Ringer

GIYF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therianthropy#Animal_ancestors

Can't find anything on the skycraper one but I found the others. Intestine death: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Abigail_Taylor Too much water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

I'll assume you're answering me, but I'm not sure because your posts don't really answer anything that was raised in my post. 1.) Please, just this once, keep the goalposts where they are for more than 1 post. What is meditation en masse? Meaning meditation in a large group, or just many people meditating? Please cite these psychologists that you speak of. Hell, just cite 2 psychologists, speaking as professionals in their areas, citing spiritual aspects of meditation. Also, Dr. Oz is not only not a psychologist, he is unbelievably idiotic about the things he promotes on his show. If you're citing Dr. Oz for any factual information don't expect to be taken seriously. Great, you accept change based on on evidence, as any good scientist should do. I do the same thing. So help me out here and give me any evidence to support your view, otherwise all I can do is assume you're making stuff up and will continue to do so in order to be correct no matter the evidence against your stance. I have no idea what you're replying to, but if it's just a suspicion with no evidence it's not worth mentioning. It doesn't matter how intuitive you are, without data you're just making stuff up. That doesn't fly in a scientific conversation. Really? How long have you actively worked and read research in the field of psychology? Because I have read A LOT of psychology papers, yet I have never came across one that said what things should be like.

Shifting the goal post. You said it was an Eastern practice, they gave evidence that Western traditions practiced it, now it must be a majority practice. You're going to need to explain this better. It sure seems like you're saying, "I'm rational and I can accept change, but not until everyone else changes first." Also, shifting the burden of proof, appeal to majority, and still making a (false) claim that all of psychologists say that prayer and spirituality make people more kind. Your opinion doesn't matter, only data matters. using to anything else is not really scientific. Changing the goal posts. Again, shifting the goal posts from psychology is evil to psychiatry holds no purpose. Psychiatrists aren't psychologists, they are medical doctors. Which gives another fallacy of a false equivalence. Then cite ANY source that actually supports your claim, you haven't shown any data to support anything you have said. It's amazing that you can answer a question about people's fictitious motivations. Also, there is an ad hominem fallacy in there. And the whole thing is just a blanket non sequitur. How is it possible to not be able to accept social change, yet attempt to cause social change. And why would that cause them to tell people to be religious.

You could use petri plate

Please cite the sources for your statements.

In reality genes to not meet the criteria for 'information' in any good definition of information. When someone says genes are information or carry information it is usually an analogy or they are not using information in a strict sense. There was a very interesting blog post on this somewhere that explains better than I can, I'll try to find it and link it.

This doesn't follow with your previous statement. If anything it shows a fear from religion of science (not always the case and an entirely different discussion as well). That's an odd statement considering that a great number of nobel prized are awarded to multiple people and not a single individual. Scientists collaborate all the time, your argument is one from ignorance of how scientists actually work. What religion sciences?

I agree with this wholeheartedly, bias doesn't necessarily mean the results are flawed but it increases the chances dramatically. Thanks for pointing it out, I don't know how I missed that section when I read it. I do wonder what is meant in the biological and medical respondents. IIRC medical doctors tend to be more religious than practicing scientists or medical researchers, but I'm not sure if practicing medical doctors is included in that set. Sadly my psych department only allows undergraduate research to use other undergrads for sampling. I actually wanted to do something similar for research but my research adviser didn't like the idea.

Yeah, you're going to have to explain that one.

That's what I meant about duality being inherent. I don't see the need to have an aspect encompassing the brain, then have separate aspects. It causes a duality, which has no evidence to support it and there is evidence refuting it. It wouldn't be expected that you solely explain your idea in the form of brain activity, but separating the mind and brain causes your idea to be inherently flawed. First if you got H+O->H2O you would have broken the laws of physics, so you would be able to write a lot about it. Also, you could tell some properties of hydrogen and oxygen from that reaction. You know that properties of how atoms combine to form molecules aren't random. You could infer more properties using more reactions. You could also use prior evidence to further explain things about that reaction. Yes, you can study to brain's interaction with environment, but that doesn't seem to be encompassed in your framework. No it doesn't, because of studies of split brain patients you can find that there are effectively two minds within those people. That shows that the brain causes the mind. You can find plenty of people who disagree with scientific consensus, but if they don't have evidence they don't have anything. Here was the prediction: If all the interpretations agree with experiments and make minimal assumptions they are equal. If they make different predictions they are tested and falsified. That's what a theory is, an explanation of a variety of experimental results. You can resort to different theories, but only when evidence supports those theories. As of yet the mind=brain hasn't even been close to being falsified. We don't have enough evidence to explain all behavior with specific brain activity, but all that we do have supports the model of mind=brain. So any theory you have must either explain why all the evidence supports that despite being wrong without extraneous assumptions or you must work within that framework. That's not to say you can't come up with with a theory that doesn't mention the brain when explaining mind phenomena, but you can't contradict mind=brain without explaining the prior evidence. My point is that for your idea to work you will have to be able to integrate it with the evidence we see in regards to brain activity and behavior. That's exactly the kind of thing you see when theories work. As an example Newtonian mechanics didn't explain some phenomena, but it did explain a lot. Then Relativity came along and explained the things that Newton didn't, so the theories were, more or less, merged. The problem is you are making a lot of unfounded assumptions without using prior evidence. You assume the water has feelings, you assume the water is reacting to you, you assume the water can communicate, you assume it uses ripples to communicate, etc. That's the problem with many psychological theories of the mind, too many assumptions that don't have, or contradict, evidence. A prediction in neuroscience that has yet to be observed? I don't work in the area we are discussing, so I don't know if this has been supported, but I'll give it a shot. If the brain is solely the interface for the mind so it can communicate with the brain we should not be able to control anything separate from the body using only brain activity.

