Charlton Heston meets Krishna creationism

"The Mysterious Origins of Man" is a notorious TV program, presented by Charlton Heston (!) and shown twice on NBC, a major U.S. network. This made the sceptics reel, and for once, I understand them. This DVD edition is, perhaps more appropriately, released by UFOTV. The show feels like a veritable rooster of the alternative milieu, featuring Michael Cremo, Richard Thompson, David Hatcher Childress, Robert Bauval, Graham Hancock, Richard Milton and Carl Baugh.

I don't mind alternative theories, and I don't consider myself to be a materialist. However, once you leave the lofty realms of the astral, spiritual, daimonic or collectively unconscious and start making statements about the material world, evidence is needed. I don't think the researchers featured in this documentary have enough of it to revise all of standard science and history. Or the origins of man, for that matter.

Some of the evidence presented is very weak and has been conclusively debunked long ago, such as the speculations about the Piri Reis map. (Clue: Reis explicitly said that the American part of his map was based on Columbus' explorations, the map contains numerous errors and the "Antarctic" part is probably just South America.) Other statements are illogical, such as Bauval's claim that the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx are meant to symbolize Orion and the constellation of the Lion. Still others are intriguing anomalies, but since context is everything in archaeology, I don't blame mainstream science for being sceptical: Hueyatlaco and Schoch's dating of the Sphinx are examples of this. Sometimes, "Mysterious Origins of Man" is just laughable, as when seriously discussing the Paluxy River tracks, interviewing a young earth creationist as an authority.

I suppose the point of the rather eclectic method of the show is to dig up as many anomalies as possible to thereby cast suspicion on the present paradigm. But what is the alternative of the people interviewed? "Mysterious Origins of Man" never reveals that Cremo and Thompson are members of the Hare Krishna movement, that Baugh is a young earth creationist, that the worldview of several other people is esoteric or esoterically inspired, etc. Virginia Steen-MacIntyre is a Christian creationist who believes that the Illuminati control U.S. media! There's nothing "wrong" about being religious, per se, but problems arise when statements about the material world are based on revealed religious dogma - this is the case with Cremo and Thompson, for instance. They will never revise their opinions about the antiquity of man, since it simply *must* be true according to Shrimad Bhagavatam, their revealed scripture of choice. And why are these facts never mentioned by the producers? Well, let me guess...too hot for the NBC?

Personally, I don't think the purely factual parts of the present-day paradigm will be revised any time soon. Rather, the problem is philosophical: granted that humans are somehow related to "other primates", how is it possible for a blind, purposeless, materialist process of evolution to create consciousness, intelligence and a creature with teleology and meaning? This question cannot be answered by reductionist materialism, and is a stronger argument against it than speculations about anomalous artefacts, crustal displacement or the maps of Piri Reis.

Unfortunately, such a discussion would never get high enough ratings at UFOTV. Let alone the NBC...