Daily Inspiration — The Science that Science Ignores

1. The origin of life: We are accustomed to think that 4 billion years ago, somewhere on earth, a set of chemicals appeared by chance that just happened to be able to create copies of itself. But decades of trying to find such a combination points to an un-bridgeable gap between the most complex system that could have arisen by chance and the simplest system capable of auto-catalysis.
2. The Anthropic Principle: We think of such numbers as the gravitational constant and the mass of the electron as fundamental constants of nature that just happen to be what they are. But since the 1960s it is clear that these numbers are very special, and if any of them were just a little bit different, the universe would be a dull place indeed.
3. Evolvability: Evolutionary biologists now accept that not just any self-reproducing system is capable of evolving. So how did life get to be evolvable? Evolvability must have evolved, but this requires a mechanism not encompassed by "survival of the fittest".
4. Lamarckian Inheritance: Does the giraffe who stretches to reach the uppermost leaves have children with longer necks? Evolutionary biologists have rejected this idea since the government-tainted "research" of Trofim Lysenko in the 1930s. But Lamarckian epigenetic inheritance has now been well-established, and all the pieces are in place to support the plausibility of the thesis that plants and animals can alter their genetic legacy as well.
5. Where is memory? The conventional answer is that memory dwells in the brain, specifically in synapses that connect neurons. But one-celled ciliates demonstrate learning. Plants have memories but no neurons. Monarch butterflies somehow pass the memory of their overwinter location through six generations of offspring each summer. And some heart transplant recipients have been reported to acquire the memories of the deceased donors.
6. Plant communication: The forest is not just a free-for-all of individual trees each trying to outdo its neighbors in height so it can grab a bigger share of the sunlight. Trees send pheromonal signals to warn of invading browsers and insect pests. These signals are picked up and acted upon by trees of other species and by birds. Trees pass nutrients to each other through fungal filaments underground, and take turns nourishing one another through years of sickness.
7. Animal migration: A homing pigeon depends on the earth's magnetic field for part of its navigational ability. But a pigeon can be put in dark, magnetically-shielded box and carried a thousand miles from its home, and within minutes after its release, it will begin flying toward home. Whales and some ocean fish navigate over thousands of miles to a specific destination, though they can't see more than a few feet in front of them. Crabs and turtles and butterflies congregate in swarms at times and places that they are somehow able to agree upon, though they are separated by hundreds or thousands of miles.
8. Telepathy, telekinesis and precognition: There is a credible science of parapsychology that has been pushed to the fringes by well-meaning realists whose theories have made them arrogant. Robert Jahn, Dean Radin, Daryl Bem, Julia Mossbridge and Jessica Utts are among the most careful and meticulous of the researchers in these phenomena, and all of them have experienced ridicule and ostracism from the scientific community.
9. The "hard problem": What is the relationship between the brain and our consciousness? The conventional view is that brains produce consciousness. "The mind is what the brain does." But already 120 years ago, William James taught us there is another alternative that is less consistent with our paradigms but more consistent with the facts. Maybe the brain is a transmission organ that connects the world of thoughts, feelings and intentions to the material world of molecules, cells and bodies.
10. Visitors from other worlds: There are so many stories of sighting UFOs that these people can't all be nuts. In 1997 over Phoenix AZ, a hundred thousand people saw an object the size of a battleship hovering in the air for hours. Many government insiders tell stories that the US military has been hoarding reverse-engineered alien technology since 1947, while using disinformation, ridicule and murder to keep their secret intact.

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).