BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies

Subject: BS: Scientic heresies
From: josepp
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 11:59 AM

More follow on this thread but this will do for now. Things just getting TOO boring around here.

http://news.yahoo.com/lost-world-atlantis-landscape-discovered-170805677.html

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: GUEST,Rapparee
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 01:14 PM

I'd be more impressed if it wasn't 56,000,000 years old.

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:05 PM

What does ' scientic ' mean ?

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: Penny S.
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:11 PM

So it isn't a heresy at all, it's a perfectly reasonable interpretation of perfectly reasonable evidence and absolutely nothing whatever to do with anything resembling Atlantis, except that it is a sunken landscape. No people. No temples. No imagined history.

Peer reviewed and all.

If it's boring here, why be here?

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:53 PM

Scientific Hareraces

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: gnu
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:57 PM

What were they smokin JtS?

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 04:17 PM

Ether

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 04:18 PM

Click here
----------Link fixed. JoeClone------------------

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: josepp
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 05:40 PM

Sorry, I was home for lunch but didn't have much time to hang around so that should have said "scientific."

JtS use the clicky function or I won't look at it.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 05:52 PM

S'matter- dontcha know how to cut & paste? Or are you just lazy?

Unreal.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 06:44 PM

You won't look!

I am am decimated!!

Subject: RE: BS: Scientic heresies
From: josepp
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 07:47 PM

One estimate is that Michigan was once home to tens of thousands of mounds. Mounds were so prevalent in the state once that the very road that my workplace is located on is called Mound Road for that reason. Few, if any, remain today having been plowed under and built over.

Normally, when we talk about burial mounds and such, we picture Indians. But should we? Who built the mounds of Michigan? The truth is, we don't know. Even the local Indian legends say the mounds existed when the first Indians arrived. They further state that the moun-builders were an "evil people" called Yam-Ko-Desh or "prairie people" and that they also minded copper. Archaeological evidence, however, turns up no connection to the copper pits or Upper Michigan and mounds. So now we have two mysteries: Who built the mounds and who mined the copper?

By the 1880s, farmers were digging up mounds constantly and finding very strange things. According to reports, there were cups, vases, knife-blades, "caskets," etc. The strangest of them were the copper and shale plates. The numbered into the thousands. They were examined by an Illinois attorney named Henrietta Mertz who cataloged the pieces. The Smithsonian fired off charges of fraud. The objects can't be real, they said. But Mertz, hired because of her expertise in detecting fraud, could find nothing fraudulent in them.

The problem is this: if the plates are real, it would mean a large, organized community of Christians of some sort lived in Michigan and built the mounds. So, this is either a huge fraud or one of the most significant archaeological finds ever. The sad thing is, hoax or not, they need to be studied and evaluated on the basis of that study--not on what science finds convenient to spout off about. Yet, science has shown so little interest that over half of this collection has been lost due to the fragile nature of the artifacts, most of which are sun-baked clay. Many have crumbled or been shattered due to carelessness and inexperience. These things unearthed by people all across the state. It would be impossible for anyone to have faked these and then put them in the ground for others to find.

People were tearing into mounds wherever they could find them. Only one in ten had anything in them but the yield was still a rich one. But science still insists they have to be fakes. Well, maybe they are. But what if they aren't? There are 13-month lunar calendars depicted here, for exmple. Certainly not impossible to fake but pretty imaginative and not without some good artistic skills. These artifacts need to be preserved and studied seriously and systematically. If they are real, we will need to radically modify our views of history. If they are fake, then at least we'll know:

http://spacezilotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/09c2c9b0720f3ef904adc033763986cc.png

http://spacezilotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/82f1b4b8b9da6cbcab5733ce6380de7a.png

http://spacezilotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/74780392244123170ce8c4729b8b96eb.png

http://spacezilotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/cf57eacd0fffa9f4691328cd840af609.png

http://spacezilotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/8e80cdf4e81751793942a48fffc09a5a.png

http://spacezilotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/517fc4fdd40cfcc574227cbddc520d97.png

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics1.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics3.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics7.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics4.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics8.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics9.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics10.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics12.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics13.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics14.jpg

http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics15.jpg

Professor W.B. Hinsdale of the University of Michigan surveyed some of the mounds in 1925 and came across this skull fragment which was printed in the Detroit News. It dates from before the Common Era. The hole is not ragged or jagged. The area around the hole is pristine. The hole is neatly cut. Who did this, how and why?

http://info.detnews.com/dn/history/mounds/images/3.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 07:51 PM

two mounds fivr cents

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 07:54 PM

As for the copper miners. They minded about 1.5 billion pounds of it starting around 5000 BCE. They opened thousands of pits across upper Michigan. The level of mining sophistication would have required 10,000 men to spend about 1000 years developing that technology. Lake Superior copper had turns up in old Indian implements from Michigan to South America but still the bulk of the copper must have gone overseas simply because there is no trace of it in the Americas. Indeed, there are archaeologists who claim Lake Superior copper can be found in tools and artifacts from all over the ancient world well before the Common Era. Who transported it, whereand how?

Even stranger, why did these mysterious copper miners leave behind no traces whatsoever of their culture other than the tools they used to mine? No petroglyphs or rock art, pottery, figurines, hunting implements, dwellings or burial mounds have ever been found. Only their stone mauls and copper axes used to chip out ore and separate it from the copper have been found along with copper knives, arrowheads and spearheads.

Moreover, they appear to have dropped their tools and walked off the face of the earth. Their mauls are found at mining pits left as though the miners had set them down and gone home (wherever their homes were) for the day, ready to resume work in the morning but that morning did not come. No one knows why or even when this happened although it would seem that 1200 BCE would be the cut-off point.

Who were they and where did they go all the sudden?

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 08:55 PM

Apologies for saying "minded" when I mean "mined."

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 09:29 PM

They were examined by an Illinois attorney named Henrietta Mertz who cataloged the pieces. The Smithsonian fired off charges of fraud.

Well, I for one would certainly take the word of a person with no education, training, or expertise in the field over that of the dumb bastards at the Smithsonian.

The problem is this: if the plates are real, it would mean a large, organized community of Christians of some sort lived in Michigan and built the mounds.

You are obviously out of your fu$king mind.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 09:48 PM

"...the bulk of the copper must have gone overseas..."

"...there are archaeologists who claim Lake Superior copper can be found in tools and artifacts from all over the ancient world..."

