Sayonara

Assuming that the story of the virgin birth is true (and there's no good reason why we should), it's a more credible explanation than her getting banged up by an angel. Mind you, so is the idea that she was having an affair. Or that she was a nut-job.

...which has nothing to do with exobiology or its various merits. (Although if you managed to plumb new biological depths you would in fact be engaged in xenobiological study. Irony.)

No.

How very optimistic No you don't. Evolution deals with mechanisms of change, not histories of change. The special histories are a consequence of evolution, and not its fabric.

Oh dear god.

Why should we not dissect it? We dissect humans all the time.

Don't forget colonisation of an isolated habitat.

Or does it? One might well consider that a population with the ability to produce and distribute antibiotics is more evolutionarily fit than an equivalent population without that ability. They are, after all, more likely to survive to a reproductive age on average.

I made the generic group to check how the image and custom title would look. The overall plan is to make groups for the major subjects. Since the mods don't necessarily know the details of a discussion in-depth, we're hoping that by making "expert" roles with some super-human abilities, persistant trolls and idiots can be more easily and quickly stopped (but of course members should still use the warning system). And of course it's nice to recognise people who have shared their in-depth knowledge with everyone.

That wasn't the important part really. What I want to know is, why should we assume any travellers from the future (or even just the "successful" ones) are going to be benevolent, or share the same ideas as us about what is "good" or "bad" for their history?

Although rarely directly observed, "virgin births" happen in the animal kingdom all the time. Interesting huh.

What makes you think that people would only come back in time to stop things from happening? (And why only things that impact America, while we're at it).

And yet you'd still have it. Perhaps you should have thought that through...

It's not really a matter of what I have decided, but of the things you said, for which I am not responsible. Still making critical assumptions and misrepresenting what people have said. Maybe you just can't help it. There's nothing I like better than strutting my stuff and feeling big though, you got that right. That's all I'm here for you know. Administering a science forum is like so cool. Every time I have an argument with someone, all the guys say "god I wish I could be like him", and all the girls feel faint.

Sun Systems do make hardware.

Irrelevant. The observations were added to the thread to give Ramin the benefit of a different view - I'm sure he can draw his own conclusions. I'm not going to ram my own down his throat, am I? I never once stated anything about the location. There isn't even a place I would call my "home town", I've moved around so much. Please stop making up completely random conditions. I don't really need you to "show me a different side", thanks - I am not an idiot. Furthermore I quite clearly said "in general", and used quantifiers such as "more" and "average" to indicate non-absolute terms. You are the one who isn't getting that. Well, I disagree. I think that it was a statement of fact and not opinion - the behaviour I was describing is consistent with a state of turning away from, not a state of being turned away from. I couldn't give a flying Jesus about behaviour I was not describing being addressed, and if you can't take the intentions of a post from the author himself then who can you take them from? Sorry, but that's just tripe. You went in for the kill because you made critical assumptions about my post, and saw the opportunity to "teach" me something. As I have made abundantly clear, you are trying to have an argument that I'm not interested in.

Perhaps you just don't have an eye for subtlety. Can you not think of any reasons why a photographer might want to get closer to the moon in order to snap a picture of the lunar landing sites? Did you search the site as I suggested? This question has already been discussed thoroughly.

Instead of posting crap for the rest of the thread, you could have gone and found out what Auburngirl('s source) and I were talking about simply by searching for "gay penguins". The headline was on every major news source on the planet.

Boring. Thread closed.

So you don't think, maybe, that if a unique "cache of memories and experience" is what we term "personality", then personality does in fact exist?

I've already met my smiting quota today

A wasp sting

You didn't inject SQL; you just supplied a(n invalid) variable/value pair.

You did not respond to an opinion. You responded to an observation, and when corrected you followed up with a strawman. Additionally, you are still continuing to misrepresent what I have said, since you seem to be making the claim that I have somehow dismissed or contradicted your views, which is not the slighest bit honest. I'm more than happy to read about your views on this, but any more tiresome, sarcastic strawman responses will be warned for trolling/flaming and persistant strawman.

None of that makes any difference to my last post. You're right. I'm not following it. You know what? That's not because of any shortcomings on my part. It's because you are devoid of various key notions of formal logic and experimental method. I'm not following your reasoning because it doesn't work.