ewmon

Evolution doesn't automatically favor murder, but murder can enhance survival of the fittest. I'll go one step further: cannibals. We've all probably seen them — the BIG tadpoles among the regular-sized ones. They're not a different species; they're big because they're cannibals. sourceoriginal study And here's something I didn't expect to find in the source above:

I think of statesmen as dealing with long-term, enduring, big-picture, global situations and solutions. And I think you're right about modern-day real-time media clamoring for an instantanteous answer.

Yet, murder/war is still with us. Survival of the fittest also shrinks the gene pool. How do we know this? Did the ability to read halt human evolution? I'm not the type to believe that we've stopped evolving.

There are other equally or more favorable strategies, being social is one of them, as you and others have pointed out. And how about a mixture of the two? Sounds very Machiavellian. Just because humans are superior to the other great apes doesn't mean that we wipe them out, obviously. People here are assuming that someone murders constantly and indiscriminately. Bad assumption. Humans can read and talk, which has helped us to evolve, but we don't read and talk constantly and indiscriminately. So far, everyone has taken this to an extreme, which can be done with any evolutionary trait. A giraffe's long neck gives it an evolutionary advantage, but what if its neck keeps getting bigger and bigger forever. Having opposable thumbs is an evolutionary advantage, so why don't we have more of them? There is such a thing as an optimal effect of an evolutionary trait: one thumb per hand is enough. If murder/war is not in the mix of positive evolutionary traits, then why does it continue to exist in even the most civilized societies and not get bred out? It has its advantages when the circumstances require it. None of us are 100% cooperative.

Evolution I know how evolution works, and being clever (and cleverly murderous) is part of it. That's why humans out-evolved other primates. That's why the chimp who cleverly sounds the leopard alarm gets the food. Survival is not always to the strongest or quickest. Clever is how Tonya Harding won the national figure skating championship and gained a spot on the Olympic team (but not clever enough to avoid getting caught ... oh well). (Almost) cleverly murderous is how Wanda Holloway's daughter almost had a spot on the cheerleading squad ... oh well × 2. Cleverly murderous is how "El Chapo" Guzmán is among the 100 most powerful people in the world (according to Forbes magazine). What if everyone What if everyone murdered? It would get rid of a lot of squeamish sissies. What if everyone was homosexual? It would be the end of human procreation ... and I guess that puts an end to the what-if-everyone philosophy. I never got answers from my folks to questions I had about this philosophy. What if everyone lived in our house? What if everyone ate our food? (Mom and Dad still aren't talking to me. Oh well.) All Catholic You're right, Christians were pretty much all Catholic back then, but that still doesn't mean that they did the Christian thing. There is no requirement or commandment in the Bible that the Crusades fulfilled.

Maybe worldwide, but not in America. There's a list of wrongs that the Catholic church does, enabling pedophile priests being only one among many.

It seems that you're missing the formula to convert absorbances into concentrations. Did the teacher provide it? Was it determined from previous work? I'm accustomed to using the four-parameter model (of the standard curve) to compute concentration from absorbances. Also, please explain the column headings in Table 2.

No. Not that the Bible would forecast it, but command it (This kind of command: Thou shalt protect and control the Holy Land and keep the non-believers away from it.). And there's nothing that even faintly hints at it in the Bible. The Pope? Not for the majority of the Christians. We laugh at the Pope. The Catholic church (with its Mary worship, saint worship, and other fallacies) is considered it a cult or almost a cult by most Christians. In a general sense, yes. Dictators, tyrants and despots aside ... don't get caught. And one of the conditions is that individuals compete for food and other life-sustaining resources. When you eliminate the others that you're competing against (be it animals or humans), then you are better able to survive and reproduce. There was a recent case from research in the wild where, when a band of chimps would discover a source of food, one of the chimps had learned to make the leopard alarm call when the band found food, the rest of the chimps would run away, and the clever chimp would have the food to himself. You can't tell me that humans don't eliminate their competitors. Humans eliminate other individuals and other nations. When it's among individuals, it's called murder (and duels); when it's among nations, it's called war. Social morals are not inherent; they must be learned. It's why different societies have different morals. Humans are born 100% selfish and must be taught to cooperate and share. Consider feral children. For that matter, consider normal children ... the fight over toys, candy, seating arrangements, dad's attention, etc. Speaking of duels and social morals, duels were once considered as morally accepted and even chivalrous.

