My Top Biological Anomalies: A List

You may live comfortably in your everyday un-anomalous world, but rest assured, that un-anomalous world is in itself an anomaly in a quite anomalous universe, all brought to you by Mother Nature.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY: How can reports of a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster continue for decades, even centuries without physical verification? It’s as if these creatures were but phantoms. It’s easy to visualize such creatures, but far harder to explain how a rather largish lake monster can elude absolute and final detection, required to convince even the most skeptical of skeptics, in a confined lake seemingly indefinitely. Or, if a species is highly territorial, that’s the same as being geographically confined. All these observers can’t be totally mistaken. There is an absolute consistency in the observations, be it whatever’s in Loch Ness or Bigfoot or other unknown creatures. Observations have, in many cases, as noted above, been reported over many centuries, as for example Bigfoot by Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans.

However, the central fly in the ointment (an anomaly) is that you cannot ever have just one of these unknown creatures. Creatures, like all biological organisms will die. Therefore, to be sighted over lengthy time frames, these creatures need to breed. To maintain a population’s survival over long time periods requires an entire breeding population, not just two individuals. That in turn ups the ante that sightings, evidence and proof positive should be far greater than they are, especially when these unknown animals are confined to a relatively small space, like a Loch Ness. But there is a slight problem with a small but breeding population of critters – inbreeding. It’s the genetic dangers of inbreeding that’s ultimately behind taboos against incest.

DRAGONS: The anomaly here is that if dragons and dragon-lore was the product of just one culture at say one particular point in time, the concept could be easily dismissed. But when they appear in every culture, from ancient times even up through the 1700’s when they were still part of natural history, then one needs to pay closer attention. That’s all the more so since dragons were taken very seriously indeed. In China they were the emissaries between the gods and the emperor, and woe beholds any of lesser rank that wore a dragon image on their person. Dragons and dragon-lore form a major part of what passes for science-fantasy today. There’s probably no child over the age of five who can’t wax lyrical and tell you all about dragon-lore. The best guess scenario is that while dragons may be considered mythical today; they certainly were not, not too awfully that many generations ago. If that’s the case, if dragons were really real once upon a time, then the anomaly is – no fossils. 

The hidden assumption is of course that they were biological. What if instead they were technological? That in turn of course must of necessity translate into extraterrestrial technology, probably a vehicle and/or weapon of sorts (breathing out fire, anyone?). That might be reinforced by the dragon’s kissing cousin, the Garuda, the divine birdman of Indian myth, which served as the mount, the personal aerial ‘chariot’ of the Hindu god Vishnu. 

CROP CIRCLES: There’s no disputing, no matter how much the pseudoscience skeptic you are, that crop circles do exist. There are numerous pissed-off farmers whose fields have been vandalized; multi-thousands of after-the-fact eyewitness accounts and an equal number of films and photographs, as well as on-site and laboratory analysis of the phenomena. Observation here is at the 100% certainty level. Finding logical and rational theoretical explanations are however way more challenging than a ‘take two aspirin and call me in the morning’ type of remedy or diagnosis. In fact, no matter what theory is advanced, natural, human or alien, there are massive flaws to be had with each.

No natural phenomena can create a myriad of massive geometrically complex perfect constructions using agricultural crops as the medium. The challenge for a human, or even a team of humans, to create the same in total darkness in just a few hours (this is a summertime event – long days; short nights), without mistakes, without leaving their traces (footprints, tire tracks, litter, etc) without ever getting caught, tried and convicted for trespass and vandalism, is beyond the theoretical pale for even the most ardent of sceptics and sceptical explanations, though human hoaxes are the fallback position, albeit without real evidence. As for ET, why they would travel vast distances to, at least in part, dabble in agricultural graffiti, defies our understanding. If crop circles are an attempt by aliens to communicate with humans, well, there’s been a failure to communicate. Theory here is at the near 100% uncertainty level. There’s a long road to hoe yet to reconcile observation and theory.

CATTLE MUTILATIONS: There’s no disputing the bona-fides of this gruesome reality. It has been observed – after-the-fact – photographed, documented, and investigated by all manner of officialdom, as well as unofficial private investigators. And though oft referred to as ‘cattle’ mutilations, all manner of wildlife and other domestic livestock have been targeted too, the first reported case being a horse. Like the crop circle phenomena, there are three possible explanations: natural, human or alien.

If natural, why has this phenomenon only become an issue since the 1960’s? Predator-prey relationships, scavengers, etc. have existed and been observed ever since humans have inhabited the continents. There should be no anomaly here if animal mutilations are just the normal continuation of Mother Nature in tooth and claw. But there is an anomaly. If predators or scavengers, why are there no footprints, and especially if predators, why no signs of a struggle? How can predators account for precision removal of just certain body parts with razor sharp incisions? Since there’s no blood associated with the mutilated carcasses, did predators drink up their entire victim’s blood like an animal version of Dracula?

If humans or cultists are responsible, why hasn’t anyone claimed responsibility? Why hasn’t anyone been caught, tried, convicted, fined and/or imprisoned for trespass, animal cruelty, destruction of private property, etc.? Why no signs of human activity like tire tracks and footprints and litter (say a cigarette butt or beer can or two). Again, why no signs of a struggle?

Some have suggested this is the work of government, or government departments, taking samples to monitor for various bovine nasties, like diseases, or other types of contamination that could endanger human health if these livestock were consumed.  Really! There are vastly easier ways of legally gathering up tissue samples than sneaking around in the dead of night and killing/mutilating animals for a few body parts.

