Theos-Talk Archives (August 2002 Message tt00152)

--- brianmuehlbach <brianmuehlbach@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Oke but then what about the evolutionary claims in
> The Secret Doctrine 
> that is claimed by Blavatsky and other Theosophists
> to be all "scientific" 
> and all "facts of nature" ?
> 
> Brian


Dear bri,

You can imagine this little Russian woman traversing
the back parts of Asia coming across all sorts of
different people and ideas. She arrives in Tibet
amongst these Adepts who show her all sorts of
esoteric tricks and teach her profound wisdom. It is
then her duty to forward this wisdom, as best she can,
to the people of the West.

Perhaps it would be best to draw an analogy here.
Aldous Huxley, in his experiments with mescalin, was,
in a similar sense, traversing the back parts of his
mind which had been unexplored by the West. IN his
explorations he discovered many things and came across
profound wisdom, which he was compelled to share with
others as best as he could. So in his essay, "Heaven
and Hell", he draws an analogy with the marsupials of
Australia and how strange they first appeared to
science. These strange and endearing creatures were
always on the planet although we never knew they
existed because we never explored that part of the
planet. Similarly with parts of the mind which
mescalin allows one to explore. 

Now both Blavatsky and Huxley needed to and wanted to
share their experiences with the greater world. How
can you explain to a people a concept that they have
absolutely no capacity of grasping? In response to a
question as to why God didn't tell Moses about DNA, a
lecturer at my university replied that how could God
explain the concept of DNA to those people? They had
no means to grasp the concept. So Blavatsky needed to
draw analogies with concepts that were already in
existence as did Huxley. Unfortunately, the concepts
Blavatsky had to draw upon were coarse, incoherent,
incomplete and largely misunderstood by the masses.
Remember, the world was still trying to come to terms
with Darwinism at the time the SD was published. If
they were struggling with that concept how were they
ever going to understand concepts put forward in the
SD. 

Given the limitations we shouldn't view a piece of
work such as the SD as set in stone. Some of the ideas
are fluid and perhaps need rewording so as they are
compatible with contemporary fashion, knowledge and
concepts of the universe. Just as we shouldn't accept
the SD as dogma we shouldn't exclude outright either.
This would be a great travesty, criminal in a sense.
You shouldn't read the SD with the idea that it is all
a load of bullshit and with the intention that you are
going to attack every concept in it. Yes it is alright
to question but you have to ask yourself, why am I
questioning this? Am I being antagonist or am I being
curious? Will my question lead to a constructive
critique which would enable me to understand the world
I live in better? Or will my question lead to a bunch
of people being pissed off with me and lose all
respect? 

mic
PS. Being a new-comer to this list you might not have
realised this (although the impression is you already
know - you must have read the archives before signing
up) but we had an antagonist on the list a while back
going by the name of “Brigitte Muehlegger” who has,
sorry had, a remarkably similar style of posting to
yours. So you can see the similarity between your
name, Brian Muehlbach, and hers. Are you from
Germany? I’ve heard its nice around this time of
year.....








