Ringer

It wasn't just not accepted, for all intents and purposes it was unknown. He probably wasn't more explicit because he really couldn't be and he wasn't writing for an everyday audience. The only people who read then were most likely rich and educated, and the only people who read about science were scientists. At the time biology was just a bunch of loosely tied fields that couldn't be brought together. Not to mention the age of the Earth was a heated topic, due to heating problems and geological discoveries, so he was unsure if the timeframe needed for his theory to work was even plausible.

What Darwin is saying is that there is dispute over the time when variation will affect the progeny of any animal. You have to realize in the time that this was written Mendel was all but ignored. So without a grasp on genes role on inheritance they believed that the traits of the parents mixed like paints instead of inheriting sets of chromosomes. Believing this made it difficult to believe variation was inherited because they would just revert back to an average. So the idea of variation happening within somethings life-time became an idea because it would allow the mixing inheritance but would also keep traits because animals in a similar environment would acquire similar traits within a population and changing the average of a given trait. Since the mouse experiment ruled this out it was thought that perhaps the trait was acquired in utero by some means (I can't remember the details of that one). Each had their own problems until the chromosomal theory of inheritance was accepted as being the most likely way animals inherited variation. Darwin got to his idea due to the fact that it is difficult to force animals to breed the way you wish them to. This idea made him believe that there was some sort of mate selection, instead of animals mating randomly, that may be a factor in animals survival. This would change the average traits even with these other elements of inheritance, even though they brought other problems with his theory until genetic variation was discovered. You have to look at what they knew then to really see the genius it took for him to think this up. They knew nothing of what chromosomes did or genetics.

And I showed, logically, that this should extend to young females as well. To make a logical point you have to have an argument not a statement. You have said this quite a bit and you still haven't listed the proof that everyone has asked for. This is an empirical question not a logical one so, even if you are a logic machine, you need evidence to back this up. Again, not a logical question so you need something other than your faulty logic to show this. I have shown, using your own logic, that the sexism would extend to girl-children as long as they are of child bearing age. This is quite young. So where are you getting this now? Do you have proof of this? If you look up the statistics I know you will find that the vast majority of children that are killed or abused in a domestic setting are killed or abused by a step parent rather than a blood relative. This would show that it is quite natural. Your logic was only extended to mammals, I did the same using your premise. So do you admit your logic was wrong? Still only an opinion until you give evidence. Your point did not say anything about being a criminal, only behavior. They are two entirely different things. Don't move the goal post. Again I ask, since there are more criminal minorities should minorities be treated like criminals?

Also remember that how we see most fruits at the store is not how they were naturally formed. Many of the fruits and vegetable we buy have been bred to be the way we want them and not how they would have been found naturally.

IIRC there were experiments done to see if Lamarck's theory of inheritance of acquired traits before the publishing of Origin. This was done by cutting off the tails of mice over many generations to see if there was any measurable difference in tail length as there should be if the traits acquired in life are passed on. The tails did not drastically shrink in any way. I assume that is the sort of thing he is talking about if I remember the timeline correctly.

Language yes, reading, not at all. An average child at the age of 12 has been reading about 6-8 years and still cannot read with proficiency; while a child that is 6-8 years can speak very fluently in it's given language. Reading in itself has no natural relationship with language.

Yeah, I have the book and found it extremely well written (though I may be biased because I want to study neuroscience in grad school). He also has a book about mathematics that is also a good read, but it is a little bit dated. There are always new ideas to be had and exciting things to be discovered. We all stand upon the shoulders of giants, hopefully we can all see further by doing so.

Actually reading is very unnatural to our brain. Try learning to read fluently in a new system that uses completely different symbols than what you are use to and you will find exactly how unnatural it is. Here's a good book on the subject. In short we probably use an old system of object recognition an use it to read. But that system has to be trained for years to become able to read at all, let alone well.

You said males of all ages should treat adult women better. So according to your logic that throws out all of these, you said previously that male children are just as likely to be molested and I believe I read about boy children being more likely to be beat, except being pregnant. So since girls can get pregnant around 12 years of age young girls should be treated preferentially. Also related, you can not make a decision of how someone should be treated by averages. On average there are more minorities in prison system, in the US I'm not sure of other countries, so should they be treated more like criminal? And this applies only to adults? Also, why is it only OK to do something because it happens in other species? Other mammalian species will kill children of different paternity if taking a mate, does that mean that is fine because it's 'natural'. [edit] I forgot about your third point, which is only at best an opinion. That being said, it is not logical to base an argument on an opinion now is it? [/edit]

And would you like to walk us through why it is logical to treat adult females better than adult men?

