circulate the warm and cold waters of the ocean stabilizing the climate and distributing elements, chemicals, and nutrients needed for life.
Magnetic field - generated by the movement of liquid iron deep in the planet's interior, protects the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind.
Plate tectonics - regulates interior temperature of the planet, recycles carbon, mixes elements necessary for life, shapes the continents ensuring land as well as ocean environments.
Enough heat in the interior to circulate liquid iron.
Ratio of liquid water and continents to allow the diversity of life and an active biosphere needed to support complex life.
Moderate rate of rotation
Oxygen / Nitrogen atmosphere. Assures temperate climate, provides protection from sun's radiation, is the correct combination of gases for liquid water and complex life.

The video states the the probability of a planet having all the conditions needed to support life is 10^-15. There are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Most sources say there are between 100 and 500 billion galaxies in the universe. By chance, there should be less than one habitable planet per galaxy but a few million habitable planets throughout the universe.

The conditions necessary for a planet to support life make a planet the best location for making scientific discoveries.

The Moon The best place in our solar system to observe a solar eclipse is the earth which is also the one place that has observers. During an eclipse, the moon appears to be about the same size as the sun. In order for this to happen, the earth has to be the right distance from the sun and it has to have a large moon. These are both factors that also allow the earth to support life.

An eclipse also provides an opportunity to make scientific discoveries. When the moon blocks the sun during an eclipse, stars near the sun become visible. Also the sun's atmosphere, the chromosphere, which extends beyond the surface of the sun, becomes visible too. Observations of the positions of stars near the sun allowed scientists to confirm that the gravity of the sun bends light that passes near it confirming Einstein's theory of relativity. Observations made of the sun's chromosphere allowed scientists to discover helium in it. Other observations allowed scientists to discover how the spectrum of sunlight is produced. This led to the understanding of how the spectra of distant stars are produced which is crucial to our understanding of astrophysics.
The Atmosphere The Earth's atmosphere has the right mixes of gasses to support life and is transparent which allows us to observe the universe around our planet: the other planets, the sun, stars in our galaxy and other galaxies. There are 70 planets and moons in our solar system. Only seven have a substantial atmosphere, and only the earth has an atmosphere that is transparent and can support life. The sun, super novae, and other sources in the universe emit electromagnetic radiation, including gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infra-red light, microwaves and radio waves. Visible light is less than one trillionth of a trillionth of the natural range of the electromagnetic spectrum but visible light is useful for life processes. For example, photosynthesis could not make use of gamma rays or microwaves. Visible light is also the most informative about the structures in the universe. Visible light is produced in abundance by the sun and it most easily penetrates the atmosphere of earth. The atmosphere that is needed to support life allows us to observe the distant universe.

The universe is finely-tuned to support life.

The forces and mathematical constants of the laws of physics that apply in our universe are finely tuned to support life. Gravity causes planets, stars and galaxies to form. If the force of gravity was even slightly stronger, intelligent life could not exist. The strong nuclear force is necessary to holds protons and neutrons together to make the atoms which make up our environment and our bodies. If there were no electromagnetic force, there would be no light and no bonding between the atoms which is needed to construct our environment and our bodies. If the masses of subatomic particles were different, life as we know it could not exist. A slight change in any of the forces of nature or physical constants or if they were chosen at random, would make the universe unable to support life. The forces and constants are another example of the correlation between life and discovery. They are finely tuned to support life, and they can also be discovered and understood by humankind.

The universe is intelligible.

The human mind can understand the universe. Natural laws are discoverable because they obey simple mathematical relationships. Many of the most important theories in physics can be written on a single sheet of paper. This intelligibility cannot be explained by naturalistic assumptions. The discoverablity of natural laws is not needed for survival. According to materialist belief, human reason supposedly developed to hunt and survive in the wild. Our ability to discover and understand atoms or black holes, is unnecessary for Darwinian survival.

There is a plan for the universe.

The founders of modern science Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler, all believed the universe was the product of a mind and that it was intelligible to us because it was the product of an intelligent being. In those times, science was part of religion, it was the study of the mind of God.

Modern science shows us that the universe seems to have been intended to contain observers who can understand it. The conditions that make a planet habitable also provide the best conditions to make scientific discoveries. The earth's atmosphere, its location in the solar system, its moon, the arrangement of other planets in its solar system, its star, and its location in galaxy are the most important conditions needed to support life, and also are ideal for making a wide range of scientific discoveries. The laws of nature are intelligible by humankind and from studying them we understand that the universe is finely tuned to support life. All of this cannot be explained by coincidence. It is too improbable to be the result of chance. It cannot be explained by impersonal forces of nature. It indicates a plan. Something beyond the universe must account for it. The universe seems to have been designed by a transcendent creator in order to support intelligent life, and allow intelligent life to discover that.

Many modern scientists believe the evidence that the universe was designed. These scientists include Nobel prize winners such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Guglielmo Marconi, Brian Josephson, William Phillips, Richard Smalley, Arno Penzias, Charles Townes Arthur Compton, Antony Hewish, Christian Anfinsen, Walter Kohn, Arthur Schawlow, and other scientists, Charles Darwin, Sir Fred Hoyle, John von Neumann, Wernher von Braun, Louis Pasteur.

Resources

There are links to resources for further study at theprivilegedplanet.com.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

The Cambrian Explosion is Best Explained by Intelligent Design

In the video The Cambrian Explosion, Stephen Meyer and Marcus Ross discuss the 80 page chapter The Cambrian Explosion: Biology's Big Bang written for the book Darwinism, Design and Public Education.

The Cambrian explosion refers to a period of time 530 million years ago when many animal phyla first appeared on earth. Biologists classify life according to a hierarchical organization of levels that include kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. A kingdom may contain one or more phyla, a phylum may contain one or more classes, and so forth. In the video, four reasons are given to explain why intelligent design is a better explanation for the Cambrian explosion than neo-Darwinism.

Darwinian mechanisms cannot produce the information in DNA needed for the sudden appearance of new phyla that occurred during the Cambrian explosion, however intelligence can produce information.