So of course it has to be extraterrestrials! How can aliens mutilate cattle (and other livestock and wildlife), decade after decade, without ever being seen? Why would aliens be interested in wildlife and livestock in the first damned place, or at least some of their highly selected body parts?  

Doomsday: The End of the World: Part Two

The end of the world has been a popular theme in the arts (film, literature, etc.) as we’re no doubt aware. It’s also been a popular theme in science, in mythology, in religion, in prophecy, and so on. The fascination with the end of the world theme is that while unlikely (in your lifetime), it’s plausible as the dinosaurs found out 65 million years ago. So, in the short term, in your lifetime, is it likely, and if so, what’s the means of delivery?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The End of the World in Science: How can I destroy thee? Let me count the ways! Well, when counting up the possibilities, it could be a ‘bang’, a ‘whimper’, or anything in-between.

The End of the World in Science: Astronomy: There’s the obvious cosmic connection. I mean the greater Universe out there isn’t all that peaceful and tranquil. A great big rouge asteroid/comet could slam into us. A ‘nearby’ star could explode showering us with intense and deadly radiation. Even from quite a distance, a gamma ray burster could fry us. Perhaps a near invisible Black Hole could wander past just a wee bit too close and down the gravitational hatch we go. Closer to home, super-ultra one-in-a-billion-year solar storms could microwave us to oblivion. After that, things calm down a bit.

The End of the World in Science: Geology:  Planet Earth can be pretty violent too, but nothing geology throws at us can cause our 100% extermination – probably. Earthquakes, volcanos, hurricanes, tornados, floods, droughts, tsunamis, can all create total destructive chaos, but each is too local to be of global concern – except, maybe a super-volcano. Super-volcanoes, which have erupted and will erupt again, might only affect several hundreds-of-thousands to maybe millions of square miles directly vis-à-vis lava, etc. but the ash ejecta can quickly enter and traverse the entire atmosphere, blocking solar radiation causing global cooling and total disruption to the food chain. Then too there are the natural swings and roundabouts that now and again cause the Ice Ages. The saving grace there is that the transition from global normalcy to global Ice Age takes thousands of years – time enough for humans to adapt, even if not loving it.   

The End of the World in Science: Biology: Lots of things can kill us – tigers and crocodiles and sharks, and related beasties, even invertebrates like certain species of spiders and shellfish and octopuses and jellyfish and wasps/bee stings and swarming army ants, etc. Still, we’re more threat to them than they are to us. But, it’s not the macro life forms that are going to do us in, it’s the micro forms. We all get sick now and again. Bacteria and viruses have their wicked way with us or our bodies. Ultimately, we win every battle against them, except the last battle. They always win the war. In the end, they kill us, and to add insult to injury, feast off our remains! History is not without case studies of humans on mass (pandemics and epidemics) being slaughtered by these micro-beasties. There’s nothing in the cards to guarantee that history won’t repeat yet again. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that bacteria and/or viruses, caring not one jot for our high IQ’s and medical technology, won’t exterminate us.

The End of the World in Science: Astrobiology: Then there’s the old chestnut of alien invasion! That an alien (from space) might wipe us out might depend on whether the alien was or was not intelligent. If non-intelligent spores from space (panspermia) landed on Earth, well, it’s alien invasion never-the-less. If said spores took a liking to our biochemistry, well, the ‘alien’ diseases of smallpox etc. had quite an effect on the native Mesoamericans post European contact. Of course those European invaders weren’t exactly friendly as macro-beings either. In the similar, but extraterrestrial context, Planet Earth has attracted the attention of alien invaders near a zillion times in films, TV shows, novels and short stories. Most guys and gals would love to be as popular as Planet Earth is to the extraterrestrials! Still, invasion by extraterrestrial intelligences is highly unlikely. It’s going to a heck of a lot of expenditure of time and effort for relatively little gain. I mean if you’re a resident of the Big Apple, why would you, invade Paris for a loaf of bread when the necessary bakery ingredients are available in your local corner store. What could we have that the aliens couldn’t find a lot closer to home, be it gold or water? No, the least likely end-of-the-world scenario is alien invasion – at least by intelligent aliens. And if aliens did want Planet Earth, they wouldn’t have to fire a laser shot or even show up close and personal. All they need do is chuck a few large asteroids our way. There’s nothing we could do about it and when the dust settles, Planet Earth is theirs.

The End of the World in Science: Nanotechnology: There’s also been some worry about nanotechnology, both in fact (for example Prince Charles and his concerns over grey goo) and in fiction (for example, ‘Stargate: SG-1’ and ‘Stargate: Atlantis’ with the nanotechnology themed Replicators), that run amuck and cause human extinction if not worse. The basic scenario is that nanotechnology ‘robots’, a sort of artificial intelligence that can be programmed to do useful things like travel through a human’s circulatory system clearing out clogs and gunk and obstructions in the veins and arteries, end up, in order to recreate or reproduce themselves, start assimilating anything and everything they come across. In short, everything is gobbled up and turned into more and more of those nanotechnology ‘robots’. Like bacteria that exponentially reproduce and expand to meet the available food supply, so too will these ever hungry nanotechnology ‘robots’ gobble up the entire Planet Earth, turning all organic life forms, plus all the air, water and rock into a uniform grey goo. If that comes to pass, it’s clearly going to be a case of bend over and kiss your own ass goodbye. 

