Moontanman

I remember asking about that as a child and being told she was his sister and god allowed that incest because the family of Adam and Eve were the only people on the earth.

It is indeed true that we are related to all Eukaryota, as far as we know there is only on tree of life, more like a tumble weed than a tree really, but to say that this organism is ancestral to all other Eukaryota is stretching a point far beyond any reasonable association.

I am going to second that question as well. I have heard some of the most outrageous claims made by religious people as "reveled truths" or as amazingly convoluted interpretations of written scripture. In all cases I am aware of not only is the "interpretation" or "reveled truth" completely self serving they never have any real world evidence to back up the claim either. Make even a slightly off beat claim about anything else and people will crawl up your ass 'til next Tuesday to check the details. People who really have no idea about the veracity of your claim will jump to point out how impossible it is and even when you show evidence they still carp and accuse you are somehow distorting the truth. For instance, I keep aquarium fish, sometimes due to my connections with breeders and fisheries people I get unusual specimens. I've had paddlefish, Polyodon spathula, for about two years. on forums where aquariums are the topic i am regularly called a liar, accused of all sorts of deception even though I have both picture and video evidence of my paddlefish, i have written about them and how to keep them, how to feed them, their behaviors in captivity, just lots of things about a fish that was always assumed to be impossible to keep alive in captivity and very little was really known about it's habits. I have even been called a liar by a scientist who studies similar fishes. It's wild how crazy people get over something so easily verified but a religious leader can make sweeping claims about things impossible to test or even know and or even demonstrably false and people suck it up like honey...

I'd like to see some evidence of that, i have never read where that the individual has to be stupid. Again some evidence of this would be good, I see no reason why human level consciousness couldn't be influenced by pheromones and other factors by the bio-sphere. naked moles rates live in a colony ruled by a queen who is the only one that reproduces and they are mammals and not insect like automatons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole_rat

How big is the gator? If is more than 4 feet or so he is immensely stronger than you, much faster, and cares not a wit whether or not you have a knife. When you see an alligator don't think big lizard, they are not big lizards, think T-Rex with short legs. Alligators are very deceptive creatures, most of the time they leave prey as large as a human alone but if he decides to take you nothing you can do will prevent it once he gets hold of you and he can outrun you over short distances.... I've worked with the state fisheries people on population studies and had to enter water where alligators were nearby, even had them swim by close enough to touch but don't think a knife will make any difference, even a gun won't make a difference if an alligators gets hold of you. People around here are very careful about not feeding the gators and there is very little interaction between gators and people except for the occasional dog snack or going after a lawn mower but it's because they don't associate humans with food, once they get the idea that humans and food are together they will attack and the attack is unbelievably fast and devastating...

It took me a long time to come to the conclusion it was bullshit, i came to that conclusion after a very long time of looking very closely at what the bible said.... No, it's that we seldom get anyone here but Christians... and I don't have a problem with any but the creationist types... and you are dishonest... Ignorant? If he was baiting then he caught one for sure....

Sadly I've had a couple of cats killed by aggressive stray dogs but it is true that your attitude can have an effect on who or what your dogs are aggressive toward. What ever you do, don't feed the gator, that is very dangerous, the gator will start to associate humans with food and will eventually attack.... When that happens here they have to be put down before they become dangerous.

Oh, you would think that cats and basset hounds wouldn't mix well but one cat I had always smacked the crap out of the dogs when they were puppies and from then on they would walk around a room to keep from passing near the cat. The cat would sleep curled up with the dogs, they were terrified to get up until the cat did, lol One cat would play chase with the dogs, she would run they would chase, she would stop and they would stop and wait for her to run again.... You said dogs but dogs tend to bark at alligators and since the alligator doesn't move they get closer and closer and bark louder and louder until they get close enough and the dog stops barking and the alligator eats... I doubt a cat would mess with an alligator, cats are either smarter or not as flamboyant as dogs.... Alligators are quite common here, not as big as further south but we still get the occasional 12 footer.... most are more like 6 to 8 feet long. They are very strong and very fast when they want to be, over a short distance an alligator can outrun a man.

Alligators usually take care of the stray dog problem around here, they are like dog magnets....

No one who is honest knows....

