I think I can help you out. But you must follow these rules exactly as written.

1. Buy some essential items that will come into use later: two (2) thick muslin clothes (no smaller than 6"x6"), a 1/2 cc hypodermic needle/syringe, a pack of Mentos (your favorite flavor), a can of acetone from Home Depot, a bottle of common house bleach (sodium hypochlorite), a small metal pencil box, a twenty dollar bill, a pair of binoculars.
2. Using the pair of binoculars, watch your prey carefully for days to get his or her routine down.
3. Pinpoint a place where your prey is always alone, and leave a packet of Mentos nearby. You'll need to leave them hidden enough where they won't be easily detected by passers-by. You'll want them later.
4. Next, find a homeless man with AIDS. You can probably find one under a bridge near a hospital or AIDS clinic.
5. Pay him twenty bucks for a syringe full of his AIDS infested blood.
6. Place the syringe inside the pencil box so you don't stab yourself. This will allow for safe carry.
7. Soak one muslin cloth with acetone, and the other with bleach.
8. Wait at the secluded spot you picked out.
9. When your prey arrives, put the two muslin clothes together. A chemical reaction will occur when the acetone and bleach mix creating chloroform. Quickly place that over your prey's mouth and nose.
10. Once your prey is out, remove the syringe from the pencil box and inject the blood inside him or her.
11. Sit back and wait. You can locate your Mentos for added snacking enjoyment.
12. When your prey awakes, surprise him or her with the news of your prank!

First off, thanks for replying. I enjoy these conversations. They give me lots of great things to think about and explore.

Now, I think you unintentionally changed my argument. My argument wasn't "How does science explain why I like sugar?" I know people like sugary foods already. My point was that science cannot tell me why it is that of all the yummy flavors of ice cream out there, I like chocolate chip mint best. This, by the way, is not a technical limitation of science. Science can, as you noted in your post, provide an explanation as to why I prefer eating ice cream to say, spinach. It can indeed tell me about all the processes that occur in my brain (which areas get activated, what chemicals get released, etc.) when I eat chocolate chip mint ice cream. The problem is that these processes will not be the same for all people who eat chocolate chip mint ice cream.

So what we have here, then, are people experiencing that same exact objective event--we're all eating the same ice cream--and getting different results. Science is utterly unprepared to deal with this situation. Science only works in a situation in which objective knowledge can be obtained. It shouldn't matter who is doing the measuring--you should get the same result. Yet in this situation, we have multiple people "measuring" (ie tasting ice cream) and getting different results depending on the person.

To truly answer the question of why I like chocolate chip mint best, we are forced to refer to subjective knowledge and explore my personal life history up to this point, including things like my experiences, feelings, attitudes, likes and dislikes, etc. These things cannot be measured. How do you measure an experience? How could you possibly understand what I meant by without being me--having access to all of my memories, thoughts, feelings, EVERYTHING that is me? The answer is simple: you couldn't. I could explain to you in crude terms that I like chocolate chip mint better than chocolate chip by only a little bit, but you will never be able to "know" exactly what I mean "by only a little bit" (without being me, that is).

Your argument is that this problem is simply a technical matter, but I'm curious if you've taken that view to its logical conclusion--that we have no free will and are simply automatons that function at the whim of electrical impulses and chemical reactions in the brain. If science truly could explain to me why I like chocolate chip mint ice cream over say pistachio without taking into account my subjective experiences, then subjective experiences would have no meaning at all. Is that really what you're suggesting?

Let me next address a couple of unspoken assumptions you made in your reply to me. One seems to be that people of faith stop searching for answers because they believe in a god or higher power. But here clearly we have significant counter-evidence to your belief--namely in the vast number of scientists who are also believers in some religion (see this article). As scientists, they must continue to look for answers and re-evaluate new evidence as it arises, which seems to run counter to your assumption.

Another assumption seems to be that science and "rational thinking" makes people less likely to believe in religion. Again, see the previous article, which shows the percentage of scientists believe in religion hasn't changed so much despite the advances in science from 1916 to 1997 (when the second study was done). Are there religious people who are closed-minded and refuse to re-evaluate new evidence as it arises? Absolutely. But that is not a characteristic of many religious people and therefore your assumption would be an over-generalization.

Now, on to your next assumption--that no one will cry over the loss of dark matter. While I agree that in an ideal world, this would be true, I think you and I can agree the world we live in would be far from ideal. Science takes a great deal of time to change. The very skepticism that science holds so dear also puts the brakes on quick change in consensus within the scientific community. People will refuse to change their beliefs quickly. Experimental data will be checked and re-checked and I'm sure criticisms will be made about experiment design and other factors. Few experiments are performed that are so well designed as to be able to defy criticism. Skepticism doesn't just require evidence for belief, it requires overwhelming evidence and hence any change will be slow (there are still scientists arguing against global warming).