... and faster and faster, if I remember correctly. (This kind of question is great. We've all experienced it, yet only the courageous and very curious really notice it and ask why.)

Evolution favors murder Of course evolution favors murder. Emphasis on "survival" of the fittest. You never heard that it's a dog eat dog world? A murdered person doesn't survive, and can't reproduce. A murdered person's offspring have one less parent to raise them, and so, have less chance of survival. An already-murdered person cannot murder the murderer. Etc. Survival. The Crusades were un-Christian In other words, what about the Crusades was Christian? Nothing. I'm not the one who must show proof. I can say that the Crusades were un-Martian, un-Venusian, etc, until someone comes along makes a positive declaration. If someone finds something in the Bible that points to the Crusades as being Christian, please let me know. Murder is wrong Why is murder wrong? Murder enhances one's survival, so it's not wrong in an evolutionary sense. Is murder wrong because John Cuthber or Moontanman or ewmon says so?

Ancient history. I wasn't there, and neither were all the Christians I have met. I don't know anyone (Christian or not), who want to start up another crusade. The Crusades were un-Christian. Murder is wrong? Of course it is, but by what standard? The scientific survival of the fittest? No. The Judeo-Christian thou shalt not murder? Yes.

Again, you don't see the difference between spiritual and bodily. Plus, there's no "killing" of the spiritual forces of evil. It's impossible. The spiritual forces are always there ... the urges to do this or that. People struggle against those urges. Imagine if everyone followed every urge that came to them? Resisting those urges is battling against the spiritual forces of evil. People don't kill anything in order to resist those urges. For example, someone doesn't kill anything when they resist getting angry at a driver who cuts him off, or jumping out of the car and punching the guy in the nose. There is no killing, either spiritually or bodily. Is this making any sense to you? So you know this how? Have you conducted polls to confirm this attitude about The Holy Land? And have you conducted polls to confirm your attitude of what Christians think about the Holy Land? How many Christians have you known? How many of them have said that the Holy Land is holy? And that Christians must own it and control it? I have been a Christian for the past 25 years and attended well over 15 churches along with various other Christian gatherings, and I have met, and talked with, and had various relationships with a wide variety of Christians (numbering in the thousands). I can say that the vast majority of Christians I have known have not expressed anything that would lead me to believe that they considered the Holy Land as holy or that they thought Christians should own it and/or control it. So you think this conflict is only of interest to Jews and Muslims? You know this how?Please see my previous answer. Britain controlled Jerusalem 100 years ago, so why did it relinquish control if Christians wanted to own/control it? Or why did Britain not return the Jews to Jerusalem at that time? The British Mandate for Jerusalem says about Jerusalem as it stood back then: Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory. The closest that any Christians I've met have come to thinking the Holy Land is holy is that a few of the very conservative Christians (who are typically the King-James-Version type of Christians) believe that the creation of the state of Israel by the UN in the 1940's was God's will (even though the same Christians usually think that the UN is the beginning of the evil "one-world government" that must be avoided!) and an important step (the return of Jews to the Holy Land) toward the end of times. Personally, I think that the creation of the state of Israel is not God's will. The closest thing that I've ever seen that approaches Christian "shrine worship" (considering a plot of ground as holy) is when Catholics claim to have seen the Mother Mary somewhere, and people visit the site to be healed, etc. A well-known example being the Grotto of Massabielle (aka "Lourdes") in France where, in 1858, a local teenage girl, Bernadette Soubirous, claimed that Mary appeared to her. The Roman Catholic Church now owns and controls that plot of ground. So, what have you ever heard a Christian say that makes you think s/he considered the Holy Land as holy and wants to own it and control it?

