>> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^quantumushroom:
So it's not possible to believe homosexuality is wrong without being a "hater?"
Bullshit.

So, it's wrong to be born homosexual?
Bullshit.


I think It could be fair to call the physical sexual aspect of homosexuality a disorder , although that's not necessarily a bad thing , its one of those things that has very few negative effects the only grounds for which I would say its a "disorder" are the following

I would think given the choice most gay men or women would rather be equpid with sexual organs that better function for sexual enjoyment from each other without so much hassle or that can operate with less risk of health implications ( in the case of men).

for example Interims of the machinery of sexual enjoyment a penis and vagina function far better together mechanically than a penis and a anus or a vagina and vagina. ( vagina lubricates itself , is less prone to tairing , when it does brake has more ability to repair itself , it has a balance of microbes that can better protect and reduce the risk of infection ) With vagina and vagina sex I think you could argue that its less intimate than penal sex with a vagina and if lesbian woman could have a lesbian penis then im sure they would use that over fingers or other body parts.

due to the Psychological aspect of sexual enjoyment obviously some people prefer a dick in an ass then a dick in a vagina , or would rather rub up against a statue or a tree. but I'm sure if you give them the ability to chose what they could enjoy they would pick vagina penis sex.

However I don't see how the emotional side of homosexuality could be construed as a disorder as There is no real negative consequence ( other than idiotic cultural conventions) from loving another human regardless of what there sex might be. ( unless gays were a super minority but at between 15-25% of the population its not going to be that hard for a gay person to find a partner)


If at birth you could have it so that people didn't need to be gay then it may be better to not have people be gay. But fact is that will never really happen and we have also got to the point where techanloicaly gay people can reproduce and function as normal or more so than anyone else , furthermore the fundamental differences between a gay mind and a straight mind probably is of social and cultural bnofit to a society as a whole.

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Commercial electric bread slicer:

Modern Technology Bitches!

Boom! Done.

Wow... the result looks great... I fear on the price he may put for his works. I wish there were more like him around, as many of the swords created today uses new technology and machinery to forge and shape the blades, becoming more of a manufactured item, rather than hand crafted, forged, and tempered by man.

No, Dandy-Walker does not contradict everything taught in the video. He has (and others like him have) most of the same brain structures (especially the ones related to consciousness). For the most part, they are missing their cerebellar vermis, which controls and analyzes spatial motion. The parts that have something to do with consciousness are still there, and they are even in pretty much the same place as they would be otherwise.

You forgot agenesis of the corpus callosum, which means it is only partially formed or completely absent. Which means that his brain operates much differently than normal (obviously).

Even if the parts of their brain were jumbled up a bit, that doesn't mean they couldn't necessarily have consciousness. The body does some amazing things considering some of the biological errors that happen. People can be born with holes in their hearts, or on the wrong side of their body, and have perfectly functioning circulatory systems - that doesn't mean the circulation of their blood is transcendent from their circulatory system.

I never said he couldn't have consciousness if his brain was jumbled up. I was saying that his brain does not have the structure described in this video. Since we know he was a normal guy able to hold down a job and have proper relationships, it refutes the assertions that it made.

And there is no comparison between consciousness and the brain and the circulatory system and the blood. The blood is physical, consciousness cannot be measured.

This is a complete cop-out. I can say the same to you. If your god is
omniscient, then he knows what you are going to do before you do it.
Therefore you don't actually have free will because, no matter what,
you are going to do what god always expected you to do.

Are you suggesting what I said isn't true? If not, why? And, God knowing what I am going to do next does not limit my free will. I am not being prevented from making any choice, nor am I being forced to make one. Simply because God knows what I am going to do doesn't mean I had to make the choice I did.

>> ^Skeeve:
The point is that his experience contradicts everything which is taught in this video. By all accounts he lived a normal life, with feelings and relationships and struggles, but did not have anything approximating the brain structure described in this video. Clearly you can see much that is being spouted here is just a materialists wet dream. The attempt to approximate all human experience into mechanistic terms.
No, Dandy-Walker does not contradict everything taught in the video. He has (and others like him have) most of the same brain structures (especially the ones related to consciousness). For the most part, they are missing their cerebellar vermis, which controls and analyzes spatial motion. The parts that have something to do with consciousness are still there, and they are even in pretty much the same place as they would be otherwise.
Even if the parts of their brain were jumbled up a bit, that doesn't mean they couldn't necessarily have consciousness. The body does some amazing things considering some of the biological errors that happen. People can be born with holes in their hearts, or on the wrong side of their body, and have perfectly functioning circulatory systems - that doesn't mean the circulation of their blood is transcendent from their circulatory system.
Let's put it this way..If you believe you're nothing more than material machinery then you don't have free will and you can't even trust your own rationality. You don't have free will because all of your choices are preceeded and caused by unconscious material processes.
This is a complete cop-out. I can say the same to you. If your god is omniscient, then he knows what you are going to do before you do it. Therefore you don't actually have free will because, no matter what, you are going to do what god always expected you to do.

