Ophiolite

Yes. I rather liked it myself. It's looking like Bush has it, so I guess that means the US electorate just chose Hillary Clinton for 2008. Edit: We need a small animated gif that shows someone 'stirring' a large pot of opinions, predjudices, presumptions and the like.

Dov, I think the problem is captured in the opening sentence of your opening post. The added emphasis is mine. I'm not at all clear what you are trying to achieve or in what way your ideas offer any imrpovement over current thinking. Don't get me wrong' date=' you may have something, but as you are currently expressing it, it is not making [b']any [/b]connection with me.

Might as well call an American a dollar.

Even numbed by watching election results through the night (and its 4:51 am here) I still have pretty good reflexes!

Bugger! All those philosophers wasting there time for so many centuries. Sorry, BrainMan if you are excluding this from the discussion then for me there is no discussion. Thanks.

I very deliberately provided two responses and offered you a choice of which one you replied to. My second response does not contain, and certainly was not intended to contain anything offensive. I thought you would be sympathetic to a ‘devil’s advocate’ type approach, for as you say However, you chose to reply to Option 1 and thus to be offended. I shall try to address each point and question you have raised in your reply. I’ll start at the end: Yes. Absolutely (until and unless evidence is forthcoming to overrule the vast body of evidence in favour of it.) To anticipate some follow up questions you might ask: · Clearly not every stage of every evolutionary line has been delineated · There are many details to be worked out as to the exact mechanism by which evolution proceeds · The origin of life is a distinct problem from the evolution of life It’s difficult to avoid using the debating technique of dismissive sarcasm. Evolutionists do not interpret the bible at all. Evolutionists, as evolutionists, are indifferent to the bible. You have turned the world on its head. Some creationists interpret the bible literally and in responding to their arguments evolutionists will challenge that literal interpretation. A flawed statement, such as you have made here, causes me to doubt the quality of your other remarks. If you had phrased this as “any scholar… ought to know….” I would have agreed with you completely. Unfortunately, as a scan of a few creationist web sites will reveal, many scholars do make this claim. Not relevant. Thank you. And, no it doesn’t make you a creationist in my eyes. I’m not even clear why it might. I hope you did. I spent all of thirty seconds lovingly crafting it. The thing is your statements in your original post were indistinguishable from what I would expect to see from a ‘creationist nutter’, so I think you have to excuse me jumping to a concussion. I am almost speechless. Nostalgia sure isn’t what it used to be. What possible relevance does Piltdown man have in 2004 to a discussion on evolution? Am I holding a discussion with someone who thinks Piltdown man plays any part in the evidence for evolution, or that it ever played a significant role? Since libraries of books and research papers have been published on this point, you will appreciate that I shall have to summarise:Anatomical similarities Genetic similarities Biochemical similarities Behavioural similarities Which of these are you disputing? Finally, I do wish you had chosen Response 2, avoided being offended and had answered my simple questions.

Your post raises a lot of interesting thoughts. While I would agree that historically many people saw themselves as separate from nature, this was not by any means universal. Bhuddists, for example very much saw, and see, themselves as a part of the natural world. And today I would suspect that the majority of scientists would see man as very much a part of nature. The notion of self-regulation is an intriguing one. Are you proposing a Gaia type situation, where the whole ecosystem works in concert to maintain stability, or are you suggesting that humans, being at the top of the pyramid, have, and in a sense were designed to have, the controlling influence over the progress of all nature? In either case it is worth remembering that self regulating natural systems do not always work well, as your comments about our destruction of the enviroment illustrate.

Delighted to see all you good citizens voting. Once this is all over (and YT I predict we will know the result at 3:47:15 GMT tomorrow Nov 3.) I'd like to discuss what we should do with people who don't vote. I'm in favour of a 10% income tax surcharge and a ban on discussing any political issue until the next voting opportunity. The latter would be enforced by six months in prison, except in Texas where, for traditional reasons, the death penalty would apply.

