Ringer

Personally I think people getting worked up about the journal publishing the work troubling. I don't believe in precognition, but instead of outrage why not repeat the experiments and show where he was wrong. If the data is interesting it should be published, regardless of majority belief. If the experiment was done improperly or the result modified it will be shown in repeat experiments. [edit] If it is true he could apply for the JREF Challenge and retire. [/edit]

I'm fairly sure they mean pre-adaptation as in something that was developed before previously thought, not developed before use. Theoretically if these genes were part of an organism before they were needed and were anticipatory, there is no reason to believe that they were only that way in early evolutionary stages; in fact most of your examples are, somewhat, complex. What Skeptic is asking is why we would not be able to find these anticipatory genes by experiment, and if we are able to do so why have none been seen.

Here's one of O'Reilley and Dawkins, I'm sure there's more, besides the other Dawkins interview. I'm sure most have seen this but someone earlier said they'd like to see it.

I would assume it depends on the basis of the experiment. Don't you have to talk to an ethics committee or something before starting your research.

Because I'm lazy, here's a link.

They sleep, in fact studying zebra fish sleeping is helping neuroscientists find what sleeping is for. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-sleep-is-good-for-you

I took a hit; Yet earlier I said that God couldn't make immoral things moral by saying so. I didn't contradict myself on the basis that the question was not about morality but of god's will. Another; I don't really remember the wording of the questions so all I can say is BLAST!

Mathematically the golden mean is interesting but nothing to write home about. I has been over sold by a number of people, at least from what I have read; I'm not a mathematician so there could be more to it. I went to your website and it seems to be put together by a 15 year old for a school project. What does this ratio teach us about morals, since you believe it is essential to everything you have said. But Aristotle's philosophy of the golden mean, which is different from the mathematical ratio, is important to philosophical thought. There was very much dualistic thought before Zoroastrianism, but it just wasn't personified by opposing deities. It was thought of as a balance. You still didn't answer my question about how it is different from the ends/means argument. So are you saying that knowledge is god? But you said before that amoral discovery (your exact word was science I believe but science works to discover) will lead to evil. So what is this enlightenment we should seek. If it is built from knowledge, what knowledge should it be sought from? I still don't see what the point of bringing god into the seeking of knowledge is good for. Yes, if you believe in some sort of god, marvel at its works, but other than that it has no point.

Being literate in something doesn't mean that you have to agree with it. Not to mention most Greek philosophers didn't agree with each other, what makes you think that because I am educated in Greek philosophy that I should agree with you. You said: This is not an end justifies means argument? If not, how does it differ from it. If good comes from the actions they are good, regardless of the cost? Even then these stories aren't about the laws of nature that you propose we use, they are the stories of folklore and superstition that you said we need to get away from. First I would like to say that most Greek philosophers were against democracy. Even Socrates said it was 'mob rule'. Drinking and not drinking polluted water has nothing to do with morality, and neither does how things really work. Things work the way they work regardless of morality. You also said earlier that you believe we are the consciousness of god, if so why would we not experience it; we are it. If then this god is not ruled by reason, then we too should disregard reason. Thus after our disregard of reason this discussion has lost its point because our assumptions are based on reasoning. I apologize, I believed you were speaking of when you said "do not unto others. . ." which is the silver rule. The golden mean is meaningless, in it's mathematical essence, in morality, but Aristotle believed that the medium of extremes is what is to be desired. Usually this is called Nichomachean ethics. What I was referring to in my previous post were the golden rule and silver rule. I apologize for the mishap. A book you may be interested in that touches on all of this is Ethics: Theory and Practice by Jacques P. Thiroux & Keith W. Krasemann

Dopamine is affected by just about everything. I don't know much about how it is involved with parkinson's, but interactions between neurotransmitters is little understood. Dopamine and Serotonin are part of virtually every emotion, reaction, feeling, addiction, etc. But what I would assume is that dopamine allows the muscles to relax. This is not a different form of dopamine than any other, but just looking at the dopamine levels to balance something else. But like I said, I don't know much about the parkinson's and how it interacts with the desease.

Jesus man, don't you have a junk e-mail to use for random things that need an address?

