LucidDreamer

The first thing you need to do to punch holes in her argument is to find out exactly what she believes. How old does she think the world and the universe are? Does she believe that other creature besides humans have evolved. Does she believe in micro-evolution but not macro evolution? Once you have established exactly what she believes you can begin to pick it apart until you uncover contradictions or absurdities in her argument. At the heart of every bad argument is a contradiction or absurdity. You should look up evolution threads on this forum and check out the site I listed as a starting point to answer the questions.

Too true.

There is really excellent evidence actually, at least for the theory of evolution itself. The reason you were taken off guard is because Christians feel that their beliefs are besieged by the theory of evolution. They are given pre-made arguments specifically designed to discredit evolution, which works well because most people are not scientifically minded and because they don't want to believe in evolution. When it comes down to it there are basically two theories: evolution and creationism. Among these two theories, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution. There are of course kinks in the theory of evolution, just as most theories have kinks. Creationist are also famous for taking every thing that science can't explain and trying to use that as evidence for creationism, yet they offer no viable alternative theory. It was done by magic just isn't a very good theory. But then again its hard to disprove magic. Here is a site that will answer some of your questions. http://www.talkorigins.org/

I actually use to run from the cops all the time when I was a teenager and I only got caught once. The trick is to run before its obvious they are after you. If you are speeding one way, they are going the other way, and then suddenly you see them do a U-turn you know they are coming after you. But if you make a quick right and make a bunch of random turns throughout the neighborhood you can most likely loose them. If they do find you, you have to pull over, but you can claim you had no idea they were after you. It was alot of fun as a teenager but I don’t think I would risk it now.

A slinky

Looking up multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria formed mostly in hospitals might be useful. Shouldn’t be too hard to find information about this. Look it up in google and then in pubmed. This could be a good launching point to find what you need. They should have lots of useful phrases and references that would help you find other related information.

Ok, first of all, when Demothenes says spontaneous generation he is referring to a false belief during the 1800's about life. They believed that if you left out a piece of meat that maggots could spontaneously form in the meat. I think it was Redi that showed that no maggots would form when you prevented flies from getting to the meat. Pasteur later showed that microorganisms wouldn’t form if you boiled something and then prevented anything from getting in. It was connected to another theory about how life had properties that non-life did not. Demosthenes is asking a valid question. There are lots of gaps in the knowledge about how life formed from non-life. In my view, Demosthenes, you are thinking about the microspheres in the wrong way. They are not considered the first form of life; they are considered the first kind of cell. Like sorcerer said, the first kind of life was RNA or DNA-like replication system. The lipid that the organisms used to compartmentalize itself came later. But perhaps early life forms took advantage of natural formations of lipids. You are also thinking that its very unlikely that amino acids could form and then come together to make long chains of proteins. It's not as unlikely as you think. In fact, amino acids have been found on meteorites that have struck the earth. We know that they are not just contaminate because some of these amino acids are not found on earth. I read a recent article about protein being found in a meteorite, but I couldn’t find the article a second time. Think of viruses. They are simple constructions of DNA/RNA surrounded by a protein coat. Think of RNA based chemical reactions; an example is ATP, which provides the energy for unfavorable reactions. Think about how the formation of complex molecules becomes favorable when you add energy. Think about the thousands of mutations that have been observed with bacteria. Think about how the basic components of life have been found both in space and to occur spontaneously. Is it really so hard to imagine the certain parts of the earth containing the building blocks of life when we have found them in space and seen them spontaneously form? Is it really so hard to imagine RNA forming from nucleic acids when the formation of complex molecules occurs in the presence of energy? Is it really so hard to imagine a RNA based replication system forming when we have examples of RNA replication and RNA based chemical control. Is it really so hard to imagine virus-like organisms taking advantage of chemical energy instead of relying on other organisms. Once you have gotten to this point, the well known-mechanisms of mutation and natural selection can explain the rest. We don’t know exactly how any of this occurred before the times represented by the fossil record. But what do we know about exactly that occurred 4 billion years ago. Sure we can make calculations about where a few stars and a few other minor things, but that’s about it.

