lucaspa

I think you are going to need the courses in math and science. Even if you self-taught, any grad school is going to want to see some record that you did well. 1. You could go to the bookstore of the nearest college and simply buy the textbooks for the math and intro physics courses and start reading and especially doing the problems! 2. You could do some internet searching on online courses from various colleges. I think Univ. of Arizona has a comprehensive curriculum online. Eventually, you will have to enroll at a community college/4 year college. You need the interaction with teachers so that they can evaluate your work, and you, firsthand and write letters of recommendation for you. As a thought, you might want to look around and see if there are research assistant positions in the physics departments at your local college/observatory. The downside is that this is physics and not medicine or biological research. Historically, most physicists have done their best, most original, and most famous work by the time they are 30. After that it's mostly downhill as far as contributions to the cutting edge of physics is concerned. Medical, biomedical, chemical, and biological researchers continue to contribute right up to the day of their retirement and often beyond. However, physics seems to be different. At least historically. You could try to break that historical trend but you may have a difficult time convincing a physics graduate program admissions committee that admitting you would be a good investment of time and resources on their part.

Popestar, you can't raise your overall high school GPA very high. But what we are saying is: it doesn't matter. What matters is showing that there is a clean break between the bad grades and the good grades. It is important that your GPA for the last 1.5 years is > 3.0. Also, your community college GPA is completely separate from your high school GPA. You start from scratch. So you have an opportunity to have a VERY high GPA in community college and your 4 year college. And THAT GPA is going to be what medical schools look at. They are not going to look at your high school grades at all!

I said "electromagnetic fields". You do your literature search on PubMed, not SkepticsGuide. PubMed is where the medical literature is. Most of the research is on electrical currents and bone. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18040774?ordinalpos=6&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

1. You aren't going to have an open artery or vein large enough for them to crawl up. If you did, you would have bled to death long before. Any artery or vein that large, if it had been severed, would have been either clamped, sutured closed, or reattached by the surgeon before any maggots are turned loose in the wounds. 2. These are used only on chronic wounds, not acute ones. These are superficial at the skin. Thus there are no large arteries in the neighborhood for them to crawl up. 3. Maggots don't eat vascularized (with blood flow), living tissue. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3977/is_200303/ai_n9216510 http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/som/pathology/sherman/home_pg.htm

Not "well before". The length of term of human gestation is variable and is not set at 40 weeks. Yes, a baby can be born at 38 weeks and be fine. Anytime before then and the baby needs some form of life support, which gets more severe the shorter the time in the uterus. Thus the dependence is simply transferred from the mother to the neonatal intensive care unit. However, at every stage of building a car, the car is independent from the people putting it together. They can walk away from it, go home, have dinner, sleep, etc. and the car is fine. Not so with a human embryo: it is entirely dependent on mother and is never separate from mother. But at that point the question is trivial. What matters is the criteria to be a person. Once those criteria are set, it takes only the most elementary science of observation to determine whether a specific organism meets the criteria. That's the fun part of philosophy and deciding what is "alive". Yes, as a whole, a eunuch can't reproduce. Neither can a woman past menarch. Of course, they could reproduce at an earlier stage. So were they "alive" then and are not alive now? At the cellular level it's also not so clear cut. Not all the cells are able to reproduce. Fully differentiated cells such as skeletal myotubes, hypertrophic chondrocytes, and osteocytes can reproduce. That's why it really isn't a science question about deciding when a person is "alive" or what "Life" is according to the OP. If you try to pin down "life", there are all these exceptions and the problem becomes intractable. As a philosophical question it is even more intractable. Thru most of history "person" or "human life" was at birth, at the youngest. In the Middle Ages when infant mortality was so high, being a person didn't come until your 5th birthday, when you were past most of the childhood diseases and had a decent chance of surviving to adulthood. That's why people could play catch with babies -- they really weren't "people" yet and, if you dropped one, it was no big deal. The criteria of "alive" work best in going from non-life to life. Applied to what we call "living things" those criteria lead to some interesting paradoxes.