The End of the World in Science Fiction: Apart from the above, there have been various proposals put forth about potential ways and means that Earth could meet doomsday that have very little scientific credibility. Some would argue that alien invasion is one such implausibility. What I have in mind here are somewhat ‘mad scientist’ schemes, say the creation in particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider of mini Black Holes that would eat us up from the inside out. Or somehow scientists could accidentally via weather modification experiments set off global storms that last for months, or trigger geological faults that would crack the world in two or more pieces. Then there are nuclear bombs that could send the planet careening out of orbit heading either into the Sun or out into the depths of interstellar space. Then there’s the creation of artificial intelligences (robots and related) who eventually take over as the Top Dog life form. Then there are all those exotic super-weapons like neutron bombs or weapons with invented techno-babble names that sound impressive but mean absolutely nothing. Then there are those weird scenarios where one wakes up to find oneself as the last man on Earth for no apparent reason (albeit there are a very few others otherwise you’re plot’s pretty thin on the ground), though sometimes a plague turns 99.99% of humans into zombies and you’re the near lone normal human fighting off the mob.

The End of the World in Social Fiction: Then there’s the total worldwide breakdown of society, of government, of financial institutions, of law and order for no real logical reason (unlike say society in a post nuclear WWIII scenario). But, perhaps a super Global Financial Crisis, a GREAT DEPRESSION that makes the Great Depression look like the good times, or we finally exhaust our oil and gas supplies, might be a potential trigger. However, even in a society of total chaos, as witnessed by many such societies that have undergone such upheavals, there would be many survivors. 

The End of the World via Terrorism: As opposed to military actions by entire countries and associated governments, terrorists and terrorism are small scale events, hardly global in nature. But it would be wrong to dismiss terrorists as having no end of the world potential.

There’s only one plausible way IMHO that terrorists could bring about the end of the world. See the section ‘End of the World: John’s Best Guess Scenario’ for the details.

*Terrorist suicide bombings – too local; no end of the world way.

*Terrorist chemical attacks – too local; no end of the world scenario.

*Terrorist nuclear weapons & related – nasty, but overall no way that would be an ultimate end of the world event.

*Terrorist biological warfare – where there’s a will there’s a way.

To be continued…

Biblical Cryptozoology: Part Two

Cryptozoology is an endeavour to establish the reality of animal species (often mega-fauna) that are currently unverified or totally unknown. New species (usually insects and micro-fauna) are being discovered everyday. Alas a lot will never be verified because we humans unknowingly have driven them to extinction. Mythologies around the world are full of unknown mega-fauna, which truth be known, if they have or had existence it is or was extraterrestrial in nature. Here I briefly look at the most popular of all mythological texts, the Bible, to see what might be of zoological interest. 

You won’t find references in the Bible to the Yeti, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, the Cyclopes, or other similar beasties that interest wildlife biologists in the hunt for unverified, but possible examples of terrestrial wildlife. However, that doesn’t mean that the Bible doesn’t contain descriptions of a whole host of unknown creatures – the province of modern cryptozoology. Taking in turn the realm of the air, the land and the sea, what do we find?

Note: All references below refer to the King James Version of the Bible.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

LAND:

*The Behemoth is referenced once only in Job (Job 40:15) and is the Biblical kissing cousin of the Leviathan (see below). Behemoth is a primordial land monster inhabiting marshlands and rivers who likes to chomp on grass, like an ox. It’s presumed by modern scholars to be the hippopotamus, but proof-positive is lacking given the once-only reference.

*Hairy men: There’s no reference to current hairy ape-men like the Yeti in the Bible. Yet there is this interesting passage from Genesis 27:11 – “And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man”. Make of that what you will.

*Lambs with Horns: In Revelation you get two references to ‘lambs having horns’. The first (Revelation 5:6) tells of a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. However, it’s further stated that these represent the seven spirits of God (whatever that really means though I’m sure mystics and scholars have it all under control), so it doesn’t really represent something zoological. Then there’s that third beast from the earth that “had two horns like a lamb” but obviously wasn’t since it “spake as a dragon” (Revelation 13:11). So what exactly was it?

*Giants: Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua all testify to the existence of giants. From “giants in the earth” otherwise known as the Nephilim; “the land of giants” (more Nephilim); “remnant of giants”; to the “valley of the giants”, there were giants aplenty. I gather it was the presence of giants (the Nephilim) that so terrified the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness that they refused to continue their trek to the Promised Land. Instead, they preferred to do an about-face and return to Egypt! That cowardice pissed off the Almighty and he thus caused them to be condemned to wander about the wilderness for another forty years. So what terrified God’s Chosen People?

By the way there’s nothing overly unique about Biblical giants. Greek mythology is chock-a-block full of giants, good, bad but usually ugly, as they are in many other cultures. Their popularity remains through the ages, and though not a staple of our society, stories or descriptions about those elusive hairy man-apes relate beasties that are anything but dwarfs.

*Serpents: We all know about the serpent (a.k.a. Satan) in the Garden of Eden, but wait, there’s more shape-shifting in store. There’s that parlour trick preformed by Moses and Aaron before the Egyptian pharaoh to impress said ruler enough to “let my people go”. That parlour trick was turning a rod or staff into a serpent and back again. In Numbers God sends a fiery serpent to bite His Chosen People – exactly where they were bitten isn’t related, but the bite must have been poisonous for many died! However, Moses did some hocus-pocus and some who were bitten lived to tell the tale. Isaiah then talks about a “fiery flying serpent” also a “piercing serpent” and a “crooked serpent” – presumably all one and the same serpent. Jeremiah talks about that biting serpent the Lord likes to utilize. Revelation goes full circle and equates the serpent with the dragon which is equated with Satan. Whether there’s anything here anomalous from a zoological point of view is in the eye of the zoologist.

*Satyr: You wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Isaiah 13:21 & Isaiah 34:14 lend credence to the satyr that half-goat, half-human hybrid one normally associates with ancient Greece.

