Response to [Everything We Have Been Taught About Our Origins Is A Lie]

It's time for a longer response, yet again. This article has popped up a few times on IFLS.

It's starts out with this:

In June 1936 Max Hahn and his wife Emma were on a walk beside a waterfall near to London, Texas, when they noticed a rock with wood protruding from its core. They decided to take the oddity home and later cracked it open with a hammer and a chisel. What they found within shocked the archaeological and scientific community. Embedded in the rock was what appeared to be some type of ancient man made hammer.

Alarm bells are already ringing - as they always do when something shocks the "archaeological and scientific community". A quick search tells us that stone tools were used starting about 2.6 million years ago.

 A team of archaeologists analysed and dated it. The rock encasing the hammer was dated to more than 400 million years old. The hammer itself turned out to be more than 500 million years old. Additionally, a section of the wooden handle had begun the metamorphosis into coal.  The hammer’s head, made of more than 96% iron, is far more pure than anything nature could have achieved without assistance from relatively modern smelting methods.

Really, a team of archaeologists? Not a laboratory equipped with carbondating equipment? Wait, not even carbon-dating - if it is 500 million years old, it follows that radiocarbon dating won't work - it allows for some 70 thousand years, but that's the limit. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This paragraph simply doesn't live up to that - it leaves open some questions:

• Is there a report on that analysis? There should be. Where is it?
• What methods were used? Did the methods allow for the result? 
• Who analysed the samples?
• If it took 100 million years for the object to get buried in rock, how did it survive?

In 1889 near Nampa, Idaho, whilst workers were boring an artesian well, a small figurine made of baked clay was extracted from a depth of 320 feet. To reach this depth the workers had to cut through fifteen feet of basalt lava and many other strata below that. That in itself does not seem remarkable, until one considers that the very top layer of lava has been dated to at least 15 million years old! 

So? That doesn't tell you anything. The lava layer could've gotten on top in any later date. Or the layer of clay could've gotten buried. And again, this begs the question - what is the source of this anecdote?

It is currently accepted by science and geology that coal is a by-product of decaying vegetation. The vegetation becomes buried over time and is covered with sediment. That sediment eventually fossilises and becomes rock. This natural process of coal formation takes up to 400 million years to accomplish.Anything that is found in lumps of coal or in coal seams during mining, had to have been placed or dropped into the vegetation before it was buried in sediment.  

Other sources claim that 20 million years can suffice for high quality coal. Why would it have been placed or dropped into the vegetation before it was buried in sediment? Coal is formed at high pressures and temperatures. When a vein of coal gets pushed closer to the surface at a later date, it isn't at that high pressure. If you recall, you can draw with a piece of coal - apparently, it isn't that hard after all. As a result, things can get stuck in the coal. For instance, a tool made of rock and metal would be harder than coal is.

Apparently, they're setting up something. Let's read on...

In 1944, as a ten year old boy, Newton Anderson, dropped a lump of coal in his basement and it broke in half as it hit the floor. What he discovered inside defies explanation based upon current scientific orthodoxy.
Inside the coal was a hand crafted brass alloy bell with an iron clapper and sculptured handle.
When an analysis was carried out it was discovered that the bell was made from anunusual mix of metals, different from any known modern alloy production (including copper, zinc, tin, arsenic, iodine, and selenium).
The seam from whence this lump of coal was mined is estimated to be 300,000,000 years old!

Interesting. Again, where is the evidence of the anecdote? And beyond that, it doesn't matter what age the seam is - we want to know how old the bell is. Seriously, how hard is it? And of course it is different from any modern production - we know how to refine, how the seperate metals, how to get that alloy exacly as we want it.

A bell is made by making a mold in sand or the like. Then you build up a fire, throw ore in it and pour the molten liquid into the mold. Then you let it cool down, finally resulting in a bell. In later times, it would also be polished and the sand used would be more specific. But the process is entirely open for getting other metals - impurities in your ore - mixed in with the brass.

Now, you can also find people evaluating the bell and coming to other conclusions. For instance, that it's a modern-day souvenir from india that was either placed near the coal - in a sort of slurry/coal mud, that was later hardened by moisture vaporation - or maybe wasn't found there at all.