Ironically, I think you could look at religious people as reverse-skeptics. Where a skeptic will not believe anything without overwhelming evidence to support it, a religious person will not change their belief in something without overwhelming evidence that the belief is wrong. And this, I suppose, is the main reason why skeptics and believers simply cannot agree with each other. There is not enough (I would say any, actually) reliable evidence (objective or subjective) to convince either side. How could there be? Most skeptics discount subjective knowledge (their own included) right from the start. Everyone is arguing over apples and oranges.

Now, by all means, when someone says the world is 6000 years old, or that Jesus walked with dinosaurs, or that evolution is "just a theory," by all means take these people to task. They're wandering about in the realm of objective knowledge where science reigns supreme. But when someone says they believe in something (religion, Democracy, volunteering, world peace, whatever), demanding they show objective evidence of their belief and ridiculing them if they can't meet your arbitrary standard of proof (science requires overwhelming evidence, but there's no clear definition of how much is enough) is just plain wrong in my opinion.

In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
Perhaps, but no religious apologist I've ever heard has managed to convince me of that. Thats my whole point. If a believer came to me saying something like "we have independent statistics showing a significant benefit of prayer among cancer patients", that would be the kind of thing that might make me admit that belief in god was a rational and logical decision.

To your point about chocolate preference, I wouldn't be as sure, it may be a technical limitation rather than an absolute one. We already know why people tend to like chocolate, for instance (evolved sugar craving) its a tad more tricky to find out the specifics of your particular taste, but if we fully understood every detail of the brain, it might not be impossible, even without actually being you. Either way, Chocolate is a perfect example of how our subjective experience fails us: Because our ancestors lived in environments where sugar was a rarity, our bodies treat every carbohydrate molecule like it was the jackpot, basically our bodies telling us "Sugar in large quantities is great for you" Well its not, and thats a perfect example of how objective knowledge and scientific thinking always prevail over the subjective assumptions we make.

Which brings me to the point about the sun moving across the sky, which is again were science triumphs: Yes, the default assumption was that the sun, moon and stars moved around the earth, but the important part of the story is that as scientists and curious apes as we are, we arent happy just making assumptions and stop there, we keep investigating, as we will do with dark matter, it may be the best assumption we currently have, but thats not the important thing, the important thing about science is that we keep trying to figure out exactly whats going on, and if that means scrapping the whole idea about dark matter, no scientist will shed a tear, (just like we didnt when it turned out we werent the center of the universe) we will rejoice in our deeper understanding of things.

>> ^SDGundamX:

What you see as a leap-of-faith may be to the experiencer a perfectly rational and logical decision.

>> ^Jesus_Freak:
I imagine an evangelical atheist is excited to share his views because of what he perceives as freedom of rejecting the notion of God (or attesting that he sees no evidence for God), and the shedding of the shackles that organized religion seems to entail.
I also imagine the stereotypical view of what drives an evangelical Christian is one (or more) of three things:

• Fear that if he does not share his faith, he'll be punished or not make it to heaven.


• Brainwashing from his mother and father since childhood.


• Some twisted pleasure from telling you that you're going to hell while "I'm not."

What I don't have to imagine is the ACTUAL reason I'm thankful for my Christianity. I've led a very satisfying life with very tangible blessings stemming from my relationship with Jesus Christ. I've found His teaching to be profound and reliable, I've found indescribable freedom, and I've found layers of comfort that surpass all understanding. If you wish to maintain a dim view of all Christians in some stereotypical way, you do so with a focus of poor examples of some individuals who share my faith, or from a lack of exeprience that your scientific analysis can't quantify.
I could fill this page with research and references of why I think "Christ was special and unique," which would no doubt be fodder for whatever counter-arguments you're eager to provide. What I'll tell you is: living is believing. Hate or disrespect me all you like, but it won't change me. I'm just as entitled to my excitement as you are yours.


Rant

I think a lot of agnostics, backsliders and atheists just want Christians to stop worrying about their well being. We're doing fine. Obviously there are many types of non-believers, just like there are many types of believers, so I can't speak for everyone; and when I speak about Christians I pull it from my personal experience. I am against the aggressive atheists almost as much as I am against the aggressive Christians; the only difference for me being that atheists are concerned with scientific truth/intellectual honesty, and Christians are concerned with saving souls from the possiblity (or the certainty, if it pleases you) of hell/faithtellectual honesty. I personally feel that if someone wants to be intellectually dishonest, that's their problem.