The reality of the situation is that the vast majority of Christians in the world don't consider the "Holy Land" as holy, and they have very little interest in who owns it or what happens to it. As I said, only the Jews and Muslims think it's holy, and they are the ones fighting over who owns it and controls it. And we're not talking about the ancient history (and stupidity) of the crusades that happened almost a thousand years ago. We're talking about what the situation is. Oh please, you removed "spiritual" from "spiritual forces of evil" — you misquoted me — and you're sticking a "word" into "flesh and blood"? How bizarre. How truly bizarre. Are you serious? So, in the same sense, are we sticking words into each other on this forum? Does anyone consider this physical violence? Are we killing each other here? Should someone call the police, or at least report it to the forum moderators? Come on, you're smarter than that. spiritual 1. of the spirit or the soul as distinguished from the body or material matters 2. of, from, or concerned with the intellect; intellectual 3. of or consisting of spirit; not corporeal Notice how these definitions describe spiritual as distinguished from the body and as not corporeal. It's impossible to stick words into flesh and blood, and killing the spirit is the opposite of killing the body. So, are we one the same page now? Spiritual warfare is not bodily warfare. The Old Testament is the entirety of the Jewish holy scriptures. Knocking the Old Testament is clearly being more anti-Semitic than being anti-Christian because, if the Jewish Bible (Old Testament) vanished, the Christian New Testament would generally stand on its own. The Jews are still waiting for the Messiah of the Jewish Bible — their religious military commander who will violently defeat their enemies.

I’m sitting here trying to explain the Old Testament to you guys, and I’m wondering why you’re directing all this negativity at the Christian belief. Christians accept the Old Testament as true, and they accept God’s commands to the Israelites in the OT (for example, to wipe out the Midianites) as legitimate, which God did to get the Israelites into the Promised Land. But Christians have accepted it as a one-shot deal, and they have accepted Christ as their Lord. Christian scriptures say to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), and that “we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against … the spiritual forces of evil” (Ephesians 6:12). Jews, on the other hand, obviously have not accepted Christ as their Messiah, and in fact, they crucified Christ because he claimed to be the "King of the Jews" but not their military commander who they expected as their king who would lead them to victory over their enemies. If anyone still has that Old Testament mentality of God wiping out their enemies, it's the Jews, and not the Christians. It's the Jews who are still trying to wrest their "Holy Land" from the possession of the Muslims (who also consider it to be their "Holy Land"); whereas Christians really don't consider any land as "holy". So, the negativity against those who continue to hold such beliefs about wiping out their enemies seems to be more anti-Semitic rather than anti-Christian.

Thank you, AutoEngr (not a sock puppet, honest). As someone who was almost murdered, I can say that there's a world of difference between being murdered and, for example, being slain in battle. People agree to go to battle; they don't agree to be murdered. Otherwise, people would have to rant at every nation on Earth (beginning, hopefully, with their own). Let me say something ... years from now (hopefully sooner than that), advanced humans will look back and wonder how nations could send their finest and most hopeful young men and women to die in war. So, unless people are frantically writing their elected officials about marching them off to war, I sense a bit of double-sidedness in them. I find this image extremely disturbing, as should everyone, yet people apparently allow it to continue as they angrily debate slayings and enslavements that may have occurred (if one chooses to believe the Bible), did and done, thousands of years ago. People can hate God or the Bible as they please, but at the end of the day, they must still deal with any internal inconsistencies of theirs.

Cat? Chemistry? Cation, of course. Any Frankenstein-looking pet (such as the world's ugliest dog), Chimera. Another big, black bird to make friends with the first one, Chromate. Wild canine (or male wool-bearing creature), Wolfram. My colorful, pirate bird, poly-[something].

MiruSiva, welcome and keep posting here. Finding answers without knowing/using research skills is like finding a word in a dictionary without knowing the alphabet. And, if you're not interested in the answer, at least try to cultivate an interest in online research because you'll need it throughout your life. When I google Alfred Wegener, at least one reason is handed to me in the first result (Hint: It's in the result under Continental drift theory — Reaction).

But nothing about sex slaves. Back in Numbers 25, an Israelite man and his Midianite wife were killed because, being a Midianite, the woman worshiped another god. Worshiping another god was perhaps THE main reason why towns or tribes were utterly destroyed. We have a distorted view of captives and slaves down through history when we think only of African slaves brought to America (and even that is distorted). Ancient slavery was common for various reasons, for example, selling yourself into slavery to pay off your debts. In Numbers 22, Moab told the Midianites that the Israelites would devour them the way "the ox licks up the grass of the field", and yet the Midians chose to resist. Everyone knew the consequences of defeat: death or, hopefully, slavery.

