If Oscar the cat can sense the imminent death of someone and go curl up with them in order to comfort them during their final moment what else might be “out there?” While I like to give myself a wide range of speculation concerning the supernatural and even willing to credit things like UFOs, it often strikes me that so many proclaim themselves to be “moderns” in scientific thinking yet are so susceptible to what is no more than outright fraud among some academics.

The universe is unimaginably vast containing things unknown and perhaps unknowable; the universe contains things even beyond our capacity to imagine. We still do not know what life is or its origin; these remain open to speculation even among scientists dedicated to the study of life. But there is a “comfort zone” not just for those holding religious beliefs, but even for scientists unwilling to admit there may be things contrary to their beliefs:

The Latest Problems with the “Man Evolved From Apes” Thesis: By Frank Pastore, September 3, 2007: Cavemen are popular once again... I’m talking about the two discoveries that came out in August that should force all those “man evolved from apes” evolution charts in schoolbooks to be redrawn. You know the ones. You’ve got the knuckle-dragging, club-wielding ape on the left hand side and a businessman carrying a briefcase on the right hand side, with all the hypothetical evolutionary links filled in between... What’s been discovered is a 10.5 million year old gorilla and that two of our “ape men” ancestors actually lived together... See, the problem is—these two discoveries render all previous human evolution charts wrong. But, the bigger problem is—unless you’re a scientist—you’ve likely never have heard about it outside of this column or at least until you’d see the trailer for Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” coming out in February 2008. As Stein exposes, there’s been a virtual Inquisition by Darwinian fundamentalists against anyone who dares challenge The Book—Darwin’s infamous 1859 “Origin of the Species.” No longer about following the bread crumbs of inquiry in pursuit of truth, Big Science is now all about enforcing doctrinaire dogmatism. Dare question the problems with naturalistic evolution—as I do here—and be guilty of blasphemy. Ask for explanations about the still missing “missing links,” the absence of transitional forms, the sudden Cambrian Explosion, or the gaping gaps in the fossil record, and be branded an unbeliever—one who must repent of their sins, recant and do penance or be damned to academic hell for all time... Make no mistake. Fundamentalists are those who censure skeptics and prohibit inquiry. Today’s fundamentalists are not the Christians who, like me, are eager to examine the scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution, but those who deny that opportunity from ever happening. The real fundamentalists are those who chair the various science departments at our major universities—those unwilling to allow dissent... First, as reported here on August 9, two alleged ancestors of man, Homo Erectus and Homo Habilis, were found to be living together about 1.5 million years ago (MYA). This is a big deal because Erectus was supposed to have evolved from Habilis before later evolving into Sapiens (us). Think of it as finding out dad and grandpa were actually brothers, not father and son. This chart on Early Human Phylogeny at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History will have to be revised—again. The mythical evolutionary tree of life with man’s ascent from ape is looking more like a patch of thousands of blades of grass with the passing of each generation. Sapiens ends up all by himself—an evolutionary orphan—almost as though he just appeared in the fossil record fully formed—as though he were created and placed here. Imagine that. The second discovery, reported here, pushed the hypothetical human-ape split back another 10 million years, to now around 20 MYA. How so? The traditional theory is that man evolved from chimps about 6 MYA, chimps evolved from gorillas about 8 MYA, and gorillas evolved from orangutans about 14 MYA. But, with the discovery of a 10.5 million year old gorilla in Africa, this pushes the human-ape split back to at least 20 MYA. But between 15-20 MYA, there were dozens of primate species in Africa, and the hominid trail goes completely cold after 7 MYA. It looks like a dead end—or to the true believer, at least a serious detour over uncharted territory. Bottom line, not only do we find that dad and grandpa were brothers, but now we find out that we were adopted—or created. As the authors of the report on all this in the British journal Nature noted, “We know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes.”

Years ago it puzzled me that while some espousing evolution and the ape to man theory were as devout in their beliefs as any Bible thumper, they could never explain how male and female developed. It occurred to me there should be volumes of evidence showing how this happened. But the fossil evidence for such a transitional thing remained a closed door. Wherever scientists poked, the results were male and female without any transitional forms. Puzzling enough that modern man and civilization could suddenly appear only a scant few thousand years ago after so many millions of years without such development. Writing? Now just how did that happen so suddenly? Not to mention marvels like the pyramids and other such things. Atlantis? Who knows?

But to consider just one example of the marvels of human beings as opposed to ape-like creatures, I love airplanes and flying; I love stories and films about airplanes and flying. But I have never lost my sense of awe while watching a B-52 or some jumbo jet taking off and wondering at the marvel of such a thing. These behemoths of the air, how could the minds of human beings have conceived such marvels; then have thousands of other men and women actually construct such wonders? Sure, I know the physics involved, I know the hands on work that goes into such construction, but it remains a source of wonder to me. And just what is it that makes us get into these mechanical marvels and take to the air, knowing these things are subject to any number of catastrophic failures? Why have so many been so captivated they are willing to risk their lives in order to do things like taking to the air? As a pilot, I never got into an airplane and took off without the thought “This thing can kill me.” But this did not prevent me from flying. Nor has it prevented people from strapping themselves in and taking off in rockets to the moon and the space station.

The opening chapters of Genesis continue to hold the answers for me to many questions, though I have no way of knowing what the facts were leading to the story of Creation and that of humankind. However, as with The Fall were Adam and Eve also cursed with a “stupid gene” that led to things like the invention of gunpowder and airplanes? How about things like the automobile and splitting the atom? Computers?

There are a host of things that distinguish modern man from the many failed lines of other creatures, so many over millions of years that simply died out and disappeared. One of my own speculations has it Satan as a god had the power of creation, but his creations like the dinosaurs were truly diabolical and early attempts at human-like creatures failed and better gods intervened with the creation of the Adam, and it has been hell on earth ever since pitting the Evil One and his kind against the creation of the better gods.

I believe there was a decision on the part of the gods to create humankind; that we carry about in our bodies the very spirit of the gods and this compels us with divine curiosity to engage in many dangerous activities and inventions while reaching out to the stars, to climb a mountain with no other explanation but “Because it is there.” But there is that dark side to consider that may also lead to our very extinction. The conflict between good and evil has not played itself out yet; but there are those seemingly committed to the extinction of our species whether there is a Devil or not, whether we are children of the gods or not. But then there is Oscar the cat, and scientists in the electronics industry are having fits trying to understand the “tin whiskers” plaguing solder connections. And Steve Fossett has not been found despite all our science.