One of my biggest issues with "enthusiatic" Christians is that their belief comes from their personal faith, yet many Christians that I know/grew up with can't fathom that I've never had this faith. It's called faith for a reason, and cannot truly be intellectualized into a logical, non-circular argument. On that note, Christian buzz phrases like "it's a free gift" are semantically obtrusive. Did the church that started this buzz word campaign ever hear the saying, "Talk is cheap"? Of course it's a free gift. Could you imagine if you had to pay a dollar every time someone shared their religion with you? "Right then, I covered Isiah 1:18, John 3:16 and Romans 5:9 -- that will be $5.50." I mean, aside from tithe.. which technically makes it not a free gift if you become a proper worshipper of Yahweh. Every time a Christian tells me this I feel like I'm a five year old retarded child. Oh, it's soo easy; it's free; it's the best thing ever. Awesome for you. Not awesome for me. I grew up in a fundamental Christian family and never once felt anything other than an emotional connection with my peers. I tried it and you know what? I didn't care for it much. It didn't provide tangible results. What provided tangible results was my rejection of the gift. It's freedom like breaking up with a needy girlfriend. My heart rests easy now. (I was happy to read that you recognize this.)

Many of my Christian relatives suffer from depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, and diabetes. I don't, yet I don't believe in Jesus' gift. What type of tangible result is that? (I'm being rhetorical.) I was involved in our family prayer circles (I'm not kidding) for years and almost every single request for divine assistance has gone unanswered. I learned growing up with Christians that tangible results are either products of their imagination or, like gambling, the luck of the draw -- If you pray about every single bad thing in your life, chances are some of those prayers will be "anwered". I have no doubt you derive all sorts of enjoyment and fulfillment from your faith. (Positive reinforcement works, obviously.) The human brain is a capable chemical production factory. One of my roommates is a microbilogist and the other is just beginning his career in psychology. Currently they both work with mentally challenged and disturbed children -- 3 year old gang rape victims, retarded children and sociopaths. Many of these kids could never begin to comprehend the message nor the gift of Christ, but there are many other avenues to fulfillment for them with the aid of a needle or a pill. (Then again, God works in mysterious ways, so maybe His essence is inside every chemical reaction.)

I am the only non-Christian in my family and it gets tiring when I am constantly bombarded by invites to church after stating I'd rather sleep in on Sundays and am not a believer, nor do I have a Jesus sized hole in my heart that needs to be filled. I love my family, but some day I'd like to spend the holidays with them unconditionally, without the current conditional, slightly uncomfortable, tension-filled and concerned invitations to "candle light services" on Christmas Eve and other similar events that occur throughout the year. (I recently started dating a Christian, and when my relatives found out it's like a shooting gallery for Christian-centric pressure, and comments like, "We prayed that you'd meet a nice Christian girl -- and it WORKED". Another tangible result!!! Luckily my girlfriend understands my perspective and, like the good Calvinist, realizes I was not predestined to believe. Now THAT I can deal with. )

Jesus is the reason for the season? No, that would be God The Father, who quote-on-quote created the seasons.

End Rant

NordlichReiter = Tom Cruise?

The ridiculous belief that depression can be cured by "training" your brain to not be depressed is absurd. What randomized control trials can you cite where "brain training" cures depression? (Hint: THERE ARE NONE)

This neo-hippie bullshit propaganda continues to add to the suffering of those with mental illness by dissuading them from getting treatment.



>> ^NordlichReiter:
I think that if a person's brain works on chemical reactions, then all that they need to know is how to cause the chemical reaction that will overcome mental issues. The brain can cause just about any reaction in a body, like an athlete who can forget about the pain. These things are achieved through brain training, which is has low impact on the knees and shoulders so you don't have to worry about injuries.
But that person has to be aware, and this is the difficult part. If a person is not aware that they are in a world that is fake then they will not find the real world. Like a dream, pay attention to things and the seams in the unreality will be revealed.
But then again, it could be like the beautiful mind, were these things can only be lived with, and not defeated.

The only dualistic aspect between body and mind is that of hardware and software.

The brain is full of chemical reactions and electrical impulses, in the same manner as a computer is composed of silicon and electrical impulses. in the computer the electrical impulses are interpreted to be programs and processes forming a higher level "language" in several stages. The brain seem to interpret some of ours as consciousness, memories, thoughts. We, obviously, have no special insight introspectively into how our brain works, since we are limited by its own interpretation of itself. By studying neuroscience, we might be able to decipher how this interpretation happens, but one thing is fairly evident, there is no ethereal element to it. There is no connection from the material to the immaterial. If there is something immaterial, and I doubt it, it has no dicernable influence on the material world and in the end, is not really important (though it would be interesting).

