I bet you would be "hard-pressed" to find Wilson and Margulis talking about beauty and aesthetics in evolution too . . .

That website you linked to is fantastic, everyone go visit it =]

Spiritual mevements are vulnarable to being captured and made into mainstream religious institutions by the ruling elite. When spirituality is not balanced by worldly wisdom it is bound be captured since it is naive when alone and yet has a lot of political power. This has been observed over and over again with many spiritual movements in history. Romans captured Christianity, Moors captured Islam and so on.

As a reaction to this, science retreated to strict materialism. Lets don't forget what happened to Galileo. The ruling elite and their proxies politicians and mainstream religious puppets have always seeked ways to corrupt science ever since the seperation of science from spirituality. Because science also has a lot of political power. But they have found that strict materialism is impossible corrupt since it is based on logic, mathematics and experimentation. In the end it has caught up with the truth. Well it is about to anyway. This shows the power of science.

Evolution at many scales comes from the fact that the universe is self similar at many scales. It is a super fractal, and it also seems to be conscious at many scales.

Now we are coming towards the zone of unavoidable unification. Deepak paints a powerful picture of it in his Life After Death. Maybe it is the long desired golden age. I hope so.

Akira, more and more people believe it is the golden age.

Whether it's the "Golden Age" or or an consciousness shift or a leap in evoluton, something is happenning.

I have a sense that we will not longer rely on past experiences and examples to steer the future. All the old dynamics will change, I feel it in my whole being.

We can not see the future with the eyes of the past.

The earth and everything on it is vibrating with excitement.

I don't mean any disrespect to anyone or thier belief systems, but I believe most will become old and forgotten just like Zeus and the flat earth.
So far for....me....in my humble observations....none of them have answered the basic questions. That's ok, they got us this far and they have given us many blessings.

But somehow they fall short of explaining how we got here and why. They have had thousands of years with the most brilliant minds and the most highly evolved spiritual leaders, and yet we still don't just accept each other and get along.

All they have given us are empty, hard to unerstand theories and spiritual expectations that only a small percentage of peolpe can achieve, or even grasp.

I choose to believe that the Holy of Holies is open for everyone right now. You don't have to go to some ivy league school or join a monestary and chant for a month. It's there inside everyone no matter what level their on. It is no longer reserved for the elite.

The meek shall inherit the earth, with peace love and compassion.

To the Mayan's the golden age.

Most of these beautiful belief systems speak of this time, they also speak of themselves fading away.

So what's the big deal, why not enjoy that we are so very aware that we are seeing it happen?

peace comes from peace

derek

'Evolution' (progressive change over time)is the result of fight between matter spiritual (soul)and matter actual(physical) via the agency of matter virtual(mind).

The matter spiritual is bound by the matter actual and fights to get freedom from it, while matter virtual keeps account of this fight.

Design explains how matter spiritual tries to go about its goal of freedom discrete-step by discrete-step and cycle by cycle. While Darwinism explains what matter actual does to keep the matter spiritual bound.

Harb

Tell me something is not going on. Is this related to evolution or climate change? I still have seen no birds fist time in 12 years.

They use the word "spooky".

Bee Emergency Stranger Than We Thought
15-Feb-2007

We're in the middle of a bee emergency. Albert Einstein said, "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years left to live." A mysterious ailment called Colony Collapse Disorder is causing agricultural honeybees nationwide to abandon their hives and disappear. It's a kind of mass suicide in the bee world.

Entomologist Jerry Bromenshenk says, "Individual beekeepers are really taking a beating. A guy down in Oklahoma lost 80% of his 13,000 colonies in the last month. In Florida, there are a whole lot of people facing 40, 60 and 80 percent losses. That’s huge."

With CCD, most adult honeybees abandon a hive and disappear, abandoning the queen and a remnant of younger bees. This is unheard of, since normally a bee colony will do almost anything to protect its queen. Since the tasks done in the hive are very stratified, bees cannot survive on their own.

One of the strongest instincts that bees have is protecting and nurturing the next generation, but with CCD, the cells of young bees in the pupa stage are not covered and protected by their older sisters, probably because most of the adult bees have left. Dead adult bees aren't even found near the hive; they are just gone.

Bromenshenk says, "We don’t want to panic the beekeeper industry because we are not sure it's time to push the panic button yet, but we do know this is real, it's severe and it's widespread."

