lucaspa

It happens to me, too. It seems to be a phenomenon called "closed-eye visualization". However, the only real discussion of it I can find is a Wikipedia article without references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination We need to do more looking.

Because you can falsify the second but not the first. Look, I'm going to take a different tack here in looking at Dawkins and the book. My position is that The God Delusion is very bad science. Dawkins misuses and misrepresents science. And that is my stance with your post. In science, we are tolerant of hypotheses that are not falsified. We mustrespect them and the possibility that they are true unless and until we can show that they are false. If we don't, then we stifle scientific progress and science itself. Dawkins (and hopefully everyone here) knows there is no peer-reviewed scientific paper showing the Judeo-Christian deity in particular or deity in general to be false. That Dawkins chooses to believe that deity in any form does not exist is fine. For him to try to tell us that this is a conclusion of science is wrong. When we read creationist literature we are very critical when they try to portray belief in the existence of deity as a conclusion of science. Rightly so. However, we also must apply that same high level of critical scrutiny when we read literature that portrays belief that deity does not exist is a conclusion of science. If not, then we are not acting as scientists but doing the same thing creationists are doing: misusing science to force our particular beliefs down other people's throats. I don't know whether this is true of YT, but many theists claim to have personal relationship with deity. Benefits they get out of that relationship are advice and assistance with their life that are not available to people without such experiences or relationships: "Therefore, before proceeding further, we shall give the floor temporarily to those who claim they have experiential evidence of God, and allow them to clarify what they mean by such evidence. ... However, when it comes to the nature of experience of the presence of God, there is an astounding degree of consensus. The following statements, in order to keep us as close to the source as possible, come not from the past but from our contemporaries, from persons with whom I have spoken directly. They are, however, echoed throughout the history and literature of religion. ... "The testimony is of God's leadership being requested and and received at turning points where human foresight and knowledge were inadequate, and of God's leadership turning out to be exactly on target, though perhaps not in the direction one would have preferred. ... God has stopped some persons dead, when they did not want to be stopped, on the brink of serious mistakes. God has changes some in ways human beings can't change themselves even with allthe help of psychotherapy. God has made it possible for them to love the unlovable, forgive the unforgiveable. ... Has all this been 'spritual' help? Not according to these witnesses. God is a powerful and active God, interveining wherever, whenever, and through whatever avenue he pleases. The phrase 'the insidiousness of God' comes from a woman Episcopal priest. God's intervention is not always kind, gentle, or pleasurable. He refuses to play by human rules or indulge our desire to plan ahead. ... God does not always come at our coalling, give us what we want, or even shield us from terrible pain or grief ... but God's forgiveness and love know no limits whatsoever. "Some direct quotes: 'My relationship with God has been by far and away the most demanding relationship in my life./ 'The Lord has been my strongest support, but also my most frustrating opponent.' 'If I didn't absolutely know this is the only game in town, I'd sure as hell get out of it!' ''The best evidence isn't some 'wonder' or 'miracle', and it certainly isn't success, happiness, or the peace of having my prayers answered in ways which suit me. It's the extraordinary, topsy-turvy, interesting course my life has taken since I've engaged in this -- once begun, virtually inescapable -- dialogue with God." Kitty Ferguson's The Fire in the Equations, pp 248- 251. Now, if you have not had such experience -- and all your posts indicate you have not -- then you are going to doubt the accuracy of these experiences. That's understandable. You are going to say that these experiences could be caused by something else. Perhaps. Although you are not going to be able to demonstrate this is the case. I put this up not to convince you to be a theist, but to answer your question: what does faith give that can't be obtained anywhere else? The answer is: leadership and help. Can people get by without this leadership and help? Yes. Many do. You do.

