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The Coevolution of Man and MaryJane
[…]Controversial but sound hypotheses have been put forward suggesting that humans and marijuana coevolved. The University of California at Berkeley describes coevolution in simple terms:
“The term coevolution is used to describe cases where two (or more) species reciprocally affect each other’s evolution. So for example, an evolutionary change in the morphology of a plant, might affect the morphology of an herbivore that eats the plant, which in turn might affect the evolution of the plant, which might affect the evolution of the herbivore…and so on.” (3)
If this hypothesis is correct, it would mean that the existence of the marijuana plant as we know it today was directly influenced by modern humans, and vice versa; a concept not easily accepted in a world where the machinations powering the War on Drugs still tout the plant as a dangerous evil to be persecuted and eradicated out of existence. However, there is significant evidence to support the idea of man and cannabis coevolving.
For instance, consider the fact that the cannabis plant is a colonizer. This means that in the wild the plant generally needs open, cleared soil in order to grow. As Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal point out, cleared patches of fertile ground do not occur often in nature; perhaps after a storm, flood, fire or some other type of disaster. As a colonizer, cannabis would also be short-lived once larger growth vegetation moved in. This means that the plant’s ideal environment is a patch of clear ground that stays clear.
Did cannabis lead to civilization?
Enter our early human ancestors. With their newfound habit of clearing land for agricultural-based settlements, cannabis found an unlikely partner in man, who provided more clearings and fertile patches of ground than the plant would encounter naturally. (1) This meant that interactions between the two species were virtually assured at least as far back as the Neolithic period.
Interestingly, some powerful figures have even speculated that the newly developed agricultural lifestyle of Neolithic man was probably focused on cultivation of cannabis directly, and was likely mankind’s very first – and often only – crop. Carl Sagan, famed author, astronomer and astrophysicist, even goes one step further and suggests that if cannabis led to agriculture, then it therefore led us to civilization. (4)
Humans are Physiologically Linked to Cannabis
If the previous theories on the coevolution of man and marijuana aren’t convincing enough, there is also the fact that cannabis is literally, physically part of human genetic makeup. It is widely known that there are thousands of cannabinoid receptor sites spread throughout the human body, with most located in the brain and spinal cord. These receptors bind with cannabinoids to produce various effects throughout the central nervous system – cannabinoids that are generally only present when marijuana is consumed. According to a study by the University of Auckland, these cannabinoid receptors are found in the brain at nearly all stages of human growth:
“Cannabinoid receptors were distributed in a heterogeneous fashion throughout the adult human brain and spinal cord. The allocortex contained very high concentrations of cannabinoid receptor binding sites in the dentate gyrus, Ammons’s horn and subiculum of the hippocampal formation; high concentrations of receptors were also present in the entorhinal cortex and amygdaloid complex. Cannabinoid receptor binding sites were also present throughout all regions of the neocortex…” (5)
Marijuana supporters often cite the fact that because of the presence of these cannabinoid receptor sites, humans must be “designed” to use marijuana. However, the deeper question often posed is this: Did humans evolve cannabinoid receptor sites naturally, or did these sites evolve as a result of our ancient relationship with the cannabis plant?
If humans developed these cannabinoid receptor sites as a result of thousands of years of cultivation, veneration and consumption of the plant, then the idea that man and cannabis coevolved would appear to be factual. In fact, suggesting that these receptor sites evolved independently and coincidentally probably doesn’t make much sense considering the complete lack of supporting evidence or logic.
[…]
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Mitochondrial Eve, Y-Chromosome Adam, and Reasons to Believe
It is reasonably well known among evangelical Christians that all living humans trace their mitochondrial DNA back to a single woman (a so-called “mitochondrial Eve”) and that all living males similarly trace their Y-chromosome DNA back to a single male (a so-called “Y-chromosome Adam”). These individuals are commonly assumed by evangelicals to be the Biblical Adam and Eve, the first humans alive and the progenitors of the entire human race. While most young-earth and old-earth creationist organizations make this claim, perhaps one of the best-known organizations to do so is the old-earth creationist / anti-evolution organization Reasons to Believe, who have produced numerous articles, podcasts, and even entire books on the subject.
In contrast to this common evangelical understanding, the scientific picture is rather different. Mitochondrial Eve, though the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all humans, was but one of a large population living about 180,000 years ago. So too for Y-chromosome Adam: he was also a member of a large population, and he lived about 50,000 years ago. As has been discussed several times here at BioLogos, there are multiple lines of evidence that indicate the human population has never been below around 10,000 members at any time in its history: we branched off as a large population to form our own species.
When presented with the evidence for human population sizes over our evolutionary history, a common point of confusion for evangelicals is how this evidence fits with Mitochondrial Eve. How can we all come from one woman (and one man) but also come from a large population of 10,000 individuals? Aren’t these two observations in conflict?