My...what interesting assumption are embedded in those remarks. Saying "the bulk MUST have" assumes it was not only 'mined' but used...

And there are archaeologists who claim almost anything when confronted with a strange set of 'data'.

Archeology is an area with a high amount of competition to discover new finds....yet this Michigan stuff seems to have been barely investigated.

It seems to me that the question "...why did these mysterious copper miners leave behind no traces whatsoever of their culture other than the tools they used to mine?" can have a number of possible answers...including that there WAS no serious 'culture' doing real 'mining'.

It will be interesting to see what develops once pure speculation wears thin.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 09:54 PM

Oh, check out Cahokia Mounds, and the culture up and down the Illinois River, especially around Kampsville, Illinois. Also the Serpent Mound and related mounds in Ohio and the animal mounds in Wisconsin. There are mounds in Arkansas (big bunch down there) and clear to the Gulf. There is considerable evidence that a healthy trade existed between the "Anasazi", the peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the Plains people, the Mississippian culture, and the Woodland cultures of the Eastern US. Evidence includes, but is not limited to, cowrie shells and copper.

If you want to investigate something, look into the similarities between the Clovis points and those found in Neolithic France -- and the Western Shore of Maryland.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 10:42 PM

As far as the Anasazi, it was funny that researchers who had been up on the Fajada Butte said the sun casts specific shafts of light on the spiral engraved in the rock. The learned professors and scientists at the universities said no way. Impossible. They couldn't have had the technology or knowledge. Just seeing what you want to see--grow up!

And what happened? It was proven that the spiral was an astronomical meter for reading the solstices, the equinoxes as well as the major and minor lunar standstills and true full moon that only happens once every 19 years or so. In fact, it was only ancient astronomical device that calculated the movements of the sun and moon both.

If the so-called intelligentsia had their way, we never would have discovered the Anasazi sun-dagger. But, as Greg F says, who we to question the Great Smart Ones whose knowledge is pure and incorruptible? Who have no agenda and no biases? They've NEVER been wrong!

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 10:52 PM

Check out the Woodhenge at Cahokia Mounds.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 10:56 PM

I first learned of the copper pits in high school when I took Michigan History. It's part of the curriculum to teach us about the copper pits and mysterious miners. I was always intrigued by it.

Never saw this article before but it has most of my info in it so it proves I'm not bullshitting anyone.

http://www.exploringthenorth.com/cophistory/cophist.html


This one's worth a look:
http://www.dayooper.com/CopperCulture.htm

The Bronze Age is a period in Western European history typified by the usage of… bronze. The Bronze Age may be a term used daily in schools across the world, but there is one major issue that is seldom debated: where did the required components, tin and copper, originate from?
Indeed, though it is undoubtedly the case that Europe had a "Bronze Age", archaeologists have accepted that much more copper was used than what they have been able to attribute to European mines. So where did an extremely large part of the copper come from? The answer, as bizarre as it may sound, could be America. It is known that during the European Bronze Age, large quantities of copper were mined in North America. However, no-one is able to answer as to what became of the copper that was mined there.
If we were to add the two problems together, do we have the solution? Of course, the answer for the accepted scientific dogma is "no", as it argues that there were no transoceanic contacts in the Bronze Age, and hence copper could not have been traded from the New to the Old World. But perhaps there is sufficient scientific evidence available that will alter the assumptions of the scientists.
--http://www.philipcoppens.com/copper.html

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 10:59 PM

Or Newgrange, for that matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 11:28 PM

And if you want to get into all the menhirs and huge stone astronomical observatories of ages lost to modern memory, well, they're still standing because they were built so well. No doubt many skeptoids wish they had crumbled to dust long ago so they could deny their existence but no such luck.

Then there's the Trilithon at Baalbek, Lebanon. The largest dressed stones anywhere on earth weighing up to 1200 tons! Who quarried them, relocated them and stacked them together so tight you can't slip a need between them and there's no mortar holding them together?

We don't know because we have no idea who built it or even when. The Trilithon has been there at least 5000 years but probably far longer. It was already ancient when the ancient Romans built temples on it. That's how huge it is. According to the Arabs, it was always there.

Here we see the Trilithon. Look very closely at the bottom of the photo and notice the man standing there. That's how big these stones are. Ever odder, the big long ones are resting on shorter, smaller ones without crushing them despite weighing a minimum of 800 tons! And the design is so good, it has stood for thousands of years. But then I'm sure the Smithsonian would tell us it's impossible and therefore doesn't exist--end of story.

The Trilithon

The largest stone of all was never removed from the quarry. It has remained where the builders left it sitting thousands of years ago. Think of that:
The Stone of the South

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 03:51 AM

josepp reminds me of Lizzie whatsername, the Cornish binge poster, only on larger scale, in fact maybeee !!!

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Penny S.
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 05:03 AM

Interesting that the copper sources in the UK have not been worked out in ancient times - North Wales for example. also interesting that there have not been shipwrecked ingots found on any route from the New World to the Old, whereas the Old World has a lot of such ingots, so loss in transit was quite common.

And who makes sun dried clay plates and expects them to last in use?

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 09:15 AM

Never saw this article before but it has most of my info in it so it proves I'm not bullshitting anyone."

Sorry, but no. The "article" doesn't prove jack$hit.

"Exploring The North Inc." is a website design company, fer chrissake. No knowledge or expertise in the points under discussion. Their "article" cites no sources.

The "dayooper" page- posted by the owher of a rock shop & metaldetector site also with ostensibly no credentials, cites articles from the 1880's and nothing more recent than 1915- long before modern archaeology & modern investigative methods.

Bullshit pure & simple, embraced by the fundagelical and the feeble-minded.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 12:19 PM

The plates are not made of sun-dried clay. They are made of shale or copper.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 12:25 PM

////there WAS no serious 'culture' doing real 'mining'.////

The copper pits number in the thousands and the mining operation went on for centuries. Look it up. My guess is that Indian tribes used slave labor--i.e. others captured in war--to do the mining and did not allow them to leave anything of their old identities behind. I can't believe any overseas power had a colony here for that long. Had to be a native culture that did it.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 12:27 PM

////Exploring The North Inc." is a website design company, fer chrissake. No knowledge or expertise in the points under discussion. Their "article" cites no sources.////

I pulled that info from an article on the mounds from the Detroit News so that's likely where this site got it. Keep swinging, maybe you'll hit something other than your own teeth.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 12:44 PM

The near mint engraved images suggest that Egyptian overlords are the rulers of some sort of enterprise.

