51. Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists

Comment #125766 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 2:21 am

this is just one of religions attempts to undermine atheism, the tact is basically show the opponent is no better than the people he argues against, then those who may be looking to join the enemy would be detoured believing it to be just another religion and thus seek most likely a moderate religious stance or a deist or agnostic stance. this is mostly a ploy by the moderates, an attempt to save a failing faith..like a star shooting off its outer layer in a large nova leaving only a lifeless dwarf, a shadow of its previous self, so too have the moderates shed their fundamentalist outer layer, they have successfully neutered themselves. and this is the only way they can keep up the shriveled lifeless corpse of their religion, like the strong nuclear force in a neutron star keeps the star from collapsing, this is ment to keep the moderate faith from collapsing as well.

52. Pascal's Wager

Comment #125765 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 2:08 am

the argument has one notable flaw, it assumes christianity or atheism. factor in all the other religions and you see just which religion you PICK is a wager. if you pick christianity and you are wrong, but the islamics were right, then you screwed up your chance for heaven, or if the jews are right, or one of all the different sects of all the abrahamic religions are right (since they all say the other sects will burn in hell) then again you screwed up your chance. if the budhists are right..well you might end up re-incarnated in a hell demension for one lifetime or just a lower animal, taoists are right...you are off the hook...they have no afterlife...shinto are right you were probably going to hell for not being japanese (i dont know much about the religion...sorry..but it seems to emphesize the japanese people as being chosen by the gods..descendant actually.) eastern religions are usualy nicer though about these things.

but essentialy, pascals wager only works with an all or nothing, christianity or atheism, but add in other religions and it loses its potency.

53. Science owes its origins to Christianity or Religion

Comment #125764 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 1:59 am

"The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive...but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born." ~mark twain.

of course that statement was more true in twains time,the atheistic nations have surpassed the christian nations substantialy. japan is largely atheists...but...not quite (they are shinto, but they do not consider themselves religious...they just like the ceremonies.) switzerland is largely atheistic and are generaly winning in..everything..
so, religion may have been a start...but now its a hinderance, we have outgrown it, and like the child who doesnt let go of his security blanket into his 40's...its not healthy anymore.

54. How do you explain the lack of transitional forms in nature, the gaps in the fossil record?

Comment #125761 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 1:53 am

well for one:
if you have two creatures there is a gap between them from where they are and where they were, find a transitional fosil what do you have now? two gaps, with each gap filled 2 take its place. its physically impossible to have a total fossil record.

thank FSM we dont rely solely on that (though it is a powerful indicator) and in fact have a large myriad of other methods which all colloborate one another

55. How can the Earth be so perfectly suited for life by coincidence?

Comment #125759 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 1:50 am

this is a common misconception; earth isnt perfectly suited for life, life is perfectly suited for earth.

56. Atheists are just as dogmatic as theists, and the only reasonable person is an agnostic.

Comment #125757 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 1:47 am

this is mostly a ploy put out by theists and taken by non-believers (fallacy known as the falacy of the middle, that when there are two extremes the truth must be somewhere in the middle.) and this is what cause agnosticism. and deism. which are nearly identical.

the theists want to have atheism be just another religion, its easier to marginalize them that way, and easier to keep others from going to them. religion knows very well how to keep people from going to another religion, but keeping them from just NOT having a religion, a ground state, ia harder.
christians for instance have a monopoly on faith, they can throw their weight around and keep anyone from joining any other faith, so they want atheism to be a faith so they can handel it like usual.

and then what could be otherwise reasonable atheists buy into this crap, they then see both sides as equally bad and thus the truth must be somewhere between them, in terms of the PH scale, agnosticism would be a 6 and deism an 8, with atheism at one (because its corrosive) and theism at 14 (because its basic) neither are true neutral.

57. People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists

Comment #125751 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 1:38 am

in life there are few things quite so unreliable as personal experience, to quote beneezer scrooge (not the best model i'll admit) when asked if he doubts his senses, "Yes. Yes. Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of
the stomach makes them cheats." many things can influence what one remembers, what one feels, and what one sees.

3 people can see the same crime and discribe 3 different people. many psychological things go into sense and memory, so such experience should naturaly be taken with skepticism.

also there is somethign of a non-sequitor from "this is an amazing experience" to "therefore god exists".