The answer is no, these lines of evidence fit together. Humans do come from a large population, and all present-day humans do inherit mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA from specific individuals in the past.
So, at what point was the Original Sin introduced?
(Source: azspot)
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- Air date: Wednesday; 15, May 2013 (10-11 pm ET on PBS)
“A tomb of 49,000 year-old Neanderthal bones discovered in El Sidrón, a remote, mountainous region of Northern Spain, leads to a compelling investigation to solve a double mystery: How did this group of Neanderthals die? And, could the fate of this group help explain Neanderthal extinction? Scientists examine the bones—buried over 65 feet below ground—and discover signs that tell a shocking story of how this group of six adults, three teenagers, two children and a baby may have met their death. Some bones have deep cuts, long bones are cracked and skulls crushed—distinct signs of cannibalism. Was it a result of ritual or hunger? Neanderthal experts are adamant that they were not bloodthirsty brutes. Will this investigation challenge their views? What happened here 49000 years ago will take us on a much bigger journey—from El Sidrón to the other end of the Iberian Peninsula where scientists are excavating beneath the seas off Gibraltar in search of Neanderthal sites. Scientists working here had theories—but no proof—for why Neanderthals went extinct. El Sidrón may change this.”
(via scientificillustration)
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"Pretty much every time I conclude that a Church Father seems like a pretty cool guy, I learn that he hated Jews and/or women."
- 10 Things I’ve Learned About Church History From ‘The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1” by Justo L. Gonzalez (via azspot)When I read the whole article, I’m struck by the cognitive dissonance of the author. A kind of liberal Christian who acknowledges that the bible was assembled by extremely fallible men and that the totality of the church has never been in agreement on very importation doctrinal tenets (I.e. was Jesus God?). They acknowledge that the church has been behind some of history’s worst abuses of power… Yet, they they still believe that there is some benevolent god behind it all and that this book is his Word. It seems obvious that they care more about belonging to the rich tradition of Christianity than they do about whether or not it’s actually true or not.
(via thereisnogod)
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High ResolutionHearing changes could be ancient in the human line
Comparison between hominins suggests modern middle-ear bones evolved early.
A study of two ancient hominins from South Africa suggests that changes in the shape and size of the middle ear occurred early in our evolution. Such alterations could have profoundly changed what our ancestors could hear — and perhaps how they could communicate.
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"If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness."
- A phrase that was carved on the walls of a concentration camp cell during WWII by a Jewish prisoner (via milktree)(Source: notclarissa, via antiriot)
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Richard Carrier: Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story
The most comprehensive argument I’ve read against the historical plausibility of the supposed Resurrection of Jesus.
(Source: deconversionmovement)
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There is literally nothing better than a sexy, badass lady.
CHING MOTHERFUCKING SHIH
This lady was such a badass, I can’t count the ways, but let’s try.
She got married to an already successful pirate, Zheng Yi, and took over when he died. She was crazy strict to keep an iron fist over her fleet of pirates, and the punishments for stepping out of line were brutal. If you stole or looted from a town that provided assistance or tribute to the pirate fleet, Ching would chop your fucking head off with a battle axe and dump your lifeless body in the ocean. If you stole from the pirate treasury, or she thought you were stealing from the pirate treasury, Ching would chop your fucking head off dump your lifeless body in the ocean. Raping any captured female prisoners was punishable by immediate death. Fuck, if you had consensual sex while on duty you got your head chopped off and the woman was chucked off the boat no matter where they were at. Ching wasn’t fucking around, and she wanted to make damn sure you weren’t fucking around when you should have been working.
Two years after she took over, she got so notorious for ransacking towns and taking taxes on them that she pissed off the entire Chinese government, and sent out a massive fleet to bring her in line. Most pirates probably would’ve said this was out of their pay grade and taken off to hide out or ransack some other country.
Ching Shih said fuck that.
She not only faced them head on, she wiped the floor with them, killing hundreds and capturing sixty-something ships from the Imperial Fleet. Prisoners were given the choice of joining up or being executed on the spot. The Admiral of the Chinese navy, Kwo Lang, was so afraid of being captured by her or going back to admit he’d been beaten by her that he committed suicide.
For the next two years, Ching Shih not only kept on pirating, she fought off Chinese forces as well as Dutch and British warships that the navy called in to help. Finally the government gave up and offered her amnesty as well as amnesty for her then SEVENTEEN THOUSAND crewman. Ching Shih got to keep all her plunder, so she retired to the countryside where she opened up a brothel and lived until she was 69.
tldr: I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’ll never be as terrifyingly badass as this woman was.
i will be as badass as she
You know, I heard of her, but I’d either forgotten or never heard that she grew old and retired having never been brought down or defeated ever.