For Darwinism to work, there has to be a series of single mutations that lead from one species to another where each mutation provides greater fitness. Theoretical research shows that because of the way proteins work, this is impossible. It is prohibitively improbable that the individual mutations needed to produce a new function would increase fitness if they occurred one at a time. Multiple simultaneous mutations that could increase fitness by producing new functions are also too improbable to occur.

Furthermore, to create the significant changes in body plan needed to create a new phylum, a mutation would have to affect early embryo development. Such mutations are usually fatal so it is also vastly improbable that a sequence of individual mutations could cause increasing fitness as they changed the body plan of a species.

Also, epigenetic information, information not encoded in the DNA, is required for embryonic development and cell function. There is no plausible theory that explains how epigenetic information can be produced naturally.
Darwinism predicts new phyla should evolve from existing species but the fossil record shows the new phyla appearing without ancestors. This sudden appearance is what one would expect if the new phyla were created by a designing intelligence. There are sufficient fossils of soft bodied animals from before the Cambrian explosion that if the phyla that appeared during the Cambrian explosion had ancestors, fossils of them would have been found.
Darwinism predicts that new phyla will arise as new species repeatedly branch off and diversify until a new species is so different that it merits classification as a new phylum. Therefore there should be many species existing when a new phylum arises. However contrary to these predictions of Darwinism, during the Cambrian explosion, many new phyla arose but there were relatively few species at the time. This dearth of species is exactly what would be expected if the new phyla were created by a designing intelligence.
Darwinism predicts existing phyla should produce new phyla as species branch off and diversify until a new species is so different it merits classification as a new phylum. However no phylum has ever produced a species so different that it could be classified as a new phylum. But this is exactly what we expect from designed objects, cars change each year but do not become airplanes.

Because of these four ways neo-Darwinism fails to explain features of the Cambrian explosion that are more consistent with intelligent design, intelligent design is a better explanation of the Cambrian explosion than neo-Darwinism.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Video: Doug Ell Discusses the Evidence for Intelligent Design

Here is an excellent video of Doug Ell giving a talk at MIT about his book Counting To God. The book is about the scientific evidence for intelligent design.

As I watched this video, I realized that mainstream science (astronomy, biology, and physics) has provided much of the evidence for intelligent design, but most scientists don't interpret it as such because of their materialist bias. It says something important about science that even though many of the scientists carrying it out are confused and in denial about the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the evolution of species, science still produces the truth.

Before the scientific revolution, many people thought, correctly, that it was self-evident that the universe and all life was created, and therefore there must be a creator. The first scientists all believed that by studying science they would learn about God - about how God designed the world. They didn't see any conflict between science and belief in God.

Later, atheist scientists, claiming they were devoted to truth and as scientists uniquely qualified to find it, came along and confused so many people about what had once been self-evident. As John Lennox points out, modern atheists have created a false dichotomy between science and God by claiming God is a god of the gaps who's role is limited to what science can't explain and diminished by every new scientific discovery. But this is a deception. Theists believe that God created the universe including all the natural laws that scientists are so pleased to have discovered. Now after many years of collecting scientific data, that data interpreted by scientists studying intelligent design is demonstrating those pre-scientific people and the early scientists were right all along and the atheist scientists were wrong. It would be comical if it wasn't such a tragedy.

Scientists believe they are seeking the truth, and it would seem that the scientific truth leads to God. As Lennox points out, in John 14:6 it is written, "I am the truth..." There are some modern scientists who understood this. Werner Heisenberg winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics is one of them. He said:

The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.

At the beginning of the talk, Ell says that the reason he is able to write on this subject is because he is not at a university... so, when one tries to understand the problems of science, one has to consider the university system as part of the problem.

The talk is only 40 minutes and it covers a lot of ground. If you are interested in more information a good place to start is the Intelligent Design section on the Articles Arranged by Subject page.

A series of video interviews of Stephen Meyer (and transcripts) on this subject, which covers some of the same evidence, can be found at The Cosmological Argument for a Transcendent Designer of the Universe.

Doug Ell's talk is an excellent overview of the wide variety of empirical evidence that supports intelligent design. Below is a list of links to articles on subjects related to the video organized in order the subjects were discussed in the talk:

Physics

Biology

Origin and Technology of Life

Problems with the Natural Chemical "Origin of Life" (updated) by Casey Luskin

Materialism Cannot Explain the Origin of the Genetic Code

The fine-tuning of the genetic code could not have arisen through the unguided action of natural laws.

Macroevolution
Primer: Summary of Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution

Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories

DNA analysis fails to confirm the evolutionary tree

The Evidence said to support neo-Darwinism, doesn't

Articles Arranged by Subject: Human Origins

Human Origins
Human/Ape Common Ancestry: Following the Evidence

Does Genome Evidence Support Human-Ape Common Ancestry?

More Physics

The Universe is nonmaterial (quantum physics)

Evidence for the Afterlife: Quantum Mechanics

Intellectual Freedom
The Politics of Suppression of Intelligent Design

Survival of the Fakest

Below I have included, with the author's permission, the text of the slides shown during the talk by Doug Ell (typographical errors are most likely my own):

Science

Observation, experimental verification, and explanation of natural phenomenon
Figuring it out
Follow the evidence wherever it leads
"If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong" - Richard Feynman

God

Abrahamic faith
- Accident or design?

Seven Wonders of Modern Science

Physics

1. Created Universe

2. Fine-Tuned Universe
Biology

3. Origin of Life

4. Technology of Life

5. Puzzles of Macroevolution
More Physics

6. Special Earth

7. Universe is nonmaterial (quantum physics)

Counting To God
1. Creation

Why does anything exist?