Field technician and self-professed bee lover Scott Debnam describes visits to the impacted bee yards as "spooky," and says, "Fortunately the sites I've visited have been recovering, but in Georgia I saw a lot of small colonies, a lot of uncapped brood and a lot of early-stage brood. The adults had flown the coop."

Remember the Bee attacks in I think Montana during the fires?

Doesn't look like evolution I guess. Suppose we are out of time. Anyone want ot buy an island with me?

Serious enough yet, someone left this out of the calculations as it relates to the effects.

Mites, pesticides and extreme winter weather are being blamed for the loss of billions of bees just as they are needed to pollinate crops nationwide. The number of honeybee colonies in the US has dropped by 50% in the past 25 years, and the winter die-off this year has made the situation much worse. Without bees to pollinate them, crops fail. There is no other means of pollination.
In the Jackson Hole Star Tribune, Olivia Munoz quotes US Dept. of Agriculture bee expert Dennis vanEngelsdorp as saying, "It's startling. We were just starting to get information through word-of-mouth from beekeepers in the east a couple months ago and we thought about what it was going to mean once it got time for them to travel to California." What it could mean is future famine right here in the US.

THANK GOD AMARANTH IS SELF POLINATING

Do I know what I am talking about or not?

Do you want to save your planet or not?

Maybe I should just go away.

Richard,

A little birdie whispered in my ear
that here was a clue for "seekers".

Mass renunciation, if it should happen all at once,
could spell the end of the population explosion.

The buzzword is...perhaps, leave your home, drop
everything.

Shoe away your fellows, meditate and be liberated.
Forget the colony for the time being.

Learn the meaning behind, "...be still, and know that I am God."

To seek out a Master you must travel lightly
and cover large distances, procuring nothing.
Only they can take you where you wish to go.
Follow with trust and without hesitation.

The time is here to fly away. If you succeed,
you will still be in the world...just not of it.

To be a bee you must remember your essence
is not that of an insect, form matters not.

The hive can wait. The Queen can learn patience.

You already posses all the qualities of the Queen
inside of you. Go find them and become a King of Nothing.

Believe me, you'll get a good buzz on your trip.

What a beautiful and true poem Keith! You are on spiritual high!

Harb

The linked to site looks interesting, but I haven't the time at the moment for a thorough reading of all the types of theory that it in turn links to, so I bookmarked it.

It's nice to break the discussion out of the either/or and at times acrimonious debate that has been going on here.

People fail to note that many scientists, including the much quoted Einstein believed in God, and many others considered them themselves mystics who believed in some kind of unifying truth, even if they admitted it was beyond the purview of science to prove the existence of such. Those scientists seem to always get conveniently omitted when righteous arguing takes over.

I'd also wager that Galileo and Da Vinci believed in God, unless someone has good evidence they didn't (such as recorded public or private declarations of such).

The so-called separation between science and God may be a philosophical matter for some (such as Richard Dawkins), but in my view it is simply a separation of disciplines in the same way that mathematics is a separate discipline from the study of history. Mathematicians can enjoy educating themselves in history in their spare time, and scientists can engage in any type of religious or spiritual practice they want. But scientific experiments (I mean here Western Science, NOT Indian Spiritual Science, which again is another discipline of its own) are not capable of measuring or running experiments on God, just as it would be difficult to describe a major historical event, like, say WWII by using only mathematical equations.

So I say God is outside the purview of science, which NOT equivalent to saying scientists don't believe in God.

The failure of people to grasp this is why I haven't even posted in most of those discussions. The debate becomes so locked down in either/or absolutistic rhetoric that there's simply no room for a real conversation.

So thanks Carter for opening up the debate with a fresh perspective!

Yogi

An ugly thing I noticed in that wie.org site;

"The enlightnement card". Such a lough. Cheap. Disgusting money-mongers don't miss a chance. The site looks like a marketing site anyway. Some people are worried to death about environmental and other urgent problems, and some others are trying to make money over it. Very simple. Leave money out of it. It is the money and power fetish that brought us to this difficult position in the first place. All they care about is money. All the "content" in that site is just "copy and paste". The fight against corruptin never ends. Eternal vigilance.

Okay Keith thanks, I'll apply that somehow.

