Moontanman

Lots of chemicals cause hallucinations and have similar receptors in the brain, this can be be attributed to plants producing chemicals to discourage animals from eating them...

Three guys are drinking in a bar when a drunk comes in, staggers up to them, and points at the guy in the middle, shouting, "Your mom's the best sex in town!" Everyone expects a fight, but the guy ignores him, so the drunk wanders off and bellies up to the bar at the far end. Ten minutes later, the drunk comes back, points at the same guy, and says, "I just did your mom, and it was sw-e-et!" Again the guy refuses to take the bait, and the drunk goes back to the far end of the bar. Ten minutes later, he comes back and announces, "Your mom liked it!" Finally the guy interrupts. "Go home, Dad, you're drunk!"......

I have faith in lots of things but I don't think we define "faith" in the same way... You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts...

"it works" means you can affect the physical world with it, our entire first world civilization is built on "it works" metaphysics does nothing but muddy the water.. Yes, I assume reality is real, I am an Empirical Rationalist, if it cannot be shown to have an effect on reality then it doesn't exist...

Which do you like best...

Did you bother to read either of those pages you linked to? I don't think they say what you think they say. From your first link... From your second link.. The flood story and Sodom and Gomorrah are mythological in nature not part of real history... There is no historical evidence this ever took place, no evidence the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt, no evidence they wondered around in a tiny desert for 40 years, no evidence Moses as portrayed in the bible ever existed. You cannot use the bible as evidence of the bible... In fact it is worthless as evidence... Believing something with out evidence or facts is nothing but gullibility...

What is a metaphysical truth? Is it anything like "reveled truth" ? What standards do you apply to verify a meta physical truth, baseless assertions? To claim claim something as real with out demonstrable evidence is dishonest no matter how much mumbo jumbo you cloak it in... We might arise from the Sugar Plum Fairy but to assert it with no empirical evidence is just baseless speculation... I don't think my lack of knowledge about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin is something that I need fear being ignorant of... To me the main thing is that reality is testable and repeatable, metaphysical things cannot be verified in the real world if they are truly metaphysical... I would challenge that, a better explanation is something that works, metaphysics contributes no workable knowledge... Yes but if it works.. it works... metaphysics makes no verifiable claims, only horse feathers... Sophism leads us nowhere...

It was the Sea of Galilee not the Dead Sea and the Dead Sea is not even close to being that salty in fact i would suggest that no water could be that salty... Would you care to cite some of that evidence for those things i have put in bold print?

Have to believe we are magic... Nothing can stand in our way...

LEARNING TO CUSS A 6 year old and a 4 year old are raking the yard. The 6 year old asks, "You know what? I think it's about time we started learning to cuss". The 4 year old nods his head in approval. The 6 year old continues, "When we go in for breakfast, I'm gonna say something with hell and you say something with ass". The 4 year old agrees with enthusiasm. When the mother walks into the kitchen and asks the 6 year old what he wants for breakfast, he replies, "Aw, hell, Mom, I guess I'll have some Cheerios". WHACK! He flies out of his chair, tumbles across the kitchen floor, gets up, and runs upstairs crying his eyes out, with his mother in hot pursuit, slapping his rear with every step. His mom locks him in his room and shouts, "You can stay there until I let you out!" She then comes back downstairs, looks at the 4 year old and asks with a stern voice, "And what do YOU want for breakfast, young man?" "I don't know", he blubbers, "but you can bet your ass it won't be Cheerios"..

So far it looks like special pleading wrapped in horse feathers... This is nothing but horse feathers...

So turning water into wine or walking on water can be explained by physics? I know you want to believe this stuff but it has been shown over and over here that you are making claims that cannot be backed up and some such as it has not been refuted are plainly wrong... I have seen the strategy a great many times, this thread in particular but i didn't know it had a name...

The reality I see is testable, I can perform experiment to confirm this and others can do the same experiments and reach the same conclusions. There is no getting around it so get used to it...

To a great extent dark and light skin can be explained by the latitude the people live at. The further north you go the less sunlight you get year round and the less vitamin D your body can make and the this affects reproductive success so light skinned people do better in the long term than dark skinned peoples. This effect is enough to prevent the genes for dark skin from enduring in populations in more northerly latitudes while light skinned people do not do as well in lower latitudes due to skin damage from too much sun light exposure. But other traits such as hair texture occur independent of skin color and can spread freely through the population. You do see light skinned people with kinky hairs and dark skinned people with straight hair and all variations in between... The most important fact is that human populations are not completely isolated from each other and gene flow continues unabated through out the human population with certain genes being favored in different areas for various reasons... Everyone should resemble their parents but still have variation, we can all trace our ancestry back to people who do not resemble us very much as well... Evolution is ongoing right now but humans are not isolated populations, gene flow occurs over time ad those genes that allow better success at breeding tend to be selected for but there is to much similarity between people to say we are different in any really meaningful way due to that constant gene flow...

The process is called abiogenesis, no magic involved although we do not have a complete understanding of the process at this time we do have some good data and hypothesis. It's quite possible we will never know for sure but the idea of a bacteria suddenly appearing is not what happened... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html

This is a case of a African couple giving birth to a blonde blue eyed baby. http://www.essence.com/2010/07/21/black-couple-gives-birth-to-white-baby/ Another good take on the subject, but the essence of it is that we are all related and quite recently, no more than a a few thousand years ago.

I know we are supposed to use videos sparingly but these two are spot on the subject and explain it much better than i can. The idea is that certain characteristics occur in certain populations and tend to persist in the geographical areas they are endemic to and the local gene pool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyknbCLys_8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71piW8lSxw4

It has been an interest of mine for many years as well, I waver back and forth about to some extent, the current data would seem to caution against it but that can be debated i think...

Yes, this is demonstrably true... Yes, I can recommend a good video on this exact subject if you wish to watch it. Yes, if you go back about 2500 years everyone alive then every where was the ancestors of everyone alive today or no one alive today.

If this is true then how can you claim the things you claimed about consciousness? Then it cannot be determined to be part of reality. Millions of people report being abducted by aliens, numbers of people who believe something is meaningless as evidence... If this was a scientifically documented report there should be more than just a "show" about it... I would say mistaken... I see no reason to assume anything else... Those experiences are called hallucinations... Optimism is meaningless but you are welcome to it...

I am going to go with Ed on this one, what I think the universe is or want it to be is meaningless, if it cannot be empirically tested asserting it as reality is dishonest in my view...

You should start a thread, it's an interesting avenue of discussion I think... Especially with the new information we have in the last few decades that show complex organics in interstellar space,,, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interstellar_and_circumstellar_molecules

The objective reality as "seen" by our senses is all we have that can be confirmed, to suggest any other reality is dishonest at best...

If they hybridized their genes with our then the result would be neither one and you would end up with the third species taking over the earth, a lot of trouble just to create more competition for space... You are assuming they would travel specifically to the earth to visit, this would require a lot of assumptions, they would have to be near enough to know we are here, and fast enough to make the trip reasonable, and there is nothing they can get from the earth that is not easier and more available in space debris... There have been some interesting bits of stuff found in meteorites, but nothing conclusive. Are you suggesting interplanetary pan spermia or interstellar pan spermia?