*Unicorns: While I’m sceptical about horned lambs, unicorns are a well established part of mega-fauna mythology from many times and places. The unicorn gets its due in the Bible as a real creature. Check out Isaiah 34:7 for example. 

SEA:

*The whale or big fish that swallowed Jonah and kept Jonah alive inside his innards would have to be a unique species to science.

*The Leviathan is some sort of primordial fire-breathing sea monster of the Old Testament (Isaiah, Job, and Psalms), the kissing cousin of the Behemoth (see above).

*Sea monsters are given the thumbs-up in Lamentations 4:3.

*A weird composite beast arises from the sea in Revelation 13:1-2: a hybrid of leopard, bear and lion (which are hardly marine animals) with seven heads and ten horns. That’s all sort of akin to Daniel 7:3-7. Here Daniel describes four different beasts arising from the sea. The first was like a lion with eagle’s wings. The second was like a bear (a pseudo-bear obviously). The third was a four-headed pseudo-leopard with four wings. The last was something radically different or diverse, something “dreadful and terrible” with iron teeth, nails of brass, and ten horns. Then another little horn pops up and starts speaking! That sounds something technological, like the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’. As with Revelation 13:1-2, the first three beasts, despite arising from the sea, are hardly typical marine animals. Something’s screwy somewhere! 

An interesting question arises. I gather or at least I assume that none of the above beasties entered onto Noah’s Ark in mating pairs, two-by-two, especially the more terrestrial and aerial ones. So, how did they survive that flood to produce offspring that would raise hell further on down the track? 

CONCLUSION: There’s much here to interest those who like to read and study mythology, especially animal-related mythology, comparative mythology and symbolism. There’s not much here to excite the cryptozoologist, although those ‘giants’ might be of interest to physical anthropologists, and the Cherubim and Seraphim to those who like to play around with the reality of possible ancient astronauts.

Biblical Cryptozoology: Part One

Cryptozoology is an endeavour to establish the reality of animal species (often mega-fauna) that are currently unverified or totally unknown. New species (usually insects and micro-fauna) are being discovered everyday. Alas a lot will never be verified because we humans unknowingly have driven them to extinction. Mythologies around the world are full of unknown mega-fauna, which truth be known, if they have or had existence it is or was extraterrestrial in nature. Here I briefly look at the most popular of all mythological texts, the Bible, to see what might be of zoological interest. 

You won’t find references in the Bible to the Yeti, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, the Cyclopes, or other similar beasties that interest wildlife biologists in the hunt for unverified, but possible examples of terrestrial wildlife. However, that doesn’t mean that the Bible doesn’t contain descriptions of a whole host of unknown creatures – the province of modern cryptozoology. Taking in turn the realm of the air, the land and the sea, what do we find?

Note: All references below refer to the King James Version of the Bible.

AIR:

*Cherubim: Of all the weird and wonderful creatures that appear between Genesis and Revelation, Ezekiel takes first prize for the most weird and wonderful of all. Ezekiel, assuming here he hadn’t consumed too much fermented grape juice, witnessed a whirlwind, a great cloud, full of fire with much brightness and overall the colour of amber, when as he puts it all came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month. Okay, maybe it’s a volcanic eruption (or perhaps a descending spaceship)! Well, apparently it’s not volcanic in origin for it then comes to pass that there were four creatures associated with this phenomenon which Ezekiel ultimately identifies as a Cherub (Ezekiel 9:3) or Cherubim (Ezekiel 10:14).

Ezekiel also says that these four living creatures (or perhaps crew members) “had the likeness of a man” (i.e. they were humanoid but not human).  And each of these creatures had four faces and four wings. The four faces were akin to those of a man, an ox, an eagle and a lion. And these creatures glowed. On second thought, maybe Ezekiel had consumed a bit too much grape juice! However, to be fair to the man, if you’ve never had a close encounter before and no concept of ET, then you can only interpret and describe what you see in terms you are familiar with, like an eagle or lion or something that’s akin to a man but not a man. 

Anyway, Ezekiel also describes the glowing craft or vehicle associated with this quartet, which in ancient astronaut literature is noted as the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’, a Biblical UFO encounter. Then he hears a voice, which in his confused state assumes must be a deity, in fact The Deity (well, that’s understandable – back then I probably would have assumed the same not being acquainted with ancient astronaut and UFO lore and the whole concept of life on other planets). In a similar way to his description of aliens in familiar terms (somewhat like a man), Ezekiel could explain in the only way possible the message he was given as a ‘message from God’. The messengers certainly weren’t his next door neighbours holding a conversation with him! 

It would appear that the creatures who posed as the Lord or who Ezekiel misinterpreted as the Lord departed around or about Ezekiel 3:2-14. Thus Ezekiel concluded his ‘first contact’, a close encounter of the third kind.

However, there was a second coming, a repeat performance around Ezekiel 8:1 when it came to pass for Ezekiel in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month. Again you get descriptions of those four faces, slightly altered as this time round as the four faces were akin to a cherub, man, lion and eagle (Ezekiel 10:14) – the ox had gone, so maybe these weren’t the exact same aliens. But you still get the technology of the wheels and the clouds and the brightness and the fire and the lifting up and departure, and so ‘second contact’ ended by the conclusion of Ezekiel 10.  

Something seems amiss at first glance however as first contact was in the “thirtieth year” but second contact was in the “sixth year”. I gather the thirtieth year was his 30^th year in captivity down by the river at Chebar, while his sixth year was his 6^th year back at home following. At a minimum that means at least six years between first and second contact, not that that has any great significance.