As Skeptic said, they reconstructed the virus. Also, what the poster is ignoring is that the ERV's are not just between chimps and humans, but there is a nested hierarchy of nested ERV's in all the great apes. We share more with chimps than we do with gorillas. And then we have some unique ones not in any of the other apes. Here's one place where the entire ERV hierarchy is laid out: http://www.christianforums.com/t96639 You also have to remember that the part of the virus integrated not only varies from virus to virus, but from infection to infection in the same virus. So, for all chimps or all humans to have an ERV, it means that they all descended from a common ancestor that had the ERV -- evolution.

The first known feathers are very sparse on the body -- not enough for thermal protection. 6 M Nowell First came feathers. Natural History 107: 33, Sept. 1998 Summary of recent discoveries in China. Sinosauropteryx did not have true feathers; intermediates between scales and feathers. There seems to have been 2 exaptations of feathers: 1 from mating display to thermal and one from thermal to flight. Go back and look at my earlier post. The transition may have been from runners to flight. There is disagreement about how well Archeopteryx could fly. However, it does appear that it did fly and not glide. They are functional for sexual selection. And that benefits differential reproductive success: the individuals with the best mating displays get mates.

As PhD stated, there is considerable data that insect wings evolved as thermoregulators: JG Kingsolver and MAR Koehl "Aerodynamics, thermoregulation, and the evolution of insect wings: differential scaling and evolutionary change", Evolution, 1985. Now, feathers first arose as modified scales for mating displays and then were exapted for insulation. That may be what the prof was trying to say. For bird wings, there are 2 theories. You stated one: the forelimbs were used for gliding. However, recently a new theory has been advanced that wings are an exaptation from running. A study done on hatchlings with feathers but without flight feather showed that flapping a forelimb enables the bird to run up inclines that it would normally not be able to do. In fact, at its best, the "wing" and flapping will allow the bird to run up a 100° slope! More than vertical! So, since birds evolved from small theropod dinos, it is easy to infer a situation where the feathered dino either uses the wing to chase prey up vertical surfaces (trees) and/or runs away up vertical surfaces to get to a refuge away from even bigger predators. At the point where the "wings" are best for running up those vertical surfaces, they are also just at the point where they start to lift the animal off the ground. Voila! Instant flight. 3. Kenneth P.Dial, Wing-Assisted Incline Running and the Evolution of Flight. Science, 299: 402-405, Jan 17, 2003.

It is very morally relevant! As animals, we can't apply the moral dictum "thou shalt not kill" to every species. We'd starve. So would every other animal on the planet, because all animal species kill plants (at least). Ethics/morals only apply within a species and to any other species we choose to apply them to. There is no moral obligation to extend morals applied to our species to other species. Let's do the reverse. To a preying mantis, it is moral for the female to bite the head off the male during mating. If species membership is not morally relevant, that makes it moral for female humans to bite the heads off human males during mating. Yet I'm sure that you would find that morally unacceptable. Actually, they are using the definition very close to the one I was getting at with my examples: " "It governs how you decide what behaviors to engage in, how you make decisions, how you decide what to pay attention to, what to do with your life," Miller said. "We do not know how, or even whether, prefrontal cortex neurons can encode abstract rules," the authors write. "Virtually nothing is known about how these abstractions are stored in the brain." That is, ideas that are not directly associated with concrete objects. However, I notice their "rules" are directly connected to concrete objects -- what is a match and what isn't. So now we are into discussing levels of abstract thought. Can a monkey abstract out the idea of "sitting" or "redness"? Thank you for providing some data. Yes, ultimately, a value system is based on some statement about what is "good" that you might not be able to prove. However, ultimately, science is based on some statements we can't prove, either. My objection is that ethics and a "value system" cannot be derived from science. Once we get into an ethics system and what individual/species has more or less "value", we are not in science anymore, Dorothy. I actually like these 2 paragraphs a lot: "There is a great disparity among scientists and the general populace concerning non-human intelligence. There are those who want to find and communicate with another intelligent species, almost to the point of over-interpreting data in favor of this hypothesis. There are also those who would only consider another intelligent species to be a technologically competent, tool-using, perhaps even humanoid race. In their extreme, they often put forth criterion of intelligence that would only include humans, often by definition. They tend to explain away most data that points towards other intelligences with complex theories that rely on Occam's Razor 2. The two most common traits that most skeptical scientists rely on are language and technology (Asimov 1990). These two are seen as the paramount of what sets us apart from other animals. However, by using exactly what sets us apart from other animals as our criterion for intelligence is defining intelligence as human intelligence. Within this framework it is near impossible to find any other species that fulfills our criterion. These two factors are definitely indicators of intelligence, but are not the defining characteristics. Expressing intelligence through technology and language are as much factors of general vocal and manipulative abilities as they are intelligence. " 1. I have been saying much the same thing about mistakenly equating intelligence with technology. 2. It shows that you can't use Ockham's Razor to evaluate theories. Instead, it is often misused to come to conclusions you choose for other reasons. The article also stresses 1. The difference in human intelligence (and even abstract thought) is a matter of degree. As I said, "we are talking about levels of abstract thought". 2. How we assess intelligence depends on our ability to communicate with the other species. That extrapolation is problematic. Since there are different levels, it is very possible that further abilities are not available. And yes, some humans can grasp addition but not multiplication. Just like most humans can get basic calculus but are not up to the math used in String Theory.