I suggest you do a literature search on "nanotechnology". That is the area of making molecular machines -- microbe size and smaller. and yes, this is what people in nanotechnology are imagining: having a set of "nannites" that will build things like houses or other complex structures.

Fred, the problem arises from that word "human". By that we don't mean "a member of the human species". Instead, we mean "a person in the ethical and legal sense; a member of the human community". This in turn is tied to the philosophical idea of identity. What makes something a unique individual? Think of a picture of you 10 years ago and now a picture of you taken today. Are those pictures of the same person? Why? Why not? Philosophers use the example of Theseus' boat. During the course of the story, the entire boat gets rebuilt (parts at a time) so that by the end of the story there is nothing of the original boat left. It's all been replaced. Is Theseus' boat the same boat before the rebuild? Why? Why not? And let me say that no one has been able to put forward an entirely satisfactory answer to that. So, when we look at human life, is a fertilized ovum you? Is a 5 day old blastocyst without any organs you? When in the course of embryonic development does an embryo become human in the ethical and legal sense? It's not an entirely valid analogy. Remember that the body is being put together according to the "blueprint" of the DNA. However, what about the mind? The thoughts and experiences that make you different from everyone else? Also, a building car is separate from every other entity. It exists separate from anything else. But a human embryo can't exist outside the mother's uterus. It's not independent. The "ready to drive" comes at birth, when the embryo is now a baby and does exist independently of the mother. Of course, what you are getting at is the root question of the abortion debate: when is an embryo a "person" due the rights and protections we give "human beings"? And that is a question that can't be answered by science because it isn't a science question. Now you are starting to display some of the philsophical parts. "Instantiation" is a philosophical term, not a biological or scientific one. Once again, when you say "Life", you don't mean life in the biological sense; you mean it in an ethical, legal (and philosophical sense). Science can't answer those types of questions. In biology, something is "alive" when it has all 4 of the following characteristics: metabolism, response to stimuli, growth, reproduction. Thus adult humans are alive by this definition. The cells in a 5 day old blastocyst are alive, but the blastocyst as a whole lacks the ability to reproduce, doesn't it? After all, no germ cells have formed by that time. Even after birth, humans cannot reproduce until the girls reach menarche and boys not only produce sperm but are able to have an erection and ejaculation.

And it is perceived very differently from human to human. Medicine has the "pain score" of 1 - 10 of how much pain a person is in. Given the same injury or chronic pain, different people say they have VERY different levels of pain. I've seen studies where the responses vary from 1 to 10! This discussion is about 2 things. Ostensibly it's about how much pain other species feel. BUT, the only way we can determine how much pain an individual feels is for them to communicate it to others. So we look at animal behavior and try to guess whether, and how much, pain they feel. Because the animal can't tell us. And the behavior can have other causes: fear, anger, defense, etc. I've seen rats react violently to being picked up and held if the person moves very quickly. The behavior is one that is very similar to a pain response. However, if a rat is used to a behavior, even one that should be painful, there is no behavioral response. For instance, I witnessed one experiment where the researcher would inject into the abdomen every day. He would just come in, grab the rats by the scruff of the neck and the rats would just hang there. Then he would jab the needle in the abdomen and make the injection. Still the rats would just hang there. No reaction at all. No squealing, squirming, avoidance, anything! Were they in pain? Logic says "yes" but the observational data says "no". This is complicated by a point made by SamCogar: our human perception of pain depends on circumstances. There is ample documentation of people in war who suffer horrendous trauma but don't feel any pain at the time. In other circumstances, even it is equally documented that minor injury can have a person screaming in agony. Now, the nerves must be conducting the pain signals, but some mechanism in the brain either interferes with the perception or augments the perception. So, back to the OP: "Is it possible that animals have evolved over time to be less sensitive to pain? " Possible, but not likely. Remember, we use animals as models for understanding the physiology of pain. That we can relate that research to alleviating human pain argues that the nerve response in animals is equivalent to humans. Also remember our own evolutionary history! For all but the last few decades of our history individuals suffered daily trauma and disease was much more common. WE should also have evolved to be just as "less sensitive" to pain as any other species. Why would human evolution in regard to pain be any different than any other mammalian species?