Personally I don't agree with the end/means morality. I will agree that if something has good results that it can be considered good. On the same token, though, if someone I cared for was hurt, cheated, etc for good ends I would be troubled and deal with it as I felt I could. The problem when arguing the ends justifies the means is that you have to take into account retaliation as well as not knowing what the ends may actually be. I whole heartedly agree with this. Perhaps running off on a tangent I would like to share a story to any who think this isn't true; when my fiancée was in school to become a secondary education teacher she heard a story of one of her classmates student teaching. The classmate was talking about morals and about school shootings that have happened around the United States. She, her classmate was female, mentioned how the shootings were done by atheistic teenagers (I don't even know if this is true or what it mattered) and was taken outside the classroom by the attending teacher. The attending teacher told her that there were a couple atheistic children in the class and she should be careful how she presents this. But, here's the kicker, not because she was worried that because the children didn't have church to guide them they may get ideas about things to do. Not only that, this story was relayed during a college course and the majority of the class agreed with the teachers standpoint. Now if that's not disgusting I don't know what is. I did. From Hesiod's Theogony: Then from Works and Days So withholding fire was punishment for Prometheus tricking Zeus into taking the crap parts of the sacrifice while man got the meat and such and Hephaestus made Pandora. I assume that you are talking about the Epic of Gilgamesh when you speak of the Sumerian flood, although the flood myth is technically not part of Gilgamesh. The stories of original sin are more about what you are talking about than the flood stories are. They are all about innocence lost, forgoing this by way of knowledge. In Gilgamesh it was sex, Pandora's was curiosity of the urn/box, old testament was eating from the tree, etc. The flood stories are more about awareness of breaking the laws and angering the gods/god. But again, I will agree that knowledge of our actions will help promote moral actions, though I don't believe I agree with the way you propose to bring this about. Here we part ways again. Science should be amoral, it is interested in facts, only the way it should be used should be looked at in a moral light (although, I suppose, testing should also be put on moral grounds). I never heard of any scientist of the Manhattan Project celebrating the bombings of WWII, though I have heard many stories of them lamenting the fact the bomb even exists. I see no reason that any of them would be surprised the bomb worked, they all worked and tested bombs until they had one that did work. I would have to ask for a source that recorded the scientists celebrating. Belief in god never slowed killings, if anything the belief that there is no afterlife would severely dissuade anyone to risk their lives for arbitrary reasons. Actually we are amazingly irrational being. I won't point out the many different ways were are since it is a popular topic in many books anymore. I have never found myself in need of god to get me through my worst moments, and even those who do will do horrible acts because of divine reason. There are millions of people who don't believe in god and live there lives relatively rationally, morally, etc. Personally I have no problem with the belief in god and am not atheistic, but I severely disagree that belief in any deity is needed to be any certain way. Indeed, if one believes that god is needed for morality, strength, etc, should it not be assumed those who deal equally well without god are, in fact, stronger than those who do not. I'm insulted that you believe that I am not literate in philosophy, ancient or modern. I am quite literate in philosophy and spent most of my highschool career reading about religion and philosophy. The Golden Mean is part of Christian theology, and others of course, Confucius' teaching is the Silver Mean. Golden is do unto others what you would have them do unto you; the Silver is do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you. There is a slight yet significant difference. Even in this, the rule was only applied to those in your tribe. I don't know about the book because I haven't read it and have far too many books in my queue to possibly add another, but I will say that your logic follows well with Buddhist traditions with slight variation. Though I will have to point out that Buddhists don't necessarily believe in any deities; most do worship the Hindu's deity since it was an offshoot of this religion.

I would disagree, although marriage for love may be rather recent in most cultures that doesn't mean that romantic love is a cultural invention. I believe that stories such as the Illiad and Odyssey show romantic love as early as the first epic. Even Romeo and Juliet is a remake of an old Roman myth. The same goes for punishment for leaving a marriage for another spouse. Depending of course on what line you draw between lust and romantic love.

www.AcademicEarth.org is a website you may be interested in looking at as well

Even so, if there is no proof he used a keylogger or some other way to get into her account without her knowledge of him being able to do so wouldn't be enough to convict him. Without these there is no way to prove he didn't have authorization to access the account.

It was a blanket statement, cranial capacity isn't the end all be all of intelligence; if it were whales and elephants would be far more intelligent. Not that it isn't possible that Neanderthal wasn't more intelligent, so it still doesn't affect my statement whatsoever.