If I rain on somebody’s parade I apologize, it is done with sincerity.

Both Dorion Sagan, the son of Carl Sagan, and his mom Lynn Margulis are “brights”

A bright is a person whose worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements. The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic world view."

Carter says,
“As the evolution debate these days in the media seems to be as hot as ever, I thought I would continue the thread I started regarding alternative ways in which to view evolution.”

Alternative ways?
One alternative way is “intelligent design” which you Carter, please correct me if I am wrong, support. But as you correctly point out, “today the idea that symbiogenesis is one of the mechanisms of evolution is taught in the majority of high school biology classes”. So, it is hardly an alternative way but does seem to clash with ID.

Richard Dawkins (another bright) about Lynn Margulis's:
“I greatly admire Lynn Margulis's sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I'm referring to the theory that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it.”

You, Carter, also say about Dawkins: “Of course, Dawkins would likely see me as part of the problem, a true believer who needs God to feel safe, an intellectual child who still needs to believe in fairy tales.”

These are your words! So, are you what you say Dawkins would likely see you as?

As far as Galileo and Da Vinci, they were before Darwin when just about everybody believed in some God!

Albert Einstein, he believed in Carl Sagan’s God:

“…if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity”.

Skeptisch,

No, I'm not a supporter of intelligent design. Why would you think that? My point is that just becasue I have a broader view of evolution than Dawkins, doesn't mean I agree with intelligent design. give me hard sceince over that any day. the point of the larger article (not all of it is here) is simply that there is much more to the science of evolution than neo-darwinism and more to the spirit of evolution than ID.

that's all.

And honestly, i'm not sure waht Dawkins would see me as. Maybe like I suggested. But I like Dawkins in many ways, I just find him too extreme, and attacking a too limited understanding of God or spirit.

Skeptisch,

No, I'm not a supporter of intelligent design. Why would you think that? My point is that just becasue I have a broader view of evolution than Dawkins, doesn't mean I agree with intelligent design. give me hard sceince over that any day. the point of the larger article (not all of it is here) is simply that there is much more to the science of evolution than neo-darwinism and more to the spirit of evolution than ID.

that's all.

And honestly, i'm not sure waht Dawkins would see me as. Maybe like I suggested. But I like Dawkins in many ways, I just find him too extreme, and attacking a too limited understanding of God or spirit.

Thanks for responding Carter and I am sorry for having you in the “wrong column”.

There is so much unsubstantiated baloney spread by so many “experts” on evolution everywhere, especially here on IB where nobody seems to care about scientific evidence.

Would you agree that Both Dorion Sagan and his mom Lynn Margulis are “brights”? A bright is a person whose worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements. The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic world view."

Would you also agree there is no evidence of a supernatural God anywhere?

Again, thanks for responding,

Skep

If some one were to answer that question one would need to have supernatural and mystical defined.

We are living through the most exciting times in human history. Breakthroughs in every area of science are opening our minds to the beauty and mystery of the material world. At the same time technology is giving us the power to make many of our dreams come true.
But what makes these times even more exciting is that we stand on the threshold of the greatest changes in human consciousness ever. Whether it is our relationships with our loved ones, our attitude to money, the ever-increasing pace of life, the environmental crisis, everything is pushing us to wake up to our full mental potential. We are being called to rediscover for ourselves the profound truths of which the great saints and teachers have spoken for thousands of years.
At their core, they all have been urging us to become wiser, more compassionate, more psychologically healthy human beings. To let go of our attachments to having things be a certain way, to be less materialistic, less egocentric, less greedy and hungry for power or status. And through this shift in consciousness to find peace in the moment -- the inner peace we have been yearning for all along, but fruitlessly seeking in the world around.
This is the next great frontier; not outer space but inner space. The exploration and development of human spirit. This is not an exploration to be conducted by some scientists in a laboratory; it is an exploration in which we are all personally engaged, and it is taking place in the laboratory of life. And it is an exploration that is already underway.
Look at the book bestseller lists. Hardly a week goes by without at least half of the top ten being about some form of personal development. Look at television, the specials on healing, the success of Oprah. Look at the Internet, the plethora of sites devoted to spiritual growth of one form or another. This is what people are hungry for today; this is the direction the collective consciousness is moving in.
And look at kids today. I know many in their teens and early twenties whose values and wisdom far outshine the liberated thinking of a couple of decades ago. Those of us who lived through the heydays of the sixties might have thought our philosophy of life was pretty cool; and by the standards of the time it probably was. But place some of the wiser kids of today back in that world, and they would stand out as beacons of enlightenment.
Spiritual exploration is not just some lofty work, to be undertaken by some select few who have renounced the worldly life. Every day we have the opportunity to learn a little more about ourselves, to let go a little more of attitudes that no longer serve us, to step back and be a little less attached to desires. In every unexpected situation when the world fails to match our expectations, when what is happening is not what we think should be happening, we can remind ourselves that we have a choice. We can either see the situation through the eyes of fear - all the ways in which it could lead us to suffer. Or we can choose to see it through the eyes of love - as an opportunity for learning, growth and greater understanding.
This shift in perception is a foundation stone of spiritual work. If we practice this in every situation in which we find ourselves, with every person we meet, then we can move from being the victim of our thoughts and feelings to being the master of them. And through that help ourselves and each other to become happier, healthier, and more caring people.
_ Peter Russell

