1. Mathematics and faith explain altruism

Comment #255496 by Silvia on September 27, 2008 at 7:39 pm

This article is terrible. There are so many mistakes! Their explanation of how Dawkins explains altruism is ridiculous. Their explanation of the Prisoner's Dilemma is completely wrong (the prisoners won't cooperate in the single shot game, because they have always the stimulus to cheat) and there is no novelty in this approach. The Prisoner's dilemma explanation for altruism is decades old and is used by several atheists. And how does it favors a Christian Agenda?On the contrary, thinking that natural selection is the rule in nature is one of the things that made me finally completely eliminate my last doubt on religion. A world based on natural selection couldn't have been created by some benevolent god.

2. Knowledge regained

Comment #246180 by Silvia on September 11, 2008 at 11:24 pm

Just to notice that the author's name was omitted: Usama Hasan.

3. Biologist Teaches the Nation's Judges About Genetics

Comment #203412 by Silvia on July 2, 2008 at 9:53 pm

I think some of the posters here are forgetting how DNA is a new knowledge. The men that discovered it are still working and producing. It's easy to conclude that people that studied before their discovery hit the middle school are still working.
Recently I made my mom read a booklet about some of the major discoveries of science, because I realized most of them occurred after she went to school or just a little before and haven't been taught to her at school. I made that because I noticed she didn't really grasp what genes are (not even DNA). And she is a very intelligent woman, an engineer who worked until three months ago, despite her 86 years old.

4. 'Uncontacted tribe' sighted in Amazon

Comment #186875 by Silvia on May 31, 2008 at 2:48 pm

Avoiding contact with them is not racism. It is just avoiding genocide.
In the 70s, the military government in Brazil decided that it was necessary to have better control of the rain forest territory and they built an enormous road - the Transamazônica - in the midst of it. For it to be done, lots of groups had to be contacted and moved. Most of the people died, even if government agencies provided the vaccines and things like that. They die of ordinary cold - for which there is no vaccin. Other diseases, like measles (well it is almost erradicated now, but not entirely) and flew have vaccins, but even then, we can't assure they will work 100%.
So the FUNAI's (Fundação Nacional do Índio - National Indian Foundation) policy is just to let them alone unless Funai thinks there is real danger of a less friendly contact, from men that are after wood or minerals. But of course the latter are only in the more known parts of the forest, not in the parts where there still are around 40 uncontacted groups - the estimates I've read in a Brazilian newspaper yesterday.

5. Synthetic Copycat Of Living Cell Underway: Life, But Not As We Know It?

Comment #186475 by Silvia on May 30, 2008 at 10:29 am

I've been lurking here for almost one year, but now I really felt I should register and tell you how happy Brasilian people are that the Supreme Court of our country decided that stem cell research is allowed by Constitution with no restrictions, against the lobby of the Roman catholic Church. Even conservative papers and media were favorable to science in this case and the letters sent to papers by readers on that matter are mostly congratulatory.