SkepticLance

To DH Those are good references you posted to support your point. You may note that I did not say whether it was justified or not justified to resurrect the neanderthal - just that once the ability exists, someone will do it. If and when this happens, I trust that they will be ethical enough to have the neanderthal baby adopted by a caring family, and raised with love and proper care. I think that anything else will be barred by public opinion, in any case. The new neanderthal person can become a part of our society. Whether that means interbreeding, or whether that means resurrecting other neanderthals to permit a breeding population is another question. Another way of looking at it is to say that the extinction of the neanderthal was probably due to the acts of Homo sapiens at the time, and we owe them another chance at existence. Perhaps the discipline of living in peace with another hominin species might be salutary for our species. Perhaps neanderthal man may have something special to contribute to our society. They did have, after all, a bigger brain. Maybe, given the chance, they will become the next generation of scientific geniuses??? Perhaps this time, they will replace homo sapiens.

The New Scientist I am reading right now ((10 January edition) has an article on the possibility of resurrecting extinct animals. They suggest it will one day be possible for cases where we have good sources of undamaged DNA and a related organism to be a surrogate mother. They restrict their examples to animals that are big and interesting enough to motivate humans to do it, and where good DNA is accessible and a surrogate mother is possible. The examples given are : Sabre-tooth tiger Neanderthal man Short faced bear Glyptodon Tasmanian Tiger Woolly rhino Dodo Giant ground sloth Moa Irish elk There is no suggestion that other organisms cannot be resurrected some time, but just that the above list is possible in theory, and of sufficient interest to motivate humans to do it. A couple of points I disagree with. They quote Dr. Svante Paabo as saying neanderthals will never be resurrected due to ethical considerations. How naive can you be? What do others think?

DrDNA asked : "Care to speculate or even guess why humans are different than canines (see below) or other species?" Since I am given permission to speculate ..... There are lots of differences between humans and dogs, in terms of reproductive genetics. For example : A woman has a long reproductive life - about 40 years, whereas a dogs entire life (in the wild) including reproduction is less than 12 years. Inbreeding in dogs, of course, is the result of deliberate breeding tactics. Inbreeding can be extreme. First cousin marriage in humans, assuming it happens only once, is a relatively mild example of inbreeding. Of course first cousin marriage increases the odds of defective children, but only to a minor degree, and the comparison with mothers over 40 is simply to put the odds into perspective. If an increase in risk is small enough, it is silly to let that influence government policy.

Chaos This is the science forum. The people here will not be convinced by videos or by written claims, or by stories. We look for proper scientific evidence. Your earlier video claimed that something like 6 alien devises were surgically removed from alien abductees, and they were made of unknown elements or alloys, and were weird and mysterious in their functioning. Unless your doctor is a total moron, he would have given these to different institutions for testing and analysis. Some would have published their findings in peer reviewed and reputable scientific journals, assuming the gadgets were indeed of extraterrestrial origin. That is what we are looking for. Give us the references to those papers. We can then read them and decide. If the evidence is strong, it becomes credible. If there is nothing in reputable journals, then we have to assume there is no credible evidence.

Guys This is the science forum. Quoting fictional movies is not exactly a credible means of arguing. Let me repeat my earlier point. Cousin marriage results in defects in children at a rate no higher than older women (40 plus) having children. If the government is going to ban cousin marriage, then it should also arrange for older married women to get sterilised. Whoops - aint that called eugenics?

Chaos I went to the trouble of watching your video. There is no convincing evidence there, except perhaps that the doctor involved is a fraudster. The movie "Star Wars" contains better video evidence of extraterrestrials, and it is unashamedly fake. If someone had genuine alien technology implanted, and this was removed surgically, the results should be written up in a reputable peer reviewed scientific journal. This would be much better evidence than a thoroughly amateurish video.