There is minor evidence that show Egyptian voyages made it as far as Australia and even South America. But Michigan? Brrrrrrrr

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 01:48 PM

...from the Detroit News so that's likely where this site got it.

"Likely?" More bullshit. Either they did, or they ddidn't.

Pre-dating "I saw it on the internet, so it must be true" was "I read it in the paper, so it must be true".

Rave on.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 01:49 PM

The near mint engraved images suggest that Egyptian overlords ...

The "near mint" images more strongly suggest forgery in the latter part of the 19th century.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 01:53 PM

WAIT A MINUTE!

Engraved copper plates?? Its OBVIOUSLY the Angel Moroni's scratch copy!

And evidence of prehistoric Mormonism!

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 11:34 PM

That other people than American Indians were in the North America a very long time ago is already well established. Spirit Cave Man of Nevada is the oldest known North American mummy at 9400 years and appears to be a Polynesian-Ainu hybrid as does the now famous Kennewick Man (but not before certain Indian tribes and Nordics both claimed him as their own).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_Cave_mummy

Then there are the red-haired giants which have been found in many places around the United States. Some of these said to stand in excess of 8 feet.

http://www.helium.com/items/1653360-who-were-the-red-haired-giants-of-early-north-america

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si-Te-Cah

Sensationalism? Hoaxes? Or is there something to it?

We would have at one time scoffed at the notion of Causasoid red-haired, blue-eyed mummies in China until they were discovered. They are dubbed "Tocharians" and lived about 3000 years ago. The real mystery is, where did they come from? Twin-peaked hats were found in some of the tombs belonging to no known culture.

If the Tocharian mummies had been discovered in America (and who is to say they haven't been?), very little would have been said of it. This leaves the field wide open to kooks who want to talk about Atlanteans and Lemurians and Nephilim from Planet X but the I get the feeling that's how the scholars want it. Weave such a skein of bullshit around it that they don't have to explain it. They can just laugh it off.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: josepp
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 11:39 PM

//////WAIT A MINUTE!

Engraved copper plates?? Its OBVIOUSLY the Angel Moroni's scratch copy!

And evidence of prehistoric Mormonism!//////

Not surprisingly, you're behind the eight-ball by more than a century. The Mormons were highly intrigued by the plates and did indeed believe them to left by from the angel Moroni. In fact, most of the artifacts are in the care of the Mormon Church these days which is fine with me because at least they are in good hands. I trust the Mormons will preserve them at all costs. The man who organized the collecting of the plates and artifacts in Michigan, however, was a Catholic priest. He would be a very strange Catholic priest who would forge thousands of artifacts to simply fool the Mormons.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 07:12 AM

Useless.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Penny S.
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 12:18 PM

OK, artefacts. Not the plates - but you can see how I thought it. I was visualising dinner plates, not engraved ones. But who makes anything from sun baked clay and expects them to last?

"The problem is this: if the plates are real, it would mean a large, organized community of Christians of some sort lived in Michigan and built the mounds. So, this is either a huge fraud or one of the most significant archaeological finds ever. The sad thing is, hoax or not, they need to be studied and evaluated on the basis of that study--not on what science finds convenient to spout off about. Yet, science has shown so little interest that over half of this collection has been lost due to the fragile nature of the artifacts, most of which are sun-baked clay. Many have crumbled or been shattered due to carelessness and inexperience. These things unearthed by people all across the state. It would be impossible for anyone to have faked these and then put them in the ground for others to find."

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 12:36 PM

Ok let's cut to the chase.

You don't have Stonehenge, you don't have recorded cultural artefacts other than native American as we know it and you want something to play with so you can join the history club.

Have Jesus! You can say he visited Michigan, or even that the dudes in The Holy Land knocked his legacy.

I'll not be concerned if you want some Christian heritage prior to William Brewster. All the same to me.

(Reminds me of the possibly apocryphal tale of two USA visitors to The Bodlien Libray in Oxford. They looked around the building and were suitably impressed. "Hey, is this pre war?" asked one. "It is pre America" said the porter.

Sorry, not trying to get all anti USA here, but claiming Christian groups from far back is a bit embarrassing for your more sane citizens.....

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 11:18 PM

Thanks, Willie, I've just heard all from you I need to hear. Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 11:30 PM

In 1879, John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was named as head of the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology. While history portrays him as a man who admired the American Indians, we must remember that he, like virtually every white man of his time, was a racist and held an unquestioning belief in the superiority of the white race. He was once a field man who spent a good deal of time among the indigenous peoples but his professed admiration of the Indians was academic and purely intellectual. It was otherwise cold and unfeeling. He had no true respect for their way of life and believed as Jefferson before him that the Indians needed to be converted to the white man's way of life (read as "put them in debt and then take their land as payment") otherwise they stood firmly in the way of westward expansion. Powell called this forced conversion that resulted in a kind of brainwashing of replacing one identity with another "acculturation."

Powell had a lot of influence since he sat on the House Appropriations Committee and had many contacts at the National Academy of Sciences. His lobbying of Congress to change how the government went about acquiring Indian lands enabled him to snatch the Bureau of American Ethnology away from the Department of the Interior in 1879 and bring it into the Smithsonian Institution with himself as director and also laid the groundwork that eventually formed the U.S. Geological Survey.

Powell set about turning ethnology into a pseudoscientific field called anthropology—the study of primitive peoples—a term first used in 1501 by Magnus Hundt of Germany. Powell did not invent anthropology but he contributed greatly to its reputation and evolution. It started in Europe coming out of natural history when Europeans decided to study the more primitive peoples and, of course, those primitive peoples were those of their own colonies. Were we to expect that such studies would determine that the colonial subjects were no different than their European counterparts (read as "betters") and should be allowed to live freely and without interference?

In America, anthropology was inherently racist and used to justify Andrew Jackson's (president from 1829-1837) Indian Removal Act and Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney's 1857 decision in the Dred Scott case that "Negroes" were so far inferior to whites that they had no rights that a white man was bound to respect and therefore could never become citizens. Whether free or slave, servitude was their natural station in life (Taney had also been appointed to the Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson). Anthropology played a significant role in all such events in the 19th century.

By 1854, Josiah Nott and Joseph Gliddon published Types of Mankind, an 800-page book that took racism to new levels. Where Southern slaveowners had previously relied on the Bible to justify the Peculiar Institution, they now had a "scientific" treatise to quote from thanks to Nott and Gliddon. The book was also used to justify the theft of Indian land and the murdering that usually accompanied it.

