How Trustworthy has Science Become?

Let's face it. Operational science is the purest science. It can be replicated and is
immediately falsifiable. Applied science and engineering science all derive from operational science because it is also observable science. To this kind of science we owe our cell phones, internet, computers, cars, tractors, and machinery of practical devices. It expresses itself through the time-worn principles the laws of physics and invisible forces like gravity, electromagnetism and the like.

Historic science is, to some degree, speculative science. Frequently it embraces origins science which is not very pure at all. It is assumed science because it makes up a narrative that may or may not be true. No one witnessed it and therefore it cannot be substantiated. It postulates scenarios that are based on our current understanding that may or may not have been true earlier in time. Its motto is, "the present is the key to the past", when just about every scientific law known has to be abrogated to make it true. The Big Bang Theory violates the first Law of Thermodynamics because it embraces the creation of energy from nothing. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (The Law of Entropy) is violated because it postulates that, out of disorder, came order. The model predicted a uni-polar planet for us when we all know we have a di-polar planet. The creation of life requires an abrogation of classic cell theory stipulating that every daughter cell derives completely from a parent cell. Evolutionism violates all probability theory in that the odds for a sequential development of billions of events is infinitely small.

We trust in the wrong kind of science while it frequently justifies itself in meaningless tautologies. Survival of the fittest is based on the notion that those life forms that survive are the fittest and the fittest life forms are those that survive. Or that fossils are dated by the strata they are found in and strata is dated by the index fossils found in it. Or that time sprang from a "singularity", space-time!

The death of science may not just be the withdrawal of government funding for research. It may turn out to be the corruption of science speculation posing as facts.

The recent article below, by Callie Joubert, is a well-researched argument for my thesis above. If you have the time, read it and examine how fallible science is to outside forces and nefarious motives:

Is Scientific Research Flawed?

by Callie Joubert on July 22, 2016

We tend to think of science as an impartial search for truth and certainty. But is it possible that we are facing a situation in which there is a massive production of wrong information or distortion of information? Is it possible that certain scientific disciplines are facing a crisis of credibility? Mounting evidence suggests this is indeed the case, which raises two questions: How serious is the problem? And what could explain this?

How Serious Is the Problem?

Recent articles in First Things,[1] The Week,[2] and New Scientist[3] present evidence that warrants the conclusion that flawed scientific research results are widespread.

The title of an editorial in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, dated April 6, 2002, asks the question, “Just How Tainted Has Medicine Become?”[4] The article states, “Heavily, and damagingly so, is the answer.” Among other things, in 2001, researchers completed experiments with biotechnology products in which they had a direct financial interest and doctors did not tell their patients that others had died using these products when safer alternatives were available. In the same journal, dated April 11, 2015, Dr. Richard Horton stated the gravity of the problem as follows: “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue . . . science has taken a turn towards darkness.”[5]

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue . . . science has taken a turn towards darkness.

In 2004, under the heading of “Depressing Research,” the editor of The Lancet had this to say about antidepressants for children: “The story of research into selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) use in childhood depression is one of confusion, manipulation, and institutional failure. . . . In a global medical culture where evidence-based practice is seen as the gold standard for care, these failings [i.e., of the USA Food and Drug Administration to act on information provided to them about the harmful effects of these drugs on children] are a disaster.”[6] After being editor of the New England Journal of Medicine for 20 years, Dr. Marcia Angell stated that “physicians can no longer rely on the medical literature for valid and reliable information.”[7] She referred to a study of 74 clinical trials of antidepressants that indicates that 37 of 38 positive studies were published. In contrast, 33 of the 36 negative studies were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. She also mentions the fact that drug companies are financing “most clinical research on the prescription drugs, and there is mounting evidence that they often skew the research they sponsor to make their drugs look better and safer.”

In 2011, researchers at Bayer decided to test 67 recent drug discoveries on preclinical cancer biology research. In more than 75 percent of cases, the published data did not match their attempts to replicate them.[8] In 2012, a study published in Nature announced that only 11 percent of the sampled preclinical cancer studies coming out of the academic pipeline were replicable.[9]

In the prestigious Science journal, in 2015, the Open Science Collaboration[10] presented a study of 100 psychological research studies that 270 contributing authors tried to replicate. An astonishing 65 percent failed to show any statistical significance on replication, and many of the remainder showed greatly reduced effect sizes. In plain terms, evidence for original findings is weak.

A discovery in physics, the hardest of all hard sciences, is usually thought of as the most reliable in the world of science. However, two of the most vaunted physics results of the past few years—“cosmic inflation and gravitational waves at the BICEP2 experiment in Antarctica, and the supposed discovery of superluminal neutrinos at the Swiss-Italian border—have now been retracted, with far less fanfare than when they were first published.”[11]

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg,[12] and they indicate, in the words of Dr. Horton (quoted earlier), “that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations.”[13] So let us turn to the next question.

What Could Explain This?

First, although replication (confirmation) is essential for maintaining scientific credibility, there are many reasons that studies fail to replicate (for example, when there was a difference in initial conditions [experimental set-up] and theoretical understanding between the original investigators and the failed replication, or when the original discovery and interpretation was false). The problem becomes exacerbated when, “in most scientific fields, the vast majority of the collected data, protocols, and analyses are not available and/or disappear soon after or even before publication.”[14] It is often forgotten that small errors can have large effects. In 2013, three years after two economists from Harvard University published research showing that when a country’s debt reaches more than 90 percent of GDP there is an associated plunge in economic growth, a student from the University of Massachusetts ran into trouble when he tried to replicate their findings. He found they “had made several mistakes including a coding error in their spreadsheet.”[15] Nevertheless, the observations of the economists had a major impact on the public policy debate.

Second, career aspirations and yearning for prestige, competition between researchers and for limited resources, commercial gain (the profit motive) that leads to selective reporting, the fixing of “small errors” so that it appears to have a more favorable result, and deliberate fraud are impossible to deny.[16] One well-known problem with statistical analysis, the practice commonly known as “p-hacking”—collecting or selecting data until non-significant results become significant—is especially rife among the biological sciences.[17] Another problem is the “tuning” of models that scientists use to explain the phenomena they observe. For example, “According to some estimates, three-quarters of published scientific papers in the field of machine learning are bunk because of this ‘overfitting’.”[18] Taken together, these problems make it difficult to decide what to accept as evidence and what not to accept.

A third explanation relates to the peer review process. It is “deadly effective at suppressing criticism of a dominant research paradigm.”[19] It means, among other things, that results that contradict previous results may be suppressed and the dissemination of false dogma perpetuated. But can science enlarge our understanding of phenomena when transparency, critical thinking, and questioning of central tenets are rigorously restricted?

