Monthly Archives: March 2017

BOSTON In humans mysterious journey to become intelligent, socializing creatures like no other in the animal world, one innovation played an essential role: religion.

Thats the theory that a preeminent evolutionary scientist is setting out to prove.

You need something quite literally to stop everybody from killing everybody else out of just crossness, said Robin Dunbar. Somehow, its clear that religions, all these doctrinal religions, create the sense that were all one family.

Dunbar, an evolutionary psychology professor at Oxford University, gained some measure of fame more than 20 years ago for his research on the size of animals social networks. Each species of primate, he found, can manage to keep up a social bond with a certain number of other members of its own species. That number goes up as primates brain size increases, from monkeys to apes.

Humans, Dunbar found, are capable of maintaining significantly more social ties than the size of our brains alone could explain. He proved that each human is surprisingly consistent in the number of social ties we can maintain: about five with intimate friends, 50 with good friends, 150 with friends and 1,500 with people we could recognize by name. That discovery came to be known as Dunbars number.

And then Dunbar turned to figuring out why Dunbars number is so high. Did humor help us manage it? Exercise? Storytelling? That riddle has been Dunbars quest for years and religion is the latest hypothesis hes testing in his ongoing attempt to find the answer.

Most of these things were looking at, you get in religion in one form or another, he said.

In the case of Dunbar and his colleagues, they already published research demonstrating that two other particularly human behaviors increased peoples capacity for social bonding. In the lab, they showed that first, laughter, and second, singing, left research subjects more capable of forming connections with other people than they were before.

Religion is the remaining key to explaining humans remarkable social networks, Dunbar thinks. These three things are very good at triggering endorphins, making us feel bonded, he said last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting, where he presented his teams research on laughter and singing and introduced the forthcoming research on religion.

Religion includes numerous elements of Dunbars earlier studies on endorphin-producing activities. Lots of singing, to start. Repetitive motion triggers endorphins, he said, noting that traditions from Catholicism to Islam to Buddhism to Hinduism make use of prayer beads.

Plus, researchers have shown that doing these activities in synchronized fashion with other people drastically magnifies the endorphin-producing effect: Picture the coordinated bowing that is central to Muslim, Jewish and Catholic worship.

And Dunbars most recent published research demonstrated the effectiveness of emotional storytelling in bonding groups of strangers who hear the story together again, a fixture of religious worship.

What you get from dance and singing on its own is a sense of belonging. It happens very quickly. What happens, I suspect, is that it can trigger very easily trance states, Dunbar said. He theorizes that these spiritual experiences matter much more than dance and song alone. Once youve triggered that, youre in, I think, a different ballgame. It ramps up massively. Thats whats triggered. Theres something there.

Dunbars team will start research on religion in April, and he expects it will take three years. To begin, he wants to map a sort of evolutionary tree of religion, using statistical modeling to try to show when religious traditions evolved and how they morphed into each other.

Of course, religious people themselves might find Dunbars theory odd most dont think of religion existing to serve an evolutionary purpose, but of their faiths simply being true.

But Smith thinks one can easily have faith in both Gods truth and religions role in human development. From the religious point of view, you can say this ... God created humans as a very particular type of creature, with very particular brains and biology, just so that they would develop into the type of humans who would know God and believe in God, Smith said. Theyre not in conflict at all.

He added: A lot of people assume, falsely, that science and religion are zero-sum games: that if science explains something, then religion must not be true ... If you were God and wanted to set up the world in a certain way, wouldnt you create humans with bigger brains and the ability to imagine?

One more research finding on the place of God in our brains remember Dunbars number, the five intimate friends and 50 good friends and 150 friends each person can hold onto? Dunbar says that if a person feels he or she has a close relationship with a spiritual figure, like God or the Virgin Mary, then that spiritual personage actually fills up one of those numbered spots, just like a human relationship would. One of your closest friends, scientifically speaking, might be God.

Originally posted here:

Religion key to humans' social evolution, scientist says - The Durango Herald

By Aaron Suttles Sports Writer

Editors note: This is the third in a series. For more on this series, go to http://www.tidesports.com

For a stretch of time, no defense was as large and fierce as the University of Alabamas. Not coincidentally, it was the most feared defense in the country during that period, too.