Powell is more or less the founder of American scientific anthropology and set about to make it as accepted a science as geology using much the same methodology of classifying "primitive" peoples and their various physical traits no differently than if they were rocks. This pseudoscience received grants and other monies that attracted various scientific organizations and universities which then established this racist pseudoscience into a respected true science—just so long as it "scientifically" supported what all who funded it already believed—namely that the white race (or what they called "Aryan") was superior to all others and therefore obliged to "take care" of the others and "guide" them along the path of progress that the Aryan race was so furiously blazing—what Kipling euphemistically referred to as "the white man's burden."

We think today of the Nazis as having founded master race theory but it was more an outgrowth of Jeffersonian ideals that evolved into the doctrine of Progressive Evolutionary Social Theory championed by men as John Wesley Powell. We need look no further than his statement from an 1888 edition of American Anthropologist: "In setting forth the evolution from barbarism to civilization, it becomes necessary to confine the exposition…to one great stock of people—the Aryan race." (From Barbarism to Civilization) Progressive Evolutionary Social Theory was master race theory and the Bureau of American Ethnology was the American Ahnenerbe—having virtually the same purpose.

The goal of anthropology was, and still largely is, to establish that there are, in fact, different races of humans and that some are more advanced (read as "worth more") than others. Indeed with no concept of race, anthropology necessarily ceases to exist. Nothing so perturbed the natives than to be poked, prodded and measured by white men from various universities interested in cataloging every bit of data they could extract from the natives' bodies—everything from finger length to head shape to nose width. Warriors who would bravely stand unflinchingly in the face of the white soldiers' rifle fire and die without a whimper were frequently observed to flee in sheer terror from a team of approaching anthropologists armed with calipers, measuring tapes, scales, clipboards and notebooks. It was a torture worse than death—the torture of sheer boredom.

All these data were used to establish that, yes, American Indians, Africans and all those "Chinamen" slaving away and frequently giving their lives building the nation's railroads (the most salient indication of westward expansion) indeed deserved nothing more. They didn't share "our" outlook, did not have "our" ambitions, knew nothing of civilized life and, as such, had no right to expect any better. Why, without the white man to guide them in these endeavors they would surely perish into extinction. They are a different kind of man. Not like "us." Their value systems are based on savagery and they could never be educated beyond a rudimentary level and would always depend on the white man to supply what they lacked in themselves. Indeed too much education was a Pandora's Box that would bring the devious cunning inherent in their uncivilized natures into play. That's what all these measurements, questionnaires, notes and photographs confirmed—that there are different races and the white race was clearly the fittest of the bunch—the most intelligent, the most clever, the most resourceful, the most honest and forthright and the most adaptable—the cream of the human genetic crop.

The only discernible difference between the Ahnenerbe and the Bureau of Ethnology was that the Ahnenerbe had a genuine scientific conviction in their master race/Aryan origins theory while the Progressive Evolutionary Social Theory was a political tool. The purpose of which was to separate indigenous and other undesirable peoples from their land under any pretense that served that purpose well enough.

So when the white people of Michigan began saying that the plates were proof that an advanced white race lived in Michigan before the Indians why was he so quick to denounce it? On the face of it, he found it ridiculous--which it may be. But his bureau conducted no investigations or research on the Michigan mounds so how could they know what was or was not in them? The real reason is that there was a fear that if the plates were real and the Indians could prove a connection to the people who made them, his scientific anthropology just went down the shitter. The Indians might just turn out to be of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel after all (a prevalent belief in the 19th century) and if they are then there goes the rationale for appropriating their land. Suddenly, they turn into white people ancestors. So the bureau had to kill the story of the finds in Michigan. Whether true or not, they were putting Indian Removal in jeopardy and possibly in the process expose anthropology for the racist frauid that it is and always has been.

And there is your REAL scientific heresy: Anthropology.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 11:48 PM

That was George Gliddon. I don't know why I typed Joseph.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 03:47 AM

Isn't this just evidence of America inventing its own prehistory to give it some sense of provenance? All very Mormon - it's not there, and what is there doesn't fit (i.e. nasty Native Americans) so let's invent something and plant the evidence to prove it. Those plates are a hoot.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 04:04 AM

"Scientific Heresy" is a dumb phrase.
For something to be a heresy, it must oppose an orthodoxy or dogma.
And there is no such thing in science - it is all open to question and provisional.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 05:03 PM

Wrong. Since anthropology is, in fact, racist dogma and not science at all then it is going against true science and so is, in fact, a heresy.

So, if we conclude the plates are a forgery, it was a clumsy one that threatened the very thing it was hoping to accomplish--the removal of the indigenous peoples from their land. But it was not scientific support that the bureau of ethnology withheld from the forgeries because there was no science to be found in the bureau of ethnology, it was political support that the bureau withheld.

The message was this: "We've already told everyone that the land was occupied by Indians only until 1492 so your findings would then force the conclusion that the Indians are, in fact, our Christian forebears--right in the middle of a program that is enabling us to move them off their land and take it for ourselves because they are a lesser, savage people. What the hell are you trying to do?"

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Smokey.
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 05:29 PM

The Chinese claim to have explored the planet long before anyone else did.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 08:20 PM

Since anthropology is, in fact, racist dogma and not science at all...

Holy shit, Margaret Meade & Frans Boaz! What planet is this idiot from, anyway?

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 03:36 PM

I'm puzzled:


"The problem is this: if the plates are real, it would mean a large, organized community of Christians of some sort lived in Michigan and built the mounds.

Whence cometh the "of Christians" in that claim?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: bobad
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 05:12 PM

"Whence cometh the "of Christians" in that claim?"



http://www.michigansotherside.com/Pictures/Relics15.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 05:25 PM

100% Bogus.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Musket
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 08:33 AM

When Mudcat has a serious thread going, I get puzzled by some of the arguing the toss on weird side issues. This has no side issue, it is weird to begin with. The fact that some are taking this horseshit seriously answers a few questions and perhaps I should stop trying to reason with some people.

Anthropology is racist?? Science can commit heresy???   Christians before they actually got there???

Keep taking the tablets.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 08:47 AM

Pontificating on science when completely ignorant of the nature and process of science. This thread is a total waste of time and bandwidth.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 01:46 AM

/////Since anthropology is, in fact, racist dogma and not science at all...