Evidence does not “speak for itself”; research results are not interpreted from a neutral point of view.
A fourth way to explain flawed scientific results relates to the researcher’s presuppositions that influence their interpretation of research results. This is hardly ever discussed in the official research literature, and when it is acknowledged as a problem, the reader is left in the dark as to what exactly that means. Dr. Horton is illustrative when he states that “scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world [i.e., worldview].” This means that we think about the world and ourselves against a background or on the basis of some conceptual scheme or framework of beliefs. This has at least one implication: evidence does not “speak for itself”; research results are not interpreted from a neutral point of view.

There is another “background assumption that almost all practitioners in the biomedical sciences agree upon and that is naturalism.”[20] Naturalism is problematic because human problems are often reconceptualized and subsequently described in terms that are consistent with the evolution story but otherwise in conflict with alternative perspectives. The following is just one example.

According to Laurence Tancredi,[21] psychiatrist/lawyer and professor of psychiatry at New York University, “Morality begins in the brain." He says that "new developments in neuroscience” have altered our concept of deception, abuse, manipulation, uncontrollable sexual desires, greed, murder, theft, infidelity—of every possible sin and immoral act related to the Ten Commandments—“into problems of brain biology.” What we consider as sins or moral transgressions actually “created an evolutionary advantage during certain early phases of man’s development.” For instance, “The compulsion to eat . . . had the advantage of holding people over during periods of famine. Women having ‘extramarital’ affairs resulted in children, which increased genetic diversity. Even homicide, during periods of limited resources, ensured the survival of some over others.” In sum, he says, “Morality in humans evolved from other primates and depends on the brain.”

In the first place, chimps often deceive, manipulate, and kill one another, but no neuroscientist has ever suggested they suffer from “problems of brain biology.” Thus, what we are presented with is a bizarre form of logic: chimps that deceive, manipulate, and kill have no brain problems, but humans who do these things have these problems. Yet by the same logic, the cannibalism, infidelity, and murder that were not sins of our alleged ancestors are also now not sins for us because these things are brain problems. Tancredi’s evolutionary and neuroscientific explanation of immoral conduct has the next bizarre implication: those who will one day “appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10) will be people with brain problems.

Tancredi’s account of morality may have two unintended consequences. On the one hand, it may lead Christians to think anew the Bible's teaching, the causes of wrongdoing, the place of praise, blame, responsibility in their moral practices, and the treatment of wrongdoers. On the other hand, if morality “begins in the brain,” then it may lead researchers, who falsify and suppress negative evidence in order to deceive others, to think that they have brain problems. And if that is science, then it is ludicrous, to say the least.

Concluding Remarks

To conclude this brief overview of the explanations of flawed scientific results, I wish to make four points. Firstly, it is always good to ask whose interest the research would serve, when, for example, a scientist claims that “the soul is dead” and that it “is what modern neuroscience promises to deliver.”[22]

Secondly, the aim of a conceptual analysis is to show that the articulation of a scientific explanation is in some way incoherent, that it is logically and conceptually unintelligible, that an explanation of some property is inappropriate, or that a question being asked of the object being investigated is unintelligible. Thus, when empirical problems are addressed without adequate conceptual clarity, misconceived questions and goals are bound to be raised, and misdirected research is likely to ensue.

Thirdly, many scientists are able to see that the goal of science is the seeking and presentation of truth, and that any deviation from this goal adversely affects our lives; but they refuse to accept that the scientific method is only one source of truth among others. What need serious reevaluation are the naturalistic materialist and the biological reductionist worldview that dominates the academia; it is a wholly misguided conceptual framework for the articulation and explanation of human origins, personal and interpersonal problems, and how it may be rectified.

Finally, if scientific evidence is the basis of scientific authority, then critique of that authority is unavoidable to those who are able to see through the interpretations and explanations of the research results. Close scrutiny of interpretations and explanations is, therefore, imperative when trust in scientific authority is to lead to ontological, epistemological, and moral guidance in our lives.

Footnotes
[1] William A. Wilson, “Scientific Regress,” First Things, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/scientific-regress.
[2] Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, “Big Science is Broken,” The Week, April 18, 2016, http://theweek.com/articles/618141/big-science-broken.
[3] Sonia van Guilder Cooke, “Why So Much Science Research Is Flawed—and What to Do About It,” New Scientist, April 13, 2016, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030690-500-why-so-much-science-research-is-flawed-and-what-to-do-about-it/.
[4] “Just How Tainted Has Medicine Become?,” The Lancet 359, no. 9313 (2002): 1167.
[5] Richard Horton, “Offline: What Is Medicine’s 5 Sigma?,” The Lancet 385, no. 9976 (2015): 1380.
[6] “Depressing Research,” The Lancet 363, no. 9418 (2004): 1335.
[7] Marcia Angell, “Industry-Sponsored Clinical Research: A Broken System,” JAMA 300, no. 9 (2008): 1069–1070.
[8] William A. Wilson, “Scientific Regress.”
[9] C. Glenn Begley and Lee M. Ellis, “Drug Development: Raise Standards for Preclinical Cancer Research,” Nature 483 (2012): 531–533.
[10] Open Science Collaboration, “Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science,” Science 349, no. 6251 (2015): 1–8.
[11] William A. Wilson, “Scientific Regress.”
[12] John P. A. Ioannidis, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” PLoS Medicine 2, no. 8 (2005): 696–701.
[13] Presumably Dr. Horton is referring generally to scientific research. Richard Horton, “Offline: What Is Medicine’s 5 Sigma?”
[14] John P. A. Ioannidis, “Why Science Is Not Necessarily Self-Correcting,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7, no. 6 (2012): 646.
[15] Sonia van Guilder Cooke, “Why So Much Science Research Is Flawed—and What to Do About It.”
[16] William A. Wilson, “Scientific Regress.”
[17] Sonia van Guilder Cooke, “Why So Much Science Research Is Flawed—and What to Do About It.”
[18] “Trouble at the Lab,” The Economist, October 19, 2013, http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble.
[19] William A. Wilson, “Scientific Regress.”
[20] James A. Marcum, Humanizing Modern Medicine: An Introductory Philosophy of Medicine (London, United Kingdom: Springer, 2008), 23.
[21] Laurence Tancredi, Hardwired Behaviour: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ix, x, xi, 2, 4, 6, 8.