There is however one more follow-up to these four-faced creatures. Revelation, like Ezekiel, is dominated to a nearly excessive degree with four living creatures. Revelation 4:7 relates another four creatures, all with now familiar faces – lion, calf, man and flying eagle. But in the time elapsed since Ezekiel’s day (a time that hasn’t actually arrived yet apparently), these aliens had sprouted an additional pair of wings, for a grand total of six wings as related in the following verse, Revelation 4:8. Maybe these creatures have differing number of wings due to age (they grow more wings as they grow older), or sex (females have four wings; males six wings or vice versa) as something part and parcel within their own natural selection and evolution.

These six-winged beasties are probably the Seraphim as related in Isaiah 6:2 and 6:6. They like to cry out “holy, holy, holy” (their catchcry), exactly the same phrase you get uttered in Revelation 4:8. They, the four beasts with the six wings, were also blessed with a myriad of eyes (as in way more than two) on all sides. Lots of eyes can be found in Greek mythology too. Argus was a 100-eyed giant, ultimately slain by Hermes who presented the corpse to Hera (Mrs. Zeus) who incorporated the eyes of Argus into her iconic symbol – the peacock.

In any event, four-winged ‘spirits’ were commonly depicted in ancient Mesopotamia so there’s nothing unique about Ezekiel’s neural network and visions and so perhaps Ezekiel wasn’t hitting the bottle after all.  

These intelligent beings might be thought of as outside the province of cryptozoology or zoology full stop, yet the Sasquatch/Bigfoot, Yeti and similar hairy hominoids are considered legit. But since Ezekiel’s creatures are unknown humanoids to science, intelligent or not, whether they fall in the realm of cryprozoology or not, well that’s just unnecessarily splitting hairs. Still, one could argue that the Cherubim (and Seraphim) might fall more into the interests of astrobiologists and/or ufologists if my premise is correct and they are really extraterrestrials.

*Cockatrice: Both Isaiah and Jeremiah acknowledge the cockatrice which is a relatively small two-legged dragon, but with the head of a rooster. In some versions it’s cited instead as a basilisk, which in legend is king of the serpents with the evil eye (much like the Gorgon, Medusa), though without wings. Some editions just wimp out and call it a viper.

*Dragon: There are many references to the concept of dragons in the Bible, but the biggie is Revelation 12:3 – “And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.” And Revelation 12:7 – “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels.” Of course in this context the dragon is equated with Satan, but “seven heads and ten horns” has to be a rather weird description of Satan, an original angel, methinks. Still, here’s the reference: Revelation 12:9 – “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” So there!

*Flying Horse: When you think of a flying horse you think of Pegasus, but Pegasus doesn’t get a mention in the Bible. But, you do get a relation of Pegasus, cited in 2 Kings 2:11 when Elijah gets abducted, placed on a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire and gets transported to heaven whether he likes it or not. I presume that in order to get from ground level to heaven the horses must have had wings. Then there’s Revelation. I think Revelation 9:17 is confusing the concept of the horse with the dragon since one doesn’t normally associate a horse’s mouth spewing forth smoke, fire and brimstone! And our poor very confused author of Revelation has trouble distinguishing a lion’s head from a horse’s head – even a very young child can tell the two apart. However, later on down the track we get white horses and riders (one of which I gather is J.C. himself – as a rider, not as a horse) heading hell bent for leather to strut their Revelation stuff. Presumably, those horses will be descendents of Pegasus, otherwise by the time they (the riders) reach terra firma from heaven it’s going to be splat-city (unless they have parachutes of course).

*Locusts: In Revelation you also have a plague of locusts appear, which doesn’t sound too unusual or anomalous, except these locusts were shaped like horses and had the faces of men and crowns on their head which was covered in the hair of women and teeth that you associate with lions and the tail of a scorpion. Are you getting the impression the author here either had some magic mushrooms for breakfast or else was puffing on the good stuff?

To be continued…

Animal Mutilations

For the better part of going on towards five decades worth, there’s been a ongoing and gruesome phenomena seemingly clustered around the American mid-western regions that involves what has been described as the mutilation of large herbivore wildlife such as bison, but more usually domesticated livestock like cattle, sheep and horses - Whodunit?

For the better part of going on towards five decades worth, there’s been a ongoing and gruesome phenomena seemingly clustered around the American mid-western regions (though Charles Fort collected similar cases from England in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries) that involves what has been described as the mutilation of large herbivore wildlife such as bison, but more usually domesticated livestock like cattle, sheep and horses. Mutilation is not usually a word associated with natural processes like predation, rather deliberate acts for purposes other than taking down an animal as a natural food source. We’ll return to that unnatural bit later on down the track.

These unfortunate victims usually have selected and nearly consistent bits and pieces of their body removed with near surgical precision. Most of the carcass is left behind, though the body is usually devoid of blood.

Firstly, from the outset, there’s no denying the reality of the phenomena – ghosts and UFOs come and go like will-o’-the-wisps, but animal mutilations, like crop circles, stick around and are available for ongoing scrutiny and analysis, and both have some other common threads like clustering in geographical areas (crop circles tend to be associated with and clustered in SW England). Both are ongoing and both now number in the hundreds to thousands of individual cases. Further, there have been several (two) independent Federal inquiries into the phenomena, one by the FBI (1979), the other by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT). Both studies produced conclusions that anomalies existed in some mutilation cases and that further studies were warranted. There have also been various State-level investigations as well as Senate hearings.