Holy shit, Margaret Meade & Frans Boaz! What planet is this idiot from, anyway?/////


Mead Work Named Worst of Century

By JEAN CHRISTENSEN, Associated Press Writer


HONOLULU--In 1925, a 23 -year-old New York City college student set sail for American Samoa to observe the transition from childhood to adulthood among members of a primitive culture.
Margaret Mead hoped to test theories taking hold among Western social scientists about the inherent turbulence of adolescence.

What she concluded after visiting the Manu'an Islands 2,300 miles south of Hawaii was that teen-age girls and boys there were free of the hang-ups of their Western counterparts and that sexual promiscuity was common.

"Samoans laugh at stories of romantic love, scoff at fidelity to a long absent wife or mistress, believe explicitly that one love will quickly cure another," Mead wrote in the best-selling "Coming of Age in Samoa."

Those conclusions long have been scoffed at by American Samoans. And now a conservative academic think tank promises to keep the debate going by naming Mead's 1928 treatise the worst nonfiction book of the past 100 years.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Wilmington, Del., criticized Mead's methods as scandalously sloppy and her findings as patently false.

"So amusing did the natives find the white women's prurient questions that they told her the wildest tales -and she believed them!" the 46 -year-old nonprofit institute wrote recently.

Mead's book joined Beatrice and Sidney Webb's "Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?" (1935) and Alfred Kinsey's "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) atop the institute's list of the 20th century's 50 worst nonfiction books originally published in English.

"The books on the worst list are still very popular on college campuses nationwide in spite of subsequent scholarship that has demonstrated the flaws in their conclusions," said Winfield J.C. Myers, one of three editors who made the selections.

Scholarly criticism of Mead, who died in 1978, isn't new.

In 1983, Derek Freeman, an anthropologist at the Australian National University at Canberra, attacked Mead's Samoa work. "Her account of the sexual behavior of Samoans is a mind-boggling contradiction," he wrote in "Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth."

Freeman said Mead was inexperienced in fieldwork and stayed only six months in the territory -hardly long enough to draw such sweeping conclusions about Samoan society.

He also said Mead was duped by her teen-age subjects and ignored evidence that did not support her hypothesis in order to please her mentor, Columbia University professor Franz Boas, a pioneer of the cultural school of anthropology.

In 1996, Martin Orans, an anthropologist at the University of California at Riverside, argued in his book "Not Even Wrong: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and Samoa" that Mead's field records do not support her claims, which are so grandiose that they could not be empirically tested.

But others in academia defend Mead.

Lowell Holmes, former chairman of anthropology at Wichita State University, retraced Mead's steps in the 1950s and disagreed with Freeman's criticism in his own 1987 book, "Quest for the Real Samoa."

Although critical of Mead's findings, Holmes said Freeman's critique stemmed from ideological differences. He also said he found no evidence that she was trying desperately to satisfy Boas by concluding that the storm and stress of adolescence were products of nurture rather than nature.

American Samoa-born Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, an assistant professor of Pacific literature at the University of Hawaii, said Mead has been victimized by "the dissemination of idle rumor faintly disguised as scholarship by certain organs of popular media."

She said "Coming of Age in Samoa" was an important challenge to the growing chorus of social scientists in the early 20th century who believed that biology -not culture -was the main determining factor for human behavior and intelligence.

The biology argument provided intellectual support for eugenics, the pseudoscience of human breeding that aimed to produce a superior race, Sinavaiana-Gabbard said.

Myers countered: "Obviously, eugenics is a great evil," but "you don't answer sloppy scholarship with sloppy scholarship."

http://www.3ammagazine.com/short_stories/fiction/margaret_mead/page2.html

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 01:53 AM

So the above article shows that anthropologists don't even like or trust one another's motives or methods. So why should I like or trust any of them?

They are all busy perpetrating the greatest heresy in science: anthropology--a pseudoscience concocted by white people in order to tell white people something they seem to have a great need to constantly hear: how great they are.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Musket
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 05:46 AM

Nurse! Nurse!

Guitarists may not like or trust other guitarists, so do you put them in the same box as anthropologists?

I have a copy of Roget's Thesaurus and anthropology does not sit next to eugenics. If your wish to link everything with Christianity is so strong, find a website chat room that caters for your affliction. Many people on this site, regardless of their religious views tend to argue / debate reality unless knowingly taking the piss.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to see whether you are being ironic or have issues that the good folk on here aren't qualified to deal with.

Sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 11:14 AM

So a group of right-wing lunatics - Ed "There's No Hungry People In America" Meese among other nut jobs is on their board of directors.
Holland H. Coors (Adolph's wife) was also.

I don't think anyone with pretensions to a brain would give much credence to any spew the Intercollegiate Studies Institute- the "educational"[sic] arm of The Heritage Foundation"- came out with.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 01:08 PM

Even Mead's defenders admit her work was not scientifically accumulated. Ad hominem attacks on her detractors doesn't her work acceptable by default. But then, why am I bothering to explain this to adults who should already know this?

/////Guitarists may not like or trust other guitarists, so do you put them in the same box as anthropologists?/////

Are you saying I should?? Are guitarists claiming they are engaging in science? Are guitarists engaging in a discipline whose very genesis is inherently racist? Do guitarists get award Nobel prizes for their work? Do they author books to be used as bibles in university courses and get paid large amounts of money to lecture on audiences on their vast field of knowledge??

////I don't think anyone with pretensions to a brain would give much credence to any spew the Intercollegiate Studies Institute- the "educational"[sic] arm of The Heritage Foundation"- came out with. /////

See this is the kind of racist thinking I'm talking about that anthropology has given birth to. It doesn't matter what the Samoans themselves think, it only matters what white people think and we can classify white people as two types: conservative and liberal with each swearing up and down that the other is the worst scum ever to slither upon the earth. White people are so wrapped up in themselves that they argue about their studies of the non-white peoples of the world without ever bothering to talk to those non-white people and get their perspective. You don't see anthropologists from, say, America, going to, say, Germany and writing a learned treatise on the habits and beliefs of the Germans. Why? Because at least half the Germans who declare the author a complete idiot. So what they do is go to some remote area, study those "backward" brown-colored people and then issue their learned treatises on them without any fear that those people would be able to issue any rebuttal. It's a scam.

Here two reviews of Martin Orans' book "Not Even Wrong" where he defends Mead from Derek Freeman's assertion that Mead was hoaxed. It is significant that bother reviewers nevertheless admit that mead's work was quite a yarn being spun by someone who was either too dumb to know she was stating crap or was smart enough to know she was lying. But, then, I'm sure you can nfind out whether they lean politically left or right and use theat to determine whether or not they know what they are talking about.