"Who the fuck cares. Despite knowing that love is a series of chemical reactions from my brain to my penis, I love it.

I mean... I totally wasn't turned on by this video."

We care about it because it's a 'pretty lie,' like Creationism. Creationism makes us 'feel good' even though it's anti-intellectual, but letting the masses have their way and persist with pretty illusions has nothing to do with progressive civilization and makes us all dumber.

>> ^chilaxe:
That's not a "prediction," that's what's called a random and baseless guess. Just like a "Nostradamus-like" random lottery winning, there are no underlying laws or wisdoms at work; there's no meaning to this event.
Choosing reality is always best for the common good. Society being mentally like a child has deep costs, and Maddow isn't helping.


Who the fuck cares. Despite knowing that love is a series of chemical reactions from my brain to my penis, I love it.

I mean... I totally wasn't turned on by this video.

>> ^Jesus_Freak:
^JoeDirt
To everyone else. Can you honestly take in the astounding sights, sounds, and wonders of the world around us and not at least consider the possibility that this was not all the result of ridiculously improbable chaos? The order and certainty, which I thank Science for demonstrating, in the laws of physics and gravity...you can honestly say "gee, neat that it all just came together like that?" Our planet alone would have had to have been to result of 10,000,000 lottery odds occurrences all happening in concert. Nothing was behind that?


Id just like to point out that those sights, sounds and wonders you speak of which you find amazing, and yes there are many in this world, are the result of your brain's chemical reactions to those three things. Like when you buy something really nice and shiny you've been saving up for and wanting for so long, that giddy rush you get while walking out of the store? Same thing (and be careful, it's addictive... mmm.. WoW Expansion Collector's Editions... =0~~ )

I know that sounds dry and soulless, but it's not. Something that is amazing IS amazing (to you).. but we're just creatures reacting to these things in the same way a cat purrs when you pet it.

And about the other thing.. the odds argument. What are the odds that we could live in a place with so many intricate and amazing systems, like the tides, and the sun rising and setting, and the seasons.. etc, etc...??

Because.. Where Ever That System Develops in this Humongous Universe We Live In.. THAT Is Where Life Is Going to -Form- (us). We are a -part- of that system, just like the purring cat, or the sand on the beach. We are a component of the universe, and we're at a really amazing stage where we're self aware of all of this. Id like to think we're going to continue to evolve further into aspects of the universe we're unable to understand at all currently.

What exists outside the realm of what our current senses cover? After all, we're currently adapted to this planet.. not the whole universe itself... hopefully.

*puts bong down*

Wait... what was I just talking about?

>> ^Psychologic:
My Guess:
Judging by the sound and the spray, I'd say that the bottom of the container went from concave to convex almost instantly due to thermal expansion.
If you listen, the sound it makes is a metallic ping rather than a liquid pop, leading me to believe that the container "punched" the liquid into the air rather than some form of pressure forming within the liquid itself. If you look closely you can see that it completely clears one section of the container near the middle before it is refilled by the remaining liquid.
That's just my guess though. I don't see any evidence of a chemical reaction so all I can think of is the container changing shape very suddenly.


Betting you're right. I can't believe the moron was willing to put his face that close to blow it out after that happened. Shit, they are very lucky they didn't burn themselves.

My Guess:

Judging by the sound and the spray, I'd say that the bottom of the container went from concave to convex almost instantly due to thermal expansion.

If you listen, the sound it makes is a metallic ping rather than a liquid pop, leading me to believe that the container "punched" the liquid into the air rather than some form of pressure forming within the liquid itself. If you look closely you can see that it completely clears one section of the container near the middle before it is refilled by the remaining liquid.

That's just my guess though. I don't see any evidence of a chemical reaction so all I can think of is the container changing shape very suddenly.

In reference to what i am getting from this thread is there is no God and this is all just one big cosmic coincidence? Now how much belief does that take?

2 points here, firstly, How much belief it takes? well, to me, its not really a matter of belief or "faith", its a matter of evidence. Scientists have studied the universe for a long time and concluded, based on EVIDENCE, that the universe is expanding at an exponential rate. By comparing stars at various distances, we can look back in time, literally, and see how the early universe looked and behaved. Which brings me to point number 2: "cosmic accident" is a gross oversimplification of our current understanding of the universe.

We have deduced, based on evidence that the early universe was much denser and hotter and simpler than it is now. Brian Cox used a snowflake as a metaphor, this old, "frozen" universe is complex and interesting, where as the early universe, like a melted snowflake, would just be a dense , hot gass of sorts, ultimately with only hydrogen in it. As Carl Sagan said: This (meaning us humans, earth and every living creature on it) is what you get when you give Hydrogen atoms 14 billion years to evolve.