Ants would certainly be formidable creatures if they were large. I would just make a giant toad army to eat all your ants though. Then I would finish the rest off with fire trucks filled with raid.

I don't think the Hawking quote was suppose to be an actual forecast, just pointing out that we could have a population problem and not enough energy to support a giant population. I too believe genetic engineering could have many benefits, but we are going to have to be very careful not to screw ourselves up. You wouldn't want to remove all forms of aggression because we might need it at some point. You would want to make people like Cain from Kung Fu--very adverse to violence, yet capable of kicking ass if need be.

I would guess that there are some conditions where the afflicted individuals almost lack emotion. Look up disorders of the limbic system and you are bound to find some. Since emotion is somewhat of an abstract term, or at least it doesn’t have definite boundaries, alot of the answer to that question depends on your definition of emotion. If you removed all of the parts of the brain that specifically controlled emotion from a person and then beat him with a stick he might still dislike you. Would you classify that dislike as an emotion response or is it just a logical response to harmful stimuli?

I believe that emotions are controlled by the limbic system of the brain. Emotions are common to mammals; they are actually beneficial adaptations. They provide a means to control certain behaviors and to elicit certain psychological responses. When you are angry your adrenal glands release adrenaline and prepare your body for a fight. When you are angry you will do things that you normally would not do. This is a useful control mechanism. After all, someone who is constantly hostile is at a selective disadvantage, but during some situations this can save your life. There are lots of physiological mechanisms involved in regulating emotional responses. These are mostly hormonal, activated by certain kinds of internal and external stimuli. They work with thought, which relies on the physical resources of the brain. Thought and emotions are interrelated, relying on feedback mechanisms with hormones. I don't know about complete absence of emotion, but some people defiantly have less emotion than others do. Psychopaths lack empathy. They don't empathize with other people's emotions and they have a reduced capacity to feel emotion. They don't have a complete absence of emotion though; they certainly feel anger and they are sad when you lock them up. Some research indicates that psychopath's amygdala, which is part of the limbic system, is reduced in size. Certain kinds of brain damage can lead to lack of emotion as well. I think complete absence of emotions would be difficult for a normal person to accomplish. Besides, who would want to live like that? What you might desire is control over your emotions. This can be accomplished to some extent through meditation or by studying Zen or Tao. While meditating you can reach a state where both thought and emotion can be observed before their normal results occur. These thoughts can be observed flowing past your consciousness, unable to take effect. With enough practice you can start to achieve a state that is almost absent of both thought and emotion during meditation. This is useful because during normal hours you are more in control of your mind and are able to stop negative emotions and thoughts from taking root. There are probably other methods to achieve this as well.

I can't say I disagree with alot of that, but regardless of its truth, we are still left with a choice between two parties. The Democrats may have sold out to corporate money, but they have not sold out as much as the Republicans. I know some people that say they trust the Republicans more because at least you know what they stand for, but that’s not quite true. Their tax cuts only benefit the rich. They have yet to reduce the size of the bloated government. They give rewards to companies that send jobs over seas. They ignore the millions that don't have adequate health care. They waste lives by starting poorly thought out wars. They weed away civil rights. Their international diplomatic policies are too heavy-handed. They try to make ridiculous laws to appear to represent the fundamentalists. They throw the most mud during mud fights. They waste away our environment. They are the greater of two evils. But hey, not by much unless you are talking about Bush. You almost always have a better idea of what a Republican stands for, but I don't like what it is. Truth is that the Democrats are not much better now. Our government has become insanely corrupt and we desperately need a viable third party to force some reforms. I read a short story once about a small town in Mexico off of the gulf. One of the very poor townsmen found an enormous pearl inside of an oyster. He went to sell the pearl but all five of the venders tried to rip him off. All five of these vendors worked for the same corrupt man. There is no one man that controls all of the wealth and power in the U.S. Yet, both the Democrats and the Republicans are controlled by the same strings of corruption.