Throughout history, two basic answers

It just does, and always has
God

Believers in eternal and infinite universe

Aristotle
Newton
Einstein (originally)

1. Creation (cont'd)

Dark night sky - Olber's "paradox"
1914: Vesto Silpher
- fuzzy spots in the sky have "redshift"
1920s: Edwin Hubble
- galaxies
- speed proportional to distance (Hubble's law)
Einstein - "I see the need for a beginning"

6:181. Creation (cont'd)

Then two theories compete
- "Big Bang" theory
  - All time/space and matter/energy created in a single instant from absolute nothingness
- "Steady State" theory
  - matter created in voids keeps universe constant
1965: Penzias and Wilson at Bell Labs discover "cosmic microwave background radiation" by accident:
- "relic"' photons rom the Big Bang (380K years after)

Counting To God
2. Fine-Tuning

How can it all be so perfect?
In physics, there are
- 3 dimensions of space
- 1 dimension of time
- 4 fundamental forces
- Many constants
Accepted scientific fact:

"the values of the numbers seem to have been very finely tuned to make possible the development of life"
- Stephen Hawking

While explaining the above slide, Doug Ell said, "if we didn't have three dimensions of space, gravity wouldn't obey the inverse square law and planets wouldn't have stable orbits."

8:582. Fine-tuning (cont'd)

Examples
- Critical density of the universe/gravitational constant (less than one part in 10⁶⁰)
- Nuclear resonance levels
  - Produce carbon and oxygen inside stars
  - "A superintellect has monkeyed with physics" - Fred Hoyle
- Water
Is there information in the structure of the universe?

9:232.Fine-tuning (cont'd)

Atheist counter - "Multiverse"
Multiverse concept based on 3 key beliefs
- Our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes
- Somehow, these universes have the ability to create other universes with different dimensions, laws, constants, and other features of physics
- Somehow, for no special reason, all of this just exists
But:
- No scientific evidence of other universes
- No idea how laws of physics can change
- Infinity is an alien concept
- Turtles all the way down?

11:17Counting To God
3. Origin of Life

How did life begin?
Ground rules:
- Laws of physics and chemistry have not changed
- No "natural selection"

12:203. Origin of Life (cont'd)

Miller-Urey Experiment (1953)
- Amino acids can be created by electrical charges
- Later disavowed by both Miller and Urey as an explanation of the origin of life
- Experiment now discredited - wrong atmosphere, no "primordial" soup, no way to link amino acids, can't set large amounts of information by accident
- But, still in most high school textbooks

13:383. Origin of Life (cont'd)

"Chicken and egg" problem
- Need DNA to build proteins
- Need proteins to read DNA
- Which came first?
Yale physicist Harold Morowitz calculated odds of life arising by chance as 1 in 10^{100,000,000,000}
Harvard's failed Origin of Life Initiative
where did the information come from to create life?
"No one knows how it got started" - Richard Dawkins

15:01Counting To God
4. Technology of Life

How does life work?
150 years ago, cells were "homogeneous globules of protoplasm"
Now know all life has same advanced digital operating system ("Central Dogma"):
- Stores code in "letters" of DNA
- Machines make copies of parts of code (messenger RNA)
- Send copies to factories (ribosomes)
- Factories (ribosomes) read code three "letters" at a time, to build proteins

16:39 4. Technology of Life (cont'd)

By chance?
- Genetic code (algorithm that "maps" 3 DNA "letters" to amino acids) is "highly optimal - significantly out performed 1 million randomly chosen alternate codes
- No evidence of a different operating system
- No known way operating system can evolve
Futuristic information technology: "DNA is biological computer code, only far, far more advanced than anything we have ever built" - Bill Gates

4. Technology of Life (cont'd)

Other amazing technology
- DNA storage technology (histones)
- Information retrieval technology
- Splicing technology
- Replication technology
  - 1,000 "letters" per second
  - Proofreading machines
  - Accurate to 1 letter in 1 billion
- Repair technology
Consider protein Histone H4: 102 amino acids, "highly conserved," 100 of these are the same in a pea and a cow (chance odds around 1 in 20¹⁰⁰?)

18:394. Technology of Life (cont'd)

Where does information come from?
- Imagine blind monkeys typing
- If every particle in the universe (proton, neutron, and electron) was a monkey
- Typing a letter every 10⁴³ seconds (typing ten million trillion trillion trillion letters a second, which if printed into books would fill a sphere 100 million miles in diameter every second)
- For 14 billion years
Highly unlikely that there will ever appear more than about 100 letters of specified information!

20:15Counting To God
5. Puzzles of Macroevolution

"Evolution" commonly defined as "any process of formation or change"
Charles Darwin in 1859: all species arose solely because of accidental mutations and natural selection
Can natural selection create new information?
- Problem is not the survival of the fittest, but the arrival of the fittest
- Today more than 10 million species

21:265. Puzzles of Macroevolution (cont'd)

Your choice:
- Accident (Darwin)?
- Design (God)?
Let's look at the facts

21:395. Puzzles of Macroevolution (cont'd)

Fact 1: Fossil Record
- "Cambrian explosion": 70% of all "body plans" of all animals came into existence in a relatively short period
- Biology's "big bang" - "Darwin's Doubt"
- "Top-down" fossil record contradicts Darwin
- Very few transitional organisms
  - "no one has ever found any in-between creatures" - Niles Eldredge
  - "Absence of fossil evidence for intermediate stages...has been a nagging and persistent problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution" - Stephen Jay Gould

23:275. Puzzles of Macroevolution (cont'd)

Fact 2: Little or no "Junk" DNA
- Once thought only 1.5% of human DNA is useful
- ENCODE (450 scientists) Sept. 2012
  - 80% of human genome has function
  - "It's likely 80% will go to 100%"
- ENCODE Dec.2012
  - DNA contains a second code, multiple layers of information
- ENCODE Jan. 2014

24:335. Puzzles of Macroevolution (cont'd)

Fact 3: Extreme Rarity of Functional Proteins
- 1990 estimate by two MIT biologists: odds of getting a sequence of 92 amino acids to perform a specified function are 1 in 10⁶³
- 2004 estimate: For 150 amino acids, odds of getting a specified function are 1 in 10⁷⁷; odds of getting any function are 1 in 10⁷⁴
- But, in history of life, maybe 10⁴⁰ organisms, almost all one-celled
Darwinian response: "cumulative selection"
- Hang on to only "good" mistakes?
- Gradual improvement of an engine while it is still running?