"This book is yet another nitpicking attack on Derek Freeman that, as usual, treats disagreements on interpretation and judgment as if they were huge errors in concrete facts that discredited Freeman.
Martin Orans implicirly admits that Samoan society was as Derek Freeman depicts it (puritanical, authoritarian, unequal, and punitive) and was not as Margaret Mead depicted it (relaxed, sexually free, egalitarian, and permissive).

Orans makes it sound as if he had proven Freeman wrong or dishonest on key matters of fact, when the actual substance of his accusation is a mere disagreement with Freeman on motives, purpose, beliefs and intentions, a topic on which neither Orans nor Freeman have any special qualifications.

The substance of Freeman's criticism is that Mead, and the anthropology profession, presented an account of Samoa that was radically false

Orans writes as if showing Freeman wrong on the issue of whether Mead was hoaxed exculpates Mead, and anthropology. It does not. Orans writes as if he is accusing Freeman of important errors of fact and substance, but when we look at the actual details he is merely accusing Freeman of attributing incorrect thoughts and intentions to Mead's actions, issues on which the truth cannot be known, and is difficult to even define, issues on which neither Freeman nor Orans have any special qualifications or ability.

Given that Mead's depiction of Samoa was untrue, and was widely accepted and taught by the anthropological profession, as Orans implicitly admits, we must conclude that Mead, and the anthropological profession, are either fools or liars, and most likely something of both. Deciding where self deception ends, and deliberate deception of others begins, is more a job for a priest than a job for anthropologist, so if Freeman has got it wrong, as Orans argues that he got it wrong, that is both unsurprising and unimportant.

Orans writes as if Freeman's weakness on the question of the extent to which Mead was hoaxed show Freeman as a bad scientist, but rather than condemning Freeman as a bad scientist, the evidence and arguments presented in this book merely condemn him as bad priest, a condemnation that is probably accurate, but hardly surprising.

Orans argues that Margaret Mead, and the entire anthropological profession, was somehow being scientific and responsible in presenting a politically motivated image of Samoa that was clearly false, and that they were well aware it was false, and that Freeman is somehow unscientific and irresponsible in presenting an image of Samoan society that is clearly true.

Freeman argues that the Mead, and the entire anthropological profession, were hoaxed largely due their strong desire to be self deceived. If, as Orans argues, they were not hoaxed, that does not make the falsehoods that they presented about Samoa any less of a hoax, it merely makes them more guilty of wickedness, but less guilty of stupidity.

Neither Orans or Freeman are trained to distinguish between wickedness and stupidity.. It is not their job.

If Orans's position on Mead being hoaxed is correct, and Freeman's position is wrong, then the conclusion we should draw is not that Mead is right, but that she was a liar and not a victim of self deception. The hoax is Freeman's excuse for Mead's behavior, not the substance of his attack on Mead, thus for Orans to attack Freeman on this issue of Mead being hoaxed as if it was the substance of his accusation, as if refuting it exculpated Mead and anthropology, is irrelevant and deceptive, an attempt to manipulate the reader. If Orans is right on this issue, and Freeman is wrong, we should think worse of Mead, and of Anthropology and anthropologists in general, not better."

***

"Anthropologists have been in damage control since Derek Freeman published Margaret Mead and Samoa (1983). Although Mead had long since ceased to be a research leader, Freeman linked her high standing with anthropology's research paradigm and threw both to the sharks. Anthropologists thus found themselves in the compromised position of defending a study of only historical interest, in order to save face. In the latest episode of the contest, Freeman inflicted a grave wound. Mead got Samoa so wrong, he claims, because she was hoaxed. `A whole view of the human species was constructed out of the innocent lies of two young women', says Freeman. `That one of the ruling ideologies of our age should have originated in this way is both comic-and frightening!' Plainly Freeman has fitted the dunce cap on anthropology.

Martin Orans's study gives anthropologists something to cheer about. It removes the dunce cap by presenting what to my mind is a conclusive rebuttal to the duping allegation. But it achieves something more important. Orans shows by example how to get beyond the storm of controversy and personal antagonisms and the mystique of prestige to examine the issues on the evidence. The book is a model of composure heedless of fear or favor. There is no impulse to vanquish, no concern to save or diminish face, no demonization or valorization of paradigms, no flag-waving. Refreshing!

The issue is the reliability of Mead's Samoan ethnography. Orans places this examination on a factual basis by comparing the text of Coming of Age with Mead's field records. The leading questions are: what evidence did she have for various contested claims? who were her informants and what are their reliability? how did she evaluate the information she collected? what was her methodology for weaving the extraordinarily intimate portrait of Samoan psychology? does the evidence support her global claim that coming of age in Samoa was unperturbed by adolescent storm and stress, and does this evidence support the conclusion that adolescent psychology and behavior are not materially affected by the biology of sexual maturation?

The contested ethnographic terrain concerns Mead's descriptions of sexual moeurs and of aggression. According to Freeman, she greatly inflated the degree of permissible sexual congress and greatly diminished the degree of competition and aggression. Orans examination of the field record shows that Mead collected substantial evidence of norms and practices restraining adolescent sexuality. Freeman's countervailing evidence adds little to what she knew. Orans writes, Mead `knew perfectly well' that free love did not prevail in Samoa. There is very little support in the field materials for numerous particular claims about sexual license and no support for generalizations that depicted Samoa as a free love paradise. Mead purported to have obtained the information primarily through interviews with adolescent girls. But the records of these interviews are sparse and do not support her claim. Her principal informant on sexual practices was indeed not a girl but a male of her own age, who did not remotely suggest Mead's sensational reports of stress-free homosexuality and lesbianism among adolescents.

How on earth, then, did Mead arrive at her celebrated conclusions? Orans points out that Mead did in fact report many of the restrictions on adolescent sexuality. The result was a deeply inconsistent text, which she reconciled by repeatedly suggesting that strict norms were winked at in practice. For example, the conspicuous Christian worship of the Samoans she squared with free love by claiming that they did not internalize the teaching on sinfulness of the flesh. In addition, Mead made `extravagant claims' on the basis of `exceedingly limited data . . .'. This she did because she was `not [on] a voyage of discovery' but was `out to make the strongest possible case for her position'.

The rebuttal to the hoax allegation is straight-forward. Mead did not record the specious information and demonstrably did not credit it because she knew-and stated in her book-that ceremonial virgins were chaste. In addition, by the time the duping occurred, she had already collected testimony that she interpreted as evidence of promiscuity among adolescents of common status. So the prank was not credited and added nothing to what she thought she knew.