It's unique. That combination of alleles (unless it is a twin) is not repeated. Those of us arguing against a "special" place for humans are not saying humans are not unique. We are saying that every species is unique in some way. Thus, being "unique" is not enough to make humans "special" compared to every other species. Then you aren't using it the way scientists are using the term. When anthropologists state that humans have abstract thought but other species do not, that is what they mean. Of course you can get other species to have abstract thought if you change the definition, but that ducks the issue. Please provide data on what you consider "abstract" thought in chimps.

In general, traits are not absolutely "good" or "bad". BTW, we are speaking of "alleles". In situations of a very high fat diet, haemophilia would indeed be a "good" trait because it would protect the individual from internal blood clots that cause pulmonary embolism or stroke. In Huntington's, in many individuals the symptoms do not manifest until after the individual has children. Thus, from the standpoint of natural selection, Huntington's is neutral. H. sapiens ceases to be H. sapiens when an individual of the new species is not fully interfertile with H. sapiens. Basic biological species concept. Now, you said "humanity" and "human". Those are not fully biological terms. They have ethical/legal connotations to them. As we have noted in other threads, anthropologists call any species within the genus Homo to be "human". Chimps, of course, are not in that genus. However, sometime in the near future we are going to have to face sapient AI programs and possibly sapient species that are not Homo. We will have to decide whether ethically/legally we consider them "human" and to be treated as we treat other members of H. sapiens. Do you have data on abstract communication with chimps? That is, discussing things like geometry, calculus, philosophy, etc. I haven't seen that data.

You are working on the RNA World hypthesis of abiogenesis. There are alternatives. there are some problems with your system and I'll give you an alternative later. As you noted, natural selection can work on the first replicators. For the ribozymes to continue to exist, they must be composed of replicators or replicators must give rise to them. Thus, natural selection is working. The problem is your premise that ribozymes can not be replicators. In order for RNA to replicate, it must be a ribozyme. IOW, it must catalyze it's own replication. Ribozymes are separate from ribosomes. A ribozyme is any RNA that acts also as an enzyme. The smallest is 3 nucleotides long and cleaves U-U bonds. A ribozyme is a system of RNA molecules -- some structural and some ribozymes -- that make proteins from amino acids. And yes, you can have functional ribosomes composed only of RNA. Ribosomes do not have to arise independently of RNA replication. The replicators could easily have 2 capabilities: replicate themselves and be able to function in a ribosome. Also, you don't need to switch to DNA to get directed protein synthesis. RNA can act in the place of DNA. And you would already have to have RNA transcriptase in order to have RNA replication. So, let's give you an alternative route to modern cells: 1. Formation of amino acids from primordial precursors (water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane, oxygen, hydrogen, etc.) [M-U experiments and Miller and Orgel]. 2. Formation of proteinoids by polymerization of sets of amino acids. [Fox and others]. 3. Formation of microspheres by contact of proteinoids with water [Fox and others]. 4. Synthesis of RNA within the microspheres [Fox] 5. Replication of RNA. [Orgel] 6. Development of the genetic code. The first 5 steps have been done in the lab. I will be happy to provide a full set of references if you are interested. Fox and others have already shown that some proteins have particular affinity to particular nucleotide sequences. This would be the start of the genetic code. Notice that natural selection begins at step 3.