58. What is the role of free will to an atheist?

Comment #125748 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 1:30 am

the real question is: "what is the role of free will to a theist"
following the premise that god is omnicient and there is nothing he doesnt know, then a person cannot make a decision god didnt know he would make, therefore all decisions are known in advance as well as the decision they would ultimately make, thus that person would have no free will at all, since its all predetermined in god's divine plan.
therefore:
if god is omnicient then man has no free will; if man has free will then god is not omnicient.

atheists have no such hang up, and though there is no single unifying belief amongst atheists, there is one thing they dont believe in...a divine creature who has decided everything that will happen.
other matters vary by philosophical beliefs.

59. What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?

Comment #125745 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 1:25 am

this is a common question, it goes into the catagory of "the arrogance of science" essentialy the existance of an all knowing, all powerful god is assumed from the start, the very thing we are debating is assumed at the begining extant, which is notably fallacious. so then by this assumption that such a creature exists, any questioning whether he exists or his supposed word is considered arrogant because then you are saying you know more than god, you are raising yourself to the divine.

the error here is the assumption of the existance of such a creature, an assumption that seems impossible for these people to expell for the sake of a debate, and then such impossible to debate logically.

so the answer is simple, anyone with a brain can argue the existance of god.

60. Ask Mitt what he thinks

Comment #125025 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 10, 2008 at 6:28 pm

...
you cant carbon date living matter. carbon dating tests how long something has been dead.

61. Top 10 Reasons to Believe Logic Over Religion

Comment #124658 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 10, 2008 at 1:41 am

ron paul is ok, but he has nothing on mike gravel..the fact many dont even know who he IS is proof there is no god.
he is in favour of teaching evolution, and opposed to integration of church and state, in favour of legalization of marijuana and all drugs to a lessser extent(not criminal, but perscription), the true greatest supporter of freedom, even giving the people the power to make laws (of course they still need by voted on and the supreme court can over-rule them) the national initiative. basically...switzerland..think thats where he gets most of his policy from (which is good switzerland is the most atheistic country on earth)

62. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #124651 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 10, 2008 at 12:41 am

Vinelectric :
Sure that's why I don't think it'll stop completely. My point was that if (hopefuly) medicine will progress at the same speed it did in the past 2 centuries, the natural selection will have less and less individuals to work on.
Mutation doesn't equal evolution. There still needs to be a process of selection be it natural or artificial.

The only biological evolution on humans I can now imagine, would be due to manipulation of our own DNA. But am not sure if it would still count as "evolution"..

something you forget, the pressures of society as a selective force.
its no small coincidence IQ tends to be higher in areas with greater industrialization than in more rural areas. the push for smarter people businesses makes a social pressure. inovation, creativity, ability to learn new things, etc these are all traits which prosper more in industrial areas than others. a person is successfull in work, he has more money, he has more money he has more chances to mate, and eventually to have children. now you needent be hyper wealthy...i dont think the very wealthy tend to have more children than the non. but to be well off gives you more likely to breed than say...a homeless man. so a mutation favouring better brains is more fit than one favouring worse minds, and while they dont DIE, they are less likely to BREED. which in the genetic sense is just as bad.

63. Admitting that you have no religion is not politically correct

Comment #122915 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 6, 2008 at 9:17 am

A handy trick would be for all the secular types to join the Campus Crusade for Christ group, stack one of its meetings, throw out the committee, elect one of its own, change its constitution and rewrite its mission statement in more enlightened terms.

A group of my friends did this at uni in 1971 to a right-wing fundie political group. It threw the loonies into paroxysms of anguish for months. Jolly good fun!

i think that constitutes a cout.

64. Richard Dawkins talks about The God Delusion

Comment #122836 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 6, 2008 at 7:39 am

I think there should be a way for people to get a copy of TGD for free the way people can get a copy of the bible for free.

indeed, something like a...publcily funded recriprical of books....perhaps a....libratorium...or a library...

^_^

65. The Moral Instinct

Comment #118909 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 31, 2008 at 6:44 am

good to see im not the only one who shouted "Borlaug" upon seeing the title.
ive known about mother T for a while now, and iv hated bill gates for longer (stupid bloody windows, viva linux!)