The most obvious answer to the mutilation mystery is that all can be attributed to natural predators doing their thing. In fact professional veterinarians usually associated with university schools of veterinary medicine or science proclaim from their ivory towers that these are indeed the results of natural predation by known carnivores, all by studying the photographic evidence – god forbid they’d actually do any on-site fieldwork. However, they do admit that not all of the hundreds to thousands of mutilation cases fall into such neat little piles. All agree by now that all cases cannot be easily explained by wild cats like mountain lions and bobcats or those from the canine side of things like wolves and coyotes, and similar predators such as foxes and wild dogs. 

An obvious problem with the natural predation theory is the appearance of the phenomena in the mid-1960s (apart from still relatively recent England noted above). Prey and predators existed way before that as well as humans to report the cases.  

In contrast, the man-on-the-land, the farmers, rangers, hunters, wildlife field biologists and vets who work for government departments and other outdoors types who are quite familiar with viewing and inspecting your run of the mill animal predation tend to take a more opposite view – there’s nothing natural about these sorts of animal predations and the state the remains of the carcass are found in.  This might appear to be a typical academic skeptic vs. eyewitness (I know what I saw) disagreements were it not for a few other unusual features.

Firstly, you’d expect to see signs of a predator-prey struggle – the ground should have been scuffed up a bit; the vegetation slightly disturbed. That’s not what you find. You’d expect in many cases to observe the tracks of the predatory animal(s). You don’t tend to find tracks. Often there are not even tracks of the victim in the immediate vicinity as if the animal were dumped from above at the spot. Thirdly, if natural, you wouldn’t expect the ground/soil and surrounding vegetation in the immediate area of the kill to show any long-term lasting effects. Often the kill site can be identified way down the track by unusual changes in the condition of the soil and vegetation, usually for the worse.

Further, natural predators tend to avoid or shy away from the mutilated carcass even though it’s an apparently easy meal. Ditto other livestock avoid the area as well. It’s like a no-go zone. Some post-mortem biochemical studies suggest that the victim in question was tranquilized prior to the mutilation. One of the anomalies often reported via laboratory studies of the carcass are unusual alterations in the amounts of vitamins, minerals and other associated biochemical compounds. The findings of tranquilizers and/or anomalies in the standard biochemistry of the victim, points more to a human or an otherworldly culprit. What about the human animal?

Because the nature of the wounds often having the nature or hallmarks suggestive of surgery; well there’s another predator that needs to be considered, the human predator. Well that doesn’t really appear to wash either – again, no human footprints in the area prior to discovery; no tire tracks (and most of the kill sites are off the beaten track – a long walk to get to them). Further, to the best of my knowledge, no human(s) have ever been observed in the act, far less caught, tried and convicted. Further, no human(s) or cults (Satanic or otherwise) have claimed responsibility. In gun-toting America, especially rural America where rifles and shotguns probably outnumber their human owners, any other humans with animal mutilation on their depraved minds are really risking their hides – farmers seeing their livestock (and livelihoods) butchered are liable to shoot first and ask questions later!

Further still, the nature of the incisions hasn’t been duplicated in the laboratory by lasers (an obvious human tool if humans were responsible) since there’s no signs of heat or cooking on the carcass incisions. Laboratory tests show that the time and effort to do the high precision cutting job using sharp steel implements is quite considerable. Hides are tough, unlike human skin. Further, no evidence beyond reasonable doubt (say by the FBI or the AFT) of any human or cultist activity was ever uncovered by any official investigation

Of course there have been claims that the American government is actually responsible via clandestine or covert research into possible cattle-human transmitted diseases like ‘mad cow disease’ and scrapie, research  via the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) with covering support from the armed forces via ‘black helicopters’. However, on balance, you’d think such work in the public interest wouldn’t have to be done undercover! Surely the American powers-that-be can buy livestock at random for testing; ditto hunt other wildlife for routine and ongoing testing in the open. Some conspiracy scenarios make sense – this one doesn’t.

You can’t really pin this on some sort of unknown, undiscovered predator like the Chupacabra – an animal that would be in the providence of cryptozoologists since there have been no sightings of such potential critters in the area with the necessary ‘tools’ (teeth and jaws), and anyway no tracks, known animal or unknown animal.

Since the phenomena exists and requires explanation and resolution, perhaps that leaves the otherworldly. Are aliens in UFOs responsible? While there have, on occasion been reports of unusual aerial objects in the relevant vicinity prior to mutilations, it would seem on the surface to be relatively absurd. Why would aliens want bits and pieces and the blood of large herbivores?

Alien beings will, by definition, have alien minds, an alien psychology and alien motives – alien relative to us of course.

There is however an obvious parallel with alien UFO abductions. Humans who claim to have been abducted by the ‘Greys’ also claim to have had tissue samples taken from them – biopsies – and often have the unexplained scares to ‘prove’ it, though to the skeptics that hardly constitutes real evidence, far less proof. Still, it’s another dot point suggesting that aliens, for whatever reason, just take tissue samples to monitor – what? Well, who knows? At least the humans aren’t sacrificed on the alien’s altar.

Needless to say humans (biologists, vets, nurses, medical doctors & researchers) do tissue sample work all the time and sometimes it’s necessary to kill the subject under the knife first.

Ultimately, to date, the only reasonable conclusion that can be reached is that there is no ‘smoking gun’ proof yet to identify beyond question whodunit, if indeed there is just a single whodunit.

The Creation: God vs. Natural History: Part Two

Probably among the most familiar of familiar phrases in the English language is one that starts out “In the beginning God created…” However, there are alternative non-theological variations on that phrase that fall more in the realm of natural philosophy (or as we call it today, science). What’s at stake is the credibility of God’s alleged word vs. the credibility of the word of science. Christians might believe the Bible, but they put their real faith in science when they turn on their TV set or board an aircraft. So too should they put their money on the scientific (natural history) scenarios of the creations.