Remember, this was a ten year old child. He took a polygraph test when he was 60 years old - that's going to tell you anything. Europians don't even believe in the merits of such a test. Especially for a ten year old, who does not necessarily see any problem with lying about such a thing.

So, about this bell:

• It was not dated.
• It was not established that the bell was even found in the coal layer.
• It was not established that the bell originated in the coal layer.
• It was not established that the bell was of a strange alloy.

The list of such items goes on and on and on.

Indeed, the author keeps on rambling about things allegedly found in coal seams. I'm fine with that, but you might want to establish your argument for once.

Out of place artefacts (Ooparts) are so named because conventional scientific wisdom (an oxymoron if ever there was one) states that these artefacts shouldn’t exist based upon currently accepted beliefs regarding our origins and history. These discoveries are “out of place” in the orthodox timeline of human history.  

Translation: Ooparts are anecdotal stories with no established thruths in them, propogated by misinformation, lies and strawmans. As a result, people think they falsify history.

The usual methods of the conformist scientific community, when faced with such anomalies is to attempt to debunk their reported age, or perhaps endeavour to discredit the source of the report or even the reporter. If this approach fails then usually the artefacts themselves are banished to the shadowy vaults of museums and warehouses, never to be seen again.   

Outrageous! Scientists ask you to provide evidence, backup your claims and don't believe your anecdote? Sorry, but this requires a meme.

If these unusual artefacts were “one offs” then perhaps one could be forgiven for accepting the view espoused by the mainstream scientific and archaeological community that they are hoaxes or misreported stories. However, when one realises that thousands upon thousands of these anomalous artefacts have been discovered and reported over the years, then one may need to re-evaluate ones acceptance of the integrity of mainstream archaeology and science.

There is also a body of evidence for the existence, and a tutorial for the identification of lizard people. That doesn't make it true. Argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy. So is  argumentum ab auctoritate:

Occasionally an honest archaeologist will attempt to reveal to the public the true age and origin of such anomalous objects. They will question the accepted beliefs of their mainstream peers. They usually find that their career ends quite abruptly.

There it is! A honest archaeologist! Amazing. So, how likely is this? There are engineering professors that subscribe to the religious concept of creationism. There are biology professors that believe in some form of creationism, IDiocy or the like. Your scientific career ends when you misuse your authorithy in some way that compromises your scientific integrity. Say, lying to people and or not providing evidence. Fabricating data. There's a professor of mine that is a christian. He distantiates himself from creationism and intelligent design - in fact, his conclusion (based on the chapter referred to on wikipedia) is rather common for a dutch christian. It's the same one I had when I was an autistic child. Simply put, he sees two seperate places in which a christian deity, or any deity at all, could have acted: In genesis, were atheists put abiogenesis, and in singling out a homonid species to grant a soul/spirit.

I could discuss this further, but that's besides the point. Prof. Dekker is a professor in biophysics, teaches the subject biophysics (which mostly introduces the biology of cells for physicists) in the first year of the bachelor and is well respected.

So no, you can be a respected scientist and be against the accepted beliefs of maintream peers. You just have to be honest in your research - provide  evidence and use logic to find conclusions. And it might be a good idea in public to follow the same ideas.

Unfortunately, the majority just accept what they are taught in school and university without question. That is how our educational system is designed. It does not encourage individuality and originality. It purely indoctrinates one with established beliefs and dogma.

It's this one again. I was once an intern at a high school. I'm also, regrettably, a smoker, so at one point I was outside with other smoking teachers. One was a teacher in the dutch language, and she was really excited and happy about a student. You see, this student opposed her. He stated his case, clearly, referencing outside sources. She checked, and he was right. She was excited that this student followed his instinct and made a clear case. She was happy that he could do that, that he felt secure in doing this during her class. And lastly, she was both for him following the scientific method.

If one requires evidence of this “mainstream” mentality, one need look no further than the realms of psychiatry. Modern psychiatry seeks to demonize and declare mentally ill anyone who deviates from what is regarded as the norm.These so called “mental health professionals” have even invented a new mental disorder named Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or ODD (love the irony of the abbreviation).This newly invented condition is listed in the latest instalment of the industry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, which dubs people who do not conform to what those in charge declare to be normal, as mentally insane.So there you have your proof – I’m obviously an unmitigated nutter and completely insane. At least that is what those in authority would like everyone to believe!Anyway, I digress. 