Terrence Cody came to Alabama weighing more than 400 pounds, and big-bodied players flying around became the norm, although none were as large as Mount Cody. At its frightening height in the Nick Saban era, the Alabama defense regularly had linebackers weigh more than 260 pounds.

It was a time of league and national dominance for Crimson Tide defenders, who threw that weight around.

Then along came Kevin Sumlin and Johnny Manziel into Tuscaloosa in 2012 and things began to change. Offenses got faster and used the entire width of the field. They made defenses uncomfortable and flat-out exhausted with their pace.

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Evolution of a Process: Change in defensive philosophy - Tuscaloosa News (subscription)

Washington DC - infoZine - Rainfall and snowfall patterns are changing with climate variation, which likely plays a key role in shaping natural selection, according to results published today by an international team of researchers.

Twenty scientists from the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia contributed to the study. Their results were published in the journal Science.

The team assembled a database of 168 published studies that measured natural selection over certain time periods for plant and animal populations worldwide. The results from the data set the scientists examined showed that between 20 and 40 percent of variation in selection within studies could be attributed to variability in local precipitation.

That's significant, he says, "especially considering the global scale of the study. These results suggest that variation in selection is actually partly predictable based on climate features like precipitation."

Adds Doug Levey, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology, "These results show that changes in precipitation can have surprising evolutionary effects on plants and animals worldwide."

In a time of change for rainfall, snowstorms and other forms of precipitation, plants and animals are changing, too, Siepielski said. As an example, Siepielski cited birds that live in the Galpagos Islands, called medium ground finches. The birds' beak sizes and shapes have changed over several generations.

"Differences in precipitation over years have affected the sizes of seeds available for the birds to eat," Siepielski said. "Birds that had bills well-matched to eat particular seed sizes were the ones that tended to survive."

The team found that changes in temperature had much less effect than precipitation. Siepielski called that surprising. "Temperature didn't have much explanatory power," he said. "It might act on a different scale that we couldn't pick up in the data set."

"By showing that selection was influenced by climate variation," the researchers stated in their paper, "our results indicate that climate variability may cause widespread alterations in selection regimes, potentially shifting evolution on a global scale."

Translation: what comes down as rain or snow may radically alter how some species will evolve.

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NSF Study: Precipitation Patterns Influencing Evolution - Kansas City infoZine

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Full disclosure: Im a huge fan of Netflix. Ive beenwatching numerous Netflix-produced shows and movies lately, and Im starting to notice more and more of themhave consciousness rooted within them. However, Ive also noticed some seriously strange forms of propaganda showing up on their platform. This got me thinking: Who funds Netflix?

Infamous investor and businessman George Soros reported at the end of 2015 that heowns317,534 Netflix shares, which hasan estimated worth of $32.79 million. If youve never heard of Soros, he is a key member of the elite, or theshadow government,disguised as a philanthropicbillionaire. And Netflix isnt his only concerning investment he also holds shares in Google and numerous non-profits.

George Soros current net worth is $23 billion. After selling hiscompany, Soros Fund Management, in 2000, hes been focusing on his humanitarian efforts through his philanthropic Open Society Foundations (OSF). Soros startedmaking strategic political donations to essentially fund revolutions in different European countries and made a fortune amidst the chaos. He also made a killing off European forced migration and other colour revolutions.

AnonymoustargetedSoros for his link to the conflict in the Ukraine, as he was partially responsible for the Western-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine.

Soros is well-known for financing and donating heavily to left groups, as he played a hand in creating the Black Lives Matter and Womens March movements. Dont get me wrong Im a strong advocate for equality and am happy to see people supporting one another. However,Soros investments in anti-discrimination movements seem to be politically driven, intent onstirring up conflict.

Hes also played a vital role in many of the lawsuits against Trumps newest policies (not that I support many of them, at all). TheAmerican Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) started filing lawsuits against Trumps executive orders, and ever since then their donations have skyrocketed, totallingover $24 million in oneweekend, which isapproximately six times the organizations average annual donations.Soross Open Society Institute has donatedover $35 million to the ACLU alone and millions more to other liberal organizations willing to file lawsuits against the Trump administrations policies. Read more about that in our CE article here.