> 
> --- In theos-talk@y..., Mic Forster
> <micforster@y...> wrote:
> > Dear bri,
> > 
> > The issues you bring up below could have been
> written
> > in any popular science publication, such as New
> > Scientist. Yes these publications are respected
> > amongst scientists but does that mean they are
> > necessarily right? Recently in Australia there
> were
> > several court cases that used DNA evidence as part
> of
> > the defence/prosecution. Scientists were invited
> to
> > interpret the results of the DNA tests. In one
> > instance the scientist misinterpreted the data and
> an
> > innocent man was jailed. Later, when the mistake
> was
> > proven, the lawyers were asked by the media why
> they
> > did not cross check the evidence with another
> > scientist. Their response was that if a scientist
> > tells you it is true then it must be true. 
> > 
> > Yes the latest claim is that we all descended from
> a
> > single tribe in Africa that was on the verge of
> > extinction but miraculously made it through. Have
> you
> > seen the actual results of the tests they
> conducted?
> > Do you know of the methodology that they adopted?
> How
> > do you know that they didn't fake the results in
> order
> > to gain recognition or that big research grant? 
> > 
> > The latest claim for the earliest man in Australia
> is
> > now set at 67,000 years before present. 50 years
> ago
> > scientists were convinced Aboriginals had not been
> in
> > Australia for more than 10,000 years. Then it was
> > 20,000 years; then 35,000; then 40,000; then
> 30,000;
> > then 60,000; and now 67,000. There is a lot of
> > certainty here, isn't there? There are also so
> claims
> > that humans had arrived in the Americas at about
> this
> > same time (40 - 60,000 years ago), and not 10,000
> > years ago as is popularly cited.
> > 
> > Another line of evidence: palynology. We took a
> core
> > sample from a swamp and did a pollen sequence for
> the
> > last 1000 years. We then took another sample, 1m
> to
> > the left of our first sample, and got a competely
> > different assemblage of pollen. Yet scientist
> publish
> > their pollen sequences in reputable journals (eg
> > Kershaw, 1986, Nature) and extrapolate theories
> from
> > their results as if it is gospel. It is not
> gospel!
> > The same technique gives completely different
> > results!!
> > 
> > So the authors that you quote in your email below
> how
> > do you know that the theses they are presenting
> are
> > any more credible than that presented in the
> Secret
> > Doctrine? Science is infallible, indeed is
> inherently
> > so. Everything must be refuted, needs to be
> refuted,
> > otherwise it is not science. How, then, do you
> know
> > that the first principles that science is built on
> is
> > not false? If science has been built on logic that
> is
> > determined to be flawed how is anything that
> science
> > presents to us suppose to be taken to be real? Yes
> you
> > could say that science must be right because I am
> > typing on this computer and sending emails and I
> > wouldn't have such capabilities if science was not
> > right. But science only deals with phenomena, not
> > noumena, and how could science ever "prove" the
> thing
> > in itself? It is faculative impossible. Most
> science
> > is done a priori, not a posteriori!! And even if
> done
> > a posteriori interpretations can be so varied as
> to
> > leave the results meaningless.
> > 
> > mic
> > 
> > --- brianmuehlbach <brianmuehlbach@y...> wrote:
> > > The Secret Doctrine borrowed from "The Great
> Chain"
> > > (and outdated 
> > > Renaisance theory see for example:
> > > 
> > >
> >
>
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/ren.html
> > > 
> > > The best book on the subject is Lovejoy's famous
> > > Harvard 
> > > University lecture series from 1933, "The Grait
> > > Chain of Being" 
> > > 
> > > Eastern philosophy has no "great chain of
> being",
> > > which places humans 
> > > above all other animals. In most Eastern belief
> > > systems, the human
> > > soul can reincarnate in many shapes and forms. A
> man
> > > can
> > > become a fish and a fish can become God. There
> are
> > > no
> > > grounds in Eastern thought for resisting the
> central
> > > idea of
> > > evolutionary theory, that all animals are
> > > historically linked.
> > > 
> > > Japanese primate researchers assumed that each
> > > individual animal had 
> > > a distinct personality, and they did not
> hesitate to
> > > give their
> > > subjects names. They plotted kinship
> relationships
> > > over multiple 
> > > generations, believing that primates must have a
> > > complex family life, 
> > > just like us.
> > > 
> > > The Western view of apes regarded them as akin
> to
> > > Rousseau's "noble 
> > > savage" autonomous individuals, devoid of social
> > > ties and obligations,
> > > driven by instinct to swing haphazardly from one
> > > fruit tree to
> > > the next.
> > > 
> > > We now know that cultural learning among animals
> is
> > > widespread, 
> > > including birdsong, the use of tools by
> chimpanzees,
> > > and the hunting 
> > > techniques of whales. 
> > > 
> > > Along with the ridiculous Great Chain borrowings
> in
> > > The Secret
> > > Doctrine, its whole peopling of the earth human
> > > evolution theory is 
> > > wrong.
> > > 
> > > All representative of early modern humans,
> haven't
> > > changed much over 
> > > the years. And that's exactly the conclusion
> > > geneticists have been 
> > > drawing from our DNA.
> > > 
> > > Every single one of the 6 billion people on the
> > > planet today is
> > > descended from the small group of anatomically
> > > modern humans who 
> > > once lived in eastern Africa.
> > > 
> > > The group occasionally came close to extinction,
> but
> > > it never died
> 
=== message truncated ===


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