No. Seriously, I saw several of these articles on my facebook when ODD was added to the DSM-IV. Once again, this author comes up with a logical fallacy. This is argumentum ad absurbem - an attempt to argue that since 'mainstream' is absurd, it can't be true. It's not an actual argument. It is also a straw man - an intentional misrepresentation.

You see, they only posted part of the specification for ODD. The DSM IV is accessible for all, and you can clearly see what the requirements are.It requires a period of six months, during which you often lose your temper, ague, defy, refuse, annoy and do this on a higher frequency than normal. Also, it requires that the person suffers from significant impairment in life.

Seriously, people, psychiatry is there to help people. It's a kind of medical science. This disorder is specifically when someone somehow has made his or her own life impossible. It's when someone is against everything and everyone. It's when someone will park his car on the highway because the sign says they should be on the parking lot. This is for someone who becomes so defiant that its life is impossible. That's when your defiance becomes a disorder, disrupting your life.

On one side of the field we have the Darwinists and their theory of evolution, trying to establish the extremely flawed view that we have somehow evolved into highly intelligent sentient beings from a primordial blob of gunge, miraculously brought to life by an electrical storm billions of years ago. (Perhaps one of this cults followers could explain to me when “consciousness” evolved, and provide proof – I await with baited breath!)  

Sorry, there are little darwinists out there. There are neo-darwinists, because you know, science often makes progress in 155 years.  And that's another straw man. This author better have a farm, because having this many straw mans in your house is really creepy.

Abiogenesis is not a part of the theory of evolution. Certainly, it is extremely likely that life started only once. That's because we all have the same system in us - DNA or it's progenitor, RNA. But the thing is, that wasn't known when Charles Darwin wrote the Origin of Species. DNA wasn't known at all.

Charles darwin determined that there was some mechanism by which biovariation in individuals propagated to the next generation. We didn't know enough to determine the mechanism in that time - but it was identified that there was one. By the way, this is something you know as well. It's why a racing horse has a promising career as a breeding stallion. The horse is fast, and you want to keep that. It's the reason our dogs look the way they do. It's why our corn is large and fruitful.

He then explained his theory; that natural selection influenced how such traits progressed to the next generation. It's extremely simple. Say we have a population of a thousand mice. At the start, we have some mutations and ten mice have some advantage. That's 1% - let's make it lower. Two mice have an advantage.
All pairs of mice produce five more mice. All mice have a 40% survival rate, but the two mice have such an advantage that their survival rate is 50%.

Let's say these two survive, due to their advantage. That's actually not certain, but it sometimes happens. In that case, these two mice produce five new mice with the same inherited characteristic. On average, 2.5 of these mice will survive. You probably know how this will end, but the next generation has 2.5 * 5/2 * 1/2 = 12.5 / 4 = 3.125 mice with the characteristic. Wut, numbers. Let me explain. We have an average of 2.5 mice. Each pair of mice produces five more mice - so one mouse produces 5/2 = 2.5 mice. And 50% of these survive. As a result, our first generation of 2.5 mice produces 2.5 mice per mouse, of which 50% survives. 2.5 multiplied by 2.5 is 6.25, and 50% of that is 3.125. As you can see, each generation is a factor of 1.25 larger - that's a geometric series. The nth generation will have two times 1.25 to the power of n mice with the advantage.

Now, let's look at the original mice - those without the characteristic. These mice produce 2.5 mice per mouse, of which 40% survives. Now, that's 5/2 * 2/5, which is 1 mouse per mouse. That population remains the same.

I wonder when the original mouse is only 1% of the entire population. The calculation is simply (998) / (2*1.25^ n + 998) = 1/100, which results in n = ln(99*499)/ln(1.25) = 2800ish generations.

And that's how new traits become dominant. It's that simple. I now used 40% and 50% survival rates, but these numbers are completely and utterly arbitrary. Suppose that the survival rate is the same, but the 'new mice' just live longer. They produce a second nest. That would mean that the geometric factor is two times larger. Now that's an effect.

