Newsweek Declares that Heaven is Real!

[_Chap]

...
Lots of things don't make sense when viewed narrowly as evolutionarily advantageous or not. What is the evolutionary advantage of death? Yet it happens.
...

You are the expert in the field of genetics, not me. But with all due deference, surely evolution in creatures that reproduce sexually requires that old individuals die off to make room in the ecosystem for new and (possibly) better adapted members of the species?

Please correct me if I am wrong, which I may well be.

Interesting take, but I'm an expert in nothing.

But as to Lee's comment, not every single random mutation results in an evolutionary advantage. Just enough of them need to give any given individual an advantage which he/she will then pass along.

All living beings pack around disadvantagous mutations, but it terms of survival, the advantagous ones just need to outway the disadvantagous ones.

Over time will every last disadvantagous one disapear? At what point over time?

Perfection is a human construction.

You are quite right that by no means all genetic changes have beneficial effects. Many will have no effects at all. But if there is no room for new members of the species to find a living, and no members of the species die, there will be no overall genetic changes at all in the population, and evolution will certainly not take place .

[_The Dude]

Dude,

Please note that I was referring specifically to synthetic DMT. Naturally sourced DMT may be okay.

Also, things may have gotten better in the intervening years, but when I worked in the area there were a number of instances of neurotoxicity from synthetic DMT or DMT -contaminated tryptophan, leading to permanent brain damage in several cases.

Early use of DMT as a hallucinogen was much like the early days of the use of LSD. Folks were messing with a potently psychoactive compounds without really knowing what they were doing.

As you certainly know, for good quality DMT, in an appropriate dose, the side effects are supposedly mild (mainly increased blood pressure and sometimes nausea). Nonetheless, I would definitely try to find someone with experience with the material to be around the first time (every time actually) that I tried it. I would not try it alone. And I would go for a naturally sourced material.

The dosing mode of choice now seems to be to smoke marijuana spiked with the (hopefully pure) synthetic powder. It is potent stuff, so be careful with the dosage.

Thanks for elaborating. I will be cautious if the opportunity ever comes up.

I posted a summary explaining the origins and relationships among a range of biogenic psychoactive indole alkaloids a few years ago. Will see if I can find it and re-post it.

Yes please!

There are certainly wide variety of these. What I find fascinating about them nowadays is that, when considered in terms of their biosynthesis and function up a down the phylogenetic scale, they provide very strong line of evidence for evolution.

[/quote]

I suppose the plants make them for self defense?

[_Nightlion]

Oh, and luckily Mormonism isn't real. This means heaven will be enjoyable.

Mormonism could have been the most enjoyable thing ever IF as the good doctor said we just get it right.

And you can believe me when I tell you that it will be worth every bit of the work it will take us, and those who come after us, to get it right.

Telling LDS how to get it right has been my life's purpose.......as yet to no avail. So ends our world.

[_Nightlion]

We do not need a bonehead deduction from what the angel told the doctor;

Code: Select all

You can do nothing wrong

to mean anything more than at that moment this was true for the doctor WHILE he was up there. NOT that for all time and in all dimensions mankind cannot do anything that actually gets counted as wrong.

HELLO!

[_The Dude]

...
Lots of things don't make sense when viewed narrowly as evolutionarily advantageous or not. What is the evolutionary advantage of death? Yet it happens.
...

You are the expert in the field of genetics, not me. But with all due deference, surely evolution in creatures that reproduce sexually requires that old individuals die off to make room in the ecosystem for new and (possibly) better adapted members of the species?

Please correct me if I am wrong, which I may well be.

I don't think evolution requires old individuals to die off.

There's a huge range in the maximum lifespan of different species and nobody knows why it should be that way in terms of evolution. For all we we can tell from the data, lobsters may be immortal (obviously they have to escape predators and accidents). Why doesn't evolution put a stop to that?

I don't see a simple explanation.

[_Harold Lee]

I don't think evolution requires old individuals to die off.

There's a huge range in the maximum lifespan of different species and nobody knows why it should be that way in terms of evolution. For all we we can tell from the data, lobsters may be immortal (obviously they have to escape predators and accidents). Why doesn't evolution put a stop to that?