26:585. Puzzles of Macroevolution (cont'd)

Fact 4: Orphan Genes
- All species sequenced to date have "orphan" genes ("designer" genes?) with no known relatives in other species
- Help to make that species distinct - toxins in jellyfish, prevent freezing in polar cod
- Leaf-cutter ant has 9,361 unique proteins, most of its genome
- Darwinian theory has no mathematical clothes

28:285. Puzzles of Macroevolution (cont'd)

Fact 5: Many biological systems defy Darwinian logic
- Loggerhead turtles navigate by Earth's magnetic field (also some fish and birds)
- Caribbean reef squids communicate by the colors, patterns, and textures on their skin
- Appendix "evolved" separately at least 32 times
- Common Design, not common descent

29:575. Puzzles of Macroevolution (cont'd)

Human beings
- 30 trillion cells - 30,000,000,000,000 cells
- Almost all have 3.2 billion "letters" of DNA
- Codes for perhaps 100,000 proteins (mean length perhaps 430 amino acids)

30:325. Puzzles of Macroevolution (cont'd)

To walk upright
- 16 coordinated anatomical changes (spine, pelvis, knees, feet, toes, skull, etc.)
- But time for specific mutation requiring two new DNA binding sites to happen and then becomes fixed estimated at 216 million years - Cornell scientists 2008
The human brain
- 54 human orphan genes that code for brain proteins
- How can reason and creativity arise from a Darwinian process?
- What is consciousness?

31:51Counting To God
6. Special Earth

Earth is special in its ability to sustain life over billions of years

Right galaxy
- Maybe 98% have less metal
Right distance from the galactic center
- Only 10% of stars are in GHZ
Safe path through the galaxy
- Nearly circular, inner edge of the Orion arm

23:146. Special Earth (cont'd)

Right sun
- Big (greater than 95%) but not too big
- Stable life in 10 billion years
- Solitary star, not in globular cluster
- Stable energy output (one part in 1,000 over 11 year cycle)
Right Solar System
- Planets have circular orbits, spaced apart, same direction
- Jupiter (vacuum cleaner of the solar system)
Right place in the Solar System
- CHZ permits liquid water

34:166. Special Earth (cont'd)

Right Moon
- No good theory on how mood was formed
- Creates tides
- Eclipse coincidence?
Right ingredients
- Water
- Carbon
- Molten iron core
- Plate tectonics
Odds of finding another equally suitable planet in our galaxy may be less than one in 100

34:19Counting To God
7. Universe is Nonmaterial

Mathematics describes everything in physics
- Mathematics is ideas
- Whose ideas?
Quantum physics defies materialistic concepts of reality
- One-slit/two-slit experiment
- Quantum entanglement
- Quantum Zeno effect
"In the beginning was the word"
- Greek word "logos" - divine thought
Could the foundation of the universe be mathematical concepts? - string theory

36:60The Logic of Belief

Only intelligence can create meaningful information
There is tremendous information in the structure of the universe, the origin of life, and every species

37:23Final Score:
God 7, Atheism 0

Stand up for the wonder
- Awe, astonishment, surprise, and admiration
Stand up for the truth
Stand up for tolerance
countingtogod.com

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Update to "Evidence That God Exists: People Who Have Near Death Experiences Meet God."

I have updated an earlier post, Evidence That God Exists: People Who Have Near Death Experiences Meet God., with the following:

In this video from an IANDS conference, Jessica Haynes discusses her near-death experience. She says that she had died and after reviewing her life she wanted to come back and live her life better. Unfortunately, she was dead and she was told, "You can't get back you don't have a body to get back to". But she insisted, repeatedly. So they took her to talk to God who enabled her to come back. She describes her experience of God as, "Pure love.", and "The most loving light you could imagine." He tells her "I am all, I created everything." The part where she describes this is from 10:30 to 15:00.

Friday, April 18, 2014

The Cosmological Argument for a Transcendent Designer of the Universe.

Stephen Meyer is a philosopher of science who earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He is one of the founders of the intelligent design movement which takes a scientific approach to looking for artifacts of intelligent design in nature.

Stephen Meyer appeared in a series of four interviews on the John Ankerberg Show discussing the cosmological argument for the existence of God. In the interviews, Meyer starts with an historical background of the origin of materialism. He goes on to explain how the discovery that the universe is expanding, and the discovery that the universe came from nothing, and the discovery that natural laws are finely tuned to make life possible, all demonstrate that the universe was created and designed by a transcendent intelligence (an intelligence outside the universe). In addition, Meyer explains that the evidence for intelligent design in the origin and evolution of life shows that the designer continued to play a role in the universe long after its creation. Meyer considers four philosophical traditions, Materialism, Pantheism, Deism, and Theism, and he concludes that Theism is the best explanation for the scientific evidence. Meyer also discusses some of the intellectuals who came to believe the universe was designed because of this evidence. These individuals included Allan Sandage, John Polkinghorne, Fred Hoyle, Antony Flew and Fred Burnham.

There are several Nobel Prize winning and other great scientists who were not mentioned in the programs who either believed in the cosmological argument or had similar beliefs. These scientists include Nobel Prize winning physicists Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner, Arno Penzias, Charles Townes, and non-Nobelists Charles Darwin, and Wernher von Braun. I have explained their beliefs on my web page on Eminent Researchers.

In this post, I have tried to explain the content of the programs as I understand it. However, my own perspective and vocabulary may be different from Stephen Meyer's so do not assume that Meyer has said exactly what I am writing. Additionally, these programs were intended for a general television audience so I think it is safe to assume there is more to be said on both sides of the issue. I am not an expert on philosophy or cosmology but I would suggest these programs be considered a starting point in understanding the cosmological argument. If you find the subject interesting, you may want to look for other, more detailed, sources of information on the subject.

Below, I've also provided links to transcripts of the programs, and embedded the videos if you would prefer to get the information straight from Dr. Meyer.

Program 1: The Rise and Fall of Materialism
Program 2: Something From Nothing Requires a Transcendent Creator
Program 3: The Fine Tuning of the Designed Universe
Program 4: The Designer's Continued Involvement: Life and Evolution
Transcripts
Videos

Program 1

The Rise and Fall of Materialism

The scientists who founded the scientific revolution, such as Newton, Kepler, Boyle, Galileo and Copernicus, thought that the discovery that nature operated according to natural laws was evidence of a designer. They thought that scientists could come to understand nature because nature was designed by a rational intelligence: God.