It works the same way in academia. In admission committee discussions they are often referred to as "late bloomers". During an interview the individual will be asked for the reason for the early bad grades. I remember a couple of years ago we interviewed a candidate for residency who had done really badly the first year of medical school -- nearly flunked out. Then he did really well his last 3 years. When we asked him about it, he replied "I'm from Montana and had never lived away from home. There I was in Hawaii with sun, the beach, and lots of girls in bikinis." We gave him a very high rank.

Vampares, you need to read the abstract more carefully. HIV can be separate from the sperm: "The researchers found macrophages and CD4 lymphocytes in most samples, indicating that HIV was present." It is the macrophages and lymphocytes (both are names for types of cells) that are in the pre-ejaculate. There are several types of lymphocytes. CD4 lymphocytes happen to be the type of lymphocyte most susceptible to HIV infection. As Mr Skeptic says, even if the person engages in sex but doesn't ejaculate, the partner is still at risk of getting HIV. The macrophages and CD 4 lymphocytes will have the HIV virus, even if the sperm does not. Since semen is also a filtrate of blood, semen is also going to have macrophages and CD4 lymphocytes. Also, HIV does not "integrate itself into the DNA". Viruses infect the cell and reside -- for the most part -- in the cytoplasm, not the nucleus. They coopt the cell's machinery for making proteins by substituting their messenger RNA in place of the cell's. So the ribosomes make virus proteins (including proteins to make DNA or RNA) instead of the cell's proteins. HIV invades only a few cell types. Mostly it attacks CD4 lymphocytes. It does NOT infect bone cells, muscle cells, heart cells, cartilage cells, red blood cells, platelets, sperm cells, ova, etc, etc, etc. Just cells of the immune system. http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/health_problems/infection/hiv.html http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/AIDS/HIV.html Finally, since HIV is an RNA virus, it can't integrate with host DNA. Because it is not DNA!

No, you haven't screwed up your future. Admissions committees for medical schools (and, yes, I've served on one) do not look at high school grades. They only look at college. What you have possibly missed is the ability to get into a top-ranked college directly out of high school. Buckle down and get really good grades during your junior year and first semester of senior year, do well on the SAT's (start studying now!), and write a good personal statement. Also go the extra mile with your teachers so they write you good letters of recommendation. Even if you don't get into a 4 year college, you aren't finished. Find the best community college around -- even if you have to move to go there -- and attend it. Get really good grades and then transfer to a 4 year college to finish up. We had several interviewees for orthopedic residency (and that is very competitive) that took the community college - 4 year college - medical school route. And, of course, once you are in medical school no one cares about your college grades. All that matters is how well you do in med school.

I can't emphasize this enough: go read the Scientific American article! It should be in your public library. If not, PM me and I'll send you a PDF copy of the article. The answers to all your questions are in the article. AFTER you read the article, if you don't understand parts of it and need clarification, then come back and ask your questions. The short answer to your question is: yes, we will be able to see them. It's difficult to explain these things. Think of being an ant on the earth. All you know is the 2 dimensions of the earth: length and width. Start walking in one direction. Eventually you will go "around" the earth and be back where you started. Does the earth have an "edge" for the ant? No. When we say "space" we mean the 3 dimensions of space (length, width, and height) and time (which is a dimension). We are so used to things happening in spacetime where we are that we have trouble thinking about the universe (all of spacetime) as a whole. What we can try to do for you is give analogies. The universe is like an ant on the earth. The expansion is like a balloon being blown up. But all those analogies are imperfect, because they all happen in spacetime and we get to look from "outside". In the case of the universe, there is no "outside" for anyone to look from.

