Posted on 12/31/2001 7:36:09 PM PST by medved
Evidence of a natural communication system in man and probably all higher kinds of animals, which is (or at least was) vastly beyond anything man has ever devised:
The first site involves my own analysis of the claim of prophesy in our own age and details some of what Julian Jaynes had to say in claiming that the entire manner in which the human brain works is entirely different from the way it worked 4000 years ago.
The second site involves the world's ultimate fortean type story.
Friends are telling me about seeing articles regarding Nkisi in normal kinds of science journals so I assume Sheldrake and others feel safe talking about it now.
Rupert Sheldrake is the former director of studies at Cambridge who has taken to investigating things normally viewed as paranormal, using intelligent experiment design and statistical methods. His "Seven Experiments Which Could Change the World" is worth having a copy of and some will have seen the German TV documentary involving the little dog in London who knows precisely when its owner first thinks of returning home. He is not loved by the CSICOP crowd and their ilk on sci.skeptic but, hey, nobody can please everybody.
Sheldrake spoke at the big Kronia confab in Laughlin Nevada this summer and, amongst the things he spoke of and showed the audience, was a film involving Nkisi, the African grey parrot which has basically learned to speak English. The bird was fortunate in her choice of owners and has been home-schooled, the NEA and its minions not being allowed near her.
Sheldrake told us he had people coming to him with animal stories all the time, and that the Nkisi story was the prize of them all. The lady who trains Nkisi no sooner had her talking, than it became apparent that the bird was telepathic and, often as not, knew what she was thinking aforehand. The test Sheldrake and his assistents put Nkisi to was fairly straightforward: the trainer and an assistent of Sheldrakes went to another room and the assistent pulled 80 photo images out of an envelope, one at a time for the trainer to look at, while Sheldrake and a camera assistent remained in the room with Nkisi and attempted to get Nkisi to tell them what the trainer was seeing. The images were normal things you might see in New York City: trees, flowers, pidgeons, trucks, cars, people...
Sheldrake noted that the bird hit on about 30 of the 80 images, including several streaks of three or four in which she did not miss; you or I would not hit one. He noted that, often as not, when the bird failed, it was because she kept on talking about the previous image.
At the time, Sheldrake told us that this story struck him as so weird he was afraid to talk about it other than at gatherings of the unusually eccentric (such as a kronia gathering). Like I say, that no longer seems to be the case and you can read the story at the web site noted above.
And so, we come to the question of telepathy and evolution. Nkisi is clearly using some kind of a communication system which is vastly beyond anything man has ever created or dreamed of creating. Is there any way in which such a thing could evolve and, if so, how? And, if such a thing did evolve, then why do we no longer have access to it?
I'll try to top this one in 2002.
Unfortunately, in this matter, the Parrot has not fared well. Not well at all.
You see....
Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
And under those conditions, the contest was simply unfair. Not sporting in the least.
ROTFLMAO! LOL!! This has to be the strangest CvE thread ever.
More likely the parrot was sending messages telling the assistant which pictures to show.
My dogs know when I'm on the internet. As soon as I log off, they start barking and running around, so I'll let them outside. It must be the consequences of Earth's having orbited Saturn so recently, huh? If my dogs' cyber-sensitivity is the last nail in Darwin's coffin, what do I do now? I'm so lost.
I mean, if you don't have one of those two things, then you are basically just shooting your mouth off (as opposed to thinking) and trying to look cool by calling the other guy an idiot after the other guy has brought a significant piece of evidence to the table for discussion. Well, which of the three is it?
As I see it, God or whoever created higher animals originally provided them with a very powerful means of communication which ultimately broke down (the tower of Babel story) and became unreliable. For something like that to be less than 100% reliable amongst humans would be a very dangerous thing and, as you read in the first of those two linked articles, the capability itself was ground out of humans by a very rapid process of attrition afterwards. Parrots, apparently, still retain the capability even though it is not totally reliable (if it WAS totally reliable, Nkisi would have gotten all 80 images...)
That at least makes sense; it is very much harder to comprehend how such a capability could evolve, particularly amongst creatures which are basically just dirt and rocks, which just somehow got lucky..
Just strange, that's all...
That's a total misstatement of my position. What I DO believe is that making a political issue of abortion gets people like Bill Clinton, Tom Daschole, Ted Kennedy etc. etc. elected to high offices from which they cause immense harm to the world. I never told anybody to stop trying to CONVINCE people not to have abortions.
It doesn't work RELIABLY; even Joan of Arc's "voices" eventually either broke down or started giving her bad info, and the story did not have a happy ending. Read the article on that first link I provided (Islam/prophecy).
How about my pointing out that the Nkisi "experiment" is basically an anecdote presented at a conference? What was the design of the experiment? Where was it published? How do you refute an anecdote? There have been anecdotal sightings of ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot . . . Am I supposed to refute all of those, too?
If this parrot can reliably do what Sheldrake says, it should be famous by now. It should have been on Leno. Why hasn't that happened? Who has examined this bird. Who tried to replicate the results? Who checked for the "Clever Hans" phenomenon? Why is so much of your goofy stuff only to be found on the pages of Kronia and/or Bearfabrique?
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