The point is that his experience contradicts everything which is taught in this video. By all accounts he lived a normal life, with feelings and relationships and struggles, but did not have anything approximating the brain structure described in this video. Clearly you can see much that is being spouted here is just a materialists wet dream. The attempt to approximate all human experience into mechanistic terms.

No, Dandy-Walker does not contradict everything taught in the video. He has (and others like him have) most of the same brain structures (especially the ones related to consciousness). For the most part, they are missing their cerebellar vermis, which controls and analyzes spatial motion. The parts that have something to do with consciousness are still there, and they are even in pretty much the same place as they would be otherwise.

Even if the parts of their brain were jumbled up a bit, that doesn't mean they couldn't necessarily have consciousness. The body does some amazing things considering some of the biological errors that happen. People can be born with holes in their hearts, or on the wrong side of their body, and have perfectly functioning circulatory systems - that doesn't mean the circulation of their blood is transcendent from their circulatory system.

Let's put it this way..If you believe you're nothing more than material machinery then you don't have free will and you can't even trust your own rationality. You don't have free will because all of your choices are preceeded and caused by unconscious material processes.

This is a complete cop-out. I can say the same to you. If your god is omniscient, then he knows what you are going to do before you do it. Therefore you don't actually have free will because, no matter what, you are going to do what god always expected you to do.
>> ^shinyblurry:

Shiny, that sounds an awful like the same garbage Deepak Chopra spouts and that Sam Harris addressed in this video.
If consciousness is "entirely transcendent of its wiring" then why can damage to that wiring change/destroy the conciousness?
Consciousness is consciousness, whether the brain is damaged or undamaged. The key part is having it, and It stems from the soul. The quality of the consciousness is effected by the relative performance of the medium, but if access to information is lost in the physical, it doesn't mean it is gone. It's purely your assumption that it can be destroyed in any way. The access may be lost in the physical, but it still exists in eternity. God knows everything, so He is the ultimate memory storage for our souls.
As for the French civil servant with Dandy-Walker syndrome, let's get some facts straight: firstly, he has a lower than average IQ and secondly, his brain is not a "small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick", it is pushed up against the sides of the skull with an empty cavity in the center.
The fact that he isn't lacking in consciousness isn't what makes it newsworthy either. It was newsworthy because he went so long without it being diagnosed and without having the common problems associated with it. The mortality rate for people with this disorder is high, but it isn't uncommon for a survivor with the disorder to have a normal cognition. The reason that is, is because their brain is misshapen and missing pieces, but those missing pieces tend to be the ones that deal with more basic functions like muscle control as opposed to those parts used for consciousness.
The point is that his experience contradicts everything which is taught in this video. By all accounts he lived a normal life, with feelings and relationships and struggles, but did not have anything approximating the brain structure described in this video. Clearly you can see much that is being spouted here is just a materialists wet dream. The attempt to approximate all human experience into mechanistic terms.
Let's put it this way..If you believe you're nothing more than material machinery then you don't have free will and you can't even trust your own rationality. You don't have free will because all of your choices are preceeded and caused by unconscious material processes. Here's a quote from Sam:
"For [many people], freedom of will is synonymous with the idea that, with respect to any specific thought or action, one could have thought or acted differently. But to say that I could have done otherwise is merely to think the thought, “I could have done otherwise” after doing whatever I, in fact, did. Rather than indicate my freedom, this thought is just an epitaph erected to moments past. What I will do next, and why, remains, at bottom, inscrutable to me. To declare my “freedom” is tantamount to saying, “I don’t know why I did it, but it’s the sort of thing I tend to do, and I don’t mind doing it.”
And this is why the last objection is just another way of not facing up to the problem. To say that “my brain” has decided to think or act in a particular way, whether consciously or not, and my freedom consists in this, is to ignore the very reason why people believe in free will in the first place: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about."
You can't trust your own rationality because it is based upon on chemical reactions in the brain, a process which evolved from the lower animals and with guarantee of any truth. Here's what darwin said about it:
"With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"
So, if I am speaking to someone who can't make independent choices, with rationality that came from monkeys, why should I believe anything that you're saying?
>> ^Skeeve:
Shiny, that sounds an awful like the same garbage Deepak Chopra spouts and that Sam Harris addressed in this video.