66. US scientists close to creating artificial life: study

Comment #118073 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 30, 2008 at 9:41 am

Personally, I think the "creating life" description is a bit over the top. Sure, if they pull it off, it is a new life form, but it looks like jumped up genetic engineering to me since they are putting new DNA into an existing cell. Impressive, but note that the cell is existing already. When I think of creating life, I think of generating the conditions where self-reprelicating protein molecules and the other requirements for cells emerge in the controlled environment. I.e. create the conditions where an entire cell can emerge. That would be really impressive...

i disagree, this isnt an experiment in abiogenesis, this isnt about proving the origins of life, its about making an artificial genome and making it run, when a bacteria has its nucleus replaced with another nucleus...it becomes its own lifeform. like those one bacteria that make insuline. except this would be a totaly artificial genome, thus and artificial lifeform. you neednt totaly re-invent the wheel, there is no reason to even MAKE the rest of the cell, because all they want is the function of the cell, make it do what they program it to do, building the cell from scratch is a lot of work and does nothing for the purpose of the research. just like i dont need to make a totaly new OS to make a program.

this thing of "he is not god" i think goes to the mistaken impression of the arrogance of science. that science thinks it can make life, that it can tred into god's domain. and there are few strongholds theists hold onto. life, death, and emotion. they hold that life is the unique provence of the almighty, that he decides when you die, and that emotion comes from the soul. and when science says "no, emotion comes from this section of the brain" or "we can make life" or "we can extend life and drive off death for many more years" this is seen as trying to be like gods, and thus seen as arrogant. "how can you know that emotions are from that area of the brain, get over yourself" or "how can you think you can do such amazing things as create life, you arent god" or "you do not have mastery over death, only god can decide that"
i think it is possible we may overcome death...whether thats a good thing or not remains to be seen. we may be able to not only create life, but living machines, cells to help our body, complex organism for travel or even shelter. given time and less objections from religious nuts, anything is possible.

67. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117027 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 28, 2008 at 5:39 am

if papers don't burn in hell then there is something very wrong with it.

henrry albert ben once wrote: "Hell must be isothermal; for otherwise the resident engineers and physical chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine to run a refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any desired temperature"
that always gave me inspiration as a child and made me think "hmm, i bet i could do some cool things given an eternity in hell" and it had less of a scary impact on me ^_^

68. A Letter From Hell

Comment #116646 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 26, 2008 at 11:06 pm

meh, the inferno was much better written. whats happening to christians these days, they used to be so much more vivid and candid with their torture. if the inferno were made a movie the christians would have it banned (except that they feel they can use it for propoganda, if pasion of the christ wasn't about jesus they would find it profane) he was quite explicit when describing the various tortures for sinners. (though he was generaly nice to the pegans, people born before christ, just because its only by ignorance that they are in hell. so the first ring of hell was a kind of elysian fields as it were.)
this one was sterotypical at best, dante had various different tortures, some involving fire or heat (such as being emersed in a lake of boiling blood, being placed upside down in a baptismal tube with fire licking your feet, being placed in an iron box heated by fire) but some with no fire (such as being emersed in waste, clumped with others in a large ball and rolling and coliding with others, being turned into a tree and picked at by harpies, only allowed to speak when a branch is broken, or running around the parimiter of hell in waste chasing a flag which ever way the wind blew while being stung by bees.)
they were well thought out, ironic, and interesting, im still in purgatory as i lost some interest after leaving hell..plus a graduated and cant find a book quite as well done as the one i was reading (nice translator notes, a must since so much is allusional.) but dante had the vigour and unique detail for his vision of hell, while this one has a sterotypical "lake of fire" come one people, use your brains. if you are going to scare them do it right, put some thought into it.
the overall "moral" of this little narrative (i'll overlook the wierd question of how he wrote while being dragged off, or even where he got the pen and paper, i'll assume it was dictated...maybe it was sent in a dream, christians love using dreams) and i use that loosely, seems to be "if you are my friend you shouldnt want me to burn in hell" which seems contradictory to his friend then actually WANTING him to burn in hell (the dead one) but going past that, there is the dead friend, i wonder about the person who wrote this little story because it seems he didnt quite grasp the nature of the person (of if it was his nature i dare say he wasnt a very good person to begin with) i cant think of anyone who would blame their friend because of something happening to them, nor of of a friend who, when facing problems of any kind, would wish the same of their friend. if he is so vindictive, shallow, and self centred i suppose he deserves what he got.