How insulting, I mean really insulting. I've read the bible many times, both cover to cover and in little sound bites the pastor gave us to read each day, you are condescending in a particularly insulting way. Are you really so arrogant as to assume with out even asking if i had ever tried your favorite fairy tale? Oh yes, i was raised fundamentalist Christian, the whole fire and brim stone, Noah's ark, pillars of the earth bullshit. Any why a year? Do you read on a 1st grade level or something? I could easily read the entire bible in a few days, admittedly i do read very fast but i also have a very high comprehension level as well. to do it real justice would take a couple weeks but only because it's too boring to concentrate on it for more than a couple hours at a time. your assumption that if someone disagrees with you they haven't read your holy book is horse feathers of the worst sort. but if you assert that then why do you discount the holy books of other religions about other gods and pantheons of gods? You are full of shit.... Those prints you talk about are faked, the "Christians" who faked them admitted to it after it was proven the foot prints had been enhanced by carving the stones. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html

I mostly keep aquariums, freshwater and marine and reef tanks, i had a scarlet king snake for 12 years before it disappeared when the cage was left open. I had a Red tailed boa for a long time but gave it away to a breeder. I had 6 turtles for more than 35 years but an unusually hard winter resulted in them dying two years ago. I kept a tegu lizard for a couple years and traded it for a fish tank. I currently have a paddlefish, Polyodon spathula and I am hoping to obtain some shovelnose sturgeon soon, Scaphirhynchus platorynchus. Oh yeah, three basset hounds and a coon hound... I've had several cats but that was many years ago...

On a planetary scale things like chemical messages, pheromones, virus particles or other completely real world things could be involved, no need for telepathy. An ant colony is aware of and reacts to it's surroundings even if the individual ants are not. Termite and ant colonies are indeed aware, the emergent behaviors they display show this even though the individuals are not.

A deity is exactly what the god of the Hebrews should be described as. DrDNA if you are going to continue to assert that your Christian god is real please provide some evidence of that claim. Belief in the "Hebrew" god is no different than belief in Zeus, Apollo, Thor or Jupiter. Oh no, I'm a Southwest patty melt....

You ask for prayer I'll ask for a doctor... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewanted=all

The idea of god is slippery to say the least but could our entire biosphere be likened to a colonial organism that is self aware in the way that ants and or termites colonies are aware? Would such a super organism qualify as being a god? The Earths biosphere could be alive and even aware in it's own way and trying to control the environment much like our bodies mechanisms control the conditions inside our bodies. Quite possibly we are the brain of the organism but we are unaware of the over mind which only seeks to live and doesn't care who dies or suffers individually. It could communicate and control it's various parts through viruses and or feed back loops it controls but has no more conscious thoughts than our liver does... Or maybe we are a cancer that developed in this organism and we are detrimental to it's existence..

Brain washing, indoctrination, potato/potatoe, the fact remains that we are awash in our own society and it's beliefs, as a child you no choice in the matter. As an adult you have more of a choice but it's more deciding to swim up stream in a strong current. It's damn difficult to undo the brain washing/indoctrination you get as a child... I can absolutely remember believing in things like the easter bunny, tooth fairy and santa when I was a kid but adults admitted when i questioned the evidence of these things that they were not true but when I questioned religion I got my ass beat....

No, it is not faith, it is the brain being fooled into producing endorphin, faith has nothing to do with it. The patient might have faith in his doctor but it's faith in a lie in this instance.

Does the algae have to eliminated completely or is simply restricting it's growth acceptable? If the it is later then you could employ snails to eat the algae and keep it trimmed back somewhat.

I think we need large movable habitats in space, they could take very slow orbits from one asteroid to the next, refining the minerals on then and build copies of themselves and send refined metals or what ever the earth needed or sell and trade back and forth between colonies. This concept would work better than sending out disposable probes and would be a stepping stone to colonies on the surface of planets. I think that once we begin the process of living in these freely orbiting colonies we will loose interest in planets...

I can't make any real sense of this, what does free choice have to do with believing in something with no evidence? God however is quite capable of providing evidence of his existence with out violating freewill. As for god being love... wow... I'd like to see some proof of that but it would have to be in another thread. I require evidence to believe in something someone tells me... God has preformed miracles in the past, why not now? Stopping the sun in the sky would be pretty impressive, he did for one group of sheep shaggers so they could kill another group of sheep shaggers. Why not do something impressive now? Swap the orbits of Mars and Venus, take over all our satellite broadcasts to tell us all what is really needed or demanded by him. Why is it up to the confused and contradictory writings of a group of bronze age primitives? No we are brain washed almost from birth by the society around us, the decision to believe is drilled into us from an early age. In a very real way we are robots that have been programmed to believe something not real...

What we have HEA'AH IS A FAIL URE TO communicate.... At no time have i said there is some universal point to anything, life exists to procreate, if it did not procreate life would not exist. Virtually everything we do is geared toward either personal reproduction or a social effort to support a society that supports the sexual reproduction of humans, so yes even when it comes to humans sex is the point of life. it has no bearing on the point of the universe or the lack of a point to the universe.

Indeed...

I didn't suggest some outside force was forcing any meaning on anything, life exists to reproduce, life forms that do not reproduce leave no offspring to wonder what the meaning of life is...

I have read that in tiger country when a tiger is a man eater wearing a mask that makes it look like you have a face on the back of your head will prevent a tiger from ambushing you, not sure what he does when he figures out you were shining him on....