That isn't how it works. Rather, the brain generates energy because there are tasks that need doing. Notice that animals that we do not consider "intelligent" also have brains that generate energy, but they don't generate as much. In evolution, generating energy has a cost. Individual animals that generate energy for no reason -- which your scenario would entail happening first -- have costs that individuals that do not generate the energy don't. Therefore, the individuals that do not generate the energy have less cost and are at a selective advantage. Before you posit "simple ways" in public, you need to check with the data. Synapses are not the basic unit of memory storage. some brids have impressive cognitive skills, particularly crows and ravens. However, these are not the birds with the best eyesight. There is a reason why "bird-brained" is in the lexicon denoting non-intelligent behavior. Dolphins and other cetaceans are considered to be quite intelligent (whatever that word precisely means) but do not have good eyesight. Yes, they have sonar, but that is not as good as eyesight. I strongly suggest a book called The Origin and Evolution of Intelligence edited by Schliebel and Schopf. It's a small book but it gives an introduction to a very large field of study.

Endosymbiosis does not explain the existence of a nucleus -- eukaryotes have and prokaryotes do not -- nor the existence if introns in eukaryotes and their absence in prokaryotes. It only explains the origin of 2 organelles and the ability to move. http://www.geocities.com/jjmohn/endosymbiosis.htm And the theory is not the way you stated. Instead, there is an acknowledged lack of data on the origin of eukaryotes if prokaryotes are thought to have evolved first. However, people are working on it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16615090 W. Martin and M. Müller, Nature 392, 37 (1998). A rival theory is that cells started out as eukaryotes with nuclei and prokaryotes are derived from them. This has support for protocells - the only experimentally demonstrated way to get cells from non-living chemicals. The internal structure of protocells is analogous to an onion -- there are a series of membranes of decreasing size. The later evolution of the DNA/RNA and directed protein synthesis would then have the DNA within one of the layers, which later became the nucleus. Prokaryotes would then be a simplified version of eukaryotes.

And ignore personal experience. But if you mean "factual" = scientific data, then yes, there is no scientific data to say whether deity exists and what its nature may be. Science is just as agnostic toward Zeus, Markduk, Vishnu etc. as it is toward Yahweh. Theists in general have falsified the idea of #2. They are not willing to accept a being that is part of the universe as deity. Originally Yahweh could have fit in #2. The Hebrews knew Yahweh as the Creator of Israel long before they thought of Yahweh as Creator of the universe and everything in it. In terms of science, this is true. Science is handicapped in considering the existence and nature of deity. First, science is handicapped by Methodological Materialism and second by its insistence on accepting only intersubjective evidence. So science is not the appropriate discipline to consider these questions. All science can do is test whether versions of deity are consistent with what we know of the physical universe. For instance, science will tell us that Thor striking his hammer is not the cause of thunder. Most versions of deity do not require omnipotence. Judeo-Christianity does not. All deity has to be is powerful enough to accomplish the activities attributed to it. Many theists have extrapolated being very powerful, very knowing, and very present to the omni's. The question theists would ask is: how powerful, knowing, and present does an entity have to be in order to qualify as deity? This is where skeptics start abusing science. Science proves the non-existence of entities all the time. That's what falsification is all about! Wouldn't you say that science has proven the non-existence of a flat earth? How about a solar system with earth at the center? Proved the nonexistence of that, right? Or the nonexistence of specially created species. Another abuse of science. Science is not A method. While grade schoolers are taught the "scientific method", it is more properly called the "hypothetico-deductive method". The problem with calling science "a method" is that science uses many methods -- not all of science uses the hypothetico-deductive. Also, other disciplines that are non-science use the hypothetico-deductive method. An irony here is that the Documentary Hypothesis and Trinity are both products of the hypothetico-deductive method. Doesn't matter. Once an idea is uttered, it takes on an independent existence. The idea is no longer tied to the people who advocate it and can be evaluated on its own. Also, you are ignoring a tenet of the "scientific method" here: hypotheses have consequences (claims). Not the scientist working on the hypothesis, but the hypothesis itself.