We are living through the most exciting times in human history. Breakthroughs in every area of science are opening our minds to the beauty and mystery of the material world. At the same time technology is giving us the power to make many of our dreams come true.
But what makes these times even more exciting is that we stand on the threshold of the greatest changes in human consciousness ever. Whether it is our relationships with our loved ones, our attitude to money, the ever-increasing pace of life, the environmental crisis, everything is pushing us to wake up to our full mental potential. We are being called to rediscover for ourselves the profound truths of which the great saints and teachers have spoken for thousands of years.
At their core, they all have been urging us to become wiser, more compassionate, more psychologically healthy human beings. To let go of our attachments to having things be a certain way, to be less materialistic, less egocentric, less greedy and hungry for power or status. And through this shift in consciousness to find peace in the moment -- the inner peace we have been yearning for all along, but fruitlessly seeking in the world around.
This is the next great frontier; not outer space but inner space. The exploration and development of human spirit. This is not an exploration to be conducted by some scientists in a laboratory; it is an exploration in which we are all personally engaged, and it is taking place in the laboratory of life. And it is an exploration that is already underway.
Look at the book bestseller lists. Hardly a week goes by without at least half of the top ten being about some form of personal development. Look at television, the specials on healing, the success of Oprah. Look at the Internet, the plethora of sites devoted to spiritual growth of one form or another. This is what people are hungry for today; this is the direction the collective consciousness is moving in.
And look at kids today. I know many in their teens and early twenties whose values and wisdom far outshine the liberated thinking of a couple of decades ago. Those of us who lived through the heydays of the sixties might have thought our philosophy of life was pretty cool; and by the standards of the time it probably was. But place some of the wiser kids of today back in that world, and they would stand out as beacons of enlightenment.
Spiritual exploration is not just some lofty work, to be undertaken by some select few who have renounced the worldly life. Every day we have the opportunity to learn a little more about ourselves, to let go a little more of attitudes that no longer serve us, to step back and be a little less attached to desires. In every unexpected situation when the world fails to match our expectations, when what is happening is not what we think should be happening, we can remind ourselves that we have a choice. We can either see the situation through the eyes of fear - all the ways in which it could lead us to suffer. Or we can choose to see it through the eyes of love - as an opportunity for learning, growth and greater understanding.
This shift in perception is a foundation stone of spiritual work. If we practice this in every situation in which we find ourselves, with every person we meet, then we can move from being the victim of our thoughts and feelings to being the master of them. And through that help ourselves and each other to become happier, healthier, and more caring people.
_ Peter Russell

Living in the "NOW" really means: living your Natural Own Way.

PEACE:
Please
Enter
Awareness
Consciously
Espavo

Love, Mieke

yo, prams , when was this written?

Who is Peter Russell?

I so connect with these words.

yo, #4

peace comes from peace

derek

Skeptisch,

yes, i woudl agree that Dorian Sagan and Margulis are "brights", in the sense you describe. Can't say for sure, but what I know is consistent with that.

In terms of a supernatural God, I think we would have to get very clear about definitions. But I'm not sure I agree. I'll post the "directionalists" and you can see what you thin about that way of seeing evolution.

thx, Carter