so, definately no dante, pretty lacking in morality, and overall...just poor.
3/10

69. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115310 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 24, 2008 at 1:45 am

lets see ad hominem, appeal to consequence, non-sequitor, riductio ad hitlerum, equivocation, outright lie, the list of fallacies in this article juat goes on and on.

thats the thing with moderates, they have this finely woven string of fallacies that support their faith, they cant function without it. most all theists have it in fact, except the string of fallacies that support a fundamentalists have a firm bedrock of total willful ignorance beneith them (aka the bible) so even if their argument collapses...they still have that firm ground. moderates have to cling tighter to the fallacy to avoid falling into atheism.

and it is realy this string of fallacies the moderates weave that the fundamentalists stand on to give them the appearance of respectability, and this article's validity in the end doesnt matter to them, it just gave them a venier of respectability, something of substance to pull out like a shield and say "see, look, this guy says darwin's ideas are dangerous"

70. How Evolution REALLY Works

Comment #113373 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 19, 2008 at 12:54 pm

i thought it was a great video myself, and no surprise someone made a reply to it where they totaly miss the point, they give that usual retarded (hmm...i shouldnt compare them to the mentaly challenged...thats an insult to the genuinely retarded) argument "that isnt evolution, evolution would be..." and there is always something dumb after that, in this case it was something like "those 8 bits turning into tomb raider" you just...you just wanna slap them...you know...like "wake the fuck up!" honestly...
i think the video was nice, esspecialy when he showed the environment changing and the average colour of the population changing to match.

71. How the Public Resolves Conflicts Between Faith and Science

Comment #112570 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 17, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Absolutely right! And as ever not a shred of science to refute the post. Why am I not surprised.

evidence to refute the post? to refute what? what did you propose? did you MAKE a proposition, you explained how the cell works in its current form...thats all. and you explained using information attained through biology. you didnt use passages of the bible which mention dna transcription, you didnt mention sermons of jesus where he explained the use of ATP or the precense of cells in the body. you used science.
now, follow that a little further, and you will find the scientific theory known as EVOLUTION, supported by such wonderful facts as SEEING IT HAPPEN.
another wonderful thing about science, it seeks to EXPLAIN things, make TESTABLE PREDICTIONS, and evaluate the results. creationism and all its retarded ilk do none of those things, it serves only to disprove evolution. scientific theories many times DO disprove other theories, but that isnt the cause....its the effect.
for creationism...its the cause. they exist only to disprove evolution, not to make testable predictions.
evolution has explanations of the origin of the modern cell, there is quite a bit of wonder to be had at such a marvelous machine, it is a wonder of nature, a testament to evolution, but not evidence of a god.

this is one of many areas that ID proponent tend to annoy me. they say "its created" they support it with "it looks created" but they dont specify the conditions by which a person can say "this looks created"
for instance, if i was a statue of micheangelo's david, sure i could say "someone made this" but whats more, i can prove it. i can point out tool marks on the statue, i can replicate the marks using tools of the era, i can seek historical data which claims he made it, i can trace that style of sculpture to the time, i can date it for age to put it around the time of micheangelo. science isnt content to just say "it looks like it, so it is." science can PROVE that it is, colloquially speaking of course, science doesnt by nature "prove" anything, but by the layman understanding of prove "to produce overwhelming evidence in support of the supposition" then it can.

but creationist cant do this, they cant say the means by which one can determine something was designed. i think they dont WANT to, since then you can provide counter evidence, you can bring up something that fits that bill but which you KNOW wasnt designed.

but of course, we know they arent science, they know they arent science, thats why they appeal to the populus to get their ideas through, and not the scientific process.