If consciousness is "entirely transcendent of its wiring" then why can damage to that wiring change/destroy the conciousness?
As for the French civil servant with Dandy-Walker syndrome, let's get some facts straight: firstly, he has a lower than average IQ and secondly, his brain is not a "small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick", it is pushed up against the sides of the skull with an empty cavity in the center.
The fact that he isn't lacking in consciousness isn't what makes it newsworthy either. It was newsworthy because he went so long without it being diagnosed and without having the common problems associated with it. The mortality rate for people with this disorder is high, but it isn't uncommon for a survivor with the disorder to have a normal cognition. The reason that is, is because their brain is misshapen and missing pieces, but those missing pieces tend to be the ones that deal with more basic functions like muscle control as opposed to those parts used for consciousness.
Next time you try to discredit science, point to something we don't know about instead of something that happens to 1 in 25000 live births.
@braindonut, you might find the following links interesting:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290610,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy%E2%80%93Walker_syndrome
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/dandywalker/dandywalker.htm
>> ^shinyblurry:
Consciousness is entirely transcendent of its wiring, and how an individual processes reality is categorically unique from everyone else. If you let them dice you up into stupid machinery, like some kind of advanced parameciam, it will just make you more automated, not less. You are more than the sum of your parts. Some of these things may be superficially true, on a superficial level, but the patterns of our lives go much, much deeper than this. We're not just rats in a maze, but rather we are spiritual beings that transcend the raw material.
There is a civil servant in Europe with a normal IQ who got a brain scan one day and found out that his brain is just a small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick. Clearly none of this "science" (and wild conjecture) applies to him. Ignore the psycho babble and discern your own individual nature. You are not your thoughts. That monologue in your head can be turned off, and there can be silence. Search out the patterns of your thinking, the automation of your being, and break the chain.

Shiny, that sounds an awful like the same garbage Deepak Chopra spouts and that Sam Harris addressed in this video.

If consciousness is "entirely transcendent of its wiring" then why can damage to that wiring change/destroy the conciousness?

Consciousness is consciousness, whether the brain is damaged or undamaged. The key part is having it, and It stems from the soul. The quality of the consciousness is effected by the relative performance of the medium, but if access to information is lost in the physical, it doesn't mean it is gone. It's purely your assumption that it can be destroyed in any way. The access may be lost in the physical, but it still exists in eternity. God knows everything, so He is the ultimate memory storage for our souls.

As for the French civil servant with Dandy-Walker syndrome, let's get some facts straight: firstly, he has a lower than average IQ and secondly, his brain is not a "small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick", it is pushed up against the sides of the skull with an empty cavity in the center.

The fact that he isn't lacking in consciousness isn't what makes it newsworthy either. It was newsworthy because he went so long without it being diagnosed and without having the common problems associated with it. The mortality rate for people with this disorder is high, but it isn't uncommon for a survivor with the disorder to have a normal cognition. The reason that is, is because their brain is misshapen and missing pieces, but those missing pieces tend to be the ones that deal with more basic functions like muscle control as opposed to those parts used for consciousness.

The point is that his experience contradicts everything which is taught in this video. By all accounts he lived a normal life, with feelings and relationships and struggles, but did not have anything approximating the brain structure described in this video. Clearly you can see much that is being spouted here is just a materialists wet dream. The attempt to approximate all human experience into mechanistic terms.

Let's put it this way..If you believe you're nothing more than material machinery then you don't have free will and you can't even trust your own rationality. You don't have free will because all of your choices are preceeded and caused by unconscious material processes. Here's a quote from Sam:

"For [many people], freedom of will is synonymous with the idea that, with respect to any specific thought or action, one could have thought or acted differently. But to say that I could have done otherwise is merely to think the thought, “I could have done otherwise” after doing whatever I, in fact, did. Rather than indicate my freedom, this thought is just an epitaph erected to moments past. What I will do next, and why, remains, at bottom, inscrutable to me. To declare my “freedom” is tantamount to saying, “I don’t know why I did it, but it’s the sort of thing I tend to do, and I don’t mind doing it.”

And this is why the last objection is just another way of not facing up to the problem. To say that “my brain” has decided to think or act in a particular way, whether consciously or not, and my freedom consists in this, is to ignore the very reason why people believe in free will in the first place: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about."

