Ringer

With this logic I can also conclude that since both chess and face recognition, as well as reading before it reaches Broca or Wernicke's area, use suclus between the temporal lobe and the occipital lobe chess is just as natural as recognizing faces.

I'm not very familiar with NLPt, but what I have heard of it a large problem it has is its use of the patient's subjective opinion of what is wrong with them and how they think they should fix it. It seems to be more of a self-help manual than a clinical style. [edit]This explains the roots of NLPt if you're interested. You'll see that it seems to be implying that our minds 'need' language to create everything we experience. If that were to be true, people who do not have an ability to understand language would no longer be able to experience the world as a human, if that even means anything. This is patently false.[/edit]

We didn't make a collective decision to do what we did to the biosphere either. We just happened to notice it.

What is what? I apologize but I'm unsure of what you mean by this Reason is a poor substitute for evidence. I'm not sure of what this hypothesis entails, a google search turns up other forums with posts from someone who appears to be you. Would you elaborate? I don't know really anything about dark energy so I won't try to mention anything about it. Dark matter has plenty of evidence to support it besides the gravitational lensing. Are you saying that the evidence for it doesn't exist or that all the evidence to support it can be explained by a better model? Apparently you don't understand what I meant by that. The fallacy comes about because your proof lies in your conclusion. The conclusion must be true for the premise to be true. I'm confused, are you saying the universe is infinite or finite? Since you say the known universe is finite are you implying the rest is infinite? If it is infinite how could something occur outside of its volume? You said the universe has been around for an infinite amount of time all collisions possible should have happened. If all those collisions have happened wouldn't they have, more or less, moved things away from each other? If things are, in general, moving away from each other for an infinite amount of time there should be virtually nothing in our general place in the universe.

I know, I was making a simplified analogy. I was just showing that a single thing can develop into an infinitely more complex system. Again, where did I ever say that anything was made out of nothing? Only religion is trying to justify any existence. Science works by trying to explain what is observed, nothing about any scientific theory will ever be 100% correct. The things you are posing as ridiculous are attempts to explain known phenomena, except the multiverses IIRC that is a conclusion based on probabilities of some sort. I am not at all a physicist, so I can't comment on the redshift of galaxies since I only have very basic knowledge of that, but I do trust the scientific methodology to root out false presumptions. As I said before nothing in science is 100%, but the models in place are there not because they felt like it was pretty. It made testable predictions that turned out to be correct, and until a better model comes into play it will be used. Well that's odd considering they have found plenty of evidence for dark matter than just saying it's there. One example is the gravitational affect of bending space around very massive objects. Since dark matter has massive gravitation it causes light to bend around it quite a bit. When that happens an observer can see the bending effects without seeing the dark matter. As I said before, I'm only marginally familiar with how redshift works so I can't comment. This is a logical fallacy called begging the question. If the universe has been around forever and, in general, things are moving away from each other why is anything even around our galaxy?

We aren't talking about the general public, we are talking about scientific consensus. I don't think a press advisory will be enough for me to believe you. If there is only 1% chance of the BB being correct, why is it still the standard model? So you don't think that saying a source caused cause and effect is a contradiction? Can you point out when I ever said energy leaves the universe? I said useful energy will be made into less useful energy until there would be enough useful energy to drive reactions. We presume it will go one way because the direction of, say, a chemical reaction is always in accordance with increasing entropy if the system is closed. If the system is closed only certain reactions will occur and those reaction move towards and increase in entropy.

I'm certain birds launch nano GPS systems before we even made fire, that's why we never see their systems. I mean, how else could they fly that far and not get lost. Given.

We are still normal creatures, we just have different specializations than other animals. There are also other animals that are very intelligent in ways we are very dumb, natural navigation over long distances comes to mind, but that's because they evolved and specialized in different ways.

The existence of the matter isn't in question. No one says that everything in the universe came from nothing, only that it was insanely condensed. I haven't seen something that hasn't existed before materialize before my eyes, and that's not what any body says outside of zealous religious circles. I have, on the other hand, experienced a very small, undetectable to the naked eye object develop into a complex system. I would imagine everyone typing has undergone what I am talking about (hint:conception). If I am reading this right you contradict yourself. If cause and effect has a source, would that not be cause and effect. Meaning there was cause and effect before cause and effect. In a closed system there is a certain amount of energy that is available, as I'm sure you are aware. For every reaction energy must be used, but not all of that energy is used to 100% efficiency. Because there is waste a certain amount of energy will be lost to the system, usually in the form of heat. Even if that heat is used for more reactions there will still be waste. That waste will build up in a closed system until all the energy that has been used will no longer be in a form that is usable. Heat death is a conclusion some have come up with in response to entropy. But, since I'm not a specialist in any way on entropy or cosmology, I would like to hear why you believe that a closed system, the universe, would not end in entropy death.