This book takes its title from Orans' assessment of Mead's global claims to have proved the independence of cultural practices from biology in this test case, and in particular to have proven that Samoan adolescents are free of stress. These arguments are so vague that they cannot be empirically tested and hence haven't reached the threshold required of scientific claims. `Not even wrong', Orans advises, is `the harshest scientific criticism of all'. It strikes both Mead's global claims and Freeman's purported refutation.

In drawing out `lessons for us all', Orans states: `That Mead's seriously flawed work, which is filled with internal contradictions and grandiose claims to knowledge that she could not possibly have had and is so weakly supported by data, could have survived and formed the foundation for an illustrious career raises substantial doubt regarding improved standards of research'. This statement is highly `incorrect', viewed from the perspective of controversy, but it is wholesomeness itself judged from the point of view of the rejuvenation needed by anthropology. Orans' book deserves to be studied in every graduate seminar on method and evidence.

It is not a criticism to note that the author has not spoken the last word. While we can now better understand how biases shaped Mead's evaluation of her evidence, there remains the problem of claims made in the complete absence of evidence. These are many, the most sensational being alleged homosexuality and lesbianism. In addition, she endowed herself with omniscience about adolescent experience that only novelists can have.

Did she, then, spin a yarn?"



http://www.amazon.com/Not-Even-Wrong-Publications-Anthropology/dp/0883165643

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Musket
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 01:30 PM

Issue books to be used as bibles in universities? Who does that then, other than the Gideon movement?

I have yet to see a scientific text be issued as a "bible." Science is about search for answers and the most fundamental texts are being refined or debunked daily. A scientist could be defined as somebody who doesn't get precious about this.

My PhD research (engineering physics) has been refined and somewhat superseded by others over the years. And .... oh...

Just noticed your last diatribe.

Wasting my time. Sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 03:06 PM

You ain't the one that should be sorry, Ian.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,999
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 01:11 AM

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Ian, there is no use trying to teach a cat to sing. It's a waste of your time AND it irritates the cat.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Mark Clark
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 06:43 PM

I no longer spend enough time around here to keep up with all the new members and their posts so I've completely missed the posts by josepp. I saw the recent thread on the landscape beneath the ocean floor and became curious about the poster. That led me to this thread and have a couple of things to say here.

I don't see anything in the posts left by josepp to warrant the barrage of ridicule I've read here. It looks to me as though josepp has spent a great deal of time preparing his/her posts and I take his/her motive as simply a desire to share this with thoughtful people and perhaps have a reasoned discussion.

I have no academic credentials that would permit me to bless josepp's information as correct nor have I any reason to think that he/she is some kind of loony. My impression is just that he/she is interested in the subject and went to a lot of trouble to share some information with us. Mudcat isn't the Groucho Marx show. We don't get higher ratings for making fun of people. What's the deal here?

More to the point, I'm currently reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus a 2005 book by well known science writer Charles C. Mann. It deals with the Americas prior to the incursion of Europeans and includes a lot of information that has been only recently discovered or understood.

Here is a quote from a 2006 review in American Scientist magazine by Michael Coe.

It is a rare textbook on world history that does not begin its account of the past in the Western Hemisphere with the European invasion that took place soon after the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Almost all of the achievements of Pre-Columbian cultures and civilizations have been systematically neglected or depreciated by most Western-oriented scholars. How was it that small bands of gold-hungry conquistadores could have defeated the armies of empires with populations that numbered in the millions? Was much of North America an almost empty land waiting to be developed by more advanced colonists?

In his ambitious new book, 1491, accomplished science writer Charles C. Mann provides answers to such questions and poses many more that have been raised by recent anthropological and archaeological research. He concludes that in 1491 the Western Hemisphere was (as it had been throughout much of its long history) "a thriving, stunningly diverse place, a tumult of languages, trade, and culture, a region where tens of millions of people loved and hated and worshipped as people do everywhere." Of course, to archaeologists and historians of Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Inca, Maya and Aztec, there is nothing particularly new or controversial in this statement—we have long appreciated the accomplishments and demographic size of these peoples. But what is new is Mann's revisionist view of regions that have long been thought of as lightly populated backwaters, far removed from the centers that were supposedly more civilized, such as the Amazon and the eastern United States.

It turns out that the American native populations encountered by the earliest European settlers were only five to ten percent of the populations prior to European encounters and their cultures were far older and more advanced than generally thought. I find Mann's book very interesting not to mention enlightening. I recommend it to those who share an interest in the subject.

I know nothing of the plates referenced by josepp but I think it might behoove us to update our own research before lashing out at josepp and then reply in the spirit of discussion rather than ridicule.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 06:59 PM

Mark Clark, Thank you so much for your advice concerning josepp.

Since you have read this thread and one other, might behoove you to update our own research before lashing out at us and then reply in the spirit of discussion rather than lecturing?

He posted an article that said "Altantis has been discovered." Does your Mr. Coe also hold forth on the demise of Atlantis? The reason josepp gave for that is "Things just getting TOO boring around here."
That is a direct quote. Where I come such behavior is called "stirring up shit" and when one engages in such behavior one is generally not interested in or inclined to received a spirit of discussion in return.

But again, thank you for the benefit of your extensive research on the subject of josepp.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 07:31 PM

Since no one has true Omnicience it is curious that anyone would assume that they have the clarity to presume that another person's idea is pure unadulterated BULL SHIT. But the type A's make a profession of it.

I study cycles and how they cross paths with each other. Virtually all of the cycles I look at have at one time or another been considered a heresy.

Tectonic plate and the variable rates of movement.
Extreme volcanic cycles,
Sunspot cycles and effects on Earth,
Earth's orbital variations and Ice Ages,
The Sun's tilted orbit around the Galaxy,
Mass extinction cycles,
Asteroid impact cycles,
ect.

These various cycles are like planets in an orbit, there are times when many of them line up, reinforcing each other or countering each others effects.

My claims how these cycles, while not dependent on each other, do account for certain enormous changes of climate within and above the Earth. This is currently viewed as a scientific heresy if I were to use such data for explanation of existing phenomena or as a predictive tool for Earth changes.

However it does not mean that certain claims are false or without merit. I could be correct. I could be right but for the wrong reasons, or I could wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 07:32 PM

There is a great deal wrong with the "empirically valid" school of anthropology, to begin with; so being accused of not cleaving to its mechanistic standards is no great fault. Empiricism is a Senior Value in material sciences, but is of secondary value in anthropology, where understanding of visions, metaphors, beliefs and emotions is much more important. These things are not easily broguht into compliance with the standards of empirical field work.