[22] Joshua D. Greene, “Social Neuroscience and the Soul’s Last Stand,” in Social Neuroscience: Towards Understanding the Underpinnings of the Social Mind, eds. Alexander Todorov, Susan Fiske, and Deborah Prentice (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 264.

The Issue of Climate Change and its Impact

Is our climate warming and is it cause for alarm?

There is considerable debate right now about climate change. The debate is not really a major one about the truth of its occurrence but rather about the funding of its solutions. For example, certain political regions are opting for a carbon capture tax while others are not, thereby giving the economic benefit to those who do not. This being the case, the taxpayers of those be hit by the carbon capture taxes are organizing to vote out their political leaders pursuing environmental incentives. So it is also for those regions where coal or oil are major components in their revenue base. With the shutdown of refining, drilling or mining, for the sake of reducing CO2 emissions, comes the additional political hot potato of lost jobs and further revenue loss. Unemployment and declining revenues are the fastest way to see political upsets occur. 

The common man and woman does not understand climate change and, as it turns out, the climatologist and scientist may not either. There are many factors that determine our climate. Six known classic factors are latitude, ocean currents, wind and air masses, elevation, relief precipitation (caused by mountainous terrains), the moderating effect of being near water (oceans or lakes). Beyond this, though, there are many unknowables. 

We may say with confidence that our earth is a very forgiving planet that seems to have stayed the course of inhabitability for a very long time without our complete understanding of how it has done so. Just like our universe, our planet has had a harmonious existence allowing for major catastrophic events like natural disasters and evidence of dramatic geological upheavals in the past.

The role of humankind in our survival of the planet is a dubious one. Humans have only begun to affect our planet in the last 150 years or so. The building of the Panama Canal was a major accomplishment in shortening shipping times from the Pacific coast of North America to Europe. The building of massive locks connecting the America-Canadian midwest to the Atlantic through the Great Lakes brought undesirable mussels and other saltwater life forms into the interior of the continent. By extrapolation, it is thought we have done the same to affect our weather.  The common world view is that humans are just one more species that has evolved and now determine the survival of our planet because of our ability to endanger its climate. Climate, remember, is long-term weather.



The consensus view on climate change is that it is happening. The view that it is caused by anthropogenic causes (human activity) is also a majority view but by no means a consensus. Even less certain is the eventual impact of any climate change that may be occurring. The fact that French winemakers have purchased land in southern England to grow some of their heirloom grapes for wine may be seen as a positive development--especially for the British! The possibioity that certain colder regions of our planet may become warmer and therefore more arable and liveable may also be seen as a positive development if it comes to pass. But the threat of alarming ocean levels flooding coastal regions of already densely populated cities is certain a concern. The suggestion that natural disasters may increase in frequency because of global warming is also bad news if it is true.

But then, there's the kicker: Just what is factual about climate change and are there factors the public doesn't know about that they should? Is there information climate scientists are ignoring? And how reliable are their computer models that rely so heavily on? Is there truly a correlation between temperature increases and CO2 emission increases? Add to this a highly politicized rhetoric and you have a very uncertain opinion about any of the science behind the issue. Would you want to be forced out of work and have your mine, oil field, or refinery closed down for the sake of the environment? 

There is a vast spectrum of opinions on climate change. Very few are left who outright deny climate change. But, from there on in, there is a myriad of skeptics, agnostics, and qualifiers.

Let us get a clear picture, if we can. Historically, anyone can verify that the planet's climate has always changed and sometimes quite dramatically. A Roman historian in the second century wrote that the climate had changed so much that olives were now growing in Greece!  This would indicate that it must have been much cooler prior to his writing because olives right now are quite commonly found in Greece. Testimonial evidence, therefore, of climate change. In 1943, six American P-38's were crashed in a bad snowstorm on Greenland and only excavated later in 1988 to be found un 270 feet of ice! At an accumulation rate of over 5 feet per year and a suggested maximum Greenland glacier thickness of some 5000 feet, this would indicate that Greenland was truly green only a thousand years ago!  Likewise, the discovery of L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, by the Viking around the same time and their reference to it as Vinland, would indicate that grapes were capable of being grown there when they can no longer be found.  Recently a Viking Cape Dorset settlement on Baffin Island led the archeologist from Memorial University to state that "all the eivdence shows this settlement to be as populated and busy as any town in Europe". Of course, the settlement is quite barren now in its Arctic environment. All of this seems to confirm that the earth's climate has changed quite dramtically since even medieval times (when the Viking were active in the northern arctic). 

What followed this Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was what we now know as the LIttle Ice Age (LIA)  from 1400 to 1850 when the evidence shows that the climate was unusually cooler than we associate with these areas now. And this evidence was not just testimonial but now commited to art. Artists painted people skating on the Thames River in England and it has never frozen over in recent times. So did Dutch and Flemish artists. So cold was it in the north of Europe that accounts record Polar Bears being seen on the Orkney Islands of Scotland. All of this evidence and more confirms that certainly Europe and part of Asia underwent some dramatic cooling phase in the climate until about 1850.

Along this vein, a recently retired professor of astrophysics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), David Lindzen has produced powerful evidence to show that, indeed, the weather has always been warming since the Little Ice Age, but not alarmingly so. And his papers suggest it will continue to do so, yet without danger to human activity. This lack of sensationalism did not endear Lindzen to his critics and a Norwegian scientist fell into his same camp with the latest IPCC report, refusing to sign it, because (so he told BBC) of its warning that global warming threatened human adaptation. The Norwegian climate scientist refuse to sign it because, already, he opined, humans have shown themselves to the warmest and coldest climates existing today on earth. Yet another scientist interviewed after him on the BBC, shot out the accusation that this Norwegian scientist was only expressing his doubts as a "publicity stunt". So much for real science and real inquiry.

The waters have been roiled too by some logistical changes that can make an honest broker question the data being collected. Many CRU's (Climate Research Units or stations) were relocated in the 1980's to a closer proximity to urban areas for the sake of convenience. But, with urban relocation, would necessarily come closer proximty to heat-attracting pavements and roads, too. So would the reading still be valid?

Then came the publication of studies that show a close correlation with sunspot activity and climate data. Apparently there are cycles of these and that our weather is warmed or cooled by their presence and intensity or their absence or decline. Dr. Ivan Semineuk ov McGill Unviersity presented on Canada's Discovery science show. It has been confirmed with a documentary on BBC by teams of scientist in Britain. 