As Ecoli suggests, evolution is about populations, so technically all contemporary species seem to have arisen from a common ancestral population. Doesn't mean there weren't other species around at that time, just that they did not give rise to the rest of species. However, as it turns out, it is impossible to identify that ancestral population. Unicellular organisms share genes not only be ancestor-descent, but by a process called "lateral gene transfer". Bacteria and archea, especially, have DNA not only in their chromosome but also in plasmids -- independent stretches of DNA that contain regions that code for proteins and RNA used in ribosomes. Quite unrelated bacteria and archaea can exchange plasmids and then later incorporate the plasmid into their chromosome -- or take part of the chromosome and make it a plasmid. So, since genes are shared -- via plasmids and other mechanisms -- between unrelated bacterial, archaea, and eukaryotic cells, it becomes very difficult (probably impossible) to trace the phylogenetic tree back to the original common ancestor. All those early species swapped genes with one another.

How do you mean "movement"? Are you talking about movement of the entire organism? Part of it? You seem to, since you dismiss the action potential itself as being a "response". Yet the action potential is a very specific response to a very specific set of stimuli. Only a very small set of stimuli elicit an action potential. You seem to want that action potential to connect to a muscle so that some part of the organisms "moves" in space. That, of course, requires a multicellular organism. So how would you say that a unicellular organism was alive? Would you require the entire organism to move in space to a new location? How about just adjust it's cellular shape? How about a pancreas cell secreting more insulin in response to an increased extracellular concentration of insulin? No "movement" of the pancreatic cell or change in cell shape, but how could you deny that this is a response to a stimulus? All in all, I think you are being too restrictive with your criteria of movement for "response to stimuli". IOW, you are eliminating too many recognized and accepted responses to stimuli. It's not. A "nervous system" is defined to require specialized cells to to these tasks. What the amoeba has isn't even a "precursor" to a nervous system because the amoeba is unicellular. You are trying to force your ideas on to nature instead of looking at nature and changing your ideas accordingly. What the amoeba has is "response to stimuli". Having proteins in the cell membrane that change shape when bound by the ligand. These cell surface receptors are attached to actin. When the receptor changes shape, this pulls on the actin molecules which in turn pull on the other end of the actin, causing the amoeba to change shape and move. "Nervous system" is used to describe a situation where cells transmit signals from one cell to another by depolarizing the neural cell. Here is amoeba movement: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=cooper.section.1790#1804 Scroll down the page until you get to "Cell Crawling".

That's true. In the earliest stories -- Job -- Satan is just the "prosecutor" of humans and is a good betting buddy of Yahweh. It is Satan's job, as prosecutor, to bring human misconduct to the attention of Yahweh. Satan undergoes a gradual transformation in the OT to a more adversarial position. When David institutes a census, for instance, his political opponents (who don't want the king to know where everyone is so he can tax them) says that Satan made him do this "evil" thing. The Christian concept of Satan came from the Essenes during the intertestatment period. Now, does this indicate that the concept of Satan is made up or does it indicate a better understanding of the true nature of Satan? Certainly no way to decide that by science! Neither one of these is "misleading" in the way you are using. In the case of Abraham Yahweh was testing Abraham's obedience. In the case of Moses, Yahweh is demonstrating his power by communicating thru a person that others make fun of. 1. The thread started out pointing out theological problems with Special Creation/ID. The thread never had anything to do with genetics. 2. How do you know it's a totally fictional account? Science will tell you that some interpretations of the text are incorrect, but I haven't seen anything in science that says a) that deity is fictional, b) that deity created is fictional, c) that Yahweh's intervention in history as depicted in th Bible is fictional. Perhaps you could cite the papers for us. Look, it's fine for you to believe the accounts are fictional. It's quite another to state them as "fact".