I'm trying to get people to stop using Wiki as a source, since it is not referreed for accuracy. What you need to do is check the references to see if the article is accurate. If I track the reference, I get the following article. Notice the bold: 1: Contracept Technol Update. 1993 Oct;14(10):154-6. Researchers find no sperm in pre-ejaculate fluid. [No authors listed] PIP: A study in Boston, Massachusetts, and another study in New York City examined samples of pre ejaculate fluid from HIV seropositive and HIV seronegative men to determine whether HIV was or was not present in pre ejaculate fluid. The researchers found macrophages and CD4 lymphocytes in most samples, indicating that HIV was present. The more significant finding, however, was that most pre ejaculate samples did not contain any sperm and those that did had only small clumps of a very small amount of sperm which seemed to be immobile. A larger study is needed to verify these results. If these results are confirmed, they may dispel the myth that pre ejaculate fluid contains sperm. An ongoing WHO/USAID study shows that the pregnancy rate caused by men with 3 million sperm/ml/ejaculation is very low; fertility clinics consider men with a sperm count of no more than 5 million/ml to be infertile, particularly if is there is low motility. The average ejaculation has about 100 million sperm/ml, but about 10 million sperm pass through the cervical mucus, about 1 million make it to the top of the uterine tract, and just about 100,000 sperm reach the fallopian tubes. Thus, only a couple of sperm, assuming motility, would reach the fallopian tubes in the case of the pre ejaculate samples with some sperm, which tended to be immobile (sperm levels only in the 1000s). Thus, the probability of pregnancy is very low if pre-ejaculate fluid enters the vagina. I note that the recommended larger follow-up study has never been done. The failure rate of "withdrawal" as a birth control method seems to lie in that the penis is not fully withdrawn before ejaculation or that ejaculation occurs on the vulva (entrance to the vagina). In either case, the sperm in the ejaculate can then travel to the fallopian tubes for conception.

There is a misconception here: We are NOT "divided from the original reproductive cells of our ancestors". We are descended from our ancestors but we are not directly divided from the original reproductive cells. You started with a false premise and then reached a false conclusion. The reproductive cells are a specialized type of cell in our body. They are descended from "normal" somatic cells and undergo meiosis, not "mitosis". In other words, the progenitor reproductive cell does not "divide", but rather separates the chromosomes so that the two cells have only half the complement of DNA. During reproduction, two of these cells (one from each parent) combine to make a new individual. That new individual has a unique and new genome of DNA - half from each parent. But since each chromosome of each parent could split, that makes a huge number of combinations. Let's try to make this simple: just 1 chromosome per parent. Remember, each chromosome has 2 chains of DNA (the double helix). Call them A and B. Mom also has 2 chains, call them 1 and 2. So Dad makes sperm with A and sperm with B. Mom makes eggs with 1 and eggs with 2. So, we can have the following combinations: Sperm A and egg 1 for A1 Sperm A and egg 2 for A2 Sperm B and egg 1 for B1 Sperm B and egg 2 for B2 Four possible individuals with just 1 chromosome. It is 2^2n with n = the nubmer of chromosomes. Now, just apply the 45 non sex chromosomes in humans and you have 2^90 possible combinations! A huge number. It's not that reproductive cells are either "young" or "old", but that they combine to make a new individual. And that individual will be "young" because it's first cell just came into existence.