I think we can ignore the 'alien landings and abductions' part of this thread as so much hocus pocus. However, there are a couple of sensible questions there also. 1. Probability of aliens versus size of the universe. It is estimated that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy and 100 billion plus galaxies in the universe, plus or minus a substantial error factor. The numbers are so large that to assume no other intelligent life anywhere is being quite irrational. So, yes, there probably is intelligent and technologically advanced life elsewhere in the universe. We also need to take the time factor into account. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, and life on Earth only 4 billion or less. Even if life can exist only after Generation III stars came into being, that leaves an awful long time for intelligence to evolve. If intelligent life were to turn out to be common, a number of such intelligences would have come into existence some billions of years ago. However, what of such intelligences coming to visit?? According to everything we know about physics, travel at faster than light is not possible. Indeed, without a major break through into totally new physics, the maximum speed a starship might attain is only 0.1 to 0.2 C. This means that, just to cross our own galaxy without stopping, would take 500,000 to 1000,000 years. This is liable to put a bit of a crimp into interstellar travel, and make intergalactic travel impossible. This reduces the probability of alien visits dramatically. 2. Re Type III civilisations. You should realise that the classification into types I, II, and III is a totally subjective, arbitrary, and imaginative thing. There is no objective reason to consider that such a classification has any meaning whatever. My own view is that clustering around a star to gather its energy is a bit pointless. There is unbelievably large quantities of energy available in plain old water, via fusion power. And there is an enormous amount of water in the universe. If you are going to build totally artificial structures to live in, why restrict yourself to a tiny space near a star? The whole universe is available, just by putting a fusion generator in your habitat. Could an advanced species hide?? Sure. Interstellar space is so enormous that you could hide a trillion space cities and have no chance of discovery. Using fusion generators, only infra red would escape, and that could be arranged to resemble the heat loss from a nebula or similar. However, why would they bother? 3. Communicating with us would be a matter of desire. If they wanted to, they would. There is no indication that any alien civilisation has ever made the effort. 4. Earth germs? An advanced society could deal with that, if it turned out they were vulnerable, which is not likely. Even on Earth, diseases cross the species barrier mainly with closely related species. An alien species that had originated and evolved on another world would be so incredibly different that it is hard to imagine an Earth germ able to affect them.

To Charon That is correct. The first 'life' was probably a self replicating molecule drifting in a solution of organic molecules, made by inorganic processes, and using the substances around it as raw material to make more molecules. Some would have become trapped in lipoprotein vesicles, making the first 'cell'. From the first such successful proto-life came all that followed, including archaeans and bacteria. What a lot of people fail to understand is that even small archaeans are highly complex and sophisticated organisms, after almost 4 billion years of evolution.

First : all life is equally ancient. It appears that the first life appeared 3 to 4 billion years ago (probably nearer 4 billion) and all life since has evolved from that original form. For this reason it is a bit misleading to think of primitive and advanced forms of life, since all life is equally advanced. Second : the divisions between kingdoms, once you go back in time, is not very distinct, and the fossil record is often scanty. This means that the point at which a particular kingdom first appeared is often vague. Sorry, but this means that the question cannot be answered with certitude. For example : we cannot say whether bacteria or archaeans arose first. Intuitively, we would think that the order was similar to what you stated 3 posts back. However, we could easily be wrong.

iNow Lots of bibliographies are in alphabetical order. Easy to cut and paste. If he/she had read all of them, that would make an expert. Would he/she simply say "personally, I don't find any of this convincing...."????? Someone who had gone to that trouble would have really detailed opinions to offer.

iNow You don't think Truebeliever actually read those references, do you? He, she or it is just having us on! No doubt copy/pasted the bibiliography from one paper as a joke.

Marriage is not an invention of government, whether for the good of the people or not. Marriage is a human instinct, demonstrated by the fact that it is a norm for all human societies. Whether government acted or not, we would have marriage. The question is whether government contributes anything positive to what is happening already. I doubt it. Governments tend to reflect the prejudices of the voters, and act to repress minorities, when the majority of the voters dislike said minorities. This is less apparent in the so-called free world, but still exists. I am not a liberalist, since I distrust extreme views. There is a balance between extreme liberalism and repression that should be socially optimal. However, the optimal balance point varies according to the issue. In marriage, I think moving the balance towards more freedom of choice is the way to go.

iNow The answer is both. This is not the way it should be. Marriage at its root is simply an agreement between two people to be together and to adhere to certain standards, such as love, fidelity, or whatever the agreement may be. It is based on human instinct, and has been a part of human culture since before we were toughing it out with the neanderthals to see who would be top dog. Government should stay out of it. Such agreements are intensely personal, and are set up to meet individual and cultural needs. Even property rights between married couples - whatever their nature - should be a result of the agreement set up between them, and not be something foisted upon them by the totalitarianism of busybody government. It is not difficult to write up a contract. However, governments are set up by power hungry people - otherwise known as politicians - who like to control people's lives. Hence the legal framework of marriage. If first cousins want to marry, that should be their personal choice. If a same sex couple wants to marry, ditto. Placing legal limitations is simply power mad politicians exercising their ability to be tyrants.

As I have said before, it is probable that evolution by natural selection, while still going on, will become less important over the next few centuries, since we are gaining the power to modify ourselves genetically. Human gene insertion, deletion and selection will become the dominant factor in human genetic change in the future.

In fact, the original post got it wrong by 180 degrees. Modern medicine is a selective advantage in evolutionary terms, and makes Homo sapiens fitter, stronger, and more likely to survive. We are in the difficult position of shifting members of our species wholesale around the globe. Every time a person from one continent goes to another, they are potentially introducing a new disease that can wipe out millions. AIDS from Africa is the classic example, but other examples include smallpox delivered to America, plague from Asia to Europe, and measles to New Zealand. Dozens of such examples exist. Humanity would be at great risk of a massive depopulation due to introduced diseases without the benefits of modern medicine. The fact that our species continues to grow in numbers is a good indication of how effective it is at increasing our evolutionary fitness, in spite of continually introducing new diseases from other continents.