Maybe you are kidding, but I think you are about one-half right in a roundabout way. Man probably started evolving from a chimp-like ancestor about 5 million years ago (more or less). At some point our ancestors were separated from the other chimp-like creatures and the selective pressures changed. The chimp's ancestors lived the good life, swinging through trees with an abundance of vegetation to dine on. Our ancestors were not so lucky. Our trees, and the vegetation that came with it, started to disappear. Our ancestors were forced to adapt or perish. They inherited two abilities from their chimp-like ancestors. First, they were able to climb trees and escape predators. Second, they had highly developed brains with strong visual mechanisms. Since the trees were disappearing they were forced to rely more on their advanced brains. Natural selection chose to keep the smart ones alive. Meat eating comes into the picture when you think about our ancestors’ ability to keep himself nourished. The disappearing forest no longer supplied the bounty it once had so our ancestors were forced to rely on other methods. We observe chimps today that go out on hunting parties. It’s likely that our ancestors already had some primitive ability to hunt. These hunting parties became even more important to our ancestors’ existence. Since our ancestors had little specialized abilities as predators they relied upon group coordination, strategy, and tool-making to get the nourishment they needed. The individuals whose brains were more adapted for this survived. The actual act of eating meat did nothing for the development of intelligence, but the pressures of natural selection involved in obtaining the meat did. Chimpanzees already eat meat and they have not developed human intelligence. Every predator on the planet eats meat and they have not developed human intelligence either. The reason why it developed in man and not the rest of the animal kingdom is because the pressures of natural selection are more likely to result in useful adaptations if those adaptations are built on the organisms current abilities. Cats get progressively faster and stronger, canines develop a better sense of smell, and the genus Homo becomes smarter.

Here is another scenario: You go to Mexico for a vacation. You decide you want to visit authentic parts of Mexico to experience their culture so you wander outside the tourist area. You break a law and are sent to Jail. You have to give all of your food to a guy named Paco and you become his girlfriend for 2 weeks before anyone even finds out where you are. Your relatives have to spend a considerable amount of money to bribe the officials to get you out, but that money is a mere pittance to the amount of money you have to spend on therapy. You can't count on US government to bail you out of everything. There are plenty of U.S. citizens in foreign prisons right now for what would only be a minor crime or not a crime at all in the U.S.

America's Freedom of Speech right only protects you from American punishment. You could not be arrested for speaking your mind on a U.K. forum by a U.S. law enforcement agency. If you actually go to another country then you are subject to all its laws unless they specifically grant you diplomatic immunity. You are also subject to certain laws in other countries while on the net, but I think the rules about that are pretty fuzzy. I bet I could go to any foreign website and tell them that their government sucks and that they should protest, but there is no way the U.S. government would hand me over to face their legal system. I hope.

tlhutlhmeH HIq ngeb qaq law' bIQ qaq puS.

Can anyone point me to a good site that has lots of physics problems with the solutions worked out? Problems dealing with charge, Gausses Law, and electric potential would be especially helpful. Thanks

This is foolish. My grandfather received a Purple Heart during WW2. His wound was moderately serious. Would he have been a coward if it had just been a minor wound? He was being shot at and blown up, risking his life whether he was seriously wounded or not. Anyone that risks their life so that other people can sit on their butts at home and make disparaging remarks about their service record deserves respect. Can either one of you guys say that you risked your lives daily in the rice patties of Vietnam? You have no idea what you are talking about. The only reason in the world that these people are attacking a decorated Vietnam vet is because there is so much money and power on the line. They would claim that his grandmother was a pedophile if they thought it would influence the election in their favor. And don’t doubt that they could spin it so that it all but appeared certain that she was one. And what the heck is that newspaper clipping suppose to mean mad? That John Kerry is a communist? Is that kind of like calling him a longhaired hippie communist? Reagan visited the USSR where he met with lots of communist representatives. Does that make him a communist too? That's so silly. I am going to vote for Kerry this election but I don't fall for all the silly democratic propaganda against Bush. The people who run these elections have tied a string to your emotions and they are yanking you around like a puppeteer

chloride ions...

Indeed. If Bush is a terrorist then most of the west is as well. Don't forget that there are or were soldiers from many nations in Iraq. Even if they did go because America carries a big stick they can't completely wash their hands of their participation.