Few people realize some of the science around climate change too. The largest greenhouse gas is not CO2 but rather water vapour!  Are we to control this natural part of the hydrology cycle? The threat of bio-engineering, by the way, is truly one possibility that should scare everyone: Scientists shooting gigantic mirrors up into space to reflect sun's heat from the earth, or cloud-seeding to control climate change. Both of these I have seen on television documentaries. Thankfully, the willingness to try these innovations are as rare as medical researcher willing to try an AIDS vaccine!

So bad has the publicity over CO2 become, that the public has largely forgotten that CO2 is a GOOD GAS that is needed for both photosynthesis and transpiration! Trees need it and we need their oxygen produced by it. Ironically, no one worries about nitrogen which is poisonous to humans in its pure form but harmless as 78% of the air we breathe!

This year, certain heat records are being attributed to climate change with the footnote that it is also caused by the "Super" El Nino climate phenomenon. So is there really any long-term global warming cause behind the record temperatures all? Famous scientist, Freeman Dyson, is one of the holdouts about climate change who regularly expresses his doubts about our understanding of it on the basis of the role cloud creation plays in mitgating the harmful attempts of climate. And there have been many scandals such as Glaciergate and Climategate that reveal some serious fuding of the facts and sensationalizing of the effects of climate change as we understand it currently. Sometimes, exaggerations carry the arguments. The Arctic sea ice thickness has only been recorded since the late 1970's and therefore lack any long-term data. Research papers from Germany show that sea-ice thickness has always teeter-tottered between the Arctic and the Antarctic over the decades. When the Arctic ice is thickening the Antarctic sea-ice thins and vice versa. The navigability of the Northwest Passoge has been used to justify the climate change argument ignoring the fact the the Northwest passoge was navigable in the 1940's when the RCMP boat, the St. Roch, passed through it from Vancouver to Halifax in 86 days--and later returned as well. 

Lord Neville Lawson of Britain was interviewed on CBC and expressed his opinion that the rise of the climate change movement was a direct offspring of the environmental movement and the decline of conventional religion. He saw the issue a back-to-the-earth Gaeia nature worship movement. A little extreme, perhaps, but something to muse upon.

Whether our taxes should be climbing on the part of our attempts to curb climate change is therefore very questionable. Judith Currie, an enivronmentalist and questioner of climate change, was interviewed in Scientific American and complained about the "tribalism" infecting the scientific community over climate change. No doubt there is good science being done in trying to understand our environment but an even larger truth has also been forgotten: That the inconclusiveness about climate change and its impact does not negate the truth that we are badly continuing to pollute the land, air and sea of our planet.

The False Hope in Government

Don't get me wrong: We need governments and if they fail to give us "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", then we surely can appreciate them giving us "peace, order and good government.". It's even a taller order to expect them to bless us with "freedom, brotherhood, and equality". (Most societies have proven that some of its citizens are more equal than others!)

Most governments in the past have ruled empires and brought great burdens upon its subjects/ Some few have given them perhaps the best this world has to offer. The two most successful empires this world has witnessed is arguably the British Empire and the American Empire. And it isn't that either one was perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The great philosopher, Voltaire, admired the British political system and marveled at the constructive engagement of the market place that he witnessed in London. Here, he noticed that it didn't matter what language or race people had, everyone conversed equally when selling or buying their goods. Charles Dickens wrote a book, A Tale of Two Cities, drawing a contrast between the Old French Regime and the relative peace and prosperity of England. So successful was the British form of government, that the Westminster model was copied around the world. With this form of government and the relative progress of civil rights, human rights and democracy, the British Empire is still remembered as the wealthiest empire the world has ever had. It even provided the example for the Thirteen Colonies to copy as it separated from its English-speaking predecessor. It has been estimated that nearly one-third of the planet's nations came under the control of the British Empire and, from this, nearly half the world's WGP (World's Gross Product). All of this from a tiny island nation.

Succeeding the British Empire was the American Empire. Although having the largest economy in 1872, America became the world's most powerful nation at the end of the First World War. Few people realize that by the year, 2000, the WGP was some 23 trillion dollars and 13 trillion of that was the United States. Although not an imperial nation like the British Empire, the United States developed many commercial relationships in tributary countries around the globe and the relationship was a win-win one for all. Any country refusing America knocking at its door was usually seen as very regressive and even downright foolish. Even after the victories of the Second World War, United States was a magnanimous victor. It rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan and rebuilt many other countries along with it. 

Yet, like all civilizations, preceding it, the Pax Britannica and Pax American are receding. Many nations now despise the U.S. and Britian and some do not even use the American dollar as its reserve currency. Despite the recent economic turnaround, the U.S. dollar is still seen as an extremely weak currency because of the country's massive indebtedness. To be sure, this is a strange development because there doesn't seem to be any other currencies inspiring more confidence. The Euro is seen by no one as a healthy currency and China's yuan has recently been going through its own throes in the country.

One of the strengths of the U.S. was always its national confidence and positive approach to challenges. This is changing. There were two mythologies all Americans believed in: (1) That democracy was the answer to our unstable world's political situation, and (2) that the people are always right in the end.

I submit to you that these innocuous beliefs were never true and are being proved such right now. Democracy is not the answer to this world. As Churchill wisely said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others!". Remember that Hamas, a terrorist group to Western democracies, was elected democratically by the Palestinians! And so did Hitler's government come into power as well during the 1930's in Germany (albeit with the help of thuggery). Right now, a significant majority of Americans are alarmed to realize that a bully billionaire devoid of human decency and who can never apologize is the prime contender for the Republican party. Yet, up to this point, the masses have made him a very credible candidate for the presidency in November. His Democratic rival is almost as unpopular with the electorate as he is. How is democracy serving America at the moment!  Where is its salvation for Americans? And why is this so? Because there is the second myth being exploded.

The notion that the people are always right in the end is also inherently flawed. If the electorate has made a bully billionaire the Republican nominee for the presidency, this speaks very poorly of the collective wisdom of Everyman. All it takes is the ignorance of the public and a gullible, exploitable narrow-mindedness of widespread millions to undermine the very freedoms and aspirations Americans have so long aimed for. Such a hijacking would very quickly destroy the hope of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for Americans voting in a wolf in sheep's clothing. Trade agreements would be canceled, trade wars could ensue, military withdrawals could cause the rise of terrorism on the main land and, at the other extreme, blustery war-mongering could destroy the national budget and easily destroy the superpower influence of the U.S.

What is particularly alarming is the general apathy Americans now have toward its adversaries threatening the peace of all Western governments. Too many see Russia as a harmless world power when the top military brass in the U.S. and NATO see Russia as the major threat the world is facing right now. 