Re extinctions. The current era is often referred to as the sixth great extinction event, and it is true that species loss to extinction is running at a very high rate. However, all five previous great extinction events have been followed by a massive speciation event, with new species coming into being at a much faster rate than 'normal'. It is reasonable to assume this is happening now, also. However, while an extinction can occur within a year, or a few years, a new species will take a much longer time to come into being. The fastest I am aware of is a new Lake Victoria cichlid fish that appeared over a 100 year period. Thus, we will not see new species appear one by one as we observe with extinctions. Instead, literally millions of new species will be slowly happening simultaneously. New species appear to occupy ecological niches that are vacant. This happens when one species goes extinct and vacates the niche. However, it will also happen when a new niche appears that was not there before. eg. a volcano raises an island from the sea, providing new opportunities for life. Humans are creating new niches at a fantastic rate. There are a massive number of new opportunities for life to exploit in human created structures, and human created changes to local ecologies. I conclude that there is a massive speciation event happening right now - just too slowly for us to observe. I predict that we will see long term genetic changes in many existing species once our technology permits it - probably within 50 years. Since many new niches now exist, it is logical that the number of new species slowly coming into being will outnumber the number going extinct. It may take hundreds or thousands of years, though, before these new species can be identified as such.

DJ Experience would suggest otherwise. First cousin marriage is legal in many countries, including Britain. Charles Darwin married his first cousin. To the best of my knowledge, these marriages have not had any deleterious effect, such as you suggest.

John I probably should have said "irrational emotional hangups." The victims of pedophiles have all sorts of emotional trauma, but I do not think it could be called irrational. The emotional damage from pedophile abuse is very real.

If we look at this issue as scientists and forget emotional hang ups, then it appears that the only objectively real issue affecting cousin marriage is the genetic health of offspring. Since the data shows that any harm is small, and no more than from older women having babies, then there appears to be no objective and scientifically valid reason to ban such marriages.

Another reason we should include viruses as 'life' is that they probably evolved from more complex forms that met all the criteria iNow posted - metabolism etc. In fact, all life on Earth descended from early forms 3 to 4 billion years ago, and so we should expect all life to have the sophistication that comes from billions of years of evolution. Viruses appear to be more complex than early researchers thought. For example : a recent discovery is a 'motor' used by one virus at least to help it penetrate a host cell. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081229200748.htm A virus such as HIV contains a number of different proteins with different functions. They are definitely not as simple and 'primitive' as some people think. And as I said, the dependence on a host is not sufficient reason to exclude them as 'life' since there are many more complex life forms that are just as dependent on a host, including using host enzymes in their own metabolism.

Recent studies have shown that the probability of a defective child produced in a first cousin marriage is no more than the odds of a defective child in a marriage in which the mother is 40 years old plus. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/cousinmarriage.html If it is acceptable to ban first cousin marriages, then it is equally acceptable to stop any woman of 40 years or more from having children. In other words - it is not acceptable to ban first cousin marriages,

I have seen and browsed enough articles by neuro-scientists and psychologists to realise that even the experts do not know what the word 'conscious' really means. In other words, it is a question we cannot answer because we lack a clear definition of the parameter being measured.

The other problem with adding complex metabolic processes as a criterion for any definition is that it automatically excludes the first life on Earth. I suspect that the first 'living' thing was no more than a self replicating molecule surviving within the primeval soup, and using the molecules around it to build more of itself. Any concept of metabolism will immediately exclude this as 'life'. Yet this first self replicating molecule would be the ancestor of all modern living things. I stand by my three criteria. 1. Based on organic chemistry. 2. Reproduces. 3. Evolves. These criteria include the first life on Earth, even the very simple, includes viruses, and includes all other life on Earth, and excludes fires and computer programs, and anything else that is not living. If you cannot stand the idea of simple life and viruses being included, you modify criterion 1 to 'based on a complex system of organic chemistry.'

To Pet As I understand it, the Rossi jet pack required he be launched from an airoplane at altitude. The one I mentioned takes off and lands vertically, and can hover. And yes, I have used a hang glider. Probably not practical as a biological, permanently grafted system, since the wings are so big. But as a hobby, hanging beneath the wing, and gliding, almost as much fun as sex!

iNow All four of those criteria are shown by a forest fire. Yet a forest fire can hardly be called life. The forest fire exhibits metabolism because it breaths, liberates energy, excretes waste etc. Responds to stimuli by flaring up with more fuel, or driving before the wind. Grows whenever fuel is available. Reproduces by budding off new fires. This makes those criteria invalid as a definition of life. Any valid definition will exclude non life such as fires, and computer programs.