thewanderingjack

Not sure what that means, but I'm agnostic, so, while I may play devil's advocate, I don't promote religion, in fact, as someone who was raised catholic, spent a lot of time at christian services, and have been associated with some of the other major religions, I sincerely feel that, religion/spirituality being neither here nor there, the religious institutions are the major problem with that entire area of human life. Mainly I have what might be called an obsession with veracity. I don't believe science to be absolutely true, but love it for being a search for some form of truth, generally, the form of truth that humans can share in common, and thus can use to best deal with the world around us. I think the saddest thing is how science's attempts at truth are corrupted by many flaws in humans, but even more so, how it often never translates into the "real" world, as in, the things that are taught in schools as science, reported in news (even science journals) and other media, and they way that, in that context, a great many things are portrayed as some sort of absolute truth. i'm afraid that in those respects, I often find myself seeing "science" and "religion" as highly analogous. Personally, I feel that the closest thing I can get to truth is experiential. What I perceive directly through my own senses is what's most true to me. Even so, believing that my perception is built on a) physical processes both outside and inside my body and b) ideas and beliefs that are a part of me because of my physical make up as a human being and cultural upbringing (general culture, family culture, personal culture), as well as many other factors, I chose to believe that my truth is subject to change, and needs to be constantly questioned as much as possible.

Hello, I'm Jack, brand spanking new here, and I seem to have navigated my little canoe of reason through the murky sea of science and come out on philosophy... should I be worried?

Thank you very much hypervalent_iodine, found the paper right off, and it answered some questions (raised a lot more). As you suggest, this seems more in line with evolutionary adaptation, not much different from a lot of research that's gone into developing organisms that feed on pollutants, except that this doesn't seem as effective so far. Anyone have info on any (even vaguely) similar studies?