I am taking another look at this parallel universe idea.

Now we have Lincoln the Vampire Killer.

This is after we had Barack Obama the Kenyan/Indonesian Socialist.

And all this is after we discovered that a large percentage of Americans are not neo Creationists but rather Fundamentalist Christians who actually think the universe is 6,000-10,000 years old.

I am boring everyone (I mean just look at my stats) with Bertrand Russell again, the Cliff Note Taker of Western Philosophy.

But I think I reached another Epiphany.

Russell plays with Plato's syllogisms and such. And it is a fun exercise to behold.

He notes that Plato acknowledged that there is no such thing as a straight line in reality.

And since I was a child I was struck as to how any individual star 'made' a straight line of light to my Iris(s).

Well Einstein demonstrated through math symbols and finally through the experiments of others, that this straight line opinion on my part was wrong. Since space is 'twisted' the light I see coming from that star is not coming to me in a straight line at all. If space itself is curved, then a straight line is impossible. If gravity affects the manner in which light arrives upon my iris, then that light did not arrive to me in a straight line.

Now what I am about to write about is not tongue-in-cheek. I just thought about the universe the last few days and if scientists have probs figuring out more than 4% of what the universe is actually made of, then I could not be that far off with regard to my opinions.

I once noted that we should be able to compromise on some of our opinions.

If fundamentalists believe that the entire FRICKING UNIVERSE is 6,000 years of age, and 'modern scientists' seem to agree that the universe is only 13.7 BILLION years of age; we should be more than able to compromise upon this issue.

THE UNIVERSE IS ONLY 6.85 BILLION years of age.

We should just put this factoid into our educational texts and move on from there! (After we inform the tots of course how we arrived at that figure!)

THE FACTOID

This factoid gives us a lot of leeway.

But before I begin a review of my travels through the universe the past week, I would like to posit where my epiphany really began!

There really may be parallel universes.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110803102844.htm

We all know the problem dealing with this 'factoid' that one might not know where an electron is at any one point in time.

Now this Science Daily article talks about how neutrons might lose some of their substance to an entirely different universe per experimentation. The minute particles seem to disappear and then reappear—even though we might only discover evidence of their appearances with no real pix as it were.

I might go on and on about things I know nothing about (certainly my trademark for the last four years) but I do recall that these physicists can not show you a picture of an electron. I mean we can shuffle our feet upon the carpet and make our hair stand up and shock our cats; but we only know that there are electrons because of the results we believe we see from the movements of the electrons.

And certainly, we should know better than to put our fork into the toaster!

So let me begin my rant.

EVOLUTION

We must acknowledge that MAN is not the only animal to use tools.

Animals use rocks with rock anvils to open nuts.

http://www.ehow.com/info_8428785_animals-use-rocks-tools.html

Otters have been using these tools for at least five million years.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_long_have_sea_otters_been_around
 

Hell birds, the ancestors of the dinosaurs use rocks as tools for chrissakes. Today you can see Sea Erns pick up turtles and go high into the sky, suddenly dropping the poor tortoise from the air onto some rocky shore and then the bird returns to the scene of the crime and finds the shell shattered with the flesh fully available.

And speaking of birds, have you ever really looked at the intricacy of nests? Amazing homes are constructed with bird brains and bird beaks.

Taveta Golden Weaver building pendant nest

Stone tools found at the bottom level of the cave — believed to be 2 million years old — show that human ancestors were in the cave earlier than ever thought before. Geological evidence indicates that these tools were left in the cave and not washed into the site from the outside world.

Archaeological investigations of the Wonderwerk cave — a South African National Heritage site due to its role in discovering the human and environmental history of the area — began in the 1940s and research continues to this day....

There were a number of hominids 2 million years ago...

The oldest known stone tools from sites in Ethiopia date to 2.4 million years.  The Wonderwerk Cave discoveries are those close in age to the very earliest known stone tools and similar in date to the bottom levels at Olduvai Gorge.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081219172137.htm

If Homo Sapiens is really only 100,000 years old (or two times that amount) what tools are THEY talking about?

I guess the otters just picked out the stones they wished to use in order to get access to their nuts but somehow these pre-humans, ten times the age of the oldest human being, changed those stones a bit prior to using them for their own devices.

FIRE

Well how many other animals on this planet use fire for their own devices?

Well one 'species' I suppose and that would be Homo Sapiens!

The analysis pushes the timing for the human use of fire back by 300,000 years, suggesting that human ancestors as early as Homo erectus may have begun using fire as part of their way of life," said U of T anthropologist Michael Chazan, co-director of the project and director of U of T's Archaeology Centre.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 2.

Wonderwerk is a massive cave located near the edge of the Kalahari where earlier excavations by Peter Beaumont of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, had uncovered an extensive record of human occupation. A research project, co-directed by U of T's Chazan and Liora Kolska Horwitz of Hebrew University, has been doing detailed analysis of the material from Beaumont's excavation along with renewed field work on the Wonderwerk site.

Analysis of sediment by lead authors Francesco Berna and Paul Goldberg ...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120402162548.htm

Again, if Homo Sapiens only appeared upon this planet a hundred thousand years ago, who in the hell was building fireplaces a million years ago?

