It’s fantastic to look at people and see that they really, deep down, are enlightened. They’re It. They’re faces of the divine.

And they look at you, and they say ‘oh no, but I’m not divine. I’m just ordinary little me.’ You look at them in a funny way, and here you see the buddha nature looking out of their eyes, straight at you, and saying it’s not, and saying it quite sincerely.

And that’s why, when you get up against a great guru, the Zen master, or whatever, he has a funny look in his eyes. When you say ‘I have a problem, guru. I’m really mixed up, I don’t understand,’ he looks at you in this queer way, and you think ‘oh dear me, he’s reading my most secret thoughts. He’s seeing all the awful things I am, all my cowardice, all my shortcomings.’

But that’s not what he’s looking at. He’s giving you a funny look for quite another reason altogether. He’s giving you a funny look because he sees in you the Brahman, the Godhead, just claiming it’s ‘poor little me’.

~ Alan Watts, Lectures on Zen/Spiritual Alchemy

...modern science differs from all previous traditions of knowledge in three critical ways:

a. The willingness to admit ignorance.  Modern science is based on the Latin injunctioin ignoramus - 'we do not know'.  It assumes that we don't know everything.  Even more critically, it accepts that the things we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge.  No concept, idea or theory is sacred and beyond challenge.

b. The centrality of observation and mathematics.  Having admitted ignorance, modern science aims to obtain new knowledge.  It does so by gathering observations and then using mathematical tools to connect these observations into comprehensive theories.

c. The acquisition of new powers.  Modern science is not content with creating theories.  It uses these theories in order to acquire new powers, and in particular to develop new technologies.

The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge.  It has been above all a revolution of ignorance.  The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.

(He goes on to discuss how the premodern religious traditions of the world all assert that we already knew everything that we needed to know, and tamped down inquiries.)

-p250-251 in Sapiens

It's simple. All we have to do is let Ebola decimate the human population.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/04/doctor_doom_eric_pianka_receiv002118.html
We are not the only or most important species, but we think we are.

Somehow it helps me to keep the big picture in mind. We live, then we die. Our species rises to dominance, then fades. The planet goes on. The Universe goes on.

Good science, like good religion,
is a journey of discovery, a quest.
It builds on traditions from the past.
But it is most effective when
it recognizes how much we do not know,
when it is not arrogant but humble.

--Dr Rupert Sheldrake

SOURCE
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rupert-sheldrake/why-bad-science-is-like-bad-religion_b_2200597.html

I didn't always understand this. When I was a young physician, I didn't realize that criticism was a good sign. Now I see that it means people know you care about them and are willing to change. If no one criticizes you, you can take that as a sign that you are perfect, which is unlikely, or that people feel you don't care enough to listen and are not willing to change. No one criticizes a stubborn mule. It doesn't help or change them.
--Bernie Siegel
p88 in Prescriptions for Living
*new tag: perfection

Not sure what to make of this:
http://altering-perspectives.com/2014/02/dna-analysis-elongated-skull-released-results-incredible.html

Sounds like the creatures who had elongated hominid skulls found in Peru were genetically quite different from homo sapiens.

Because Muslims, Hindus and African Animists are also made in the very likeness and image of God, to hate them is to hate God! To reject them to is to reject God and the Gospel of Christ. Whether we worship at a church, a synagogue, a mosque or a mandir, it does not matter. Whether we call God, Jesus, Adonai, Allah or Krishna, we all worship the same God of love. This truth is self-evident to all who have love and humility in their hearts!
--Pope Francis

Pretty cool:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/science/toe-fossil-provides-complete-neanderthal-genome.html?_r=2&

Report on the genome from the toe in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12886.html
Abstract
We present a high-quality genome sequence of a Neanderthal woman from Siberia. We show that her parents were related at the level of half-siblings and that mating among close relatives was common among her recent ancestors. We also sequenced the genome of a Neanderthal from the Caucasus to low coverage. An analysis of the relationships and population history of available archaic genomes and 25 present-day human genomes shows that several gene flow events occurred among Neanderthals, Denisovans and early modern humans, possibly including gene flow into Denisovans from an unknown archaic group. Thus, interbreeding, albeit of low magnitude, occurred among many hominin groups in the Late Pleistocene. In addition, the high-quality Neanderthal genome allows us to establish a definitive list of substitutions that became fixed in modern humans after their separation from the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans.

http://hereistoday.com/

Nice illustration of where a day falls in the scheme of things. I enjoyed it.