Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Read books by Martinus Thomson free on-line.
Read books by Martinus Thomson free on-line: http://www.martinus.dk/en/ttt/
On-line Buddhist meditation retreat
There is an on-line 8-day Buddhist meditation retreat available here:
http://www.dhammasukha.org/online-retreats-david-johnson.html
Detailed description (including links to source materials)
http://www.dhammasukha.org/online-retreat-details-dj.html
You can sign up for the retreat and work with an instructor, or you can use the source materials, videos etc, on your own at your own pace.
If you sign up, they ask for a donation, whatever you feel like paying, after the retreat.
This style of meditation is based on the teachings of the Buddha. Most "Buddhist" meditation taught today is based on later commentaries on what Buddha taught.
More articles here:
http://begintosee.blogspot.com/
http://www.dhammasukha.org/online-retreats-david-johnson.html
Detailed description (including links to source materials)
http://www.dhammasukha.org/online-retreat-details-dj.html
You can sign up for the retreat and work with an instructor, or you can use the source materials, videos etc, on your own at your own pace.
If you sign up, they ask for a donation, whatever you feel like paying, after the retreat.
This style of meditation is based on the teachings of the Buddha. Most "Buddhist" meditation taught today is based on later commentaries on what Buddha taught.
More articles here:
http://begintosee.blogspot.com/
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Saturday, May 16, 2015
General Nursing › General Nursing Discussion › Death bed visions
http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/death-bed-visions-301825.html?PageSpeed=noscript
http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/death-bed-visions-301825.html?PageSpeed=noscript
Friday, May 15, 2015
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Monday, May 11, 2015
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Friday, May 8, 2015
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Darwin's God: The Evolution of Neural Crest Cells: Teleology Rai...
Darwin's God: The Evolution of Neural Crest Cells: Teleology Rai...: Early stem cells were set aside to create new features There is a reason why Aristotle’s ideas persisted for thousands of years—they adv...
Monday, May 4, 2015
Darwin's God: Chuan He: Evolution Created Epigenetics
Darwin's God: Chuan He: Evolution Created Epigenetics: Because Nature Takes Advantage of What it Evolves They never predicted it, then they denied it could be heritable, and then they denied ...
Saturday, May 2, 2015
UNDERSTANDING RIOTS
UNDERSTANDING RIOTS
David D. Haddock and Daniel D. Poisby
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1994/5/cj14n1-13.pdf
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Friday, April 24, 2015
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Infinity Is a Beautiful Concept – And It's Ruining Physics
Infinity Is a Beautiful Concept – And It's Ruining Physics
Infinity Is a Beautiful Concept – And It’s Ruining Physics
By Max Tegmark
Physics is all about predicting the future from the past, but inflation seems to sabotage this. When we try to predict the probability that something particular will happen, inflation always gives the same useless answer: infinity divided by infinity. The problem is that whatever experiment you make, inflation predicts there will be infinitely many copies of you, far away in our infinite space, obtaining each physically possible outcome; and despite years of teeth-grinding in the cosmology community, no consensus has emerged on how to extract sensible answers from these infinities. So, strictly speaking, we physicists can no longer predict anything at all!
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Immaterial Aspects of Thought by James Ross
Immaterial Aspects of Thought by James Ross
http://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/43151/ross-immateriality.pdfANIMAL cognition and desire, from the appetite of a clam to the optical systems of vultures and frigate birds, is supposed to have neurobiological explanations resultant from, if not reducible to, universal laws of physics. That is a minimal and modest project for epistemology naturalized, one to be assisted by specialized sciences.
There is a larger and bolder project of epistemology naturalized, namely, to explain human thought in terms available to physical science, particularly the aspects of thought that carry truth values, and have formal features, like validity or mathematical form. That project seems to have hit a stone wall, a difficulty so grave that philosophers dismiss the underlying argument, or adopt a cavalier certainty that our judgments only simulate certain pure forms and never are real cases of, e.g., conjunction, modus ponens, adding, or genuine validity. The difficulty is that, in principle, such truth-carrying thoughts2 cannot be wholly physical (though they might have a physical medium),3 because they have features that no physical thing or process can have at all.
The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life by Luke A. Barnes
The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
by Luke A. Barnes
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.4647v1.pdf
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.4647v1.pdf
Blowing the whistle: But, Emperor Evolutionary Materialist Scientism (by being self-falsifying) is parading around naked . . .
http://www.uncommondescent.com/atheism/blowing-the-whistle-but-emperor-evolutionary-materialist-scientism-by-being-self-falsifying-is-parading-around-naked
1] Truth does not exist (Is that a true statement?)2] Nothing is absolute (Is that absolutely true?)
3] I do not exist (You must exist to deny that you exist)
4] Science is the only way to know (Can you scientifically prove that?)
5] Only what can be perceived by the five senses exists (Can you prove that by the five senses?)
6] Nobody can know anything for sure (Do you know that for sure?)