Abiogenesis is not part of the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. It really isn't. If it did happen - and there is evidence that it is possible for it to happen - then it wasn't with some sort of electrical storm. That's frankenstein, people. Abiogenesis would happen by self-replicating molecules forming in some kind of circumstance. There's actually quite a few ways in which it can happen. T.O. has a FAQ on it.
Mind you, it's not determined yet - but this is not an evolution thing. It's an atheist thing.

Consciousness. The mythical term that a great many people get hung up on. Seriously, let me give you an anecdote. I started living on my own somewhere in 2010. My parents acquired a kitten shortly thereafter. This kitten was really energetic, and I played with it in the garden whenever I was at my parents. After a year or so, my visits became less frequent, due to having a life where I live.

When I come home, the cat jumps up. It'll walk to me, then walk to the door. It knows who I am, and it wants to play. Seriously, she forces me to come and play.

My cat is conscious. It might not be highly intelligent, but that doesn't matter. It's conscious. I do not know which philosophical view it holds, or even if it believes in the great deity of cats, or longcat, or even the nine circles of catnip. I do know it recognises me and knows some characteristics.

Now, what is consciousness? I think this author refers to some kind of soul or such.

Consciousness is the quality or state of self-awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.^[1][2] It has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind.^[3] Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.^[4] As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote inThe Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."^[5]

Philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness and pin down its essential properties. Issues of concern in the philosophy of consciousness include whether the concept is fundamentally coherent; whether consciousness can ever be explained mechanistically; whether non-human consciousness exists and if so how it can be recognized; how consciousness relates to language; whether consciousness can be understood in a way that does not require a dualistic distinction between mental and physical states or properties; and whether it may ever be possible for computing machines like computers or robots to be conscious, a topic studied in the field of artificial intelligence.

That's from wikipedia. Want more? I can also refer you to Stephen Novella. I'm sure you'll be able to find his fragments somewhere. He was quite convincing in talking about consciousness - in particular that we can influence it so heavily with medicine that it is extremely likely to be entirely biological. As an anecdote, I know for a fact someone became significantly more upbeat after receiving an insuline pomp. His glucose levels influenced his 'consciousness' so heavily that fixing it made him look extremely upbeat and happy.

The reality is that the origin of the human race is a total enigma. No one, anywhere, actually knows how old humanity is or how and where it originated. It is a complete mystery. Yet from birth one is indoctrinated into one or the other of the above factions, with no questions asked or alternative opinions allowed.  

No. The reality is that we have evidence for a great many things, in particular evolution. It is extremely likely that 'consciousness' is an emergent property. It is apparently possible for abiogenesis to happen, but that doesn't mean it did happen. Atheists think it likely that it did happen. Theists think that some deity or pantheon did it, begging the question who made their deity. Both occupy a religious position.

I'm not a believer in scientism. I don't believe fervently that science will ever solve the question of whether or not abiogenesis happened. I'm not sure there is evidence to prove it did happen, or not.

The problem the mainstream has with these anomalous Ooparts is that they throw into question every single established belief there is regarding our past.

No, actually we just have a problem with misinforming and lying to the public.

The discovery of Ooparts completely annihilates the [comparatively recent] theory of evolution. If, as this hypothesis would have us believe, modern humans only evolved 200,000 years ago (or thereabouts), one has to ask how man made artefacts, found in substrata originating millions of years ago, could be explained?  

Another strawman. Evolution and human origin are two seperate things. The theory of evolution is about a mechanism in nature. Human origins is about the history of our species, of how that mechanism worked  for us.

And remember, 2.5ish million years ago, Homo habilis used tools. Most remains of this homonid species are found with tools. And the oldowan toolset already included simple stone hammers and axes. Finding a hammer/axe of that age won't disprove the current story of human origins.

And disproving human origins doesn't disprove the theory of evolution.