She won being a pirate.
She got history’s high score.
I’d see this movie.
(via darwinsminion)
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"[T]here are persistent alternative traditions as to when Jesus lived and died. Irenaeus thought Jesus was martyred under Claudius Caesar. The Talmud makes Jesus the disciple of Rabbi Jeschua ben Perechiah and has him crucified in 83 BCE, when Alexander Jannaeus crucified so many Pharisees. The Toledoth Jeschu incorporated these long-lived traditions. Epiphanius reports them, too. The Gospel of Peter assigns Jesus’ condemnation to Herod Antipas, and (as Loisy suggested) so did one of Luke’s Passion sources. If Pilate had really turned the case over to Antipas, and the latter set Jesus free, why on earth does Jesus go back to Pilate? Only because Luke wants to use as much as he can of both an ‘L’ story (i.e.,from a hypothetical ‘Lukan source,’ material private to ‘Luke’) in which Antipas condemned Jesus, and Mark, in which it was Pilate who did the deed. How is it that such radically different estimates of Jesus’ dates grew up side by side if there was a real event at the heart of it? We have already seen that no historical memory was available to Mark when he composed the first crucifixion account.
I am of the opinion that the varying dates are the residue of various attempts to anchor an originally mythic or legendary Jesus in more or less recent history. It would represent the ancient tendency toward euhemerism. In like manner, Herodotus had tried to calculate the dates of a hypothetically historical Hercules, while Plutarch sought to pin Osiris down as an ancient king of Egypt. Even the Christian Eusebius (in his Chronological Tables or Summary of All Histories) supposed that Medea and Jason really existed and dated them 780 years after the Patriarch Abraham. Ganymede and Perseus were historical figures, too, living some six centuries after Abraham. Why did the Christians bother trying to anchor Jesus in recent history? For the same reason that, according to Elaine Pagel’s keen insight, the Orthodox opposed the spiritual resurrection appearances of Jesus and preferred a version in which he showed up in the objective flesh to name apostles and give commands. As Arthur Drews had already posited, the urgency for historicizing Jesus was the need of a consolidating institution for an authoritative figurehead who had appointed successors and set policy (exactly the advantage of Orthodoxy over subjective Gnosticism according to Irenaeus, a true company man). It was exactly the logic whereby competing churches fabricated legends of their founding by this or that apostle: the apostle (or Jesus) could not be much older than the organization for which he is being appropriated as founder and authority.
All this implies it is utterly pointless even to ask whether there was sufficient time for legends to grow up around Jesus. Sufficient time—from when? It is anybody’s guess when the tiny mutation of an honorific epithet of some Near Eastern dying-and-rising god took over Jesus as his name (as the Vedic Rudra became too holy or dangerous to say, and worshipers began to invoke him as ‘Siva,’ ‘Auspicious One’). Some god or savior was henceforth known as ‘Jesus,’ ‘Savior,’ and Christianity was off and running. The savior would eventually be supplied sayings borrowed from Christian sages, Jewish rabbis, and Cynics, and clothed in a biography drawn from the Old Testament. It is futile to object that monotheistic Jews would never have held truck with pagan godlings. We know they did in the Old Testament, though Ezekiel didn’t like it much. And we know that first-century Judaism was not the same as Yavneh-era Judaism. There was no normative mainstream Judaism before Yavneh. And, as Margaret Barker has argued, there is every reason to believe that ancient Israelite beliefs, including polytheism, continued to survive despite official interdiction, from before the time of Josiah and Deuteronomy. Barker suggests that the first Jesus-worshipers understood Jesus to be the Old Testament Yahweh, the Son of God Most High, or El Elyon, head of the Israelite pantheon from time immemorial. When he spoke of or to his Father, he meant El Elyon. And, according to Geo Widengren, this ancient Yahweh was celebrated as a dying and rising god. When early Christians gave the Easter shout, ‘The Lord is risen!’ they were only repeating the ancient acclamation, “Yahweh lives!’ (Psalms 18:46), and they meant the same thing by it."- Robert M. Price (2011. The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems, p. 49-51)(Source: deconversionmovement)
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Facial Reconstruction of Homo georgicus, Skull nº D2700 from Dmanisi Republic of Georgia (~1.8 Mya)
- Reconstruction by Philippe Froesch
This reconstruction is rather different than those seen in the previous post. The nose is much narrower and the nostrils are much less flared. The supraorbital torus is less prominent, the eyes are light and the skin much fairer too. It also seems less prognathic but it’s hard to tell from these angles. You don’t often see a reconstruction of any hominid dating to ~1.8 Mya that looks this modern human caucasian-like. However, Homo erectus was all over the shop and certainly variability existed. Here are some examples of other reconstructions, this one (Dmanisi), this one (Dmanisi), this one (Homo erectus) and this one (Homo erectus). See also this image for comparisons of different reconstructions of the Dmanisi specimens. I wonder about variability both in artistic but scientifically informed representation and on a geographic basis in fossil specimens. And I’m aware that I’m conflating taxa here because as today’s guest post noted, there is no consensus as to the taxon of the Dmanisi fossils.