72. Huckabee Wants A 'Faith-based' Constitution

Comment #112443 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 17, 2008 at 6:16 am

they behave (or will behave) like bulls in the china shop

actually mythbusters proved that bulls are well behaved in china shops.
dont know if they tested elephants.

as for the article, i didnt realy intend to, but i know for certain now, i am not voting for huckabee.
are there any republicans who are actually in FAVOUR of sepperation of church and state? republican party has become the party of god, for many i think its not even their real belief, there are just millions of idiots who will eat it up and vote for them based on how evangeical they are.

i think this is an evolutionary response, starts with small mentions of the bible, a mention that they are people of faith, this yields more votes from the bible belt, more catch on, the person to make the most claims of faith gets the most, then competition kicks in and you have fights between candidates on who is the most christian, which affect their policy (since policy is selected against based on appeal to populice) so the introduction of faith based policies yield more support from the bible thumpers, and so on and so forth. im not sure if there is an ESS for this...

73. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #110370 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 11, 2008 at 4:06 am

another example of christians attempting to throw their weight around. its the same thing with the "atheism is a religion" argument, by claiming atheism is a religion, not a result of evidence and fact, they can minimalize it, place it in a fringe religion and then use their superior size to keep them down. getting christians to listen to logic and reason may sound impossible, but getting them to listen to another religion IS. thus by claiming atheism is another religion they keep people from listening to them.
this is the same thing, they wish to hijack the "out" campaign and the scarlet A to spread them amongst the large number of christians, in time any mention that it was dawkins' to begin with will me sublty phased out. this minimalized the out campaign and the atheist movement by undermining its novelty, christianity did this for years, microsoft calls this the "embrase, extend, extenguish"( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_extinguish ) its the same method the christians used to fight various pegan holidays, they first embrased the holiday, they extended it to be a celebration of their dieties, then they extenguished it, made it officialy christian, by this is was easier to get people to transition. thats how christianity opporates, it places itself over any existing custom, it changes the customs to match theirs, and over time the old customs are totaly gone.
this is just their way to minimize the influence of the out campaign and the atheist campaign by changing it to meet their needs.

74. Stop House Resolution 888

Comment #110321 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 11, 2008 at 1:44 am

Just wrote to my congressman, thanks for the template at www.talk2action.com. Does anyone else think it's just plain silly that they even propose resolutions like this? How about these instead:

"The first week of May will now be known as:
1. Be nice to your neighbor week
2. Feed a hungry child week
3. Don't drive angry week
4. Help an old lady cross the street week
5. Instead of going to church go to the library week"

Frankly, any of these would be better.
D

i wholeheartedly support number 5, or something similar to it, just some national day of reading, it would be nice if people took the time they spend in church in the library, but hell even one day a year for people to just go to the bloody library and read a book would be good.
i spent a good portion of my childhood in the library, i still go there when i dont have internet, my favourite is classical literature and non-fiction, it happens i love learning new stuff, there is more info on the internet than there ever was in my library, but i think in part that has to do with the lack of people IN the libraries. many good books end up being sold off so the library can keep running, that to me a sad thing, it means first there arent enough people buying library cards and second there isnt enough funding going to our public libraries.
the science section in my local library has no new book from the ones i read over 10 years ago. in fact its mass has reduced, encroached upon by the language section to the left and the health care to the right. the language section itself is somewhat abismal, more book assigned to slang and sign language than any other language, of the remaining languages there is english, german, and french, with no other languages available.
speaking of libraries:

JemyM said:

Once Christianity erased history.

Then ADH said:

That's quite a claim you're making for Christianity! If it succeeded in erasing it, how could you possibly know that it did? Which history did it erase? Have you got some kind of covert access to this putative history that has been denied to the rest of us? Maybe you could enlighten us!

In their efforts to convert the native population of Mexico to Christianity, Catholic priests collected and burned hundreds of thousands of Aztec and Maya codices in a single event, believing them to have been the words of the Devil--effectively destroying the entire history of civilization in America up to that point. There were many libraries renowned throughout the Mesoamerican world at that time, but of them, only four books survived the torch--four pitiful books which today make up almost all we know about an entire world and its people. It is as if they never existed.

Tragically, that is more or less precisely what the Christians did to the Roman world, when they came to power. It was a Christian mob which burned the Great Library of Alexandria to the ground. All the knowledge we have of Plato, Aristotle, and other Classical (pagan) thinkers, preserved in part by Greek-speaking scholars in the Middle East, is only a tiny fraction of the knowledge and history that was destroyed by the early Christians, and which will never be rediscovered.