Measurements do not have a SD. SD applies to ALL the measurements within that particular group. Not "better", but different. With a mean and SD you can describe any normal distribution. SEM gives you a rough and ready means to compare 2 groups and make an eyeball estimate whether they are statistically significantly different. If the difference of the means > the sum of the SEM of both groups, then they are probably statistically different at p <0.05. What you are trying to do, it sounds like, is do several repetitions of an experiment and then getting a SD of the experimments. This is meta-analysis, which does compare results of independent experiments. Places to start reading are: http://allpsych.com/stats/unit5/21.html http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~health/meta_e.htm http://www.statistics.com/ourcourses/meta/

Bettina, that is our limited thinking because we are in spacetime. Our experience is that we never see expansion of something that does not expand into the space that we occupy. But our experience is not always a good guide for understanding what the universe is really like. After all, we evolved in this spacetime and thus, in order to survive, we are really good at understanding what happens around us on our scale. But we didn't need to evolve senses or understanding of the very small or the very large. So our "common sense" doesn't work there. Spacetime (the 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time that we occupy) is what we know. The expansion of the universe is like blowing up a child's balloon. That is an attempt to take something outside our experience and make it like something we really do experience. But analogies are not identical to what is being described. Yes, a balloon needs to expand into an existing spacetime, but spacetime itself doesn't need to expand into antything. It just expands.

Sorry. You need to choose your own topic. It's not like there is a limited number of topics. Any of them would be equally valid and make a good presentation. Just do a quick PubMed search under the categories you named and find a review paper on a new drug. Then look at the primary references and make you presentation.

We don't know. It's not known where the idea of "self" resides. Some data indicates that part of self-awareness resides in the frontal lobe (see first reference below), but it is not known for sure. Partly it is the sense of propioception: that you know where the parts of your body are in space even without looking. People with defects in propioception say that they feel "out of their body" and not really a "self". Some places to start reading on the subject are: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=142635 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0D-4M04NXY-3&_user=5751&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000001378&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=5751&md5=027d2147d1f376ad1bd2891c7082459c Probably not. After all, twins don't feel that they have two brains, and they have another individual with the same structures they have. They don't feel the other one get hurt or sexual excitement. The main difference is: even if you have the same structures, you are not getting the same sensory input. Not the materials, but the connections between neurons. Even with the same structures, you won't necessarily have the same connections between neurons. You would have a network of, say, neuron A to B to C to D. Because of different sensory inputs and possibly quantum effects, the other brain would have a network of A to B to D to C. According to various religious beliefs -- no, self-awareness doen't vanish. For instance, according to the story, Lazarus got his self-awareness back. However, from the point of view of science, that story is not reliable. Science doesn't know. There are numerous incidents of self-awareness after "clinical" death: no heartbeat and no breathing. How long this Near Death Experience lasts is unknown. Does it last beyond the point that all electrical activity in the brain has ceased? Don't know. No one has ever been resusitated after that point -- yet.

Nothing. You have stated a limitation of our minds that we have to work around. We are used to seeing only expansion of something into an existing space. But the expansion of space is something else. There is no space to expand into. So we have to accept the data and try to get our minds to wrap around that concept. That is apples and oranges. You have two separate things and you tended to confuse them, and thus confuse us as to what you were saying. As far as I can tell, you are saying: 1. Gravity is a property of mass. 2. There are no gravitons or gravitational "field". As I recall, Einstein said that gravity was a warping of space with the amount of warping being proportional to the mass. However, since effects for other phenonmenon -- such as electromagnetism -- are mediated by "particles" between objects, it is permissible for physicists to posit such "particles" as gravitons and go look for them. Uh, you went beyond what the data says. Einstein says that acceleration and gravity are equivalent in their effects. Einstein never said anything about causes. It's obvious that acceleration is due to one cause and gravity to another. As far as I know, the search is NOT restricted. It's one avenue of approach. A very popular one, to be sure, but not the only one. Loop quantum gravity, for instance, does not look for a gravitron. This one can't be right. As I pointed out with the gravity of earth and Jupiter, according to this possibility, the gravity should be the same since they are both accelerating in the universe together. But gravity isn't the same. So this possibility must be wrong. Sorry.

Let me echo iNow. Nowhere in your post do you refer to calculating the value of biodiversity and most of it has nothing to do with biology even. It's a lot of heat, but no light.