(Source: Visualforensic)
(via deconversionmovement)
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On September 16 and September 22, 1941, the Nazis rounded up all of the Jews in the town of Vinnitsa, Ukraine, and executed them. Pictured here in this famous photograph we see a man, kneeling before a pit filled with bodies, about to be shot by a German soldier. This photograph was found among a German soldier’s photo album, and on the back was written the title “The Last Jew of Vinnitsa”. A Wehrmacht officer who observed the slaughter described it in all its horror. The people were told to show up at the already dug pit for a “census”. They were then forced to disrobe and turn in all their belongings. A row of naked people were then lined up along the pit, and mowed down by German soldiers using pistols. The next group would be ordered to shovel quicklime onto the still-writhing bodies in the pit, then repeat the process of undressing, turning over their valuables, and being shot – until each and every one of them joined their families and neighbors in the pit. All 28,000 Jews from Vinnitsa were killed in this manner.
If all the Jews in Vinnitsa were killed in this manner, being forced to disrobe and line up naked, why are this man and all the bodies in the pit clothed? There’s no shortage of evidence that people were killed in that manner, there’s no shortage of evidence of plentiful atrocities of every sort listed and this is obviously a photo from some part of it, so why jumble them together to form a blatant obvious lie?
This is why holocaust deniers prosper. Because despite all that happened and all that can be proven, some people just have to make shit up to make it a tiny bit more personal sounding, a tiny bit more dramatic. The sad thing is in this case, the word “all” may be the only exaggeration. The whole story fucked up for three letters of hyperbole. Sources across the web tell the same story for this photo but without the mention of rows of denuded victims and quicklime.
A few idiots lie, so people start wondering if it was all a lie. In this case, the oldest post of this copypasta with the false section intact appears to be from a Listverse article by Patrick Weidinger. Good job Pat. Your quest for a sensationalist article has shamed you, your site, and all who value the truth.
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"Those who go to George Bush Jr.’s museum, for purposes other than mocking laughter are internalizing a false narrative. They are reproducing a lie as truth; the lie is also reinforcing their standing priors. There is no need for the character Winston. The petit authoritarian who has nostalgia for George Bush Jr. is a living vessel of propaganda. He or she is a walking and talking incubator for lies."
- The Ministry of Truth: George Orwell Predicted the Post-Truth World That is George Bush Junior’s New Museum (via azspot)“Museums should serve the Common Good and be places where questions about public memory are debated, contested, and worked through in a critical manner.
George Bush Jr.’s Orwellian museum serves none of these functions. In a righteous world, his museum would be a site that both warns and cautions us about public incompetence, and all that can go wrong when a boy king is made President. In the world in which we live today, the public is denied that lesson.”
(via azspot)
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"
Because the early Christian texts were not being copied by professional scribes, at least in the first two or three centuries of the church, but simply by educated members of the Christian congregations who could do the job and were willing to do so, we can expect that in the earliest copies, especially, mistakes were commonly made in transcription. Indeed, we have solid evidence that this was the case, as it was a matter of occasional complaint by Christians reading those texts and trying to uncover the original words of their authors. The third-century church father Origen, for example, once registered the following complaint about the copies of the Gospels at his disposal:
The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please.
Origen was not the only one to notice the problem. His pagan opponent Celsus had, as well, some seventy years earlier. In his attack on Christianity and its literature, Celsus had maligned the Christian copyists for their transgressive copying practices:Some believers, as though from a drinking bout, go so far as to oppose themselves and alter the original text of the gospel three or four or several times over, and they change its character to enable them to deny difficulties in face of criticism. (Against Celsus 2.27)
What is striking in this particular instance is that Origen, when confronted with an outsider’s allegation of poor copying practices among Christians, actually denies that Christians changed the text, despite the fact that he himself decried the circumstance in his other writings. The one exception he names in his reply to Celsus involves several groups of heretics, who, Origen claims, maliciously altered the sacred texts."- Bart Ehrman (2005. Misquoting Jesus, p. 51-52)(Source: deconversionmovement)
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(Source: ummagumma-)
Divine Irony
is a rich archive of religious delusions, scientific truths and political implications.
"Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."
-George Carlin
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed”.
-Albert Einstein
