Related:

• Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity) not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements of individual human brains.
  -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousne...
• Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but they prevailed with irrefutable data.
  More often, egregious findings that contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts....
• Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but they prevailed with irrefutable data.
  More often, egregious findings that contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts....
• we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
  I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized brains--and I am equally confidant that our brains became large as an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting functions)....
• we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
  I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized brains -- and I am equally confidant that our brains became large as an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting functions)....
• we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent observations and inferences by the thousands.
  The earth is billions of years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary descent....
• Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around the sun.
  At one time this was called the Copernican theory...
• While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possessio
  conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge, we must ask how one differentiates "real transcendence" from neuropathies that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense of cosmic unity....