Nice sarcasm. Yes, you can make up the Expelled arguments for any situation where one theory has been overwhelmingly supported and all the others falsified. You can do the same arguments for heliocentrism vs geocentrism. Look at the "suppression" of the geocentric point of view in academia!

Apples and oranges. Or a strawman. In looking at chromosomes, you can determine the similarity of chromosomes by banding patterns. People can identify merged chromosomes, translocations, fusions, truncations, and other changes to a chromosome by looking at the banding patterns. It's all well-documented in the scientific literature dealing with issues other than the chimp-human genome. And that's what we are talking about here: chromosome fusion.

Please define "expanded technology". Humans have only been in extended "non-kin" social cooperation for at most 10,000 years. Far too short a time for it to have affected our biological evolution and thus our physical traits. Therefore none of the list can be attributed to this. Your parentheses negates your statement about "unique". As I said, every species can claim to be unique. I don't think you realize the implications of being able to make tools to make tools. Many species make tools. To make that additional step, however, is to open a whole new realm of technology. This small change is the basis of the magnitude of our technology. Please name them. I can't come up with any. Sorry, but the first documented use of tools is by H. habilis -- who lived in small family groups. No villages. By the time larger groups and villages were forming, humans were H. sapiens with our modern brains. Kin groups also protect pregnant mothers and vulnerable young. You don't need a larger group than that. Cooperative species like wolves and dolphins most certainly have. Humans solved it genetically by evolving a brain module to detect cheating. It is one of the few modules that is constant from culture to culture that evolutionary psychology has found. Bipedalism doesn't free up hands for birds, so that is an apples and oranges comparison. Australopithecines were only partly bipedal. Later hominids (H. habilis and H. erectus) were more fully bipedal. Therefore they could occupy that niche better than the Australopithecines that were their ancestors. Maybe the production, but the technology itself is only partly, at most, related to social cooperation. Chimps have social cooperation, but they don't have the technology, do they? It is related to our ability to make tools to make tools. Lots of animal behavior is unique. This is an empty statement. Why do you think it is the correct one? Have you tried to falsify it? Let's try this. Bingham states (according to wikipedia) that it was the ability to throw, thus threatening from a distance. But other primate species throw. Chimps and baboons as just two examples. So why didn't they evolve like humans? Also, if you are living in a small group with a cheater, is throwing really going to help? The person isn't at a distance -- he/she is right next to you! What's more, they can throw back! So we have two pieces of observations that contradict the theory. I see Bingham has stated the theory in two papers. Has he ever studied the fossils of the upper arms to see if there are any specific adaptations in humans that allow for throwing? That isn't the scientific way to do it. Promoting it to students who don't have the expertise to challenge the theory is a dishonest way to go about it. What Bingham needs to do is convince anthropologists. If he can't do that, then the theory isn't worth anything and what he is doing is the equivalent of creationist/IDers like William Dembski and Michael Behe who try to bamboozle non-scientists about how ID is correct. No, the easiest way to do it is to threaten with overwhelming numbers. Not really. Especially if the individuals are unarmed. The thrown stone back can hurt, but an outnumbered individual not trained in hand-to-hand combat is going to be quickly subdued by the group. Doesn't work that way. You also forget the cheater is going to take damage! Therefore it is much more likely that the cheater is going to flee! Look at predators faced with a troop of chimps or baboons. Yes, the physically fit predator is going to deal a great deal of damage to the members of the troop, but it is the predator that runs away, not the troop. Why? Because the predator knows that he will take damage. And a damaged lone predator (or cheater) isn't going to be able to get food. Whereas the undamaged members of the group can help the damaged one until they heal. That assumes the cheater will fight. But that isn't the case. The group will bluff the individual and not have to fight. Ecoli, I went and looked up "Lanchester's Law" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_Square_Law -- since it is the basis of the idea of "throwing". Unfortunately, from the description, the "law" doesn't apply here. "Among these are what is known as Lanchester's Linear Law (for ancient combat) and Lanchester's Square Law (for modern combat with long-range weapons such as firearms)." Neither of these is the situation we are describing. "In ancient combat, between phalanxes of men with spears, say, one man could only ever fight exactly one other man at a time. If each man kills, and is killed by, exactly one other, then the number of men remaining at the end of the battle is simply the difference between the larger army and the smaller, as you might expect (assuming identical weapons)." But we aren't talking about one on one here, are we? No, we are talking about many on one. This is why the predator won't take on a herd but seeks to isolate just one prey and why troops of chimps or baboons are able to deter predators. And it's why our hominid ancestors would have been able to eject cheaters without having the ability to throw. I'm sorry to say, but (as long as Wikipedia is accurate) Bingham's theory is based on a faulty premise. No wonder it hasn't been accepted.