Before it gets pointed out again, there was the study that had a 33%, but I don't believe that was peer-reviewed and the methods on the report only stated that they conducted an online survey of ~2,000 AAAS members. I don't find that method to be very convincing seeing that most anyone could be an AAAS member, membership type wasn't mentioned. That aside, I don't have access to Nature so I can't say if their methods were similar or better. Overall, the consensus is the majority of science do not believe in a god. I wonder what kind of results one would get if they tested only supernatural beliefs.

Do you have evidence that this ceremony works better than current treatments or even placebo?

All terms that are used in ways that have not been strictly defined elsewhere should be defined. If they aren't defined then everyone could be using separate definition and any discussion will be meaningless. So since only humans have it, and assuming you have an idea of what it does, what tests could you perform to show that this concept is uniquely human? It's unnecessary because there is nothing about the mind that necessitates the unfounded assumption that it isn't brain processes. I did say seems to be, it is just something to think about as your ideas develop. Neuroscience makes a lot of predictions, I'll only stick to cognitive neuroscience because it's the only relevant one here. For example, if the brain is the mind when I disable communication from one hemisphere to the other anything information shown to the right side of the brain would not be able to be communicated vocally because language areas are in the left hemisphere. That's exactly what you see with split brained patients. If the mind was separate from the brain there would be no reason for this to happen. So there is a neuroscience prediction about mind/brain duality that has been done. The experiments that the linked book says its theory is in total opposition with. If it is opposition to the established science it is in opposition to experiment and is therefore wrong.

No, in the general public belief in god is at 83% and among scientists it's 33%. If you only use 'higher power' you have 18%, but the article he presented used the qualifier 'or' so they added the 33% who believed specifically in god and the 18% who believed in a 'higher power' to falsely claim that the majority of scientists are theistic/religious. There are a couple problems with that, mainly 'higher power' could be virtually anything you want it to mean.

I saw this paper today and the abstract alone hurts my head. I have no idea what is happening in it, and I have to ask myself "how the hell did the reviewers and editors let this through. Sage isn't exactly a great journal publisher, but wow. http://qix.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/11/1077800413489534.abstract If you can't get through the paywall here's a blog that covers the paper: http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/is-this-the-most-bizarre-paper-ever-published-in-a-peer-reviewed-journal

The rub with that finding is the "God or higher power". You'll notice in the actual survey those who believe in god are only 33%, which is drastically lower than the public's 83%. Since theistic means believing in a god that number would be a better number to use.

The issue isn't whether we are currently overpopulated, it is whether religious groups have hindered or ignored scientific investigation in that area. You know, the thing you asked me to cite sources for when I made that claim which you have yet to refute my claim with anything other than "I don't aggree" or "that's not the topic" Again, please point out the misrepresentation based on what was written. The only clarification was a later post that said not doing those things would kill you, that was pretty much my point. I may have not been overt enough in my sarcasm to really get the point across. So I will say it outright, making a blanket statement that ending life is wrong is so ridiculous as to be incomprehensible. Anything anyone does ends life. Even if one just means human life, which no one has specified despite repeated requests to clarify, a ball of undifferentiated cells is not alive so the point is moot. Unless one takes a differing definition for life than biology or medicine does, in which case one is equivocating. Apparently you haven't read this the last few time so I'll make it large: NO TRUE SCOTTSMAN Not to mention you're saying that the majority of people don't follow their religious leaders in their strictly defined, self-affiliated, practiced religion? What refutation? A couple no true scottsman fallacies, ignoring multiple examples, and an failed attempt at cherry picking a quote to make it seem like the source I gave didn't support the position of a religion ignoring/hindering science? I don't think those have helped your case. [edit] So, in more accordance with what the title of the thread, from what I've read the amount of religious scientists changes drastically depending on how you define both 'scientist' and 'religion'. So it would probably help to define what is meant by these terms. [/edit]

