Televisual highlight of week was a mystical Shambhala therapist explaining to Richard Dawkins (of all people) that "DNA is very interesting right now in our evolution of the human race". I almost felt sorry for her. Did she have any idea who she was talking to?
She went on to explain to Dawkins, author of numerous best-selling books on evolution and genetics and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, that "every human being except a very small percentage has a double-helix in the cell". When a surprised Dawkins asked whether this meant that some people don't have a double-helix of DNA, the mystic explained that "a very small percentage do not—they have got more strands. We used to have, in Atlantis, twelve stands, and they're in the form of four triangles facing in in each cell. And we forgot who we were in the experiment after Atlantis and everything changed…"
When asked how she knew all this, the woman explained that "it comes from the Akashic record—the record of all vibration on this planet—but we also have […] The Deep Knowing, and the Deep Knowing, it really can't be argued".
No it can't. She made an utterly convincing case. In her own mind, at least.
The woman then went on top up Dawkins's quota of DNA strands. I don't know if she charged him the going rate of £58 for doing this, but we actually got to see her "put the last triangle in". She did this by closing her eyes and waving her hands about in a manoeuvre that will have been spookily familiar to any student of Rixology. Sadly, she did not explain whether Dawkins's missing triangle had been an isosceles triangle, a Bermuda triangle or a Dairylea triangle.
All of which made me wonder, do any of these alternative therapy adherents have any sceptical faculties whatsoever? Do Chakra healers ever get into heated arguments with homeopaths? Do acupuncturists ever accuse Reiki Masters of being charlatans? Do crystal healers ever point out that aromatherapists are spouting a load of old wank?
If people from different religious backgrounds can have violent disagreements about utter nonsense, then why not different snake oil merchants?
Or is someone out there trying to link all these specious disciplines together into a Grand Unified Theory of Mumbo-Jumbo?
Perhaps we could call it Gumbo for short.
To quote an interchangefrom the movie 'Head'.....
Sounds like a lotta superatural baloney to me!
Supernatural...perhaps, baloney...perhaps not
So, let me get this straight...the Atlantans knew all about DNA and experimented with it, and all this is recorded in the Akashic Records (which if the ancients - and not so ancients - knew about they must have access to) then why did no-one come forward to complain that Crick, Watson & Wilkins got a Nobel (and the money) for something known about for millenia...and don't get me started on missing out Rosalind Franklin.
Dawkins made that exact point, pointing out that we only discovered the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953. The voodoo merchant didn't bat an eye-lid.
I always felt sorry for Rosalind Franklin too, but she had the dreadful misfortune to be dead by the time Crick, Watsonand Wilkins gottheir Nobels, and Nobels aren't awarded posthumously.
As interesting as anything is the nomenclature.
How the Hell could the creators of the Akashic Records (I freely admit to not knowing what that is) know that modern science would call a particular 5-carbon sugar "ribose" and hense "deoxy ribose" and "deoxyribonucleic acid" to give DNA? Now, certain aspects of the name are systematic (nucleic or nucleus, for example), but sometimes if you discover something not seen before, you just have to call it an arbitrary word so that it can be identified. I suspect "ribose" is one of these.
Not only was ribose not known until the 20th centuary, but crucially it didn't have a name either, so even if it were identified centuries ago, how would we now know about that? Make it up, of course.
I suspect they're making it up as they go along.