You can't trust your own rationality because it is based upon on chemical reactions in the brain, a process which evolved from the lower animals and with guarantee of any truth. Here's what darwin said about it:

"With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

So, if I am speaking to someone who can't make independent choices, with rationality that came from monkeys, why should I believe anything that you're saying?

>> ^Skeeve:
Shiny, that sounds an awful like the same garbage Deepak Chopra spouts and that Sam Harris addressed in this video.

If consciousness is "entirely transcendent of its wiring" then why can damage to that wiring change/destroy the conciousness?
As for the French civil servant with Dandy-Walker syndrome, let's get some facts straight: firstly, he has a lower than average IQ and secondly, his brain is not a "small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick", it is pushed up against the sides of the skull with an empty cavity in the center.
The fact that he isn't lacking in consciousness isn't what makes it newsworthy either. It was newsworthy because he went so long without it being diagnosed and without having the common problems associated with it. The mortality rate for people with this disorder is high, but it isn't uncommon for a survivor with the disorder to have a normal cognition. The reason that is, is because their brain is misshapen and missing pieces, but those missing pieces tend to be the ones that deal with more basic functions like muscle control as opposed to those parts used for consciousness.
Next time you try to discredit science, point to something we don't know about instead of something that happens to 1 in 25000 live births.
@braindonut, you might find the following links interesting:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290610,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy%E2%80%93Walker_syndrome
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/dandywalker/dandywalker.htm
>> ^shinyblurry:
Consciousness is entirely transcendent of its wiring, and how an individual processes reality is categorically unique from everyone else. If you let them dice you up into stupid machinery, like some kind of advanced parameciam, it will just make you more automated, not less. You are more than the sum of your parts. Some of these things may be superficially true, on a superficial level, but the patterns of our lives go much, much deeper than this. We're not just rats in a maze, but rather we are spiritual beings that transcend the raw material.
There is a civil servant in Europe with a normal IQ who got a brain scan one day and found out that his brain is just a small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick. Clearly none of this "science" (and wild conjecture) applies to him. Ignore the psycho babble and discern your own individual nature. You are not your thoughts. That monologue in your head can be turned off, and there can be silence. Search out the patterns of your thinking, the automation of your being, and break the chain.

Shiny, that sounds an awful like the same garbage Deepak Chopra spouts and that Sam Harris addressed in this video.

If consciousness is "entirely transcendent of its wiring" then why can damage to that wiring change/destroy the conciousness?

As for the French civil servant with Dandy-Walker syndrome, let's get some facts straight: firstly, he has a lower than average IQ and secondly, his brain is not a "small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick", it is pushed up against the sides of the skull with an empty cavity in the center.

The fact that he isn't lacking in consciousness isn't what makes it newsworthy either. It was newsworthy because he went so long without it being diagnosed and without having the common problems associated with it. The mortality rate for people with this disorder is high, but it isn't uncommon for a survivor with the disorder to have a normal cognition. The reason that is, is because their brain is misshapen and missing pieces, but those missing pieces tend to be the ones that deal with more basic functions like muscle control as opposed to those parts used for consciousness.

Next time you try to discredit science, point to something we don't know about instead of something that happens to 1 in 25000 live births.

@braindonut, you might find the following links interesting:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290610,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy%E2%80%93Walker_syndrome
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/dandywalker/dandywalker.htm
>> ^shinyblurry:

Consciousness is entirely transcendent of its wiring, and how an individual processes reality is categorically unique from everyone else. If you let them dice you up into stupid machinery, like some kind of advanced parameciam, it will just make you more automated, not less. You are more than the sum of your parts. Some of these things may be superficially true, on a superficial level, but the patterns of our lives go much, much deeper than this. We're not just rats in a maze, but rather we are spiritual beings that transcend the raw material.
There is a civil servant in Europe with a normal IQ who got a brain scan one day and found out that his brain is just a small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick. Clearly none of this "science" (and wild conjecture) applies to him. Ignore the psycho babble and discern your own individual nature. You are not your thoughts. That monologue in your head can be turned off, and there can be silence. Search out the patterns of your thinking, the automation of your being, and break the chain.

Consciousness is entirely transcendent of its wiring, and how an individual processes reality is categorically unique from everyone else. If you let them dice you up into stupid machinery, like some kind of advanced parameciam, it will just make you more automated, not less. You are more than the sum of your parts. Some of these things may be superficially true, on a superficial level, but the patterns of our lives go much, much deeper than this. We're not just rats in a maze, but rather we are spiritual beings that transcend the raw material.