That's exactly what I said. Science figures out how the physical universe works. How you use that knowledge is a matter of ethics. So a definition of science that says science is "bettering human life" is not an accurate definition of science. Yes. Look at research into using fetal cells to cure Parkinson's. Several papers showing that this approach does work in animals and may work in humans. Now we decide whether we want to use it or not. The classic example, of course, is nuclear fission. Scientists in the 1930s discovered that fission produced lots of energy. Now, do we use that knowledge to make bombs or power plants? That decision is one of ethics, not one of science. There are several sources to tell you how many species there are on the planet. That's how biodiverse our world is. Of course, that doesn't tell us how valuable this biodiversity is. And that was my point: we have no means of telling "exactly" the value of that biodiversity. Most of the posters (including me) agree that biodiversity is valuable, but how do we calculate it? I think you reacted before you got to the next paragraphs of my post, like this one: "However, that's a major problem in conservationism. Conservationists (and I am one) have basically emotional and non-quantifiable arguments for preserving species, but have no objective numbers to counter the monetary figures of jobs lost, revenues lost, tax income lost, etc. of conservation issues. "

This is apples and oranges. In a car, you are moving thru space. But in the expansion of the universe, it is space itself that is expanding. Because you are being carried in space, you don't feel any acceleration. All the molecules within you and around you are changing velocity at the same time as space expands, therefore no "force" that is felt. And yes, Einstein showed that you cannot distinguish between acceleration thru space and gravity. Also, if you think about it, if gravity is simply based on the expansion of space, then gravity should be the same no matter where you are: earth or Jupiter. But that isn't the case, is it? If you relate it to the "number of particles", then you are simply restating classical views of gravity as linked to mass.

Not quite. Some mutations shorten the life of the individual -- like Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. These are "detrimental" by the terminology used in evolutionary biology. However, only 0.002% of mutations fit this category. The rest are either "neutral" -- having no effect on differential reproduction -- or "beneficial". Have you ever heard of the Hardy-Weinberg Principle? Using that principle derived from Mendelian genetics you can objectively determine whether a mutation is detrimental, neutral, or beneficial. Now, in terms of what is needed by the individual or the population, mutations are random. Are they really random? We don't know because, as Dawkins points out, it is possible that an entity can specify a few mutations that it desires. Such manipulation would be lost in the noise of the random mutations. I don't see how you can say that. PCR is one of the most useful tools ever to be introduced in biology. It's applications are numerous and of tremendous importance. This one is actually very easy. Any small variation that allows an individual to blend into the background and avoid predation (or sneak up on prey) is advantageous. The addition of the ability to change colors within a range by sensing and then dispensing pigments is simply another addition. It's straight direct Darwinian evolution.

You have described "pseudogenes". "junk" DNA was a whimsical term given to all the DNA that is not used to code proteins. It includes all the regulatory sequences that precede genes that serve, when bound by proteins, to tell a gene to be expressed or to be turned off when it is being expressed. It refers to transposons, stretches of DNA that are necessary for compacting DNA so that it will fit in the cell, etc. Obviously some of this "junk" has vital roles. It is unfortunate that many people (including many molecular biologists) took this whimsical name seriously and really thought that DNA that wasn't in genes was "junk" and therefore useless.