I never said that Neanderthal, or any other hominid, didn't have larger cranial capacity than modern man. How does that change anything I've said.

I don't see what this has to do with understanding god. Putting aside that all the lawnmowers I know of have a failsafe if you take your hands off the handle the blades stop spinning now; the result is a consequence of knowledge. Perhaps I didn't know the blades were still spinning. This could also be prevented with action, not only lack of action, of turning the blades off before I put my hands there. Though none of that is moral or immoral, the mower is an amoral, inanimate being therefore my being cut is not in the realm of moral philosophy. Zeus didn't hide fire from mortals out of fear; it was punishment for Prometheus' tricking Zeus. I can't remember the exact details, but it had something to do with sacrifice. Also, Zeus didn't create Pandora Hephaestus did, though it was ordered by Zeus. Though I don't see how this mythology has to do with laws. How was 9-11 done 'with good intentions'? If that was done so, it could be equally said about the Holocaust. I am not arguing that actions won't have unforeseen consequences, but we can't base laws solely on intent. That quote is actually Confucius teaching, not all religions. Your arguments are starting to contradict themselves our knowledge comes from this spiritual morality, yet we cannot depend on our knowledge to choose what is moral or not. By being alive we face death on large scales, our knowledge doesn't make any impact on that other than figuring out how to survive. Perhaps we could have a better discussion if these laws were put forth. It seems that you are being vague saying only laws of nature. If we are to build upon them I would like to know what specific actions I am arguing against. Again I disagree, although god isn't limited to a single religious ideal, it is still a theological idea that is rooted in religion.

My friend, who was a marine, says they are trained to 'shoot the T' as he called it. Sides of the T being the eyes, to the bridge of the nose, to the top of the mouth. Shooting these points straight on should cause instant death, though I haven't tried it myself. I would lazily assume, because I'm too tired to picture the areas of the brain ATM, that this would cause damage to the autonomic nervous system, more specifically the parasympathetic division, that controls involuntary action such as heart beat, breathing, etc.

Well then I would have to ask what evidence is needed for you to believe that a hominid is our ancestor? Do you believe that none of species discovered could be our ancestors, or that they could be but you need more evidence to be convinced? Then again I would ask, what evidence is needed? Of course there will never be proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that these are our ancestors, just like any thing there will always be doubt. But saying that there are no intermediary fossils is stretching it by a large margin.

Because the entire charge is 'hacking' not 'invasion of privacy'. Michigan's hacking laws are as follows; Found Here and here respectively. I don't believe he broke any laws unless it is proven he had malicious intent or that he didn't have 'valid authorization'. There is no way to show she never said, 'I don't care if you access my e-mail,' thus possibly giving permission for future access. This is probably what will be argued since legal battles tend to be semantic arguments. [edit] Sun glass guy should be a B and ). I'm too lazy to turn off emoticons[/edit]

god by its definition is religious; to assume otherwise is futile. If you want to dissuade me from thinking of your argument in a religious viewpoint I would use a different word than god, deity, etc. Alright, how about the rape that is so prevalent in orangutans. Chimps social structure use what looks similar to monarchies with alpha males taking women and being overthrown. Gorillas have one male controlling a hoard of females in his territory. All these things are fought for constantly. Personally, I wouldn't follow laws that promote actions such as these because they are 'natural'. So you propose laws that promote nonconformity, but aren't laws by their definition an attempt for everyone to follow the same rules? That would cause conformity in the most obvious of ways. What makes you believe that human thinking does not happen naturally? What evidence is there that something else was in effect to cause our intelligence, whatever that may be, to be enhanced. You say this intelligence is only gained through education, but that is a circular argument; Why do we educate? higher intelligence. How did we get higher intelligence? education. I find it amusing you say in your last paragraph that education must be used to develop the brain, but now say my education has ruined my imagination. What am I blinded to? I see your argument, although some points I may be misinterpreting, and just disagree with its standpoint. This has nothing to do with my formal education, it has to do with my personal outlook. Civilizations die for many reasons; war, famine, corruption, etc. This is not just because they did not follow the laws of nature; indeed, part of nature is the breakdown of structure. You ask what my understanding of the spirit is, yet earlier asked that I leave religion out of the discussion. What is the spirit but a religious belief in something more. I am not saying they do not exist, I am merely stating that you ask religious questions without wanting religious discussions. What these things mean to me personally has nothing to do with a true discussion. Connotation is not useful in discussion, only denotation. I end this with a quote from Richard Feynman that I think talks of the imagination of science quite well, "Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"

AFAIK cancer has nothing to do with the strength of your immune system. Cancer cells are your own cells that don't go through apoptosis. There would be no reason to assume your own immune system would attack your own cells.