7] Nobody can know anything about God (How do you know that?)
8] Talk about God is meaningless (Since it is a statement about God, this statement is meaningless too)
9] Reality is just your interpretation, objective reality does not exist (That’s just your interpretation)
10] “‘Everything we think and do is the function of our genes/nervous system’”: Is this belief itself just the result of genetic/neutral activity? If so, why trust it — or any belief we have? If your belief happens to be right, it’s just by accident” [2]
11] There are no beliefs (You expect me to believe that?) [3]
12] Everything is meaningless (So is that statement)
Friday, April 17, 2015
Pseudogenes Shrink Gaps for Theistic Darwinian Evolutionists Collins & Giberson
On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin discusses how theistic Darwinian evolutionists Francis Collins and Karl Giberson rely on the argument that pseudogenes are junk, "broken DNA." The pseudogene is their centerpiece evidence for common descent and macroevolution in their new book, The Language of Science and Faith. This leaves them hard-pressed as we learn more about biology, genetics and biochemistry, finding function for non-coding DNA, including pseudogenes.
Pseudogenes Shrink Gaps for Theistic Darwinian Evolutionists Collins & Giberson
Pseudogenes Shrink Gaps for Theistic Darwinian Evolutionists Collins & Giberson
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Friday, April 10, 2015
Scientific Deceptions: How science is misused to promote atheism.
Scientific Deceptions: How science is misused to promote atheism.: Sometimes atheists try to discredit people who in God by calling them "anti-science". However, belief in God does not conflict wi...
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
To Build a Worm: Where Undirected Evolution Runs into Severe Difficulties
To Build a Worm: Where Undirected Evolution Runs into Severe Difficulties by Paul Nelson at evolutionnews.org
...if we want to explain the origin of the adult form of C. elegans, we need first to explain the origin of the developmental pathway that constructs the worm. And this is where undirected evolution runs into severe difficulties.
Monday, April 6, 2015
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS - THE BEST AVAILABLE EVIDENCE
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS
BRIEFING DOCUMENT
THE BEST AVAILABLE EVIDENCE
by DON BERLINER with Marie Galbraith Antonio Huneeus
Presented by CUFONS, FUFOR, MUFON December 1995
http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/Rockefeller-Briefing-Document.pdf
http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/Rockefeller-Briefing-Document.pdf
Everything You Believe Is Based on Personal Experience and Testimony
Everything You Believe Is Based on Personal Experience and Testimony
...when anyone says that testimony and personal experience are dismissible forms of evidence, they are obviously using (consciously or not) selective (and logically incoherent) hyperskepticism against an unwanted idea, because everything any of us believe or call ‘knowledge” is gained/extrapolated (hopefully using logic and logical arguments) via personal experience and/or information gained via testimony.
The Little Bird that Could
The Little Bird that Could
Hundreds of miles out to sea in a storm, exhausted birds would sometimes land en masse on ships for refuge. Sailors must have wondered at the sight; where did these little birds come from? And what are they doing out here? Did the wind carry them away from the safety of the land? A team of scientists decided to find out.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Lee Strobel is a journalist who's research into the authenticity of the Gospels transformed his life. He started out as an atheist skeptic but when he used his credentials as a reporter to get access to the worlds leading historians, the results of his research made a believer out of him.
The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel from Slaves4Christ on Vimeo.
The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel from Slaves4Christ on Vimeo.
"... [believing] began a transformational process for me where over time my philosophy and my attitudes, relationships, parenting, world-view, all of that began to change over time for good. Really for good."
"When Lee became a Christian his whole life started to change to the extent that our five year old daughter who also saw those changes went to her Sunday school teacher and told her that she wanted Jesus to do in her life what He had done in her Daddy's life."
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Scientists admit they have no idea how the brain works. Maybe they need to question their basic assumption that the brain produces consciousness.
Brain studies galore yet 'nobody really knows'
Brain studies galore yet 'nobody really knows'
Friday, April 3, 2015
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Life in B Flat (Science and Spirituality): Naturalism is an extraordinary claim.
Life in B Flat (Science and Spirituality): Naturalism is an extraordinary claim.: Most people don't understand that naturalism is an extraordinary claim. The following should help to explain why it is: The laws of na...
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Monday, March 30, 2015
Life in B Flat (Science and Spirituality): Sasquatch Are People
Life in B Flat (Science and Spirituality): Sasquatch Are People: Sasquatch are people: Sasquatch Genome Project DALLAS, Feb. 13–The multidisciplinary team of scientists, who on November 24, 2012 announc...
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Bee pesticide study furore is called a 'scandal' - environment - 27 March 2015 - New Scientist#.VRe24_lQOM5
Bee pesticide study furore is called a 'scandal' - environment - 27 March 2015 - New Scientist#.VRe24_lQOM5
Do neonicotinoid pesticides kill bumblebees? We still don't know, but the latest research is alarming – and casts doubt on the integrity of science.