No it's not, children were in at least one instance given to the troops as sex slaves... after everyone else had been killed at the demand of god... I meant that the Bible is silent about whether infants/children who die go to heaven, hell, limbo, purgatory, etc. I'm unaware of the Bible mentioning children as sex slaves (or, actually, any sex slaves). Can you cite the book, chapter and verse on that one?

Why not simply measure the resistance between the wheels because cracks would cause higher resistances? A Wheatstone bridge might work well. Also, cracks are more of a deep V shape (versus a gouge), so the two sides of the crack would act as a capacitor (even though they're connected at the bottom of the V, pretty much the same way two adjacent turns of a coil act as a capacitor). This means that the crack can be measured using AC rather than DC. How do the "cross-sectional areas" of cracks that you want to detect compare with the natural variance of a rail's cross-sectional area due to their manufacturing process?

Again, the Bible is silent about children. But if you had to choose between nature and nurture? I had mentioned having to teach/remind them throughout childhood (and beyond) not to be selfish. The babies of some animals are quite capable from minutes or seconds after birth. Human babies are quite incapable for months. Even if measured relative to lifespan, human babies are probably selfish/incapable for much longer than other animals. It's as though humans are über-domesticated. Infants can't even hold their heads up.

No, I can't agree with "all the damn time". I think it would be up to you to prove your statement. And as for Jericho, not everyone was killed. The people of Jericho knew that Israel (with God) would defeat them, but they chose to resist instead of surrendering. It's in the Book of Joshua. As for babies in general, have you noticed how selfish they are? About 100%, if not more (). Nature has made them look cute, otherwise we wouldn't love them so much, and they'd never thrive. I don't know if it makes them "very evil", but I'd say at least "evil". Now, before you say that babies can't help it, I'll simply agree with you and admit that it's their nature. Pretty much throughout their entire upbringing (and sometimes beyond), children need to be taught/reminded not to be selfish. As for "beyond help", I don't know because I wasn't there at the time. Here's an example in modern history. Now, I know it's not exactly the same as these OT accounts, but it's somewhat similar. America dropped the "bomb" on Japan in WW2: Should we have done it or not? A lot of people back then, as well as today, say it was the better choice. Here we were, at war with a nation fanatically devoted to its Emperor, whom it worshiped as a god. The Japanese people did all sorts of crazy things because the Emperor (or his government) told them to ... kamikaze pilots, parents who killed their babies and then themselves, Japanese soldiers who held out for years, and some for decades! The American military estimated that an invasion would have killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.

If one is to believe these few biblical accounts, the Old Testament does not give much detail, except usually to say that these nations were very evil and beyond help. In at least one instance, the Israelites were to destroy everyone/everything, including the children, animals and wealth — there should not be any plundering. The commandment about "not killing" is understood to be about an individual committing murder and not about national defense. America attacked Japan after Pearl Harbor, and that would be a poor argument about not killing.

As I said, it's a broken world, which I don't think anyone denies. It's important to understand that the criteria I described is for competent adults. The Bible does not mention anything about what happens to babies, children or mentally incompetent adults, so it doesn't "suck" for them. I can say that you drew a conclusion as to their destination that is not biblical. In fact, Christ says that we must especially help those who are in need, and he even equates them to himself. The important thing is not to draw conclusions about Christianity that are not biblical. And finally, it seems obvious that the ultimate purpose of following any religion or philosophy is not rewards or punishments, but how we live our lives, because it's the only thing that we can control.

As you quoted it, God laid down the law: Thou shalt not kill. Therefore, these men did not do God's will. If they don't/didn't accept Christ as their lord & savior and repent, they cannot go to heaven. The standard Christian perspective is that we live in a "fallen" (that is, imperfect) world, which is also true according to just about everyone's standards. Some of us suffer from bodily imperfections; some suffer from mental imperfections. The ultimate reason for these crazy people is that they are the product of an imperfect world, whether their insanity was of genetic origins, or a natural cause (such as a high fever), or a human cause (such as being horribly abused themselves), or an immoral upbringing, etc).