There is a civil servant in Europe with a normal IQ who got a brain scan one day and found out that his brain is just a small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick. Clearly none of this "science" (and wild conjecture) applies to him. Ignore the psycho babble and discern your own individual nature. You are not your thoughts. That monologue in your head can be turned off, and there can be silence. Search out the patterns of your thinking, the automation of your being, and break the chain.

I have claimed that there are methods to synthesize information that do not require the interaction of a mind. I have provided an example of one such system.

You object, but without either asserting that the simulation is a mind, or that it does not synthesize information, but instead you make some vague assertion about how it's instead not an example.

A mind created and designed it, therefore a mind is involved, therefore it is an invalid example..

Abiogenesis is, like all real knowledge, unproven. None the less it is, at present, the only coherent explanation for what can be demonstrated to exist.

Abiogenesis is unproven because there is no evidence, it is just metaphysics. It's your faith that it is true. It is not the only coherent explanation, it is just the explanation that you have to believe because you have ruled out an intelligent designer apriori.

There is no ID hypothesis, Behe came the closest to actually trying, and any competent high school biology student could pick his little charade to pieces in a few hours with a half decent encyclopedia.

Here is the hypothesis

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1156

Here is a story about ID being published in a biology journal making predictions for cancer research

http://www.discovery.org/a/2627

I am arguing not that there are no differences in the world, but that there is no concrete distinction between life and chemistry. You can assume there is, you can assert there is, but until you can demonstrate that there is I have nothing to disprove.

There is obviously a concrete difference since life doesn't come from non-life, and has never once been observed doing so. You have everything in the world to prove here. Everything in the Universe is made up of atoms, does that mean there is no difference between you and me? Is there no difference between a duck and a neutron star? You can't just say that because there are trivial similarities that they are the same thing.

And if you think like that, and you just believe we are all chemicals in motion, then you can't trust your own mind because if our mental processes are just chemical reactions, then there is no reason to believe anything is true. If our mental states have their origin in non-rational causes, rationality can't be trusted. You can't know if the rationality we have from evolutionary processes is discerning the truth of the world or not. Even Darwin realized this:

"With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

The bottom right hydroxyl group is the only difference between RNA and DNA, to suggest that molecules can't lose parts, is to argue that the universe is not as it observably is.

Since the step you clearly label (MAGIC) in the RNA-> DNA path is so obviously trivial, why should anybody believe that the other step you label (MAGIC) is any more complex
?
Well this is plainly false. RNA to DNA is far more probable than ROCKS to RNA. The reason it is labeled magic is because there is no proof. It doesn't mean that they are both equally likely. It is less likely by large orders of magnitude.

The magic is RNA self-replication:

http://www.lifesorigin.com/chap10/RNA-self-replication-3.php

And if you had bothered to do any real research, you would see that the leap from soup to these complex molecules is anything but trivial..here is a list of just of basic issues...

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/chemlife.html

Some quotes for you:

Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the evolution of the cell might have occurred, molecular biology has served only to emphasize the enormity of the gap. We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature. Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive....

Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells. The size, structure and component design of the protein synthetic machinery is practically the same in all cells.

In terms of the basic biochemical design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth. For those who hoped that molecular biology might bridge the gulf between chemistry and biochemistry, the revelation was profoundly disappointing."

Dr. Denton, Ph.D (Molecular Biology),
An evolutionist currently doing biological research in Sydney, Australia

Now we know that the cell itself is far more complex than we had imagined. It includes thousands of functioning enzymes, each one of them a complex machine in itself. Furthermore, each enzyme comes into being in response to a gene, a strand of DNA. The information content of the gene (it's complexity) must be as great as that of the enzyme it controls.

A medium protein might include about 300 amino acids. The DNA gene controlling this would have about 1,000 nucleotides in its chain, one consisting of a 1,000 links could exist in 41000 different forms. Using a little algebra (logarithms) we can see that 41000 = 10600. Ten multiplied by itself 600 times gives us the figure '1' followed by 600 zeros! This number is completely beyond our comprehension."

Frank Salisbury,
Evolutionary biologist

Perhaps an "effort", but not a method, or a hypothesis. ID makes no predictions, it simply tries to find arguments to prop up a baseless assumption, that is the opposite of science.

If any ID proponent, or any theologian for that matter, can demonstrate even one example of anything true that their ideology can reliably tell us that we don't already know I will admit that it has predictive power, and that it could qualify as a hypothesis, and then eventually a theory. I'm betting you can't find one.