If that's so, would you be so kind and donate the 90% you are not using for research?

What are you even talking about. What can they distinguish between? You have not yet said anything about how to distinguish between neurons. To reiterate, all neurons give off the same electrical signals which are going off millions at a time. How would telepathy be able to distinguish which are important for telepathy? This is not different colors, this is equivalent to seeing through objects that give off the same wavelength of light as the ones you want to see. You just choose to see through the other one because it's not important. You misunderstand what I mean by give off. I mean that the electrons in molecules of animals bodies are given a bit of energy by the metabolic energy we naturally produce. These electron excitations are then emitted as photons in the infrared spectrum after the electron goes back into a lower energy state. The same way we 'give off' visible' light by absorbing certain wavelength electron excitation, etc.

That is only in when colors are in relation to each other, and when you take into account the shading and reference objects. Their ability to distinguish hues is far less impressive. From the same link There is quite a difference. When reference objects are seen it is easy to make a single color seen as two different colors. Also you have to wonder how much the wavelengths differ to be considered separate colors. We could both be right depending on what the cut off point for colors is. That is like saying we shouldn't be able to see because we give off light in our visible spectrum. They don't actually see the heat, they see the infrared spectrum given off by the heat. Sharks cannot tell what the fish is thinking. Telepathy would need the ability to tell the difference between ALL different neuronal interactions, not just 'see' electric fields. It is entirely different from seeing colors. It would be more like only seeing colors that bounce off certain objects even at a single wavelength.

Eyes respond. . . did you even look up photo receptors? It's a neuron that responds to electromagnetic radiation in the 400-750 nm wavelength. You were mistaken and I was pointing that out. I would like you to point out at what point in this entire thread I have endorsed telepathy.

Your welcome? I'm really unsure of what you are thanking me for. Anywho, All you did was ask if I had seen a type evolution as if that were the deciding factor of truth. I assumed you meant direct observation and not indirect so I asked a the same question about something virtually everyone accepts but has never seen. The difference is we have seen evolution and there are hundreds of papers on this. Quite simply, no. I disagree with that entire statement. Children have difficulty making decisions when they are truthfully informed, if you start teaching them things that have no evidence as if they are truth who are they to actually be able to tell the difference. When you were in secondary school did you know how to tell if someone was making a valid scientific argument or just saying science words while telling lies? Could you tell how truthful the statistics were by analyzing the numbers and how the study was done? I know I sure as hell didn't. Why would we think they could do this when they have never even been taught how to do these things. You also have to think that many people that make decisions in companies and governments don't take anything over a 100 level science class. So they are probably never taught these skills to the degree necessary to be able to make a valid distinction between science and psuedo-science. As was pointed out earlier, I think, it would be like teaching med students to use homeopathy and crystal healing methods because people believe they work instead of using what works. As you can imagine this could easily hurt those affected.

And where did you get those numbers from? The visible part of the EM spectrum is around 400 - 750 nm. Depending on what you mean by distinguish, we can only tell the difference between a few hundred hues independent of luminescence (I think that's the right word). And that's only the color receptors of the eyes. The rods in your eyes, located in the edge of your eye, are more or less colorblind. They can only 'see' around 400-500 nm. The rest of your vision is lies put together by preconceived notion in your brain. You can even test this yourself with a friend and some colored paper, but I digress. Again, it would be virtually impossible for telepathy to be able to tell the difference between which neurons are important for communication, and therefore would 'see' the information your fingers are sending to your spine, your eyes are sending to your brain, your brain is sending to your feet, ad infinitum. In all that noise of a single person, billions of neurons with thousands of synapses potentially firing, would be unbelievable. Not to mention some glial cells can communicate the same way neurons do so they would add to the noise. There can be around 30 glial cells for every neuron. I'm not very familiar with cancer so I personally couldn't give you very good information on cancer specifically, but there are mutations that are more common than others. If you are interested in learning more of that I would try wiki.