Kepler said "We, as scientists, have the high calling of thinking God's thoughts after him."

Newton believed that the arrangement of planets in the solar system could not have arisen through natural causes and the best explanation for the arrangement of the planets was the workings of an intelligent being. He wrote:

Though these bodies may indeed continue in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws. Thus this most beautiful system of the sun, comets, and planets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

However, in the 19th century, scientists began to try to explain natural phenomena without God. Laplace wrote a book attempting to explain the arrangement of planets by natural means. Lyell tried to explain geological features as a result of gradual natural processes. Darwin tried to explain how new species arise from preexisting species. Other scientists tried to explain the origin of life. By the end of the 19th century there existed a materialist world view that could explain everything from the origin of the solar system to the evolution of humankind as a result of natural processes. Materialists had no need to explain the origin of the universe because they believed it was infinite in size and infinite in age. But this belief was not based on any scientific evidence, it was a metaphysical belief.

The Discovery that the Universe is Expanding shows the Universe had a Beginning. This Shakes the Foundations of Materialism

The foundations of materialism began to crumble when astronomers determined that the universe had a beginning. Edwin Hubble observed that all the galaxies in the universe were traveling away from each other. This means that they were closer together in the past than they are today. The farther back time, the closer together they were, and if you go back far enough you can find where the expansion began. This implies that the universe had a beginning.

Einstein's theory of general relativity gave theoretical corroboration to Hubble's empirical observations. General relativity explained gravity by theorizing that objects with mass could bend space. One consequence of this theory was that the size of the universe changed over time. However, Einstein was so convinced of the materialist world view that he added a constant to his equation so it would describe a static universe. When he learned of Hubble's observations he revised his theory.

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Program 2

Something from Nothing Requires a Transcendent Creator

The two lines of evidence, Hubble's empirical evidence, and Einstein's theoretical evidence, that the universe had a beginning, upset many scientists who held to the materialist world view. If the universe had a beginning, then the origin of the universe must be explained and materialism could not provide that explanation. A beginning to the universe eliminated the grounds by which God had been excluded from the materialist world view. It required a transcendent cause, something outside the universe, something beyond space and time and matter and energy, to explain the origin of the universe. Allen Sandage who had been a student of Hubble and continued to study the expansion of the universe, described the origin of the universe as supernatural because it could not be explained by any known natural phenomenon. The scientific evidence led Sandage to convert from agnosticism to belief in God. Astronomer Robert Jastrow thought it ironic that this evidence proved theologians were right and the materialists were wrong, the universe did have a beginning, it was not infinitely old.

In the Beginning, the Universe Arose from Nothing. Materialism Cannot Explain This.

Another scientific break through that shook the foundations of materialism came when Stephen Hawking solved Einstein's field equations for general relativity. When Hawking calculated the curvature of space-time at the beginning of the universe, he found that space-time had zero volume and so it could not contain any matter. The problem this created for materialists was that it required that all the matter in the universe arise from nothing. Nineteenth century materialism answered the question of origins by asserting that everything comes from matter which had always existed into the infinite past, but that explanation became unsatisfactory when Hawking showed the need for an explanation of where matter came from.

Some materialists tried to find a natural explanation for the beginning of the universe in quantum mechanics. However, they were unable to do this. According to the standard Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, you need a conscious observer to go from a probability wave to an actual universe. You would need a mind that is separate from the universe to create it. Other interpretations of quantum mechanics lack an explanation of how an actual universe would arise from an atemporal, immaterial state.

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Program 3

The Fine Tuning of the Designed Universe

The physical laws of the universe are finely tuned in ways that make life possible. One example of this is the rate of expansion of the universe. The expansion of the universe is fine tuned to one part in 10⁶⁰. If the expansion of the universe did not meet this fine tolerance, life could not exist. If the rate of expansion was slightly faster than it is, galaxies would not form and heavy elements generated by stars would not accumulate in sufficient density to form planets that could support life. If the rate of expansion of the universe was slightly slower, the universe would have collapsed too quickly for planets that could support life to form.

The force of gravity is fine tuned to one part in 10⁴⁰. If the force of gravity was slightly weaker, stars would be too cool to ignite and would not produce the heavy elements needed to support life. If gravity was slightly stronger, the stars would be too hot and burn too quickly to support life on planets.

In the interview Meyer says, "...there are about 25 to 30 of these separate parameters that are each exquisitely finely tuned to allow for the possibility of life in the universe"

This fine tuning is too improbable to have occurred by chance so it is evidence that a transcendent intelligence is responsible for creating the natural laws of the universe. The universe was not just created, it was designed.

John Polkinghorne a physicist at Cambridge University thought the design hypothesis was a better explanation of the fine tuning than materialism. The astronomer Fred Hoyle tried to find alternatives to the Big Bang theory but eventually he came to the conclusion that fine tuning of the universe is compelling evidence that the universe was designed. He said, “A common-sense interpretation of the data suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with Physics and Chemistry, as well as Biology, to make life possible.”

One way materialists try to avoid the implications of the fine tuning of the universe is to suppose that there are a huge number of universes all with different tuning so that there can be some that will be able to support life. However, the theories of how multiple universes might be created do not fully explain the fine tuning of our universe. Such theories result in a highly improbable system which is itself finely tuned so you haven't really explained how the fine tuning arose, you have only pushed it back to a previous step and the need for a designer remains.

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Program 4

The Designer's Continued Involvement: Life and Evolution.

At the beginning of the fourth program, Meyer reviews the previous shows. He reminds the viewer that the universe had a beginning and it was designed. The expanding universe shows that the universe had a starting point in time. The universe is not infinitely old. The solution to the field equations of general relativity show that the universe also started from zero volume so we know space and all matter was created at the instant of the big Bang. The fine tuning of the physical laws of the universe show that the universe was designed by a transcendent intelligence.

The remainder of the program addresses the question of whether this intelligence continued to be involved with the universe after it was created. The evidence that life arose through design and species arose through design suggests that the intelligence does influence events within the universe. This evidence was discussed by Meyer in a previous series of programs on the same television show, so it was only covered superficially in this program. The evidence that life was designed is based on the conclusion that the genetic code could not have arisen naturally. Transcripts of those shows are available. I have explained elsewhere in this blog that materialism cannot explain the origin of the genetic code. There are also various articles on evolution elsewhere in this blog.