In the beginning God said a whole bunch of stuff central to His creation of life, the Universe and everything.*

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Botany is next up on the creation agenda. Of course you need land and water before you can have a garden (hydroponics and phytoplankton aside) so the ordering is, well, in order. Except God then makes a mistake. He starts off all things botanical with grass, which, truth be known, is a pretty complex and highly evolved plant. There were lots of simpler plants that pre-existed grasses. Even the dinosaurs existed before grass did! What God should have said is that “let the Earth bring forth algae and phytoplankton and mosses and ferns”. That would have been a detail which would have made botanical atheists stand up and take notice of Biblical bona-fides.

But, just when you think the Biblical creations gets things in a reasonable and logical order, here comes the next bit – the creation of the Sun, Moon and stars. The relevant quote, in case there’s any doubt:

Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Okay, the Moon and the stars aren’t all that relevant, but what did all those plants, those grasses, herbs and fruit trees, do for solar energy (photosynthesis) before the Sun got created? This is without question a major Biblical screw-up; the height of all that’s illogical in the scientific ordering of things, but then the Bible and science are not exactly bedfellows. Science on the other hand has the Sun and the Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago – plants came much later on and thus they never lacked for solar energy.

The screw-ups keep on keeping on. Next up we have the creation of marine life and avian life. Unfortunately for God, He screwed up by including whales among marine life. Okay, whales are marine creatures, but they are not fish. Whales are mammals. God apparently created whales before the end of the fifth day of creation. After the fifth day had ended, and the sixth day had begun, God then apparently created mammals, like cattle, and lots of other critters that in the fossil record preceded whales, as well as those things that “creepeth” upon the earth for example (I assume worms and snakes, etc.). What’s the relevant proof?

Genesis 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

We note that whales were created before other beasts as outlined in Genesis 1:24. Yet, as any biologist will outline for you, whales evolved from land mammals and went back to a marine habitat. Whales are a relatively recent product of natural selection. They were hardly an animal that kicked off the mammalian branch of the tree of life, contrary to what God says. 

Take as a further example the creation of the male and female of the human species, which is I’m sure a bit more relevant and personal to all you readers. The barebones (as it were) were given in Genesis 1:26. Now, finally, God gives out the details!  

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Genesis 2:21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

Genesis 2:22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Well at least now we get some sort of explanation – the male created from common dust; the female from the masculine rib. Details are still thin on the (dusty) ground, but the dust-and-rib theory is at least something that scientists can explore and play around with. Hands up all of you who attended high school biology class or university Biology 101 and got the dust-and-rib explanation? I thought so. Biologists have found a more convincing explanation. If you don’t need dust, and you don’t need ribs, then you don’t need God either in the equation. That aside…    

Now if you’re a male, are you overjoyed that your original alpha-male ancestor was made out of ordinary everyday garden-variety dust? Would you be happy if you had been made out of dust motes? If you’re a female, does it tickle your fancy that you’re (well your sex is) just a second generation afterthought (there is quite a break in Genesis between Adam’s creation and Eve’s coming to the party); a creation from a masculine rib? Does any of this strike you as slightly ridiculous? That’s all the more so since the creation of the original alpha-male and alpha-female afterthought was just a one-off. Post-dust and post-rib it was creation by that time-honoured mechanism – sex, which is smelly and messy and rather hit-or-miss. I mean hey, if dust and ribs work, well when you’re on a winner, stick to the original blueprint. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. God should have left the dust-and-rib instruction manual behind. So, if a modern loving couple wants a bouncing baby boy, well a bit of housework will round up the raw material. If it’s a little girl, well hubby can have a rib job at the local clinic. Okay, that’s ridiculous. But if it’s ridiculous now, it was equally ridiculous back then.

Now kindly note another creation screw-up here. We’re all familiar with the concept of day and night; morning and evening. Now the question is what celestial object is responsible for there being light and darkness, day and night, morning and evening? Did I hear you suggest that the Sun was the orb responsible? If so, go to the head of the class.

But it comes to pass that we have this verse:

Genesis 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And then we have this verse (repeated from above):

Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

So the upshot here is that day and night, morning and evening, existed prior to the creation of the Sun. Wow! Neat magician’s trick that!

Now kindly note yet another creation screw-up here.

Recall: Genesis 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Recall: Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Now recall: Genesis 2:18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

Now recall: Genesis 2:19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.

In Biblical parlance, this is the equivalent of the chicken and egg question. Which came first, man or beast? The Bible provides statements for both that’s can’t both be correct, so take your pick. Whichever you pick, the alternative then has to be nonsense. Odds are neither version is correct.

Now if God is perfect, there can be no Biblical screw-ups. If there are Biblical screw-ups, then either God isn’t perfect or the Bible is NOT God’s Holy Word. A reasonable explanation is that the Bible was written by non-perfect humans, and God doesn’t exist since the errors, the screw-ups, were never corrected by Him. God never proofread His own Holy Words!

One further anomaly that proves just about beyond any doubt that Genesis is the work of man and not of God; we note the endless repetition of “And God said.” My question – prior to Adam, just who was around back then to copy down anything that God said? And if the answer to that is nobody, then presumably God is just talking to Himself! Or, more likely as not, the entirety of Genesis, creation and all, is just an early example of what would later become known as science fiction.

*Kindly note that all Biblical references have been taken from the Book of Genesis that appear in the King James Version of the Bible.

The Creation: God vs. Natural History: Part One

Probably among the most familiar of familiar phrases in the English language is one that starts out “In the beginning God created…” However, there are alternative non-theological variations on that phrase that fall more in the realm of natural philosophy (or as we call it today, science). What’s at stake is the credibility of God’s alleged word vs. the credibility of the word of science. Christians might believe the Bible, but they put their real faith in science when they turn on their TV set or board an aircraft. So too should they put their money on the scientific (natural history) scenarios of the creations.