I did, see above. Here is a bunch more: http://www.discovery.org/a/2640


>> ^dgandhi:
>> ^shinyblurry:
What I insist is that you substantiate your claims, which you have failed to do.
I have claimed that there are methods to synthesize information that do not require the interaction of a mind. I have provided an example of one such system.
You object, but without either asserting that the simulation is a mind, or that it does not synthesize information, but instead you make some vague assertion about how it's instead not an example.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Abiogenesis is purely metaphysics and unproven.
Abiogenesis is, like all real knowledge, unproven. None the less it is, at present, the only coherent explanation for what can be demonstrated to exist.
There is no ID hypothesis, Behe came the closest to actually trying, and any competent high school biology student could pick his little charade to pieces in a few hours with a half decent encyclopedia.
Given two possibilities, one being unlikely, and the other being false, I'll go with unlikely.
>> ^shinyblurry:
So you acknowledge that information is trivially synthesized, by
non-minds? That's the opposite of your original claim. Is that a
retraction?
No, see above.

You said, and I quote: "if you already have DNA, you can certainly expect a cell to form."
Do you mean that DNA must already have the information required to do so? because lots of DNA does not, otherwise are you asserting that DNA is somehow "mind", which you claim would be required for that information to come into being?
>> ^shinyblurry:
The distinction between "life" and "non-life" does not exist.
So there is no difference between you and a rock? I can admit I see similarities, heart wise..:)
Let's see some evidence for your claim that there is no difference between life and non-life.

I am arguing not that there are no differences in the world, but that there is no concrete distinction between life and chemistry. You can assume there is, you can assert there is, but until you can demonstrate that there is I have nothing to disprove.
You can't disprove unicorns, I can't disprove the life boundary, and we have no reason to believe either exists.
>> ^shinyblurry:
It's not false. This is your pathway to DNA: RNA - (MAGIC) - DNA This is your pathway to RNA: ROCKS - (MAGIC) - RNA Just because you can get RNA to self-replicate doesn't automatically mean it is either likely or plausible this could happen.
Please consider this image: http://en.citizendium.org/images/thumb/f/f6/RNA_base_vs_DNA_base.jpg/350px-RNA_base_vs_DNA_base.jpg
The bottom right hydroxyl group is the only difference between RNA and DNA, to suggest that molecules can't lose parts, is to argue that the universe is not as it observably is.
Since the step you clearly label (MAGIC) in the RNA-> DNA path is so obviously trivial, why should anybody believe that the other step you label (MAGIC) is any more complex?
>> ^shinyblurry:
It is an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent" design in nature, which biologists acknowledge, is actual design. It is only useless to you because you have ruled out design apriori, which is just simply ignorant.
Perhaps an "effort", but not a method, or a hypothesis. ID makes no predictions, it simply tries to find arguments to prop up a baseless assumption, that is the opposite of science.
If any ID proponent, or any theologian for that matter, can demonstrate even one example of anything true that their ideology can reliably tell us that we don't already know I will admit that it has predictive power, and that it could qualify as a hypothesis, and then eventually a theory. I'm betting you can't find one.

The best evidence is just filling in the gaps in science.

I'll have to disagree with you here. To say the evidence for a creator is just filling in the gaps isn't true when it is a better explanation for the evidence. Take DNA, for instance. DNA is a complex coded language which contains grammar, syntax, phoenetics, etc There is no naturalistic explanation that can account for it; DNA is information, and information only comes from minds. The medium doesn't matter. Just as a message transcends the paper and ink it is written in, and just as you can write that message in the sand and has no loss of data, DNA is transcendent of its medium. A designer is a better explanation for the existence of DNA. Check out this article:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3040594/The-Linguistics-of-DNA-Words-Sentences-Grammar-Phonetics-and-Semantics

What happened before the Big Bang? I don't know. "God did it" isn't evidence, it isn't rational or logical. "God did it" used to be the explanation for the shape of the Earth and the movement of the stars, when that was questioned, the questioner was threatened with death. However, by continuing to question, we now know a lot about the solar system, enough to put satellites into orbit and photograph distance planets.

That is just a fallacy, though. Just because people used "God did it" as an explanation for things we know understand in more detail is not evidence against the existence of God. It is just evidence for the ignorance of people. Christians aren't against science. I am against things which aren't science, like things which have never been observed and are untestable, like macro evolution.

Scientific theories are indeed interpretation of facts and in many cases, it involves jumps because we can't explain everything. This is what the word "theory" means in this context, rather than the meaning the Fox News's of the world use when they pretend it means that science is guessing. That's why there is always doubt, always questions to be asked and answers to be listened to. The important thing is that it is interpretation and extrapolating data, i.e. it is based on what we can prove.

