Ringer

I don't think someone saying that they know it's wrong is news, put it in speculations if you show your formula

Then it appears wrongly. I am under the understanding that in your statements you are arguing for a god that people can understand. If we are to follow 'laws' of this god then the god must have some sort of opinion of right and wrong; what is this god's way of deciding if not by reason? How can we discover these laws if not by reasoning since there isn't a way to please or displease this force. I'm under the assumption that you say god is physical laws, if so then the god is unneeded for the explanation of its laws. So believing that something is alright with a higher power makes it alright? So bombing the twin towers is alright? Law without god is still law. Law with god tends to represent those who believe in the same god and ignores the will of others. [edit] Double posted [/edit]

If spirits were real and could influence things physically I doubt they would be doing it letter by letter for a bunch of teenagers at a slumber party.

Sleights of Mind; What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about our Everyday Deceptions. Pretty good read for winter break so far. Can't wait until Deadpool classics vol. 4 comes out next month.

Thus why I said it is developmental in only the vaguest sense. They found genes similar to ones that code for nerve cells and muscles; not the genes that we have. They could be doing many things, as I have said before, because our understanding of how genes interact with each other is still very limited. Just because there are genes that are similar to ones we have does not mean they interact and code for the same, or even similar, things. In the article it says that the ancestor of the sponge must have been more advanced than previously thought. It says nothing of the genes being dormant.

I think you man ape/man. Chimps aren't monkeys

I completely and utterly disagree with the statement that living only by man's laws will crush our liberty and power. If god says killing people is alright, does that make it so. No it doesn't it's still wrong. God cannot make something right by saying it is so. And what notion of god should we use to protect our liberty; new testament, old testament, Krishna, etc.

Actually the difference between terms is a huge deal. You can't have any sort of meaningful argument without knowing that both sides are using the same meaning of a word. A perfect example is when people say evolution is just a theory; they don't realize that scientists don't use theory/conjecture meaning and causes all sorts of disputes. So I, as well as many others, give a rat's ass about the difference between terms. We have no way of knowing what ancestors had higher cognitive power. I have to disagree with the statement that science is a terrible blow to religion. The bible never said that the solar system was geocentric, that was an assumption of the people of the time. Even if it had the bible has all sorts of metaphorical statements which could just as easily mean that Earth is important for the life that is present, not that everything actually revolves around it. It's obvious that Adam and Eve isn't a literal reality, but again religion is all about metaphor.

I don't understand what you mean by saying it is needless. You mean the wording is redundant? Maybe so, but this redundancy wasn't seen as obvious so it was needed to be explained in the theory. Only in the most vague sense. It is a developmental process, but that does not mean that it is planned. Any time something changes it develops something, this is what I mean when I say it is a developmental process. But these genes are present in animals that use them. You don't find a dormant gene to develop kidneys in amoebas. The zygote has the DNA of it's parents that had those organs to begin with, that is why they are there. They were surprised that DNA was similar, but what I am saying is that if DNA encodes for future changes there should be no reason that all genomes should be coded for most possible changes. And if the genome was coded for changes in the environment then why is it that so many animals use different adaptations to deal with the same problem.

So when do we decide when it is god punishing someone for being immoral and when it is someone or something evil doing bad? Wouldn't an all powerful being allow us to discern something like that easily so as to know what to do in response? Why would this being create us to where we question its existence yet give no way to see if it exists other than another person saying 'believe'. Lucifer I can understand being punished for trying to overthrow a 'king' he was subservient to, but punishment because the god refuses to be proven, or even give any evidence, seems rather arbitrary.

I would have to disagree with you that the belief that jesus was god incarnate is fundamental Christian philosophy. Some sects of Christianity believe that Jesus was the son of god but not himself god incarnated.

In my opinion it's no more wrong than trying to convince someone to change their taste in music. It can be annoying as hell, but there's no real intrinsic badness to it. Some religions even say that it is wrong to force your religion upon others, although we all know how easily zealots forget the teachings that go against their actions. At the same time there are atheists out there that try to force their beliefs upon others just as strongly as the theists do.

Obviously any worries about harm coming to the child should be looked into further. But the easiest way to watch for lies, if there is nobody else to corroborate, is story consistency. There have been numerous studies that show when a memory is called it can easily be manipulated and changed. So some inconsistency is expected, but certain things should be steady. Ask questions like where were you, what was in the room at the time of event, etc. Now this line of questioning is only suitable for a familiar surrounding, so make sure the line of questions are answerable and check for consistency. On the same vein there are questions that would seem easy but are really easy to forget, commonly things like what was the person wearing. Even though memories are malleable that doesn't mean that memories should be dismissed offhand, but should be looked at with careful scrutiny. The child should also be seen with and without the parents present, see if the story changes when the child is alone, with one parent or the other, and with both. The parents should also be talked to individually as well as together and with the child. Obviously this is not always possible, but if it is it's extremely useful.