What? The OP said that the universe never began follows from simple logic. I would like to hear what these simple logical steps are. When correcting people's grammar one is bound to make a similar mistake. My point is that he didn't answer the concern that his statement flies in the face of the second law of thermodynamics.

Could you walk through the simple logical steps that the universe never began. He asked about entropy, not energy. They are very different things.

I'm pretty sure earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are separate from any climate change phenomena, so how would a climate model predict these?

Well, I wrote a fairly detailed answer and it was lost in the void of the internet. Anyway, I assume it's asking about gamete formation. The gamete will form from a diploid parent cell to a haploid cell. Being a haploid cell it wants one set of each gene. After that it's easy to wean the down the answers to the correct one.

I'm not sure if I understand what you are asking but if it's what I think it depends order of a reaction it it. You are describing a second order reaction, and since is the limiting reagent it will go to completion due to the excess of reagent A in accordance with Le Chatelier's principle.

I would suggest looking for more of what you're interested in than what you're better at. You can always get better, but you won't necessarily learn to like something boring.

Boiling and evaporation are two different things. Water at 100 C isn't trying to boil unless it is at 1 atm pressure, you can make water boil at room temp fairly easily. Fill a 2 Liter bottle halfway with water and attach a vacuum to it securely. Turn it on and when the pressure above the water is equal to the pressure of the water it will boil. Now that's reducing pressure to boil at a lower temp, now think of what the massive increase in pressure at the bottom of the ocean does to the boiling point of water.

It's not a science because it's a technique, not an area of study. You can do things that are scientific regarding hypnosis, just like you can do things that are scientific regarding surgery, but the act in itself is not science. [edit] Odd wording fixed for clarity [/edit]

I didn't say anybody had anything. All I meant was that since there isn't really any sort of agreement on what intelligence is, we can't strictly define it. It's much like consciousness, we can talk a lot about consciousness and have interesting discussions, but when it gets down to the hard stuff we just can't agree on what can be considered consciousness. Not saying that it doesn't exist, just until professionals agree to what they intelligence is there won't be a good definitive definition.

Although I would agree that a large part of that sort of thinking, like scientific thinking, has to be learned and practiced; there is still probably a predisposition in your heredity to that type of critical thinking as well as introspection. I don't think Phi was saying that it is all nurture, I just wanted to make sure it was clarified.

There is nothing about evolution that has to do with intelligence. The reason hosts evolve resistance to things because those that don't die. So that makes your definition null considering that intelligence isn't necessary for your example.

So would this ability be part of their conscious mind? If so it is not an external, objective perspective.

Scientific definitions have to be very specific. We can't explain it as you are suggesting because your definition really doesn't explain anything. What is a memory capable cell? Any cell can alter itself to counteract circumstances. That's part of the definition of being alive, reacting to external stimuli. I'm unsure of what you are talking about in your last sentence so I can't really comment. I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but intelligence can't be defined in a strict scientific manner because no one can seem to agree what intelligence is. This may seem obvious, but that's really what it takes.

If you had the blue-print to every car, would you then have a different perspective on how cars came to be what they are today? You know that someone invented the automobile a while back. You also know, more or less, how people have developed different ideas for cars that are used in different situations. Some are more complex than others, but all cars more or less work. Having and understanding may give you a better appreciation of the details of what goes into making cars. You may even be able to see the relationships between the cars as in when they were made and where they were made depending on the parts that go into them more so than if you just saw them in a line up. As a caveat this, like all analogies, has a few flaws, but I hope this gives you an idea of how, even if we had every genome sequenced, the whole of evolutionary theory is on good ground even though we only have a few full blueprints.

I'm fairly certain they do this, I could just be crazy though. I can't seem to find a source and I can't remember where I read/heard it now. I don't know why or how I would just make all that up though. . . It is easier just to compare SNPs, but I was pretty tired when I wrote that and didn't want to explain SNPs and PCRs.

What they mean when they say that humans and chimps have ~99% is that many genes can attach to halves of genomes from those animals. You can separate DNA by heating it and causing the bonds between the bases to be broken. If you have a racemate mixture of human and chimp DNA some of the halves of the separate species will attach to each other to the matching bases. Since pure DNA will separate at a certain temperature, like 90 C IIRC, if two halves of separate animals attach they will separate earlier since there are less attachment points the overall bond strength is weaker. By calculating how much less heat is needed, you can find out how many matches there were. There are other ways I believe, but that is a good example and the only one I could explain somewhat adequately.