Meyer explained that Darwin believed that to understand an event that happened in the remote past you should identify a cause that is known in the present time to be capable of causing the same type of event. By this reasoning, one arrives at the conclusion that the genetic code, genetic information, the control systems that regulate processes in the cell, and cellular machinery are best explained by intelligent design. This is because the only known process by which codes, information, control systems, and machines arise in the present time are through the action of intelligent human beings. Genetic information, in particular, arose when life on earth began about 3.85 billion years ago (long after the big bang which occurred about 14 billion years ago), and during the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago when many new forms of animal life arose in a brief time and without precursors. This is at variance with Darwinian evolution which predicts slow gradual changes from one species to another. Similarly there were rapid increases in genetic information during the mammalian radiation 50-55 million years ago, the origin of flowering plants in the Cretaceous era, and the origin of marine reptiles. All these increases in genetic information show that the designer is still involved in the universe.

Meyer concludes the program and the series with a discussion of some of the scientists who were convinced by the cosmological argument:

For example, Antony Flew, who was a long-time atheist who came to realize that there was compelling evidence of a creator in the physical world, both in cosmology and biology. The historian Fred Burnham has said that the God hypothesis is now a more persuasive and respectable hypothesis than at any time in the last hundred years. I agree. I think it's not only more respectable, I think it's the best explanation of this ensemble of critical evidence from cosmology, physics, and biology that we've been able to discuss on your program.

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Transcripts

Transcripts are available from jashow.org:

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Videos

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Monday, March 17, 2014

US Military Telepathic Communications with Aliens

Above Black is a book written by Dan Sherman that describes his experiences working in the US military as a telepathic communicator. In the two videos below, Dan also talks about his experiences. Dan says that his mother was part of a program in which aliens abducted pregnant women and genetically modified their unborn children so they would become capable of a very accurate and precise form of telepathic communication with the aliens. This form of communication could then be used by the government in an emergency when other forms of communication such as radio and telephone were unavailable. Most psychics are not accurate enough to replace a telephone so this would be a real breakthrough. Dan described his initial training method which included humming a tone inwardly, in his mind, not aloud, for four hours a day. For more information watch the videos below.

ET Contact Government Cover Up by Dan Sherman:

Alien Liaison: RichPlanet Interview with former U.S.A.F. Staff Sergent Dan Sherman:

Monday, March 10, 2014

Exopolitics Lectures from the 2010 X-Conference

The UFOTVstudios youtube channel has a playlist of lectures on expolitics from the 2010 X-Conference. Exopolitics is the study of the politics of the UFO phenomena and of extraterrestrial entities. Exopolitics involves discussions of the reasons for government secrecy on these subjects and the political consequences of full disclosure of information about them by the government.

Below are some videos that I liked. There are additional interesting videos on the playlist which you might enjoy watching, but there are also some videos there which I believe contain unreliable information ... so view them at your own risk.

The X-Conference : The Stephenville TX UFO Wave - Angelia Joiner

The X-Conference : UFOs and the National Security State - Richard Dolan

(The second video below is from a different channel and playlist but I am including it here because it is also by Richard Dolan and I preferred it to the first video below from the X-Conference.)

PA MUFON Conference 10/09/2009 Richard Dolan

Debunking the UFO Debunkers - Stanton Friedman

The X-Conference : SURGICAL REMOVAL OF ALIEN IMPLANTS - Special Update - Dr. Roger Leir

The X-Conference : A New World Power Emerges for UFO Disclosure - A.J. Gevaerd

The X-Conference : The Government, UFOs & Crop Circles - Colin Andrews

The X-Conference : Plan C: Preparing for ET Disclosure - C. B. Jones, PhD

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Video Highlights of UFO "Experiencers Speak" Conference, September 2013

Chris Augustin's youtube Channel has a playlist of speakers from the 2013 Experiencers Speak conference that was held in September 2013. Below are some of the highlights including talks by the experiencers in three classic cases and one well known UFO researcher, but there are more videos at the playlist.

Christopher Bledsoe Sr. - The Fayetteville North Carolina Encounter

Travis Walton & Steve Pierce - Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience

Stanton Friedman - A New Look at the Cosmos

Jim Weiner & Chuck Foltz - The Allagash Abductions

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

How Does a Flying Saucer Work?

The video Blueprint for a UFO from the Sirius Disclosure channel on youtube explains how a flying saucer works. This channel has many other interesting videos on the related subjects of zero-point energy, electrogravitics (anti-gravity), and faster-than-light travel.

Anti-gravity has an interesting relationship to one method of faster-than-light travel. Einstein's theory of special relativity shows that you can't accelerate a mass to the speed of light because it would take an infinite amount of energy. But, if you use electrogravitics to reduce the mass of an object to zero, you are not limited in that way and you can accelerate an object to a speed faster than that of light. However, accelerating an object through normal space may be less efficient than another method of faster-than-light travel suggested by Einstein's theory of general relativity. General relativity is concerned with bending space. By traveling through warped space, it may be possible to travel faster than light would travel through the same space in its unwarped state.

Monday, February 24, 2014

UFO Witness Testimony from Csetiweb Channel

The following videos of UFO witness testimony are from the csetiweb channel on youtube. Most of the witnesses are military or government officials. These videos are a few of my favorites but if you find them interesting, you can find more videos like these on the csetiweb channel. I thought Clifford Stone's testimony was particularly interesting and found many more interviews with him by searching on the internet.

I have read much of the UFO literature but I learned something important from these videos. Seeing a UFO or an alien can be a life altering event that causes a huge psychological disruption. It can turn a person's concept of humanity and our place in the universe upside-down. When the government tries to intimidate witnesses to prevent them from talking about their experiences to their colleagues, family, and friends it restricts the witnesses from an important way of coming to terms with their experiences. Also, when pseudoskeptics harass witnesses, it also causes psychological harm. Therefore, the government cover-up of the UFO phenomena and the pseudoskepticism it enables is extremely harmful to witnesses and can lead to broken families, lost jobs and even suicide. It harms not just the witnesses but the people close to them.