Have you seen an atom? Do you not believe them to be ridiculously common? As I said, science isn't a public poll and shouldn't be taught as such. It's sickening what some people think should and shouldn't be taught in schools. What matters in secondary education is learning the abilities that you will need to be successful in whatever career you choose. Teaching them what there isn't evidence for only hinders them in that respect. I'll point out a few things real quick but this won't be an exhaustive critique by any means. Second paragraph Apparently he forgot that for most of history people believed the bible literally and that evolution was on the fringes. Evolution wasn't even taken very seriously in Darwin's time. Especially since most people believed inheritance was a type of blending, Mendal was more or less ignored in his time. Evolution came into being through over a hundred years of people trying to discredit it at every turn. It stands for a reason. Really? Wow, how unscientific. Wait. . . wait does he mean by index fossils. Fossils of species that are found in rocks that are either impossible to date because of their makeup or that it would just be very difficult. So what is it they do with them you ask. Well they don't date the Earth with them. They take other fossils that have been in sediment that is easily dated and has been showed to be a certain age multiple time. They use that fossil to determine an approximate age of the sediment. That after they have established a range of dates when the animal had lived through previous dating. That's all I'm doing for now. If you want to continue debates of evolution go to the thread I linked in my previous reply and start it up. But first read through the discussion and links because they will cover a great many of the misconceptions of evolution.

We didn't evolve from fish, nobody agrees with that, we had a common ancestor. You didn't evolve from your 4th cousin did you? No you came from a common ancestor. Same thing only further back. We do distinguish from different colors of light and we had a reason to evolve such a device, what necessitates our development of telepathy (assuming it is real)? Now to the point of how this telepathy distinguishes between, say, the action potential of a photo-receptor, a motor neuron, or any other neuron that would make communication possible. Short answer, I doubt it could. It says types of genes, not genes. There's a big difference. There could be thousands of genes that are the same type, but that doesn't make them the same gene. quote from the site

Science is not a public opinion poll. But, hey, since most people think correlation = causation we need to make all these stubborn math people teach both sides of statistics. How about some evidence from peer reviewed publishing instead of evidence for creationism in a creationist publication. First evidence against evolution isn't evidence for creationism. So even though it's ridiculously common for 2 animals to co-evolve and the explanation is fairly simple even if there wasn't an answer Creationism still doesn't have evidence.

Now show that they evolved this ability before our common ancestors, identify the gene that causes this, show we still have it, etc. Then you need to show we produce enough of an electric field to be able to be detected and interpreted. Last, but certainly not least, you need to show that the brain waves would not be interfered with by all other neuronal interaction or any other electrical activity. So being able to detect electricity is really almost nothing like telepathy other than neurons use electric pulses. Could you link to the places you found this.

I would be fine with teaching Creationism if it was at all scientific, but it isn't. Kids don't even know what science is, let alone how scientific truths are decided (and it's not by popular opinion). When Creationism has any evidence supporting it that can be reproduced teach it. But that a subject for this thread. Here's a link to other GOP standpoints on evolution http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/2012-election-gop-candidates-evolution-_n_934045.html#s333316&title=Rick_Perry

You know Perry has a lawsuit against the EPA because of tighter pollution regulations right? Not to mention his belief that Creationism should, actually he thought it is, be taught in the public schools. This is pretty much consistent with most of the GOP in the spotlight.

Two things. One, this personal attack at people in relationships is childish, pointless, and against the rules (I would assume, unless it only counts towards a single person). Second you have no experience with any of the things you are saying are idiotic, all you are doing is cherry-picking information to make your lifestyle seem somehow better.

(My bold) What exactly do you believe these receptor cells to be? Sensory neurons use external stimuli as activation and then communicate with other neurons. They are no different other than they have very specific shapes to receive these stimuli. Photo receptors, for example, respond specifically to electromagnetic radiation in a certain range of wavelengths. Telepathy, as is usually understood, is not understanding through body language. In a scientific discussion you cannot redefine words as you please. I could say I can prove Gods existence, but only if you accept that God is a dog. That doesn't prove God exists.

And what gene is that exactly? Everything I have heard about cancer is that it can have a wide variety of causes. And the development of a completely different sense is far and away more complex than unregulated cell growth. We are sensitive to electro-magnetism, in fact our nervous system communicates electrically, but the brain doesn't give off strong enough waves to be efficient for telepathy. You also would need proof that the fish had telepathy, they don't but let's say they do, before our common ancestor split.