If the topic is about theistic scientists I find it odd that no one has mentioned much in the way of theistic scientists. In fact the only mention that seems to be even close are the first couple posts. That aside, what about theistic scientists is under debate right now? You asked for citations, since you didn't clarify and my examples were anecdotal I gave evidence that was within the same realm. Denial of overpopulation problems and climate change problems. What part did I misrepresent? Are you saying that any of those things do not end life? I already clarified, again in the same post you quoted, that if human life was the only one that one cares about the argument is different. Though it's still easily argued against. The flaw were you quoted the part were it states that the pope didn't agree overpopulation was happening/a problem? That doesn't seem like much of a flaw since my entire point was to point out an example of religion denying overpopulation being a problem, which you asked for in the post before my links.

That the pope who wrote humanae vitae, which is still a document used for practice, says procreation is the purpose of marriage and sex isn't relevant to religious ideas on overpopulation? That the very last sentence of the part you quoted says that pope doesn't accept the claim of overpopulation isn't relevant? Odd. Again, no true Scottsman fallacy. The topic is just religion, not religions that don't do what I say they don't do. Not a straw-man, unless you are arguing that those things are not alive. I only took the idea that snuffing a life is absolutely wrong to its conclusion. Human life wasn't a constraint. I agree, as should everyone. Luckily I make a habit of doing just that. Like any human, though, I may misunderstand the what is written, though if I did I would gladly accept you showing me where. Yes it would, but it would kill less than doing those things. Why is it an obvious straw-man, please point out which part of my example made a different position based on the text that was quoted. My point was that we accept the certain deaths are acceptable for various reasons, again you didn't make the distinction of human life. If you did make that distinction I would have pointed out that stem cells are not alive and, therefore, cannot be killed.

No, it's very true. Look up split brain patients or experiments.

As mentioned, there are a lot of factors that go into word recognition. The familiarity of the word, length of the word, priming, phonological/orthographical complexity, etc. You could try a search on a psychological database like psyarticles for more information.

No True Scottsman That sounds almost exactly like what I typed in the part of my quoted text you decided not to respond to. Of the specific examples I wrote or just examples in general? Here's some about population control and religion: http://www.pop.org/content/did-pope-paul-vi-think-we-are-overpopulated http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html http://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/the-myth-of-overpopulation Climate change: http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/the-green-dragon-slayers-how-the-religious-right-and-the-corporate-right-are-joining-fo#funda http://www.cornwallalliance.org/articles/read/an-evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/ I haven't seen his dislike for theistic people in general, just the arguments that are being made. So you don't drive cars, eat anything, drink anything, use any household appliance, move, or breath? Because all of those things kill, and, unlike stem cell research, they kill things that are actually alive.[

Sorry it took me so long, I've been a bit busy. So according to this idea only humans have these traits associated with the human mind aspect? There seems to be a duality inherent in your idea which is demonstrably unnecessary. I have many problems with many theoreticians within psychology, mainly because they seem to leave scientific training at the door when they start coming up with their ideas. So long as you stay within empirical evidence and predict from there you should get further than most models have. I stopped reading his ideas at this part: As Richard Feynman said, if your model disagrees with experiment it is wrong. Luckily that part was in the very beginning so I didn't waste too much time. I would like specific examples of tests that would falsify your model, otherwise you're just waxing philosophical. If you can't find evidence supporting your model it's not a model in the scientific sense. If there is no evidence it's pseudoscience. So if you truly wish to be scientific about it do research, not just research that supports your ideas either. If your model is wrong that's alright, but if you don't change your model based on the evidence that has been gathered you're not being scientific. Again, if there are no predictions it's not a model. An explanation must both explain what we see and what we would expect to see in a given scenario.

It's not only the Catholic church nor was it only in the Dark Ages. The town I was raised in never taught evolution, sex education was abstinence only, etc. Further more, we have religious institutions attempting to throw out climate change because god said he wouldn't kill everyone again. You have people saying overpopulation isn't a problem because God has infinite resources. These are just a small sample of some of the religious ideas that have been given for reasons research shouldn't be done in areas. Using a single sect of a single religion doesn't allow you to see a trend of overall relations between religion and scientific progress. But the idea that life starts at conception tends to be a religious belief. What are these atheists' objections?