And while Americans are struggling with wedge issues like gay rights, climate change, race relations and national poverty, other forces are very much at work stealing their legacy and weakening their nation. Too many, in other words, are asleep at the wheel. While their patriotism is never doubted, their society is stealthily degenerating. Not only are wages stagnating, one in two Americans are either living in poverty or heading in that direction. Near 50 million Americans are now collecting food stamps. And things are heating up in the country but it isn't climate change related. It is an inability to transcend racial stereotypes and accept fellow Americans as colleagues at arms united by the same aspirations all share together. And to some it appears that animals and the LGBTQ communities are faring much better than the legacy minorities of past centuries.

The brew is being stirred hotter and hotter and it is only a matter of time before even greater explosions occur.

The governments of this world are doomed to fail because they cannot handle the decay from within their countries. Only a future golden age with a world government ruled by a returning Jesus Christ can bring peace to this earth!

Why Humans Are Not Animals

Few of you may remember it, but in 1994, an animal rights lawyer, Steven Wise, decided to promote the idea that some animals should be declared humans with all the full rights of any person. Soon came the proclamation that dolphins and whales should be deemed full persons as well. Of course, many have long considered primates to be our cousins and even assured us that we share 98% of their chromosomes. This kind of thinking very much follows from the belief in evolutionism and origins science, not operational science that can be observed and repeated. 

Very few of the public realize that the old assumption that humans and chimps are closely related genetically has now been proven false by several teams of researchers. A new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the common value of >98% similarity of DNA between chimp and humans is incorrect. The >98.5% similarity has been misleading because it depends on what is being compared. There are a number of significant differences that are difficult to quantify. A review by Gagneux and Varki described a list of genetic differences between humans and the great apes. The differences include ‘cytogenetic differences, differences in the type and number of repetitive genomic DNA and transposable elements, abundance and distribution of endogenous retroviruses, the presence and extent of allelic polymorphisms, specific gene inactivation events, gene sequence differences, gene duplications, single nucleotide polymorphisms, gene expression differences, and messenger RNA splicing variations.’ (Gagneux, P. and Varki, A. 2001. ‘Genetic differences between humans and great apes.’ Mol Phylogenet Evol 18:2-13.) A number of studies have demonstrated a remarkable similarity in the nuclear DNA and mtDNA among modern humans. In fact, the DNA sequences for all people are so similar that scientists generally conclude that there is a ‘recent single origin for modern humans, with general replacement of archaic populations.’ (10.Knight, A., Batzer, M.A., Stoneking, M., Tiwari, H.K., Scheer, W.D., Herrera, R.J., and Deninger, P.L. 1996. ‘DNA sequences of Alu elements indicate a recent replacement of the human autosomal genetic complement.’ Proc. Natl Acad Sci USA 93:4360-4364) Careful re-tallying of the numbers in the original paper describing the initial elucidation of the chimpanzee DNA sequence suggests that the two species are only ~89% identical. This has now rendered any similarities between chimp and human DNA somewhat meaningless as mice apparently share 92% of the same chromosomes humans do! 

The essence of our humanity is found with our minds. Animals have brains and not minds by this classification. In other words, animals can partially fulfill the lowest three orders of Bloom's Taxonomy but humans can flourish and dazzle all of us up to the sixth and highest level of the hierarchy.  All agree that animals can (1) remember, (2) understand, and (3) apply. But humans can go beyond this in spades. We can independently and without hard wiring, (4) analyze, (5) evaluate (thinking critically), and (6) create. 

The truth is, we really do not know what animals are thnking or even what their true motivation is in their behavior. What you might think is heroism on the part of an animal may well be conditioning that drives it to act as it does for the sake of a reward of some sort. It also seems that animals have a sixth sense that many humans do not have. It doesn't make them smarter but it gives them additional advantages we do not have. But then this has always been the case between animals and humans. Many animals have superior hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching capabilities totally lacking in humans but still never exceeding humans in mental abilities granting them a mind and not just a brain.

Our classification systems have always been a bit awkward and a bit embarrassing. It was Carl Linnaeus who gave started classifying animals and some strange results were produced indeed. We stopped calling whales fish and deemed mammals like us even though a beached whale doesn't fare half as well as a beached human!  We seem to consider birds what they are even though some cannot fly and some can. Snakes are all considered reptiles even though some bear their young as eggs and others bear them alive like mammals! And then there is the Duck-Billed Platypus of Australia that is considered a mammal even though it is equally a reptile and a bird and swims under water as frequently as it dwells on land. There is one species of a wren in the American Carolinas that is deemed another species strictly on the basis of it singing a different song! (Are the French and the English a different race after all? And are the Gaelic-speaking Irish a different species than the English-speaking Irish?)

My contribution to clear up this terrible confusion is to declare outright that humans, when all is said and done, are not animals after all. And we are mammals only because someone has grouped us together with the rest of that class of creatures. Here are ten points that make us strictly human and four sub-points that separate our human minds from the brains of our fellow animals. Below is the combination of two articles combined from Live Science regarding our uniqueness as human beings. Hats off to Charles Q. Choi and Natalie Wolchover and their masterful articles on the subject. 

Humans are unusual by any stretch of the imagination. Our special abilities, from big brains to opposable thumbs, have allowed us change our world dramatically and even leave the planet. There are also odd things about us that are, well, just special in relation to the animal kingdom. So what exactly makes us so special? 

(1) Speech 

The larynx, or voice box, sits lower in the throat in humans than in chimps, one of several features that enable human speech. Human ancestors evolved a descended larynx roughly 350,000 years ago. We also possess a descended hyoid bone — this horseshoe-shaped bone below the tongue, unique in that it is not attached to any other bones in the body and allows us to articulate words when speaking.

(2) Upright Posture

Humans are unique among the primates in how walking fully upright is our chief mode of locomotion. This frees our hands up for using tools. Unfortunately, the changes made in our pelvis for moving on two legs, in combination with babies with large brains, makes human childbirth unusually dangerous compared with the rest of the animal kingdom. A century ago, childbirth was a leading cause of death for women. The lumbar curve in the lower back, which helps us maintain our balance as we stand and walk, also leaves us vulnerable to lower back pain and strain.

(3) Nakedness

We look naked compared to our other hairy animals. Surprisingly, however, a square inch of human skin on average possesses as much hair-producing follicles as other primates, or more — humans often just have thinner, shorter, lighter hairs. Fun fact about hair: Even though we don't seem to have much, it apparently helps us detect parasites, according to one study.

(4) Clothing

Humans may be called "naked apes," but most of us wear clothing, a fact that makes us unique in the animal kingdom, save for the clothing we make for other animals. The development of clothing has even influenced other species — the body louse, unlike all other kinds, clings to clothing, not hair.