I don't see a simple explanation.

Only reason I can think of is maybe we haven't had enough time. We evolve so darn quickly as humans and natural selection hasn't played a part with our species in a very long time. There's a million complicated social factors that relate to our mating habits now, enough resouces for our survival needs to go around, and it's more than just surviving to sexual maturity for our evolution- it's largely a social process.

Lobsters have been around unchanged for a very, very long time, that might be part of it. Because of how prevalent medical technology and available food is we'll never go back to natural selection for our evolution. It'd honestly have to be epigenetic changes, sexual selection, and of course genetic engineering technology. Maybe our only chance at immortality is to build it into our genetics manually (fetuses) hundreds of years from now.

Immortality would be a mistake, with the exception of maybe astronauts who want to pioneer and colonize planets 50 lightyears away, etc. Once that feat is accomplished if ever everyone will mistakenly want it.

[_DrW]

Dude,

As requested in one of your earlier posts, here is a graphic I put together a few years ago showing the relationship among a number of biogenic indole compounds that are psychoactive, and the products of metabolic pathways for tryptophan as it is converted to serotonin and then melatonin. Since you report god experience with mushrooms, you may be more interested in the bottom two lines of the chart.

In fact, if you are the least bit interested in chemistry (especially biochemistry) it is worthwhile looking up the structures of these various compounds on the internet. Fascinating stuff.

Turns out that at the lower end of the phylogenetic scale (green algae), tryptophan derivatives (metabolites) help mediate the organism's response to light. As one moves on up to the vertebrates, these compounds (and specifically melatonin now) are still used help mediate response to light including external coloration in teleosts, and several amphibians, right on up through pelt color in Siberian hamsters in response to day length.

In humans, these types of compounds can serve as neurotransmitters (e.g. serotonin) and both pre-synatptic and post-synaptic neuro-modulators. Understanding the neuroendocrine response to light as mediated by these compounds has provided insight into such disorders as winter depression (seasonal affective disorder of SADS) that can often be managed by exposure of a solar spectrum light in the afternoon.

As you probably know if you are interested in psychoactive compounds, there are probably a dozen or so different types of serotonin receptors (I stopped counting several years ago). It is known or hypothesized that the psychoactive indoles (many are derivatives of the amino acid tryptophan) exert their effects by interacting with (interfering with the normal function of) these serotonin (5-hydroxy tryptamine) receptors.

For example, Utah's feel better drugs of choice (SSRI antideperssants such as Zoloft, Paxil, etc.) exert their effect by blocking serotonin re-uptake and generally increasing the levels of serotonin in the synaptic cleft.

Anyway, here is the somewhat dated chart. It has a minor error in it that I didn't see until now and am too lazy to fix. You will know it when you see it.

If the mods want to move this to another Kingdom, that is fine. However, I claim it is relevant because it helps explain how one can make it to "heaven" through chemistry.



I really like the "madness characterized by prophetic utterances" description (from the peer reviewed literature).

[_DrW]

Dude,

Here are some of the other old posts related to biological effects of indoles:

Breast Cancer:

http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/discussions/viewthread/13962/

Melatonin and Evolution:

http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/discussions/viewthread/13760/


Sex, Sleep and Psychology:

http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/discussions/viewthread/14677/

[_EAllusion]

One of my favorite bloggers commented on this:

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... of-heaven/

I agree.

[_EAllusion]

Sam Harris fairly well exposes Dr. Alexander's sloppy pseudoscientific Newsweek story:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/this-must-be-heaven

Here is a question: Why would the brain explode with neurological activity as it is dying? What would be the evolutionary advantage of a brain offering its soon-to-be-dead host, lucid consciousness that it has never provided at any other time while fully functioning?

Doesn't make sense to me.

It's a side-effect of different areas of the brain shutting down at different rates. Many people, myself included, experience highly lucid "hyper-reality" when dreaming from time to time, by the way. That's also a consequence of altered brain functioning, but not everyone experiences that. You may never have, but others do.