Science does a lot of guessing. This is why theories have changed so many times in the last few centuries. Not too long ago, science was certain the Universe was static and eternal. It was one of the evidences that atheists would use against Creationists. Now, we know the Universe had a definitive beginning. The scientist who discovered said that there is no other theory which lends itself so well to the creation account in Genesis.

My main point is that science has nothing to say about the existence of God. It is not anything it can prove or disprove. God is a spirit, and a spirit is an immaterial being. There is no empirical evidence for something immaterial.

However, some answers have been listened to and fallen short. For example, Intelligent Design. This has been discussed and no rational, logical or empirical evidence have been put forward. This is why it has been rejected, by me and by the scientific community: not because we don't want to hear but because it's been talked to death, causes distracting controversy and frankly, it's clearly bullshit. I wouldn't want my child taught it in school because if you teach one unsubstantiated load of nonsense, where does it end? I want rational and logical things taught to my children. If I want my children to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will teach them myself and when I struggle to explain the dinosaurs and radiocarbon dating that they learnt about in school, I should take a long hard look at myself.

Again, intelligent design is a better explanation than natural selection by random mutation for a number of things. When darwinian theory was created, the cell was thought to be a simple ball of protoplasm. We now know the cell is more complex than the space shuttle, by an order of magnitude. There is no naturalistic process which can account for the existence of this complex and intricate nano-machinery. Just because you consider it "bullshit" doesn't make it so. The Universe has the appearance of design. There are 30 or so factors in physics which have to be precisely calibrated for the Universe to even form correct, let alone for life to develop. The odds of this happeneing by chance are beyond calculation. Instead of admitting that and changing the theory, scientists then postulate multiple Universes to make the design features in this one seem plausible as happenstance.

Here is a nice video on the complexity of the cell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSasTS-n_gM&feature=related

If you want to talk about radiocarbon dating, this again is something which is an interpretation of evidence based on a number of unprovable assumptions. It presumes that radioactive decay rates have remained constant in the past and that there was no contamination over periods of millions or billions of years. Check out this article:

http://biblicalgeology.net/blog/fatal-flaw-radioactive-dating/

I do rely on empirical evidence, we all do. You are relying on what you see too, what you see written on the pages of the Bible. Short of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" philosophy, everything we think exists is empirical. If we can't believe what we see or what we consider to be self evident, how can you believe what you think you are reading from what you think is a Bible?

I am relying on my own experience, and in my experience I have observed that the material reality is a veil, and behind that veil is a spiritual reality which encompasses it. I have seen the evidence of a higher power working in the world, who relates to us on a personal level. I believe the bible because my experience confirms it, not because I just assume it is true.

Is believing my own eyes and my own mind what you want to call my religion? That seems to be to be very different to religion as I know the word.

When you have faith in metaphysical claims, and that faith informs your entire worldview, that is indeed like a religion. What you are seeing is through the lens of that worldview..

>> ^Quboid:
I haven't seen any good evidence for Christianity. I haven't seen any good evidence for the existence of God. The best evidence is just filling in the gaps in science. What happened before the Big Bang? I don't know. "God did it" isn't evidence, it isn't rational or logical. "God did it" used to be the explanation for the shape of the Earth and the movement of the stars, when that was questioned, the questioner was threatened with death. However, by continuing to question, we now know a lot about the solar system, enough to put satellites into orbit and photograph distance planets.
Scientific theories are indeed interpretation of facts and in many cases, it involves jumps because we can't explain everything. This is what the word "theory" means in this context, rather than the meaning the Fox News's of the world use when they pretend it means that science is guessing. That's why there is always doubt, always questions to be asked and answers to be listened to. The important thing is that it is interpretation and extrapolating data, i.e. it is based on what we can prove.
However, some answers have been listened to and fallen short. For example, Intelligent Design. This has been discussed and no rational, logical or empirical evidence have been put forward. This is why it has been rejected, by me and by the scientific community: not because we don't want to hear but because it's been talked to death, causes distracting controversy and frankly, it's clearly bullshit. I wouldn't want my child taught it in school because if you teach one unsubstantiated load of nonsense, where does it end? I want rational and logical things taught to my children. If I want my children to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will teach them myself and when I struggle to explain the dinosaurs and radiocarbon dating that they learnt about in school, I should take a long hard look at myself.
I do rely on empirical evidence, we all do. You are relying on what you see too, what you see written on the pages of the Bible. Short of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" philosophy, everything we think exists is empirical. If we can't believe what we see or what we consider to be self evident, how can you believe what you think you are reading from what you think is a Bible?
Is believing my own eyes and my own mind what you want to call my religion? That seems to be to be very different to religion as I know the word.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Martin Luther King managed to create protests and a movement that DIDN'T get in people's faces or disrupting the business of innocent bystanders who have nothing to do with what you're protesting. He did it with a positive, uplifting, inspirational message that people of good sense could not help but agree with. These yahoos are doing the exact opposite. They couldn't be driving people AWAY from their cause any better if they were trying.