He alsouses OSF to funnel money into Media Matters, whichdirectly contributes to mainstream media outlets such as NBC and theNew York Times, so he plays a role in manipulating MSM and the way in which politics is reported. You can read more about his previous investmentsin our CE article here.

So, why would he buy into Netflix and Google? Well, Google is a pretty safe investment, since it controls some of the worlds best technologies and our access to knowledge and information. Earlier this month, Google announced one of its latest technologies, Cross Check, which will supposedly help identify fake news. I wonder if this will actually be the case, or if this will be a similar situation to the Snopes and Facebook censorship. Its easy to imagine how this form of censorship would benefit Soros.

Netflix, on the other hand, was a relatively questionable investment to make at the end of 2015. Although the stock price had seen an upswing of 20% over the course of a month at the time, Netflixs entire business model was so innovative that it couldnt really be considered a sure thing.

Nevertheless, Soros decided to invest millions into Netflix, a decision that paid offbig time. Netflix announced that the company turnedover $8.29 billion from streaming alone in 2016, which is a 35.2%increase from 2015.

The question here is: How much control does he get over what the company produces? The answer very well could be none. However, after Netflix released the documentary The White Helmets, I began to question that. Disguised as an incredible tale of real-life heroes saving innocent Syrian civilians, the filmended up beingpure propaganda.

The groups acting skills turned out to be far more impressive than their humanitarian efforts. They have been caught falsifying photographs, recycling footage of children, and literally faking scenes of them saving civilians, forcing one to wonder ifthe movie was even a documentary at all, or entirely staged.

Furthermore, the group isheavily funded by the U.S., the UK, and other countries in Europe, despite the fact that they deny accepting funding from any interested parties. Its clear that the U.S. has vested interests in the Syrian war, since theyre selling arms to both the terrorist groups and non-terrorists.

The White Helmets also claim to be neutral and unarmed, which is far from the truth. As independent journalistVanessa Beeley explains, If we look at their claims to be neutral, they are embedded entirely in terrorist-held areas whether it is predominantly Al-Nusra Front or ISIS or any of the various associated brigades of terrorists that take their command very much from Al-Nusra Front, that is where White Helmets are exclusively.

Beeley continues, Theyve been filmed participating and facilitating an execution of a civilian in Aleppo. They post celebratory videos to their social media pages of the execution of civilian Arab soldiers.

So, Netflix has most North Americans thinking that the White Helmets are a group of heroic, peaceful knightssaving Syrians, when in reality theyve been referred to as terrorists themselves, and even a shadow government represented by the U.S., the UK, and other countries in the making. You can read more about the White Helmets in our CE articlehere.

If youre familiar with the details of Soros role in the Ukraine conflict, all of this seems extremely questionable. Why would Netflix voluntarilycreatea documentary spreading propaganda? Well, Im not sure why Netflix would, but its easier to envisionwhy Soros would.

Mainstream media tends to demonize Russia in regards to the Syrian war, which is exactly what Soros would want. You could say that Soros has a long-standing grudge against Russia, in part because they kicked out Soros company, OSF.

It was found that the activity of the Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation represents a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation and the security of the state, a translated version of a Russian press statement read.

Soros has been extremely outspoken on Russias crimes against humanity in Syria, even though some of those news stories were falsified. You can also read a document here that includes notes from an OSF meeting about Russia that was released in the DC Leaks.

Netflix also got a ton of backlash regarding their upcoming seriesDear White People. The title sort of says it all: Its an attempt to provide insight into racial segregation, even though the title itself promotes separatism. Theres no telling if Soros was involved in any way, but perhaps he wouldve supported it since it has his infamous activism that actually promotes separatism branding all over it.

Soros investments here could be well-intended, but given his vast history of profiting off chaos, its easy to imagine him having an ulterior motive or a hidden agenda. Regardless of his intentions, I encourage you to always think critically aboutwhat youre looking at. Its difficult to distinguish what is fake news and what isnt, so its crucial that wedont just take things at face value anymore. Most importantly, follow your intuition, and learn to trust it!

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Elitist George Soros' Most Concerning Investments: Netflix, Google, & More - Collective Evolution