If we are part of god's consciousness then why would our own laws not be representative of, some, god's laws. Now I will not include arbitrary laws that are put forth by 'public safety' such as seat belt laws for vehicles, but it could be included being that this god may not represent reason. On this line of thinking our laws are natural, and if not our laws exactly, the way that our democratic society pans out is no less natural than chimps hierarchy within their societies. I agree with your statement that we may have no evidence that we are no more important than worms, but to assume that the laws of quantum physics, physics of the very small, would apply to us at a societal level I disagree with entirely. I arbitrarily use 9-11 because it is well known; any mass killing, terrorist acts, etc will serve the purpose just as well. The action in Baghdad was a response to supposed WMDs not of 9-11, though they are commonly tied together because Bush/Cheney liked to talk about them at the same time and, as most people believe, 'the Middle East is the Middle East'. Anyway, along this line of thinking there would be no way to propose laws until we know the eventual outcome. Rape would not be punishable until we know how badly the victim is hurt, and if there is a child that, say, cures cancer, way would it be punished at all. Actions are immoral if people are hurt, moral if people are helped, and amoral if no one is affected. This is my personal view at least. It seems you are talking about some sort of 'social Darwinism'. Slavery violates no laws of nature; worker bees, worker ants, and many other animals work for only food and shelter with no hope of procreation. I have not once said that I am only discussing Yahweh, the god of the old testament, but all societies that derive their laws of a theistic point of view. I don't care if it was Greek, Roman, Hindi, Zoroaster, Buddah, Krishna, Shiva, (insert god of choice here). I never use 'G' when I write god because I only talk of a title, not of any certain god. Laws are tyrannical in themselves, they reduce freedom of choice. This doesn't make them inherently wrong, I see no less tyranny in allowing an irrational 'force' decide what I should and should not do.

Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention - The transparent and automatic feat of reading comprehension disguises an intricate biological effort, ably analyzed in this fascinating study. Drawing on scads of brain-imaging studies, case histories of stroke victims and ingenious cognitive psychology experiments, cognitive neuroscientist Dehaene (The Number Sense) diagrams the neural machinery that translates marks on paper into language, sound and meaning. It's a complex and surprising circuitry, both specific, in that it is housed in parts of the cortex that perform specific processing tasks, and puzzlingly abstract. (The brain, Dehaene hypothesizes, registers words mainly as collections of pairs of letters.) The author proposes reading as an example of neuronal recycling—the recruitment of previously evolved neural circuits to accomplish cultural innovations—and uses this idea to explore how ancient scribes shaped writing systems around the brain's potential and limitations. (He likewise attacks modern whole language reading pedagogy as an unnatural imposition on a brain attuned to learning by phonics.) This lively, lucid treatise proves once again that Dehaene is one of our most gifted expositors of science; he makes the workings of the mind less mysterious, but no less miraculous. Illus. (Nov. 16) The Man Who Loved only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paul Erdös was an amazing and prolific mathematician whose life as a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. He published almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, and he probably thought more about math problems than anyone in history. Like a traveling salesman offering his thoughts as wares, Erdös would show up on the doorstep of one mathematician or another and announce, "My brain is open." After working through a problem, he'd move on to the next place, the next solution.Hoffman's book, like Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind, reveals a genius's life that transcended the merely quirky. But Erdös's brand of madness was joyful, unlike Nash's despairing schizophrenia. Erdös never tried to dilute his obsessive passion for numbers with ordinary emotional interactions, thus avoiding hurting the people around him, as Nash did. Oliver Sackswrites of Erdös: "A mathematical genius of the first order, Paul Erdös was totally obsessed with his subject--he thought and wrote mathematics for nineteen hours a day until the day he died. He traveled constantly, living out of a plastic bag, and had no interest in food, sex, companionship, art--all that is usually indispensable to a human life." The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is easy to love, despite his strangeness. It's hard not to have affection for someone who referred to children as "epsilons," from the Greek letter used to represent small quantities in mathematics; a man whose epitaph for himself read, "Finally I am becoming stupider no more"; and whose only really necessary tool to do his work was a quiet and open mind. Hoffman, who followed and spoke with Erdös over the last 10 years of his life, introduces us to an undeniably odd, yet pure and joyful, man who loved numbers more than he loved God--whom he referred to as SF, for Supreme Fascist. He was often misunderstood, and he certainly annoyed people sometimes, but Paul Erdös is no doubt missed The Moral Animal: Why We are The Way We are - An accessible introduction to the science of evolutionary psychology and how it explains many aspects of human nature. Unlike many books on the topic,which focus on abstractions like kin selection, this book focuses on Darwinian explanations of why we are the way we are--emotionally and morally. Wright deals particularly well with explaining the reasons for the stereotypical dynamics of the three big "S's:" sex, siblings, and society. Proust and The Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain - Wolf, a professor of child development at Tufts University, integrates psychology and archaeology, linguistics and education, history and neuroscience in a truly path-breaking look at the development of the reading brain-a complicated phenomenon that Wolf seeks to chronicle from both the early history of humanity and the early stages of an individual's development ("unlike its component parts such as vision and speech... reading has no direct genetic program passing it on to future generations"). Along the way, Wolf introduces concepts like "word poverty," the situation in which children, by age five, have heard 32 million less words than their counterparts (with chilling long-term effects), and makes time for amusing and affecting anecdotes, like the only child she knew to fake a reading disorder (attempting to get back into his beloved literacy training program). Though it could probably command a book of its own, the sizable third section of the book covers the complex topic of dyslexia, explaining clearly and expertly "what happens when the brain can't learn to read." One of those rare books that synthesizes cutting edge, interdisciplinary research with the inviting tone of a curious, erudite friend (think Malcolm Gladwell), Wolf's first book for a general audience is an eye-opening winner, and deserves a wide readership. Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend - Borne out of a quest to understand her sister Carolyn's lifelong sinister behavior (which, systems engineer Oakley suggests, may have been compounded by childhood polio), the author sets out on an exploration of evil, or Machiavellian, individuals. Drawing on the advances in brain imaging that have illuminated the relationship of emotions, genetics and the brain (with accompanying imaging scans), Oakley collects detailed case histories of famed evil geniuses such as Slobodan Milosevic and Mao Zedong, interspersed with a memoir of Carolyn's life. Oakley posits that they all had borderline personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, a claim she supports with evidence from scientists' genetic and neurological research. All the people she considers, Oakley notes, are charming on the surface but capable of deeply malign behavior (traits similar to those found in some personality disorders), and her analysis attributes these traits to narcissism combined with cognitive and emotional disturbances that lead them to believe they are behaving in a genuinely altruistic way. Disturbing, for sure, but with her own personal story informing her study, Oakley offers an accessible account of a group of psychiatric disorders and those affected by them. Illus. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior - Recently we have seen plenty of irrational behavior, whether in politics or the world of finance. What makes people act irrationally? In a timely but thin collection of anecdotes and empirical research, the Brafman brothers—Ari (The Starfish and the Spire), a business expert, and Rom, a psychologist—look at sway, the submerged mental drives that undermine rational action, from the desire to avoid loss to a failure to consider all the evidence or to perceive a person or situation beyond the initial impression and the reluctance to alter a plan that isn't working. To drive home their points, the authors use contemporary examples, such as the pivotal decisions of presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush, coach Steve Spurrier and his Gators football team, and a sudden apparent epidemic of bipolar disorder in children (which may be due more to flawed thinking by doctors making the diagnoses). The stories are revealing, but focused on a few common causes of irrational behavior, the book doesn't delve deeply into the psychological demons that can devastate a person's life and those around him Also an enormous amount of comic books that would make me feel way to geeky to list. And some others that I can't think of off the top of my head. All information is from Amazon. School cuts into my reading time so freaking bad I can't hardly get most of my books done. Have about 15 next to my bed that I still need to read.