wrong wrong WRONG!
martin luther king jr knew full well the only way a peaceful protest would be effective was by interfering with business.
any protest that was even moderately successful interfered with business and the everyday machinery of government.
now we have "free speech zones"(see:RNC 2008 st paul MN) which are many times far distances from the very thing being protested.....how convenient.
this is where the protesters can be marginalized and ignored but get in the way of everyday business and NOW you will get noticed.
and the government will send its goons in to strong arm and intimidate because the business class scream bloody murder.
there will be arrests.
there will be macings.
there will be violence and yes,even sometimes murders.
all of which can now be clandestinely videotaped from a phone exposing the strong arm tactics of the government all in the name of "keeping the peace".

this aint rocket science.it is effective and it works.
your obedient slave solution just leaves the protester flaccid and ineffective.
you have the RIGHT of redress.
you have the RIGHT to assemble.
and the police are within their powers to cite or detain you for civil disobedience.
they are NOT within their powers to:maim,torture,brutalize and disregard the laws in which they were sworn to uphold.
this is about challenging power and authority and the only way to do that properly is to disrupt the machinations of power and authority.

Tax is not the point here. Sure taxing the rich assumes redistribution - but we all know any money that goes into the govt at this point vaporizes into national debt. The poor won't see a cent.

It's ambulance at the bottom of the cliff anyway - The point is the graph.

The hole in the system is:

- Consumers can control the market by which products / services they purchase
- But they can't control how profits are distributed internally. The ceo's - all on each other's boards - reward each other with a fatter and fatter cut of the pie.

Outside corporations the market is a democracy. But INSIDE corporations the class structure is a clear oligarchy with no checks or balances and a totally powerless workforce.

The inequality of distribution of wealth has to be fixed INSIDE the corporations remuneration for effort. It cannot be fixed by funneling money back through the government machinery.

Actually I have no problem with motive. I heard Ron Paul say at the debates that we are spending 20bil to air-condition tents for soldiers in Afghanistan... that 20bil is making SOMEONE really rich, so there is definitely a LOT of profit to be made in war.

That said, there is absolutely no way in hell that our government (present, past or future) is clever enough to pull off some of the absolutely ludicrous shit that these conspiracy nuts are peddling. What pissed me off the most is how many internet "experts" we have on demolitions, engineering, plane debris, etc.

It is the same logic that idiots who think that aliens built the pyramids use: I can't conceive of how to build a pyramid without the use of modern heavy-lifting machinery, therefore ancient societies couldn't have possibly done so and therefore... fucking aliens.

Basically, just because they don't understand something, they go to ANY explanation that is controversial and feeds conspiracy. NWO Ninja Demolitionists, lizard politicians, aliens, impossible conspiracies where hundreds if not thousands of participants have to not only keep quiet, but also cover an inevitable trail of planning, communication and on-the-ground efforts that simply cannot go unnoticed.

Seriously, there is just no way that our government, stupid fucks that they ALL are (dems, reps, libertarians, etc), just no way.


>> ^NetRunner:

@marinara maybe I've just forgotten my 9/11 conspiracy storyline, but to me the problem with the whole "WTC was taken down by demolition" theory is motive.
Why would someone want to do that? It's a lot easier to destroy documents with shredders, and there are much easier ways to commit insurance fraud.
I can see someone making the case that some people in the US wanted 9/11 itself to happen, but I don't really see why those someones would do something as weird as packing the building with explosives, and then hitting it with airplanes.
I mean, there was an Al Qaeda bombing of the WTC some eight years earlier, why mess with the planes if you could've just blown the building up with secret bombs?

Wow, god damn, that brake that that machine pulls is nothing short of spectacular. I occasionally do braking mechanisms for industrial machinery, and I am dumbfounded as to how he removed that much angular momentum that quickly. It almost looks like an impact brake, which is easily capible of braking like that but difficult to deal with because it involves using parts that destroy themselves, and have to be replaced