Your resonse is ambiguous. Reality seems to exist independently, or so we perceive. Remove the observer completely from consideration for a moment. There is no observer. In such a situation is there an objective reality? Yes or No? If you refer back to my first post you will see I excluded, for the purposes of this discussion, the possible role of the observer in creating reality. All of my subsequent arguments have been based upon that condition. If there is an objective reality, then the only differences between alien sciences will be how effectively and how exactly each science sets about investigating that reality. Eventually, both sciences will arrive at the same conclusions, because both are describing the same reality. And it doesn't matter how different their limited perceptions and emotions are, because science can be made independent of these by expanding our perceptions (e.g. x-rays) and ignoring the emotions. Edit: and re-Sayonara's first point in post #25, this is nicely illsutrated by JOHARI windows. I haven't googled it, but I'm sure it will be there.

To each of your questions: Yes. Yes. If he could. The best he could do. Edit: See Lucid Dreamer's post #42 for why I think these are the answers.

Ah! So we must groog the endaphyte through distipulating the ardex bidenda. I hadn't thought of it quite like that before!

Good luck with that line of questioning CPL (or may I call you Luke). Nameta9 seems unwilling to concede that there maybe an absolute reality. If we only perceive with our senses what he says is correct, but we go so far beyond that today, that his arguments are become meaningless.

That's accounting. I'm talking PR.

I seem to have been unclear. Bernstein said this I was agreeing with him in principal, but with the caveat that I would be impressed by peptides and above, but not merely by amino acids. Of course the peptides would not prove life exists, they would merely demosntrate that they could be produced in an environment with similarities to the early Earth.And I think you greatly oversimplify the ease by which peptides might be created in such a pre-biotic setting.

Intersting question. I suspect a very strong environmental component. Indeed I think it is largely habitual. On the other hand my desire for a siesta after lunch (even if I haven't had lunch, is definitely biological!)

I see from the link that geneticists are in dispute over this. Since they have been studying the issue rather longer than I have, I'll tactfully, for once, avoid a direct comment. Indirectly I'll say that with a dispute as loaded with unscientific concerns as this one, the positions of everyone needs to be thoroughly filtered for evidence of political correctness or racial elitism.

Right? Could you share with us the other forms of brain damage that don't involve killing brain cells? I'm not being facetious, its just I would have imagined that it was destruction of brain cells that accounted for most/all brain damage. gib65, a speculation: I would imagine that specific drugs zero in on particular portion of the brain, causing localised damage.

Broadly agree with everything you have said here. Absolutely we should be looking for the details of the pre-biotic chemistry. If it's nicely complex (let's hear it for the peptides) that augers well for the 'life is commonplace' school. If not, well...... And let's say that water is a necessary pre-requisite for life as we know it. {Ammonia?}

Well it doesn't shatter it across my strand of opinion. It is an exciting find, but to me is wholly consistent with the current story of human evolution. That story goes back over several million years, during which time several offshoots of the line leading to homo sapiens occured. All of these died out. Now we have a newly discovered variant whose distinguishing feature is that they died out more recently than any other (that has so far been found). I ask again, in what way has this dicovery shattered the current story of human evolution? Are we postulating an earlier or later origin for humans, are we forced to reassess 'Out of Africa', has it brought into question any part of the central theme of human evolution? Perhaps it has, but I can't think of any example. You can. Please enlighten me. Edit: Are you suggesting that until this discovery man was the only intelligent hominid known??!!

I've noticed several references to science fiction on various threads. Many people develop an interest in science after first reading science fiction. Why not have a section of the forum devoted to it? It surely is as relevant as a section on politics. Any supporters? Decriers? Edit: Oops! I see Skye proposed this back in June. I haven't had a chance to read all the thread yet, so I'm not clear what the conlcusion was. Regardless, I still think it is a good idea.

My son purchased it two days ago, took it to his room and hasn't appeared since. My provisional conclusion is that it must be d*** good.

I suppose if you like this sort of thing then the plural of paradox would be paradise!