(5) Extraordinary Brains

Without a doubt, the human trait that sets us apart the most from the animal kingdom is our extraordinary brain. Humans don't have the largest brains in the world — those belong to sperm whales. We don't even have the largest brains relative to body size — many birds have brains that make up more than 8 percent of their body weight, compared to only 2.5 percent for humans. Yet the human brain, weighing only about 3 pounds when fully grown, give us the ability to reason and think on our feet beyond the capabilities of the rest of the animal kingdom, and provided the works of Mozart, Einstein and many other geniuses. 

There's no consensus on the question of what makes us special, or whether we even are. The biggest point of contention is whether our cognitive abilities differ from those of other animals "in kind," or merely in degree. Are we in a class by ourselves or just the smartest ones in our class?

Charles Darwin supported the latter hypothesis. He believed we are similar to animals, and merely incrementally more intelligent as a result of our higher evolution. But according to Marc Hauser, director of the cognitive evolution lab at Harvard University, in a recent article in Scientific American, "mounting evidence indicates that, in contrast to Darwin's theory of a continuity of mind between humans and other species, a profound gap separates our intellect from the animal kind."

What makes our brains unique is their...

(a) Generative computation
Humans can generate a practically limitless variety of words and concepts. We do so through two modes of operation recursive and combinatorial. The recursive operation allows us to apply a learned rule to create new expressions. In combinatorial operations, we mix different learned elements to create a new concept.

(b) Promiscuous combination of ideas
"Promiscuous combination of ideas allows the mingling of different domains of knowledge such as art, sex, space, causality and friendship thereby generating new laws, social relationships and technologies." (Hauser)

(c) Mental symbols

Mental symbols are our way of encoding sensory experiences. They form the basis of our complex systems of language and communication. We may choose to keep our mental symbols to ourselves, or represent them to others using words or pictures.

(d) Abstract thought

Abstract thought is the contemplation of things beyond what we can sense. "Researchers have found some of the building blocks of human cognition in other species. But these building blocks make up only the cement foot print of the skyscraper that is the human mind," (Hauser)

What other unique features are human only? 

(6) Hands

Contrary to popular misconceptions, humans are not the only animals to possess opposable thumbs — most primates do. (Unlike the rest of the great apes, we don't have opposable big toes on our feet.) What makes humans unique is how we can bring our thumbs all the way across the hand to our ring and little fingers. We can also flex the ring and little fingers toward the base of our thumb. This gives humans a powerful grip and exceptional dexterity to hold and manipulate tools with. This is getting off the topic, but what if we all had six fingers?

(7) Fire

The human ability to control fire would have brought a semblance of day to night, helping our ancestors to see in an otherwise dark world and keep nocturnal predators at bay. The warmth of the flames also helped people stay warm in cold weather, enabling us to live in cooler areas. And of course it gave us cooking: Cooked foods are easier to chew and digest.

(8) Blushing

Humans are the only species known to blush, a behavior Darwin called "the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions." It remains uncertain why people blush, involuntarily revealing our innermost emotions (we do know how it works). The most common idea is that blushing helps keep people honest, benefiting the group as a whole.

(9) Long Childhoods

Humans must remain in the care of their parents for much longer than other living primates. It could be because our minds require more time to grow and develop than animal brains.

(10) Life after Children


Most animals reproduce until they die, but in humans, females can survive long after ceasing reproduction. This might be due to the social bonds seen in humans — in extended families, grandparents can help ensure the success of their families long after they themselves can have children.

Let's face it. By any stretch of the imagination we are fearfully and wonderfully made and utterly unique from the rest of creation. Stop others from stealing your special human existence. You are unique on the planet and you are unique in the universe!

Terrorist Attack in Nice Has Grave Ramifications

At least 80 bodies lie on streets of Nice, France, after attack.

Just a few hours ago, new reports around the world flashed the tragedy of yet another terrorist attack in France, this time in Nice. As of this exact moment, 77 are dead, but some 50 are still listed as being in critical condition raising the possibility that reports about there being as many as 100 fatalities are a distinct possibility. The act came in the form of a lorry or truck driving along an avenue over a distance of some 2 km (1 mi) at some 30 mph purposely swerving and veering to try and kill as many as it could. There were many children hit as well as adults.

Bob Baer, a former CIA analyst, terrorism expert, and contributor to CNN, immediately saw the ramifications of this new and inventive way to heartlessly destroy people: "In the long term, it will contribute to the rise of far-right political groups in Europe and around the world." Why? Because national security is a political issue and the masses will quickly vote into power far-right leaders who promise better protection. But, along with this change in the political climate, will come new laws which suspend civil rights and override privacy privileges liberal democratic societies have boasted of. In France, this will mean more votes for Marine Le Pen's National Front party. Baer also noted that this increasing fear of terrorism was partly behind the Brexit vote and its promise to control immigration. Why? Because immigration is linked, in turn, to undesirables entering the country and stirring up terrorist activites or radicalizing Britain's Islamic youth who have travelled to Islamic State to serve in their armies.

To solve this problem, it is sometimes necessary to analyze it first and find out the connections that are so polarizing our societies right now.  For this reason, it is hardly accurate to impugn those opposed to immigration as racists. Certainly there will always be a minority that are, but the majority of those opposed to immigration are uncomfortable with those peoples who national heritage is so monolithically linked to one particular religion and its ability to coerce its members into fidelity to the faith and the ease with which it can radicalize its youth into believing killing horrifically is somehow a virtue and not a negative in its values.

Believe it or not, this is not unique to Islam for the Western Judeo-Christian religions have also been plagued by it over the course of history. When we think of medieval times and the Spanish Inquisition, we realize that both Catholics and Protestants were quite capable and even eager to vanquish each other from their lands in the names of the God of Israel and Jesus Christ. So too are some orthodox Jewish sects dwelling currently in the modern State of Israel. In North America right now there are dangerous sects listing themselves as Christian who impose the harshest punishments and practices upon their members. The corruption of true Christianity and the true Judaism certainly sets no example for anyone to follow. For this reason, the poplarity of Christianity has diminished markedly recently, enhanced by the widespread sexual abuse of Catholic children and young women by the clergy pretending to be men of God.