...
The study, by Helen Thompson of the government's Food and Environment Research Agency, found "no clear consistent relationships" between pesticide residues and measures of the health of bee colonies, such as the number of new queens. "The absence of these effects is reassuring but not definitive," she said.
But Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex in Brighton has reanalysed the data and says that in fact the results "strongly suggest that wild bumblebee colonies in farmland can be expected to be adversely affected by exposure to neonicotinoids".
...
"This is a scandal," said Matt Shardlow of the charity Buglife, which has campaigned on the issue. "The scientific process appears to have been deliberately manipulated to agree with the environment secretary's views."
Thompson now works for agribusiness Syngenta, which manufactures some pesticides. She was not willing to speak on the record to New Scientist about Goulson's conclusions, but is understood to have submitted a new study on the issue for publication.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
The Internet is controlling your brain with alert notifications.
Alert notifications are designed to induce compulsive behavior in you.
The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology | MIT Technology Review
In an age when commercial competition is only a click away, the new mandate is to make products and services that generate compulsive behavior: in essence, to get users hooked on a squirt of dopamine to the brain’s reward center to ensure that they’ll come back.”...
It starts with a trigger, a prod that propels users into a four-step loop. Think of the e-mail notification you get when a friend tags you in a photo on Facebook. The trigger prompts you to take an action—say, to log in to Facebook. That leads to a reward: viewing the photo and reading the comments left by others. In the fourth step, you inject a personal stake by making an investment: say, leaving your own comment in the thread. This pattern, Eyal says, kicks off a cycle that lodges behaviors in the basal ganglia, the part of the brain where automatic behaviors are stored and where, according to neuroscientists, they last a lifetime.
...
The hook’s final stage, investment, closes the loop by “loading the next trigger,” Eyal says, an idea inspired in part by work on game psychology by Jesse Schell, a Disney Imagineer turned Carnegie Mellon professor. Take Twitter. When you make an investment by posting a tweet, a follower’s reply to your contribution triggers an e-mail notification to your in-box, inciting you to take yet another spin through the cycle.
Here's the link for the Nightwatch interview I did last...
Posted by Dr. Melba Ketchum on Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Reminder: I'll be on Coast to Coast at midnight CDT or 1 am Eastern time on Sunday night the 29th. Here's a link to find a radio station in your area to listen: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/stations
Posted by Dr. Melba Ketchum on Friday, March 27, 2015
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2014.4
Enzyme Families--Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design? A Study of the GABA-Aminotransferase Family
Mariclair A. Reeves, Ann K. Gauger, Douglas D. AxeAbstract
The functional diversity of enzyme families is thought to have been caused by repeated recruitment events--gene duplications followed by conversions to new functions. However, mathematical models show this can only work if beneficial new functions are achievable by just one or two base changes in the duplicate genes. Having found no convincing demonstration that this is feasible, we previously chose a highly similar pair of E. coli enzymes from the GABA-aminotransferase-like (GAT) family, 2-amino-3-ketobutyrate CoA ligase (Kbl2) and 8-amino-7-oxononanoate synthase (BioF2), and attempted to convert the first to perform the function of the second by site-directed mutagenesis. In the end we were unable to achieve functional conversion by that rational approach. Here we take a complementary approach based on random mutagenesis. Focusing first on single mutations, we prepared mutated libraries of nine genes from the GAT family and tested for BioF2 function in vivo. None of the singly mutated genes had this function. Focusing next on double mutations, we prepared and tested 70% of the 6.5 million possible mutation pairs for Kbl2 and for BIKB, an enzyme described as having both Kbl2 and BioF2 activities in vitro. Again, no BioF2 activity was detected in vivo. Based on these results, we conclude that conversion to BioF2 function would require at least two changes in the starting gene and probably more, since most double mutations do not work for two promising starting genes. The most favorable recruitment scenario would therefore require three genetic changes after the duplication event: two to achieve low-level BioF2 activity and one to boost that activity by overexpression. But even this best case would require about 10^15 years in a natural population, making it unrealistic. Considering this along with the whole body of evidence on enzyme conversions, we think structural similarities among enzymes with distinct functions are better interpreted as supporting shared design principles than shared evolutionary histories.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/expphysiol.2012.071134/pdf
Physiology is rocking the foundations of evolutionary biology
Denis Noble Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, Oxford, UK
The ‘Modern Synthesis’ (Neo-Darwinism) is amid-20th century gene-centric view of evolution, based on randommutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection. Any role of physiological function in influencing genetic inheritance was excluded. The organism became a mere carrier of the real objects of selection, its genes. We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution in a way that reintroduces physiological function and interactions with the environment as factors influencing the speed and nature of inherited change. Acquired characteristics can be inherited, and in a few but growing number of cases that inheritance has nowbeen shown to be robust formany generations. The 21st century can look forward to a new synthesis that will reintegrate physiology with evolutionary biology.
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