Got it in one!

Who does the rating? How do you vette them to know they are qualified to rate the paper?

Very possibly. As you noted, we determine intelligence by 3 criteria: 1. Communication 2. Technology 3. Behavior. Any species that cannot use tools to make technology is at a disadvantage. If we can't communicate with that species (I'm thinking about dolphins and whales which may have language but we haven't deciphered it), then that species is also at a disadvantage as we try to determine the intelligence. And no, there is no absolute scale of intelligence.

Stevo, we are back to "necessary" and "sufficient". Unless you are at absolute zero, "something" is always moving. Atoms vibrate, molecules move in brownian motion, etc. So saying "something move" doesn't help you. The water in a stream moves; is the stream alive? If you change the gradient, the water doesn't move as fast. Is that "response to stimuli"? It involves motion. Yes, in a response, something must move. But that, by itself, won't give you life. In an action potential, the organism does not move. Instead, there is movement in the proteins making up the cell membrane such that Na ions move into the cell and K ions move out. Which means the amoeba does not have "some sort of nervous system". You can't use the phrase to mean "anything that detects stimulus". "Nervous system" means specialized cells -- neurons. Start here: http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/ Then you are going to have to move to old-fashioned hardcopy.

Nearly all biologists accept endosymbiosis as the explanation for mitochondria and chloroplasts in eukaryotic cells. The objections come when some people try to extend the theory 1) to other organelles (such as the Golgi or lysosomes) 2) to say that most of evolution resulted from endosymbiosis.

That's deism, not theism. The reason Judeo-Christians won't accept that, of course, is they have accounts of where deity intervened in human history. That negates the "just sat back". Other theists won't accept it because they have personal experience of deity. That also negates the "just sat back". Now, if you reject the accounts and have never had personal experience of deity, then you can go with this.

We can argue whether atheism is a "religion" because atheism does not have liturgy or churches (but it does have dogma), but atheism is a faith. Apples and oranges. all these are scientific theories and are either accepted or rejected based on scientific data. Theism and atheism are faiths. Actually, it's atheism that can't defend itself with evidence. Theists present evidence and atheism says the evidence is invalid. Remind you of another debate? Such as evolutionists presenting data supporting evolution and creationists always trying to poke holes and rejecting the evidence? You don't have to "accept" someone's belief in deity as in also think that belief is an accurate reflection of ultimate reality. I think the point is rather that you must o accept that theism can be (altho it isn't always) a rational, reasoned belief based on evidence. (Notice I didn't say "scientific" evidence.) Just as I must accept that atheism can be (altho it isn't always) a rational, reasoned belief (also not based on scientific evidence). I'll leave it to you to figure out what evidence atheism has. Mosts atheists, I've found, haven't a clue.