Interestingly, some of the witnesses say that they were inspired to talk publicly about their experiences because they wanted to fight back against the intimidation they experienced and fight back against the harm done to other witnesses. So, it seems that the cover-up and the strong-arm tactics used to enforce it may have been counterproductive and are leading to the demise of the cover-up.

Incident at Malmstrom - Capt. Robert Salas

"Cover-Up at Vandenberg" - Prof. Robert Jacobs Testimony

The Bentwaters Incident: Security Officer Larry Warren

"UFO Crash In Peru" - Lance Corporal Jonathan Weygandt Testimony

Colonel Phillip J. Corso was involved in reverse engineering technology from crashed UFOs:

Sergeant Clifford Stone participated in UFO crash retrieval:

Sergeant Karl Wolfe, US Air Force observed NASA photographs showing an alien base on the moon:

Alan Godfry, British police officer witnessed an UFO blocking traffic on a motorway:

"Re-Engineering an ET Craft" - Capt. Bill Uhouse:

"The Ministry's UFO Files" -- Nick Pope

The Lord Admiral on Bentwaters

"Project Blue Book: An Insider Speaks" - Brigadier General Stephen Lovekin, Esq.

"Saucers Over DC" - Col. Ross Dedrickson Testimony

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Evidence That God Exists: People Who Have Near Death Experiences Meet God.

People who have near death experiences often meet God during their experience. This is evidence that God exists. Below is a video from an IANDS conference and several excerpts from near-death.com of people describing their meetings with God. Kevin Williams summarizes near-death experiencer observations about God here

Jessica haynes

In this video from an IANDS conference, Jessica Haynes discusses her near-death experience. She says that she had died and after reviewing her life she wanted to come back and live her life better. Unfortunately, she was dead and she was told, "You can't get back you don't have a body to get back to". But she insisted, repeatedly. So they took her to talk to God who enabled her to come back. She describes her experience of God as, "Pure love.", and "The most loving light you could imagine." He tells her "I am all, I created everything." The part where she describes this is from 10:30 to 15:00.

George Rodonaia

Many people have asked me what I believe in, how my NDE changed my life. All I can say is that I now believe in the God of the universe. Unlike many other people, however, I have never called God the light, because God is beyond our comprehension. God, I believe, is even more than the light, because God is also darkness. God is everything that exists, everything - and that is beyond our ability to comprehend at all. So I don't believe in the God of the Jews, or the Christians, or the Hindus, or in any one religion's idea of what God is or is not. It is all the same God, and that God showed me that the universe in which we live is a beautiful and marvelous mystery that is connected together forever and for always.

Anyone who has had such an experience of God, who has felt such a profound sense of connection with reality, knows that there is only one truly significant work to do in life, and that is love; to love nature, to love people, to love animals, to love creation itself, just because it is. To serve God's creation with a warm and loving hand of generosity and compassion - that is the only meaningful existence.

Linda Stewart

I was home and I wanted nothing more than to remain in the light of God. Christ had delivered me into the light and I stood in the presence of God. I was filled with complete knowing: The light was love and love was God. Waves of consummate love which emanated from the light obliterated every burden I carried and every thought that kept me from knowing God.

Mellen-Thomas Benedict

Then, like a trumpet blast with a shower of spiraling lights, the Great Light spoke, saying, "Remember this and never forget; you save, redeem and heal yourself. You always have. You always will. You were created with the power to do so from before the beginning of the world."

In that instant I realized even more. I realized that WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN SAVED, and we saved ourselves because we were designed to self-correct like the rest of God's universe. This is what the second coming is about.

I thanked the light of God with all my heart. The best thing I could come up with was these simple words of totally appreciation:

Arthur Yensen

If you saw heaven, why didn't you mention God and salvation?

I didn't omit them intentionally. It's only that I didn't see God, Christ, or hear anything about salvation. However, I do consider the Master-Vibration as part of God because it controls the universe and seems to regulate everything except the evil minds of people on Earth.

To understand God, I believe one would have to be almost as great as God is. Or at least be like Christ who was in harmony with God. On the other hand, salvation is simple. All one has to do is to love so unselfishly that his soul-vibrations will rise high enough to fit him into heaven.

Jan Price

The Wise One continued speaking. "Throughout the vast unlimitedness of All That Is, the creative energy - that which is called the Spirit of God - is expressing itself as you, me, and everything else. Wherever we are, the God-source is, and we are always somewhere."

"Sometimes I am in places where God doesn't seem to be, as in the middle of a heart attack," I responded. "Surely God is not there."

"Yes. Wherever we are, the Source, God, is. A heart attack isn't bad. It is just an experience accepted on a certain level of being. We are so unlimited that we can limit, restrict, contract. Such power is awesome, for it is our very nature to create. We are constantly expressing in some way.

...

In the center of the universe I stand encircled by divine being. In this I live and move and have my being. I am in this world, and of it. The world of natural order, ease, and joy. Eternal goodness flowing, doing, being all. There is only joy; waves of love support, sustain. I am in God, not outside.

I am in love, consciously at peace with all there is. In God, I love and move and have my being. In love, I live and move and have my being. In peace, I live and move and have my being. There is nothing else. There is no outer. All is in the circle of God, Love, God Love. GOD LOVE.

The Kingdom of God is within me. Yes. But more important, I am in the Kingdom of God. The Spirit of God is within me, but more important, I am in the Spirit of God. The love of God is within me, but more important, I am in the love of God. All there is is God. I can be nowhere else. I cannot be separate from God.

Laura's NDE (age three and a half)

God in the manifestation of infinite light appeared off to my left, and I was engulfed in a form of all-powerful, all-nourishing love. That divine being appeared as a massive column of golden light, with the suggestion of a human shape inside. I both saw and felt his light, feeling as if I were in a warm bath that completely healed and protected me. I never wanted to leave. No conversation passed between us, but in those infinite moments I acquired the knowledge that allowed me to go back to Earth to complete my life.