Right now, our Sun with its immense gravitational pressure fuses 700 million tons of hydrogen into 695 million tons of helium, EVERY SECOND. 5 Million tons of pure energy is released, equaling something like 200 million Hiroshima bombs EVERY SECOND. Yet these extreme numbers are peanuts compared to the events that shaped our universe. Our sun simply isnt powerful enough to fuse helium and create heavier elements. For that, we need bigger "Weapons of Cosmic Destruction Creation" Supernovae, red giants, galactic collisions and supermassive black holes, nebulae and gas clouds beyond all imaginations. From cosmic events like this, all the ingredients we take for granted here on earth, (like carbon etc) were originally created. Again when talking about grand stuff like this that I know little about, it is best to qoute Carl Sagan again:

We are the Stuff Of Stars.

I love that quote because it is literally true.

So thats the "accident" before life arose. The exact chemical reactions that gave rise to the first self-replicating molecule is not fully understood, but once that first barrier was crossed (achieving high-fidelity replication) Evolution by natural selection is INEVITABLE.It still took a good 2 billion years before cells start grouping into multi-cellular organisms, but when that revolution happened, we went from flatworm to primates in a measly 700 million years.

That account of the Cosmic accident is a far to brief, incomplete and rough draft of what happened, of course, I only mean to point out that this isnt some mad scientists guesswork. The processes and events above have been predicted, discovered, tested and examined and calculated and peer-reviewed and-- you get the point. They are our current best shot at understanding the universe, based on the available evidence. Naturally, much is left to discover, and thats what makes science interesting.

Interesting voodoo science here... any word on neutron production and detection, which would indicate an atomic rather than some weird, exotic chemical reaction?

^Our society as it exists now is predicated on each of us being accountable individuals . What I think you're hinting at with "the illusion of person-hood" is that we don't have free will, and while I agree in the strictest sense of the word, our society exists as if we have free will. If it did not, we could not have a law and we could not hold anyone accountable for their deeds.

Again in the strictest sense of it, then yes, no one of us is accountable for what we do, because we are determined by chemical reactions, background radiation and so on, but we exists as if we do choose for ourselves and for now, I don't think it would be wise to change that.

(The argument could be made that we are only determinable by something that would exist outside the universe, because by being inside the universe this prediction would break itself with paradoxes.)

What I think I'm getting at is that when something is given "rights" is completely arbitrarily determined by us, whether it is when it is conceived or born (or at 18) is not really relevant from on objective standpoint, we just have to decide on any given compromise. I'm not sure that you can make a general rule for when a baby can never/always survive birth, because it depends on the baby and the mother's health and many, many factors. The best thing that policy can do is to give guidelines and let the doctors and mother (and to some extent father) decide in the individual cases.


//The Following code is a concept.
//Just imagine the possibilities.
using System.Net;

public ConnectToAi
{
  private anomalousAI = System.IP.Interface.Scan().getInterfaces();

 public ConnectToAi
&nbsp&nbsp{
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp AttemptConnection()Throws YouAreNotPreparedException;
&nbsp&nbsp}

private AttemptConnection()
{
 try{             &n
bsp;//Source    Destination
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp System.Interface(127.0.0.1,anomalousAI);
&nbsp&nbsp}
  catch(Exception youarenotprepared)
&nbsp&nbsp{
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp MessageDialog(youarenotprepared.StackTrace)
&nbsp&nbsp}
}
}



So how does one attain immortality?

That is simple.

With out a cerebral cortex we cannot have conscious life, as human kind knows it. If this conscious is nothing but brainwaves, electrons, and chemical reactions, then the best way to prolong existence is to create an environment where the cortex and brain can live.

Sounds a lot like the Matrix doesn't it...

is this definitely a bag of cement?


>> ^StringerBell:
Cement or pure plaster would be pretty bad for the eyes.
Firstly, cement when wet is highly alkaline (~pH 13) which would with sweaty skin could cause 1st, 2nd and even 3rd degree burns depending on exposure.
Forget about the eyes, and mucous membranes.
Exposure to airborne dust may cause immediate or delayed irritation of the eyes. Depending on the level of exposure, effects may range from redness to chemical burns and blindness.
http://www.cdc.gov/eLCOSH/docs/d0500/d000513/d000513.html
Also, the chemical reaction when plaster mixes with water is exothermic. Which could also lead to burning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaster
Right, I think i'll scrub plasterer off the potential jobs list.