ECCE HOMO

Now we come to the subject of art and I have written before about 'something happening' to Homo Sapiens 40,000 years ago. Something happened that was extraordinary.

Paleolithic paintings in El Castillo cave in Northern Spain date back at least 40,800 years -- making them Europe's oldest known cave art, according to new research published June 14 in Science. 

The research team was led by the University of Bristol and included Dr Paul Pettitt from the University of Sheffield's Department of Archeology, a renowned expert in cave art. Their work found that the practice of cave art in Europe began up to 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, indicating the paintings were created either by the first anatomically modern humans in Europe or, perhaps, by Neanderthals.

A total of 50 paintings in 11 caves in Northern Spain, including the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo, were dated by a team of UK, Spanish and Portuguese researchers led by Dr Alistair Pike of the University of Bristol, UK.

As traditional methods such as radiocarbon dating do not work where there is no organic pigment, the team dated the formation of tiny stalactites on top of the paintings using the radioactive decay of uranium. This gave a minimum age for the art. Where larger stalagmites had been painted, maximum ages were also obtained...

Dr Pike said: "Evidence for modern humans in Northern Spain dates back to 41,500 years ago, and before them were Neanderthals. Our results show that either modern humans arrived with painting already part of their cultural activity or it developed very shortly after, perhaps in response to competition with Neanderthals -- or perhaps the art is Neanderthal art."

The creation of art by humans is considered an important marker for the evolution of modern cognition and symbolic behaviour, and may be associated with the development of language.

Dr Pike said: "We see evidence for earlier human symbolism in the form of perforated beads, engraved egg shells and pigments in Africa 70-100,000 years ago, but it appears that the earliest cave paintings are in Europe. One argument for its development here is that competition for resources with Neanderthals provoked increased cultural innovation from the earliest groups of modern humans in order to survive. Alternatively, cave painting started before the arrival of modern humans, and was done by Neanderthals. That would be a fantastic find as it would mean the hand stencils on the walls of the caves are outlines of Neanderthals' hands, but we will need to date more examples to see if this is the case."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120614142840.htm

See pix at:

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=ytff1-tyc&va=el+castillo+cave+art

This always brings me to the extraordinary line of Shakespeare (through Socrates really):

There are things above the heavens and beneath the earth that were never dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio.

There are sunken cities we are just finding (per variational changes in our shore lines over the millennia).

There are bones lurking in hills and valleys that have not yet been discovered and rated.

There are writings in stone and clay and even ancient versions of paper that have not been freed from their graves; let alone interpreted.

There are tens of thousands of ships lost to the sea that have been left untouched for millennia.

I do not have space here to get into this.

But in my universe, there is depth that cannot be totally understood and never will. There are ancient cities and ancient structures and high art that have not even yet been discovered.

Art

Well what is art?

Besides thousands of our plants, ants and birds and beavers a multitude of other beings on this planet create art. I don't care if we are discussing the fascinating tunnels created by prairie dogs or damns created by beavers or nests of such intricacies created by our avian friends; that it boggles one's mind.

But these cave paintings have awed our greatest artists including Picasso along with nitwits like myself.

There was something happening in those caves and I have written of my own opinions along this line often.

FUNDAMENTALISTS

But what Russell is talking about in 1945 and what Plato was talking about in the 4^th century BCE involve consciousness; and an assumed definition of consciousness.

To me, I am conscious that that star I was discussing previously was communicating directly to me along an assumed line.

But Einstein tells me absolutely that that star is not communicating directly to my iris but rather the photons that embody that communication are moving in skewed lines.

CONCLUSION

Depending upon the 'study' or the 'poll' a large percentage of Americans believe the 'universe' is six thousand (or sometimes ten thousand) years of age; that God stood on a 'formless' earth comprised of wind and some water and tossed the stars into the sky and separated the land from the water and....

And anyone who challenges that 'consciousness' is an enemy of the fundamentalist's tribe, an enemy to Christian thought everywhere and an enemy to the United States of America.

Forgetting for the moment the pugnacious-nish of this position; I think I am beginning to understand it.

I conclude that there are an infinite number of universes and they are all based in the end upon our own consciousness; our own experiences; our own studies; our own ethos in fact.

There are no straight lines in 'reality', there are no ' indisputable truths' in this reality, and there is no reason to attack the universe of one faction over the universe of the other faction.

On the other hand, I do not feel it would be a good idea to put a fundamentalist in charge of NASA as we once put a fundamentalist in charge the Department of Interior

(Again putting a person in charge of our wetlands and our national shrines and our national ownership of lands who believes the END OF DAYS will arrive soon; well it makes no sense!)

What if six or ten thousand years ago God instilled in MANKIND (I mean women certainly had nothing to do with it) a new soul, how could I prove otherwise?

I certainly believe that God or Genes or chemical changes in the brain instilled in humankind a new way to approach the universe at several steps during our evolution.

And one important step in this evolutionary process can actually be seen in some of our ancient caves.

How much more wondrous is this vast and ancient universe where new wonders are discovered every single day by us insignificant mammals than those universes contained in the minds of Tim Burton or Orly Taitz or Trump Head or even Jerry Falwell?