Cecil's NDE (age eleven)

Behind me and to the left was a strong light source, very brilliant and filled with love. I knew it was a person. I called it God for lack of a better term. I could not see it; I felt what seemed like a male presence. He communicated to me, not so much in words but telepathically,

Clara's NDE (age ten)

I was taken to a huge iridescent white room and told to sit down on some steps that led up to a large white chair, and wait there for someone who was to talk to me. He came out a door at the other end of the steps, walked to the chair above me, and sat down. He was dressed in a white, long-sleeved, floor-length robe with a wide gold band around the mid-section. He wore sandals. His dark brown hair was shoulder length; he had a long face, broad chin, dark eyes with black around both eyelids, like eyeliner pencil, but it wasn't. His skin was olive colored and his eyes were as liquid love. He communicated by looking at me. No words had to be spoken, as we could hear each other's thoughts. He told me what I had to do in life and had me go to the other side of the room and look down into something like a TV set so I could see my future. What I saw made me very happy. This man, who I believe is Jesus Christ, said that once I woke up in the hospital I would forget what I was supposed to do in life.

"Nothing can happen before its time," he cautioned.

As I was leaving the room he said I must obey his commandments if I wanted to come back.

When I revived, a nurse was sitting beside my bed and she said, "Thank God you finally woke up." I told the doctor that I had watched him work on me and the color of the machine brought into the surgery room. He didn't know what to say.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Objects That Contain Healing Power

This is the fourth post in my series on psi wheels.

In the first post, I discussed how everyone can measure the energy field surrounding their body with a psi wheel and how to use a psi wheel to measure this energy as you bring it into and through your body when you practice spiritual healing. In the second post, I discussed how the psi wheel shows that the energy in the field surrounding the body is the same as the energy that flows through you when you give spiritual healing to another person. In the third post I discussed using qi gong to increase the flow of healing energy (qi) through your body to help develop your abilities as a spiritual healer.

In this post I will discuss how to use an Egely wheel (a very sensitive psi wheel manufactured by the Egely Research Company) to demonstrate that healing energy can be stored in inanimate objects.

(The Videos shown below are only provided to illustrate the apparatus and phenomena that I have written about for those who are interested and who may want to try reproduce it themselves. The videos are too short in length and too close to the subject to be considered as proof of the phenomena. Since it is impossible to proving anything with a video, I have no plans to make more convincing videos. The proof of the phenomena will come when others reproduce them. One of the phenomena, turning a psi wheel covered by a jar by placing a hand on the jar, has been reported by many others. I am not aware of anyone else who has reported the second phenomenon: using the jar by itself to turn the wheel.)

When I first learned spiritual healing at a Spiritualist church I was taught that a healer can put healing energy into an inanimate object and then if another person holds that object, the healing energy will be transferred to the other person. I was able to test and confirm part of this belief using an Egely wheel. I was doing a healing meditation and monitoring the flow of healing energy with an Egely Vitality Meter. This is a very sensitive psi wheel. To be totally certain that no air currents were influencing the wheel I used a jar turned upside down to cover the wheel. The jar was made out of plastic, recycle number 1, PETE. I put my hand on the jar to spin the wheel. This is a very inefficient way to turn a psi wheel and the wheel turns much slower when covered with a jar - which is why I use the more sensitive Egely wheel when doing this rather than my homemade psi wheels. While this was occurring, I took the following video of it:

After meditating this way for twenty minutes, ten minutes with each hand turning the Egely wheel under the jar, I tried an experiment to see if the jar had retained any healing energy. I took away the jar covering the Egely wheel and waited for it to stop turning. Then I placed the jar near the wheel and took my hand away from it. The Egely wheel began to turn. While I did this, I took the video of it shown below. After several rotations I moved the jar away from the wheel and it soon stopped turning. I put the jar near it again and it began to turn once more. Another time, I let the jar turn the wheel for ten minutes. This length of time would rule out the possibility that the motion was caused by air currents created when the jar was placed near the wheel. I then took the jar away and the wheel stopped turning after a few seconds. Since the wheel stopped turning when the jar was removed, it is unlikely that air currents could be the cause of the movement of the wheel when the jar was next to it. I put the jar back and the wheel resumed turning and continued to turn for several minutes until I stopped the experiment.

This phenomenon is consistent with another observation about psi wheels. Psi wheels seem to turn in the opposite direction when they are under a jar than when they are uncovered and exposed directly to a hand. Usually, a psi wheel will turn clockwise when the left hand is placed near it and counterclockwise when the right hand is placed near it. However, if a jar is placed over the wheel, the wheel will turn clockwise when the right hand is placed near it and counterclockwise when the left hand is placed near it. This phenomenon suggests that the wheel is not turning inside the jar because some force field from the hand penetrates the jar, but because the force field from the hand induces a field in the jar - like two gears that turn in opposite directions when their teeth mesh. Interestingly the Egely wheel (and a home psi wheel to a lesser extent) is shaped like a gear. If a field is induced in the jar, it seems possible that the jar might retain the field once the hand was taken away as if it was magnetized (a la Franz Mesmer). This would explain why the jar without a hand near it would also cause the psi wheel to turn, whereas if it was simply the energy from the hand penetrating the jar that turned a covered wheel, that would not explain why a jar could turn a wheel without a hand near it.

These observations seem to confirms the belief that healing energy can be stored in inanimate objects. There is some scientific evidence in this area. Dean Radin published an article, Effects of Intentionally Enhanced Chocolate on Mood in the Elsevier journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Volume 3, Issue 5, Pages 433-546 (September 2007), which describes how chocolate which had been prayed over elevated the mood of the people who ate it.

Update 9/5/12: I tried a slightly different experiment today. First I placed the plastic jar near the Egely wheel to make sure it did not have any residual "magnetism". Then, I did the healing meditation for five minutes turning two homemade psi wheels, one with each hand. Next, I stopped using any psi wheel and continued meditating with my right hand on the plastic jar in the same position as if it had the Egely wheel under it but without the wheel. After ten minutes with my hand on the jar, I placed the jar next to a stationary Egely wheel and took my hand away. The wheel began to spin counterclockwise and continued to turn until I moved the jar away after five minutes, then the wheel stopped turning.

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