Yet the current trends remind me of an essay I once read that, at first, struck me as absurd, but later made me reflect further upon it. The author wrote an essay about the link between violence and the media. He argued that the influence of the media was dangerous to our youth, not because of the realism of its violence but, in fact, because of its lack of realism. He argued that a cowboy decking another cowboy was portrayed too lightly on Westerns; that a real, honest-to-goodness deck would have left a real cowboy with missing teeth, blood running out of his mouth, possibly permanently demaged eyes, and a broken jaw that would have left him howling in screaming pain that wasn't captured by the movies. That a real-life shooting of a person would leave a real-life pool of blood with body parts sprayed over the area with the result of shocking anyone whoever really got to experience this violent act. His solution was, therefore, not to ban violence in the media, but to show its real-life effects. I still don't support his theory but you have to give it to him: He's on to something you might want to ponder a little further.

I use this example to illustrate that the problem with terrorism is not religion per se not even the corruption of various religions. The problem with terrorism is that too many people are raised in the wrong religions that have the wrong values and allow for their own corruption and radicalism. 

"A comparison between the concept of martyrdom in Islam on one hand and in Judaism and Christianity on the other illustrates the emphasis on violent jihad within Islamic jurisprudence. In Islamic practice, the martyr is one killed in jihad. He is entitled to special status in paradise and on Judgment Day. In Judaism and Christianity, a martyr is someone who endures torture and death rather than renounce his or her belief.....There is little tolerance for idolaters within Islam: the first article of faith is the profession, la ilah illa-llah (there is no deity but God).[Muhammad Ibraheem Surty, The Qur'anic Conception of al-Shirk (London: Luzac, 1982)] Muslim jurisprudence considers shirk to be the worst form of disbelief.[Qur'an, 28:17, 31:13, 36:74, 37:158. ] The Qur'an commands Muslims to kill those who commit shirk[Qur'an, 4:4.] and is replete with examples calling for jihad against idolaters. For example, sura (chapter) 9:5 reads, "When the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters whenever you find them, and take them captive or besiege them."[See, also, Qur'an, 2:193. Sura 8:39 reads, "So fight them so that sedition might end and obedience is wholly Allah's"; and sura 9:123 states, "Fight the unbelievers who are near to you, and let them find ruthlessness in you."[See, also, Qur'an, 2:244] Muslims living under the rule of idolaters are obliged to fight their rulers.[16] The Qur'an likewise commands believers to conduct jihad against hypocrites,[‘Ali ibn Muhammad al-Mawardi, Kitab al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyah (Beirut: Wilayat al-Dinn, 1996), pp. 30-1, 44-5, 50-1.] seize them, and do away with them.[Qur'an, 3:167-8; 4:82; 4: 88-91; 4:145; 9:12; 9:73; 66:9.] All infidels, unbelievers, and hypocrites—those who commit blasphemy or treason—are relegated to hell.[Qur'an, 9:73; 47:12; 98:6.]

Prominent Muslim scholars consider the general jihad declaration against the unbelievers to be crucial to Islamic success.[20] Those who sacrifice their material comfort and bodies for jihad win salvation. By their sacrifice, they obtain all the pleasures of paradise, be they spiritual—the close presence of God—or material.[Qur'an, 3:195; 9:72; 47:4-6, 15; 61:11-3.] As an additional incentive, Muhammad promised those mujahideen who fight in a jihad war a reward of virgins in paradise.[Qur'an, 44:51-4; 52:17-20; 55:47, 50, 52, 56, 70, 72; 56:22-4.] Importantly, those conducting suicide bombings do not consider themselves dead but rather living with God. As sura 2:154 explains, "Do not think that those who are killed in the way of Allah are dead, for indeed they are alive, even though you are not aware." Therefore the prohibition on suicide need not apply to bus bombers or other kamikaze jihadists. Martin Lings, a British scholar of Sufism, argues that this linkage between martyrdom and paradise was probably the most potent factor that Muhammad brought to the annals of warfare, for it transformed the odds of war by offering a promise of immortality.

The Hadith collections, the second important source of Shari‘a after the Qur'an, devote considerable attention to jihad, most often in terms of military action against non-believers. Indeed, most Islamic theologians in the classical period (750-1258 C.E.) understood this obligation to jihad as military. There is a whole genre of hadith known as fada'il al-jihad (the merits of the holy war), based on the nine-volume Hadith collection of Muhammad ibn Isma‘il al-Bukhari (810-70) and considered to be the most respected and authoritative collection. He dedicates almost one-third of his fourth volume on jihad as physical holy war against infidels. For example, he relates a hadith of Muhammad commenting that there are one hundred stages in paradise for those who fight for the way of God.  Only those who participate in jihad deserve paradise without any checks and reservations. To exemplify this notion, Bukhari relates a story of a woman asking Muhammad if her son, who was killed in the battle of Badr, is in paradise, and he replied that her son is in a higher paradise.

Consistent with the Qur'an, these hadith generally demonstrate the necessity for Muslims to spare no means to spread Islam by force and strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of God. The main motif of jihad in the Hadith reinforces the concept that death on the battleground in the cause of God leads to paradise and receipt of a "sacred wedding" to black-eyed virgins. From among 262 traditions that are mentioned by Abdallah Ibn al-Mubarak (736-97), a renowned Khorasani scholar who concentrated on jihad warfare as the most important method to Islamic success, thirteen reinforce the concept of virgins in paradise as a reward for martyrdom. 

The Hadith also emphasize the necessity for all believers, whenever called upon, to commit to a jihad war. In one example, Bukhari cites Ibn ‘Umar, one of the transmitters of accounts about the Prophet traditionally accepted by Muslims, who relates, "Muhammad said: ‘I have been ordered to fight against all the people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's messenger, and offer the prayers perfectly, and give the obligatory charity. So if they perform all that, then they save their lives and property from me and their reckoning will be done by Allah.'" And, in another, a transmitter narrated, "O Allah, you know that there is nothing more beloved to me than to fight in your cause against those who disbelieved your messenger." (Burkey, David. The Religious Foundations of Suicide Bombings. The Middle East Quarterly, Fall, 2006, pp. 27-36) 

I do not indict Islam as being a false religion. I indict all religions as having layered many false layers of traditions that are harmful and, like Islam, completely uninspired. All of them, incidentallyl, draw upon many pagan traditions having nothing to do with the real God. 

While religion is a problem with much of our world today, it is specifically false religion, not true religion, that is the problem. I believe that the true religion is an empirical one that is provable on many levels. In fact, that an invisible God exists is empirical lest how can we explain the origin of invisible forces and invisible laws of physics? That the Christian Bible is the true source of a true religion I can easily demonstrate through fulfilled prophecy (and a lot of it, too!) and the historical, archaeological confirmation of its existence and its surroundings. (The Quran has been criticized for having no archaeology and no broad prophecies but only narrow prophecies about Mohammad himself.) The existence of Jesus of Nazareth can be confirmed by at least 11 non-biblical references which only the dedicated skeptics can discuss on an absurdist level of reasoning. 