This discussion was started by SamCogar in the thread "Evidence of Human Common Ancestry". It doesn't belong there because it has nothing to do with human ancestry. Hypertilly stated "But like djmacarro I believe that all animals have souls. my question to him was how do we know that they do not possess the intelligience to understand their own souls. " My response to this was: "By noting that the required intelligence requires a large and complex brain in order to contemplate abstract thought. Dogs don't have the required brain. AND "You don't know dogs have souls, because the only reason we think humans have souls is because humans can discuss the subject with other humans. As you stated "I believe that all animals have souls." That's fine. You have stated a belief. But you can't go from that belief to taking it as a factual premise without the data. And, as you admit, you can't get the data!" " Dogs certainly don't have the ability to verbalize. If the ability to have abstract thoughts is dependent on brain size (and much evidence suggests it is), then dogs don't have large enough brains. " 2. My point wasn't only about "verbalizing thought", but having the ability to form abstract thoughts to begin with." So, Hypertilly had 2 hypotheses: 1. Animals have souls. 2. Animals may or may not have the intelligence to understand that they have souls. Obviously I am questioning both hypotheses. As far as I can see, there is no way science can test for the presence of a "soul". The characteristics of souls are such that they are not amenable to scientific testing. However, the whole concept of soul falls under "abstract thought" and I question whether dogs in particular and most animals in general have the cognitive ability to do abstract thinking. Now enter SamCogar. Sam posted a definition of "abstract thought" obtained from wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn "abstract thought - thinking that is coherent and logical" Several people disagreed with this definition as applied to cognition and stated it is inappropriate. This is not how "abstract thought" is used in cognitive studies. The reason has to do with necessary and sufficient. When describing a term or phenomenon, or stating causes, necessity and sufficiency refer to 1) what you have to have (necessity) and 2) all that you have to have (sufficiency) to cover the subject. The definition you used is necessary to have "abstract thought" but it is not "sufficient". IOW, yes, abstract thought is coherent and logical, BUT it is also necessary that abstract thought apply to abstract ideas or concepts. And "abstract" is "1 a: disassociated from any specific instance " So, now onto the most recent of Sam's posts and my response: And I didn’t “read into it” that he/she was implying that dogs “have souls” or “thought that dogs have souls”, Back to the original statement by Hypertilly: "I believe that all animals have souls." How can you not read that as saying explicitly that dogs have souls? Unless you consider dogs not an animal? I went on to say "Part of our discussion of soul is based upon the ability to conceive and verbalize abstract thoughts. Dogs certainly don't have the ability to verbalize. If the ability to have abstract thoughts is dependent on brain size (and much evidence suggests it is), then dogs don't have large enough brains. " By "our" I meant human beings. Notice I said "conceive and verbalize abstract thoughts". And not just "verbalize" as in making sounds. But putting those sounds into words and strings of words that are sentences. Where are the peer-reviewed scientific papers to back this up? There aren't any. Instead, we get anecdotes of Sam's personal experiences. For every one of which I can provide anecdotes where dogs and animals did NOT evidence coherent and logical thinking. Sam also used a different definition of "verbalize": "And dogs also have the ability to “verbalize” (express: articulate; either verbally or with a cry, shout, or noise;), " However, Sam's source for "verbalize" states: "talk: express in speech;" NOT, "express: articulate; either verbally or with a cry, shout, or noise". http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Averbalize&btnG=Search 1. Where is the scientific data to back up Sam's "learned opinion"? I did allude to scientific studies when I said "as evidence suggests" and I can provide the citations if required. 2. I find Sam's complaint of "untruths" ironic since he stated a verifiable untruth about the definition of "verbalize". 