Then please define what you mean by intermediary. If you wish to see something that looks half man half ape then you are surely mistaken about what it means to be an intermediary species. All an intermediary species means is an ancestor. Even the term itself in assuming there is a beginning form and an end form that is just untrue. There is nothing in evolutionary theory that predicts ancestors must look like a mixture of two cherry picked species that arose from it. Also, if these are not intermediaries, what are they. Just some hominids that happen to be dated in a timeline that would fit well with our current ideas of human evolution? This is a nice time-line for hominid species evolution. And if you scroll down on this page you will see a graph that shows the gradual rise in cranial capacity in these hominids to support that they were evolving toward more intelligence. Here are some other sites that have timelines supporting this theory. http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/timeline.html http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/03_index.html http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/species.html http://www.berfingen.info/athemyst/hominid1.html

Why does matter exist at all? It just does, and be happy that it does. There's no real 'point' to anything existing to an extent. And, not to sound insulting, science isn't around to make people comfortable; it's here to explain what things are and what they do. People's feelings have no relevance to scientific explanations, at least they shouldn't in my opinion

Really? Maybe you should look here before you say there are no known intermediary fossils

I did mean what I say, but when I say that I don't try to say that a single statement is the whole of the theory. It's an obvious oversimplification that is used as to avoid being long winded, I suppose I assumed that was understood so allow me to restate. the idea of natural selection is that natural variation among populations will allow certain alleles that are better suited to an environment to reproduce better than those that are not as well suited. These alleles can be anything from size, color, metabolism, etc. Natural selection is not mutually exclusive to other explanations of evolution, such as HGT, nor does it disallow random variation without consequence such as genetic drift. Again this is a somewhat oversimplification but i assume you know what I mean. The reason it looks like a development process is because we are looking at it after the fact, and that it IS a developmental process. But that does not mean that genes are were already there waiting to be used since the beginning of life. And if these genes were in fact present before they were needed, as what I think you are saying, then how do you explain the reason for them to be there except that they had prior knowledge that the environment will change. What purpose did they serve, and if they served none; why would they be there if they were not aware that something could change. Also, if genes needed for future populations were already present in ancestral populations wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that all DNA sequences should be almost entirely the same. Why would genes only code for certain changes and not others?

Adding to what everyone else has said if your bed is close to a window sunlight hitting your eyes while sleeping could cause these types of 'phantom' images; assuming you don't sleep with a light on because that could do the same thing. That would be the simplest thing assuming there is no actual medical problem.

Well it's not completely that simple. There are thousands of photoreceptors in the eyes and only a small percentage can really see color, only in the center of vision in fact. Not only that but the light from the left and right hemispheres go to different hemispheres of the occipital lobe and the same is true for both eyes. So the brain gets a scattered, partially color, overlapping input that it has to rearrange and make since out of. You never ONLY see a spot, and a spot is just a change in color. Again our ideas of what neurons do is not black and white. Saying that only one kind of neuron can see a line is a mistake, there may be neurons that respond more to lines than to motion, but that doesn't mean it's a 'line neuron'. It could just as well be an inanimate neuron seeing as the line doesn't move. In that train of thought a line neuron could just as easily see a spot as a line since the only different is the dimensions.

If it is normal then why is it that humans are the only species out of millions of vertebrate species to develop the way we did. And if it has a tendency towards complexity why are there many more bacteria than other animals.

Personally I dislike the term transitional species, it assumes a stoppage of evolution that doesn't happen. Every species is a transitional species. Primitive species would be a better word. Missing link is even more confusing because it assumes a clear cut line of what is human and what fossils are not and there should be a single fossil that will show an 'in-between'. It would be wrong to assume that our common ancestry with apes looked more like Modern apes than modern humans. Obviously that would be hairy and walk on all fours, it doesn't mean that it would look a lot like apes now except superficially. I'm not sure why you say scientists who sit with the gods, but the reason people used the term missing link was a bash at evolutionary theory saying that we had no intermediary fossils, which is just untrue.

I don't think they meant dirty in a 'it has dirt on it' kind of way. Just the same way as they believe a women on her period is dirty, more commonly used is unclean, so they are not to be touched. A theory I have heard on the biblical prohibitions on certain foods is that it was a way to tell those who are in your clan and those who are not. If someone brings pork as an offering of peace then they are unclean and not to be dealt with. The same goes for any cloven hoofed animal, shellfish, etc. for those religions that follow the old testament

No, those who survive, reproduce, and have their offspring reproduce. Mere survival isn't enough to cause an evolutionary change. Cherry picking a single statement and saying that is the whole of evolutionary argument is fallacy. What questions? . Still, accepting that we can't know entirely is part of science, I still don't see what doesn't 'fit' current evolutionary theory that is better explained in your theory. Which is already explained by a current theory without the belief in genetic precognition. And there have been many modification natural selection, hence the term neo-Darwinian that gets tossed around a lot. Parts of descent with modification didn't fit evidence of the time of Darwin, he became more Lamarckian. Then in the 1900's Mendel's pea experiments were 'rediscovered' and the use of allele frequency could better explain the change in animals that could genetic mixing; the theory was adapted. Theories change and evolution is not different. Assuming that evolutionary theory has never changed is ignorant as is the assumption that scientists refuse to believe anything in evolutionary theory could be wrong.

A 'spot neuron' would be a bit of a misnomer. Neurons aren't all specifically designed for specific functions per say. It would kind of like looking for a reading neuron. You have to also take into account we don't have the brain's neuronal pattern mapped, so if there were neurons specifically used for spot detection we would be hard pressed to pin it down. Your second question is assuming some sort of duality between the brain and the eye; both are apart of ourselves and should not really be separated. The reason we see spots is the same reason we see any other color, very simply because it's a different color than the area around it.

If these 1%ers are the top of the human race we should let them lead; we all know how well people with schizophrenia plan their own lives.