In the beginning God said a whole bunch of stuff central to His creation of life, the Universe and everything.*

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. [God creates photons and electromagnetic energy.]

Genesis 1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. [This makes little sense, but it’s a division of heavenly ‘waters’ from the earthly ‘waters’. There’s earthly ‘waters’, and then there’s everything else above the earthly ‘waters’ – the firmament.]

Genesis 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. [The distinction between land and sea is noted as the earthly ‘waters’ undergo a partial phase change.]

Genesis 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. [Botany makes an appearance.]

Genesis 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. [The creation of the Sun, the Moon and the stars is noted.]

Genesis 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. [God creates fish (including whales) and birds.]

Genesis 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. [Add to that the invertebrates, mammals, reptiles and amphibians.]

Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

These are statements, but not explanations, far less adequate explanations. It’s akin to sleight of hand, the snap of the fingers, the waving of a magic wand. Its parlour tricks that dazzle but you’re left none the wiser. You’re awed by magicians’ tricks because you can’t figure out how they do them; and they’re not telling!

We note by the way that microbes, bacteria, viruses, unicellular critters, etc. don’t get a mention in Genesis. There’s no “And God said, let there be microbes”. That’s one major omission. Of course humans didn’t have microscopes back then and I guess God forgot to tell His scribes about the reality of the greater part of Earth’s biomass so that’s why they didn’t get a mention. All of God’s creations would fall apart at the atomic seams if it wasn’t for the strong nuclear force, so why didn’t God take credit for that? Okay, so the human author(s) of Genesis presumably didn’t know much about atomic physics, but they did know about gravity (the force that really dominates the Universe, including much of reality back on Terra Firma, including much of their reality. So why no “And God said, let there be gravity”? 

Those significant omissions aside, and they are significant, religion, as in the Bible, gives you various creation statements as we’ve seen. If the Bible gives you creation explanations of any kind, they are downright weird, if not supernatural, and certainly not verifiable explanations. Science tries to give you logical explanations for creation events and to the best of its ability, verifiable explanations.

So, God created the “heaven and the earth”. Heaven apparently is as in all things not earth – the rest of the cosmos. Out of what did God create heaven and earth? Out of nothing? Out of some pre-existing primordial matter that presumably God didn’t create but had available to Him as a raw resource? Or, alternatively, if He did create this primordial stuff, then He then took some time out to figure out what to do with it. Decisions, decisions! I mean if God is immortal; and the heaven (cosmos) and earth aren’t, then a lot of water passed under the bridge between God, and God’s creation of heaven and earth. In any event, where are the details? If I told you I had created a jumbo jet in my heavenly garden shed, you’d ask questions. You’d require the nitty-gritty details, as in made out of what, and what size – life-size or toy model – and can it fly. Was it carved or assembled from pre-existing parts or were the parts all created from scratch, and if so where did I get the raw materials from? 

Now even I have to admit, when it comes down to the creation of “heaven” (the Universe or cosmos presumably), scientists (cosmologists) come out with some pretty far-out-star-scout statements too. And some pretty far-out-star-scout details, but at least there are details. The nitty-gritty is that 13.7 billions years ago (science – vs. 4004 BCE God), there was a Big Bang which somehow created the Universe (matter, energy, time and space) from nothing, and to top off the silliness, that all happened in a space way, way, way smaller than a pinhead. Pull the other one fellows! However, at least they do have some observational evidence – runs on the board – to support at least the 13.7 billion year ago event (though little else), evidence which the 4004 BCE Biblical version lacks. For example, there’s the measured redshifts of the galaxies which suggest the cosmos is expanding. Reinforcing that there’s the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) – the temperature of the cosmos – which keeps getting cooler as the cosmos expands. CMBR measurement meets CMBR theory. Also an area when observation matches prediction is the cosmic ratio of hydrogen to helium. So, the Big Bang has runs (as in details and evidence) on the board. Genesis 1:1 doesn’t.

The “earth” part on the other hand has science on a far, far firmer ground. Astronomers have certainly witnessed the overall process by which extra-solar planetary systems are currently forming, and extrapolation then gives the process that created our Sun and planets, including the Earth, isn’t difficult. In brief, it goes something like this. Interstellar dust clouds rotate and contract due to gravity. Contraction down into a much relatively smaller volume makes for extreme heat and pressure. That heat and pressure eventually triggers nuclear fusion – a star is born. The surrounding debris under gravity contracts to much smaller bodies where the heat and pressure isn’t quite enough to trigger fusion. Those smaller bodies become the orbiting planets – like Earth. As I said, observations are made, explanations are given and details are, well, detailed. So when it comes to accounting for the creation of the Earth, it’s science on top by a mile, or two or ten.

As to the creation, or separation, of land and sea, well you certainly don’t need supernatural processes to account for that. Take a lump of mud or sand; add water; stir until everything is a uniform mixture or slurry. Let stand. What happens? The mud/sand sinks or settles to the bottom (gravity again) and you have separation of church and state – sorry, land and water. Science trumps God again. The Bible should have mentioned gravity and density, but it failed to do so. The Bible should have also mentioned the atmosphere when noting the separation of the land from the waters. Somehow God forgot to mention His role in separating out the atmosphere from the lithosphere and from the hydrosphere. That’s another major oversight IMHO. 

To be continued…

*Kindly note that all Biblical references have been taken from the Book of Genesis that appear in the King James Version of the Bible.