However, in 1968 a palaeontologist named Stan Taylor began excavations of fossilised dinosaur footprints, discovered in the bed of the Paluxy river near Glen Rose, Texas. What he unearthed shocked and dumbfounded the scientific community. Alongside the dinosaur tracks, in exactly the same cretaceous fossilised strata, were well preserved human footprints.
The immediate reaction of evolutionists, archaeologists, and science in general, was to debunk the find as a hoax. “They were carved into the rock by hoaxers” or “They are not human footprints, but more dinosaur footprints that have been eroded to look human” were the arguments most commonly proposed.However, their line of reasoning falls somewhat flat when one asks why only the human prints were eroded and not also the 3 toed dinosaur prints? Additionally one has to consider, if the human prints were carved as a hoax, how did the hoaxers manage to carve further human footprints that continued under bedrock that was later removed from the side of the river bed? 

Every single time we do not accept their "evidence"as faith, we're somehow debunking things as a hoax. You know, talk.origins has an entire archive  on this topic. It's all good fun to hypothesize that something is a human track. But we're not exactly talking footprints. It's mostly holes and stuff; nothing close enough. The scientists that evaluated the track hold that there is no evidence that these tracks were human.

Since the initial discovery, hundreds more human footprints have been discovered and unearthed, both in Paluxy and in many other places around the globe. Either those hoaxers have unlimited time and budget – or someone is telling porkies!  

Everyday, thousands of ghosts are sighted, miracles happen and lizard people show their face. The thing is, this never happens when a scientist is around to document data.

Indeed, somoene is telling lies. It's the people making the claims, maybe? Onus probandi. They make the claim, but they do not attempt to prove it; they just state the tracks are human, with conviction; and they feel we have to falsify that.

Surprise, science doesn't work that way. You don't hypothesize and if it isn't falsified, it stands. You make a hypothesis. When that hypothesis is tested and holds true, the hypothesis is likely true. If it doesn't hold true, it's falsified. And it's gone.

Falsifying something is enough to disprove it. This is true. But not finding evidence to the contrary doesn't mean it's true. I have yet to find any evidence falsifying a hypothesis that the Jedi are coming for me to train me in the ways of the Force. However, that doesn't mean they're coming, mostly because the Jedi are fiction.

Oh right, fiction. That brings me back to these alleged human tracks. I think I have made my point.

Next one needs to consider another find discovered in 100 million year old cretaceous limestone. A fossilised human finger, which was found along with a childs tooth and human hair. This finger has been subjected to numerous scientific tests and analysis. Sectioning revealed the typical porous bone structure expected in a human finger. Additionally a Cat-scan and MRI scan identified joints and traced tendons throughout the length of the fossil. This is one find that science cannot explain away as a hoax 

So, which homonid species was it? Where is your evidence? How was the finger dated? Limestone, if you recall, is a rock used for a few thousands of years as a building material. A miner losing his finger in a rockslide isn't that weird.

Over the past few decades, miners near the little town of Ottosdal in Western Transvaal, South Africa, have been digging up hundreds of mysterious metal spheres. These spheres measure between 25 and 100 mm in diameter, and some are etched with three parallel grooves running completely around the equator. Two types of spheres have been found. One is composed of a solid bluish metal with flecks of white, the other is hollowed out and filled with a spongy white substance.These spheres are reportedly so delicately balanced that even with modern technology, they would need to be made in a zero gravity environment to attain these characteristics. These objects have become known as the Klerksdorp spheres.Geologists have attempted to debunk these artefacts as natural formations or “limonite concretions”. They fail to explain sufficiently how these formations occurred naturally with perfectly straight and perfectly spaced grooves around the centres.
Perhaps the real reason for such fervent attempted debunking by the scientific community, is that the rock in which these spheres where found is Precambrian – and dated to 2.8 billion years old!Whether one wishes to accept these out of place artefacts as genuine or not is I suppose, down to personal beliefs. 

 Just read the wikipedia page. And if you do not believe the evidence for its formation, at least read the paper reporting on it. I'm fairly certain the author of this field of logical fallacies hasn't.

Summary - this author has woven a net of straw mans, lies and other logical fallacies, combined with anecdotal evidence. Nearly everything in the article is either wrong, false, a lie, a straw man, just randomly dismisses scientific papers or the like.

It's extreme nonsense. These are my thoughts on it.