This does not mean Meade was right or wrong. It just means her analysis should be addressed on its own ground.

As for Atlantis, I think we're getting a bit silly now. They said the same thing about the roadway discovered in deep water off the Bahamas, remember?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 07:49 PM

Someone comes here saying they want to liven things up and invoking Atlantis gets what they deserve from me, old Bugs Bunny clips.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Musket
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 03:50 AM

The post from Donuel above is interesting. Newton was branded a heretic, despite spending most of his life in religious research, trying to find the ark of the covenant. Yet The Principia describes the fundamental aspects of some of Donuel's research even though, and this is the point, it has been refined (and aspects totally debunked) since.

I doubt a religious text as sacred to religious people could get debunked by themselves in the same way science has dismissed absolute position, a key plank of The Principia.

There is a wonderful thread in this list regarding when a cricket ball can get swing in cloudy weather. An absolute fact, you can see it happening and yet hasn't been adequately explained yet.

Perhaps the cricketers on Atlantis noticed the same thing?

This whole thread is reminiscent of any argument of religion versus science. Some on the science side refusing to factor in fantasy and some on the religious side seeing their text as fact rather than a set of example tales in which to base moral judgement.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 06:52 AM

ALL new scientific hypothesies are heresy!
That is the way it works.
But, most of them are found through reproducible testing to be quite wrong.
Then they are discarded for a new heresy.
Only the ones that survive repeated and aggressive testing get to be called "true"...but only until a new heresy overtakes them.

That is the way science "truth" works.

Religious "truth" is entirely different.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Musket
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 07:36 AM

Sorry, the only people who call scientific hypothesies "true" would be the authors themselves through vanity.

Scientific "truth" is not a term that sits comfortably with the system. Religious "truth" is, I assume, another word for "faith."

We may have "faith" in scientists finding a cure for cancer and some may have "faith" in the power of prayer to achieve the same end.

Neither are the application of scientific hypothesis to a situation. Or at least not yet. Both have to take placebo effect into account..

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Greg F.
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 08:15 AM

Religious "truth" is, I assume, another word for "faith."

Or, alternatively, myth, fantasy, and/or wishful thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Big Mick
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 08:31 AM

Thanks, Mark Clark. I would say to several posters, you should spend a little of your time responding to josepp instead of just spewing bile at him. You just come off badly. Attack the opinions with some intellect. Need examples? Read the posts by Amos or Mark. Or better yet, if you think this is pap, just go find a thread that is more suitable.

Be nice. You will look better. Debate ideas, don't call names. No bullying allowed.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: TheSnail
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 10:11 AM

Digging Up Controversy: The Michigan Relics - Michigan Historical Museum

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 10:37 AM

From the link provided by thesnail.

I beg of you to announce that the tablets and monuments claimed to have been excavated are willful forgeries, remarkable only for their clumsy character and the great ignorance betrayed by the forger.

Morris Jastrow, 1892
                There is no reason why honest people should be deceived any longer as to the true character of these forgeries, or be misled by the fanciful interpretations of misguided enthusiasts.

Francis Kelsey, 1892

Then, in 1986, The Mystic Symbol: Mark of the Michigan Mound Builders appeared. Its author, Henriette Mertz, worked from a collection of relics she had assembled. She was convinced that they had been made by early Christians fleeing persecution and offered some preliminary translations of the tablets.



So what josepp is contending is that early Christians, left Palestine, crossed the Roman Empire, somehow learned ocean going sailing skills and acquired seaworthy vessels (which probably did not exist at the time), crossed the North Atlantic, made landfall somewhere between Labrador and Florida, hiked to what is now Michigan without leaving a persistent trace of their passage and without being slaughtered or absorbed by all of the intervening tribes and then had the wherewithall to develop a civilization based upon the current middle eastern technology of their day, that just (according to the Michigan Department of Natural resources) happened to use incorrect markings and machine sawed planks in the construction of the artifacts which could not be as old as claimed because the pottery had not been fired.

I don't agree with the name calling. But I believe that mocking these ideas are justified. After all, by first saying that things are too boring and presenting this horse shit to us for discussion, is josepp not mocking us? Or at least trying to?

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Big Mick
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 11:51 AM

I'm not going to get in a big debate and hijack the thread. Josepp presented a controversial subject and his interpretation of the data. There is nothing to indicate he is "mocking us", whoever "us" is. Your last post, minus it's last para is a good example of a solid post refuting his assertions and questioning his assumptions.

I won't be answering anymore posts on the subject. Max has indicated something to the effect of, "it's not what you say, it's how you say it". So I repeat, no bullying allowed. Period. Heated, passionate debate is cool, in fact encouraged. Just mind your manners.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 12:18 PM

The point is that I am not bullying and more than he is.
and that "Hey I am bored. Why don't I throw some shit out there and see what comes back." Is probably not the best way to start a "serious discussion."

I agree with no name calling and no bullying, but I do not agree with Mark Clark's contention, after reading two josepp's threads, that futher research is warranted. josepp has history of bringing up loony ideas and as far as I can see, enjoying the rough and tumble in defending them.

There is plenty of research and considered argument here against his ideas. It leaves josepp undaunted. He simply finds different shit to shovel. I am not saying that bullying and name calling should be allowed. But he is literally asking for it. So he should not be considered a victim as much as an instigator. He draws silly lines in the sands of logic and dares people to cross it.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: TheSnail
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 12:27 PM

As a matter of fact, josepp said -

In fact, most of the artifacts are in the care of the Mormon Church these days which is fine with me because at least they are in good hands.

On the "Controversy Revived" page of the Michigan Historical Museum website, it says -

A systematic review of the historical background of the relics and a material analysis of the relics themselves were published in BYU Studies in 2001. These studies satisfied church authorities that the Relics were fraudulent creations and thus irrelevant to the collections of the Museum of Church History and Art.

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Big Mick
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 12:29 PM

Well done, Snail!

Subject: RE: BS: Scienti(fi)c heresies
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 02:27 PM

All those ancient earthen mounds down in Mississippi and vicinity have been called religious sites.


Bear with my common sense here but...


After decades of deadly floods Chief Ogg started a building project to save lives during floods. When the floods came and the people climbed the mound to safety they yelled "Thank OGG". Ergo it is a religious site.