What I CANNOT support are the many pagan and false doctrines that have spread in the name of Christianity nor those that have inundated Judaism too. Hard to dismiss that the early Christianity of Christ was already being corrupted by Gnostic-Buddhist traditions when no mention of fathers, abbots, nuns, monasteries, prayer beads, veneration of relics, priestly celibacy, chants, or monks are contained in any of tis pages. Hard to dismiss that the early church observed God's holy days in a New Testament way rather than invent their own based on pagan Saturnalia and Ishtar traditions. Hard to dismiss that Protestantism only got rid of the Buddhism in corrupted Christianity and not its pagan observances. 

The New Testament teachings of Christ plainly teach peace and non-political involvement. So did the Apostle Paul and the early churches continue this traditions. There were no original instructions to Christ's little flock to destroy the world and all its people. He taught them to obey the authorities and become lights in a dark world around them. So many false doctrines and practices have laden believers with guilt and hang-ups that should never have been passed down to them. 

Religion is a dirty word nowadays for very good reasons but it isn't the truth that is threatening the world: It is the falsehoods and wrong conclusions that have corrupted adherents' minds and made them easier to radicalize and embrace devilish ideas, perhaps inviting possession of the devil himself.

Our Backward View of History

Neanderthal Skull

Just watched a BBC video on Neanderthals and the "new discovery" they were human because of their ability to create art. I found this "breakthrough" rather underwhelming because, our accumulated knowledge of this human population showed that they carefully buried their dead in a ceremonial way indicative of belief in an afterlife and they are also known to have created musical instruments, the "Neanderthal flute" being one such relic.

The video shows the results of their exploration of a cave that is part of Gibraltar. Their determination it was a Neanderthal cave is an interesting one in that we are not told how it was determined. Presumably some human bones were discovered that match the body and cranial characteristics of skeletons found in the Neandertal Valley of Germany. Of course, the anthropologists quickly attribute to tens of thousands of years to their residence in the cave (which in itself is difficult to fathom if they were normal, curious human beings constantly in search of food and habitation). 

The real root of this problem regarding our human history is the speculation about deep time when, in fact, our knowledge of time is badly in need of reform. The closest anyone has come in trying to explain time was Stephen Hawking in his book, A Brief History of Time. Here he postulates that time began with a "singularity", but, upon further investigation, this simply turns out to be a meaningless tautology because singularity means spacetime. Ergo, Hawking postulates that time originated with spacetime. This is tantamount to saying that rain comes from water from the sky. It tells us absolutely nothing. But, in one of his lectures, Hawking did admit that our universe and our earth had to have had a beginning, time-wise. Here he was on the right track, to be sure, because time is built into our smallest particle of matter, radioisotopes. In radioisotopes, time is expressed in half lives. Carbon 14 has a half life of 5730 years, which is to say, that half of its isotope mass disappears in 5730 years. And in the following 5730 years, half of its earlier mass disappears. Through this understanding, it is therefore evident that Someone started the clock ticking because there would be no Carbon 14 existing if all of its radioactive mass had disappeared. 

Because of science's inability to grapple with this "big question", it is therefore quite fatuous to speculate on the age of Neanderthals or anything else they deem old. In fact, it is fatuous to believe Neanderthals are our ancestors in any direct sense because they could, in fact, be a European population group of peoples whose ancestry lie in the Middle East or Africa without relation to other population groups around the world. 

It is geological stratigraphy that provides that basis of our age determination methods. The notion that some relic or fossil is just so old is based on the rock environment it is found in. Despite the suspicion that radiometric dating--scientific dating--was discovered nearly 100 years after Lyell's Principles of Geology, and made to agree, the determination of a geological column was decided upon in a very arbitrary way. The fact that the geological strata is almost never found in the accepted order, is even a further travesty of academic integrity.

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 53.

There are many means of determining the age of our universe and its earth, some of which provide us with relative ages and others providing us with absolute ages, and the majority of them vary dramatically from conventional radiometric means. For example, the known number of exploding star remnants (super novas) indicates an age of the universe that is only some six thousand years old. This relatively youthful age of our universe is seemingly corroborated by the Faint Sun Paradox and the decomposition of comets orbiting the sun. The magnetic decay of the earth's north and south poles sets up a trajectory that would make it impossible for our earth to be more than 10 thousand years old--another fact seemingly corroborated by the amount of mud accumulated on the sea floor and the recent discovery of T. Rex soft dinosaur tissue and its accompanying DNA existence.

So to insist on some Neanderthals as our evolutionary ancestors would seem to be wildly precipitous in light of these other age determination methods. 

Ancient histories by pagan Romans and Greeks couples with medieval histories attest to an earth that was peopled from humans originally from Mesopotamia thereby giving credence to their dispersion on the Plain of Shinar just as the Bible records. Raphael Holinshed states that the first human derived from Japheth populated Europe 200 years after the Great Flood. The History of Rome by Livy traces Italy's foundation to the Trojan defeat in its war against Sparta. And as far as the pre-Flood earth, we can only depend on the Bible for that murky period although other ancient histories testify that Seth's ancestors inhabited Egypt giving rise to the Seti name among its ancient Pharoahs living in the Post-Flood world. The

Bible, along with many pagan peoples' records, also verify that the ancient world existed with human giantism and dramatic longevity. The fossil record certainly verifies that almost every life form we know of today existed in the antidiluvian world in some giant form. At least every year, new fossil remains are turning up recording giant boas, bears, dragon flies, oysters, clams, iguanas, tigers, that existed in that pre-Flood world. There are precious few human fossils but, among them there are remnants of human teeth, skulls and skeletal parts (femurs, tibias, etc.) indicating giant human as well. The best documented example was the Giant of Castelnau but other giants were found in the same Bronze Age grave site in Montpellier, France. Yet skeletal parts of many giants were also discovered in North America and recorded in local newspapers (assuming none of these were hoaxes). 

Our interpretation of history is badly damaged and in need of repair. Anthropology is supposed to be looking for the truth but, perhaps as the late primate specialist, Lord Solly Zukerman, intoned is closer to the fact: "Paleontology is closer to parapsychology that science: (from Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Frontiers of Public and Private Science ) Too bad that those with their feet on the ground and perceptive minds are ridiculed for their logical conclusions regarding our past. But then, who ever believed for a moment that scientific truth was established by the majority opinion?