3. Citing the Bible to prove the literal truth of the Bible is using a source to prove the accuracy of the source. That isn't what I did at all. I used independent lines of evidence to test hypotheses that 1) animals have souls and 2) have the intelligence to contemplate their souls. So yes, Sam disagrees about my statement that dogs do not have the ability to have abstract thought. Fine. Post scientific evidence that this is so. Irony again, since Sam is trying to pull rank on me and claim Wiki is an "authority". As I stated, since Wiki is free for anyone to post, posters do NOT have to support and/or justify their claims! And claims can be changed as new people change what has been written. Some hot topics in Wiki have the entries changed hourly! IF a Wiki article uses a citation, then the next step is to look at the citation and see what it says. IF it says what the Wiki article says it says (and that is not guaranteed), then you quote the original source, not the Wiki article. Wiki is about democracy, but accurate knowledge is not democratic. Something is either true or it isn't. Wiki often is a forum for people to argue their own points of view in the guise of "knowledge". That's why, in a serious discussion, it can't be used to pull "rank". Yes, they do. But they are responsible. They are held to be accurate, otherwise they don't sell dictionaries if they make many mistakes! Also, the reason tehy add, revise, and modify is because definitions change with usage. However, that is completely different from Wiki changing because someone puts up a different opinion as "fact". If you do that, and it hasn't undergone peer-review, then you really are "using the Bible to prove the Bible". You are using you to prove your own claims. That isn't acceptable in science. That wasn't my argument, Sam. My argument was: "If that is the case, then you have destroyed the only basis for your claim that dogs dream! Sam, you need to remember what the claims were. It was your claim that dogs dream: "GEEEZE, dogs even have dreams ya know." " My statement was that REM supported that dogs do indeed dream, since dreams do not occur in the absence of REM sleep. You, however, said that REM has nothing to do with dreams. If that is the case, then you ruined the only scientific evidence you had of dog intelligence! Denial isn't either evidence or argument. Denial without evidence or argument is worthless. You provided neither evidence nor argument. Sam, I'm taking this time with you because serious scientific discussion is different from either debate or common arguments. You can't "win" a scientific discussion with either rhetoric or ad hominem. You need data and sound logical arguments for a scientific discussion. I'm hoping you will become a serious discussant in these forums. However, in order to do so you must discuss in a scientific manner. Therefore I'm taking the time to try to teach you what that manner is and what it consists of: 1. Use the specific definitions of the field. Don't try to change them or lie about them. 2. Post data. And by data I mean peer-reviewed scientific papers whenever possible. If it's not a peer-reviewed paper but a secondary source, at least try to make it a .edu source or a publication that refers back to primary sources. Sources of people who have studied in the field (and are therefore knowledgable about it) are preferred. Wiki can't be relied upon to meet any of these criteria. Wiki is a place to start, but you can't use it as a reliable source. 3. Personal anecdotes don't count and evidence that is available only to you doesn't count. Science works on evidence that is available to everyone under approximately the same situation. 4. Denial without evidence doesn't work. You need to show WHY you are denying a claim. There are 2 different claims here: 1. Dogs dream. 2. Those dreams are "abstract" like humans have. Now, when you say “REM sleep is nothing more that a “normal reaction” by the eyes as a result of receiving “repositioning instructions” from the subconscious mind.” , this means that REM sleep has nothing to do with dreams. The subconscious mind could give "repositioning instructions" to the eyes without dreams! Of course, one falsification of your statement is that REM does not occur during any other part of sleep except dreaming. Now, there is no "observational data" to suggest that dogs have abstract dreams! None. The reason we know that humans have abstract dreams is that we describe them to one another using language. Since dogs do not have a complex language and do not tell us about their dreams, there is no observational data. What this amounts to is that I agree, based on REM sleep, that dogs dream. What I question is whether those dreams are "abstract". Please provide the data that they are. In terms of "verbalize", humans have an allele of the FOXP2 gene that allows complex speech sounds. This allele is missing from every other species. Humans born with a mutation of the gene that restores FOXP2 to the allele found in animals are not capable of speech. 32. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Wolfgang Enard, Molly Przeworski, Simon E. Fisher, Cecilia S. L. Lai, Victor Wiebe, Takashi Kitano, Anthony P. Monaco, Svante Pääbo Nature 418, 869 - 872 (22 Aug 2002) Do you realize you just made an argument against deer having abstract thoughts? According to what you stated, the deer were unable to make the abstract idea that the cows could charge thru the fence and only looked at the specific instances that the cows did not charge the fence. Therefore the deer did not (because they could not) make the abstract idea that they were not safe on the other side of the fence. You might want to follow your own advice. I find it ironic that these two statements were made separated only by a quote from me.