JemyM was correct when s/he said that Christianity once destroyed history, except that it actually did so not once, but twice, in two different worlds, a thousand years apart. It's as Ingersoll said: "Give the church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the sword of power, and the priceless fruit of all ages will turn to ashes on the lips of men." The churches are ready and willing to rekindle the flame at a moment's notice, should they ever be given the power to do so.

the christians did that? i thought i couldnt find a new reason to dislike christianity. the burning of the library of alexandria stands to me as one of the greatest historical tragedies. the whole of knowlege of the ancient world, gone, burned to the ground. i thought it was sacked myself, many programms mention the burning of the library but never mentioned the reason it was burned, which left me to conclude it was in the chaos following the fall of the roman empire.
but the christians burning it makes much more sense, if someone sacks a library they dont burn the books, they steal them. and anything else. but christians have a very rich culture of burning books which continues to this day, people burning harry potter books, plus the burning of beatles records in the...60's was it?...if they dont like something or they dont like someone who made something they burn it. i think this predisposition in christianity for arson is something that should be investigated.
i think its an example of what happens when you raise children on symbolic representation of things as empirical. this "drink of this wine it is my blood, eat of the bread it is my body" and the act of communion puts this sense of symbolism in them, and all of the faith is symbolism, the cross is symbolic of jesus's sacrifice, the bread and wine of his body and blood, the many writings of the bible, its all symbolism. so its no surprise that they would attack something they see as a symbol of something they dont like. they view harry potter as a symbol of witchcraft, so to destroy the symbol is in their mind to destroy that which they dont like. they react against people who say things they disagree with by destroying their works, as was the case with the beatles, or often they will attack the person who said it, kill the speaker, kill the message.
and so of course the symbol of the old world, the old ideas, the old philosophies would be burned, they are symbols of what they hope to overcome, they are symbols of the pegans, and by destroying them, they seek to destroy that which they oppose. sadly its also quite effective.
of course as a result modern science and medicine was set back hundreds of years, they had to be rediscovered, and we are STILL to this DAY rediscovering things lost from the ancient world.

what a different world this would be if christianity taught to accept other views, not destroy them, if they never got power, if the knowlege of the ancient world lived on, what a different world we would live in today.

christians should never be allowed power, no religion should, history shows that is a dangerous mixture.

--edit--
have written my congressman as well

dear congressman,
i am writing today about a H.RES.888, i would like to emphasize very much that this bill should not be allowed to pass, it is not the place of congress to say what does and does not constitute history, that is the part of historians, by making a static bill saying what is or isn't history negates the possibility of revisions based on additional information, history is a constant process of revision based on evidence, a process that this bill would very badly injure. whats more many of what is outlined simply isn't true, and if it were true, by sheer virtue of being true would insure that it made its way into the history books. also the additional clause of having the first of may set aside to celebrate the religious nature of the country would constitute a violation of the establishment clause of the constitution. it would essentially be a government sponsored religious holiday.
this bill should not be allowed to pass.
thank you for your time.

(replaced his name with "congressman" in the above message, i didnt refer to him thus in the actual message)

75. Anthropologist finds cultural emphasis on group over individual might hinder democracy

Comment #109911 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 10, 2008 at 3:35 am

this makes you wonder then, is individuality more important than the group. now the people are under a monarchy which may or may not be bad (depends on who it is, its a common misconception that all monarchies are oppressive and cruel.) but is a monarchy the natural conclusion of group mentality over individual mentality.
the fact that favouring the group over the individual is detrimental to democracy is perhaps something to worry about, at least something to think about. and it seems almost an unusual conflict.
consider the issue of minority rights, democracy, as defined by my teacher who was quoting someone, is majority rule, limited by minority right. this means the majority may not oppress the minority by out voting them. now often its the opposite, blacks were a minority and held back for years because the whites outnumbered them, even today the gays are often outvoted by the religious zealots, as are the atheists, pro-choice, and pretty much anyone looking to provide some form of rights. now if democracy was only voting for what affects you and giving no mind to the group, there would realy be no equality, the majority would dominate the minority. because if it means giving up something you have so someone else can have something, most people will refuse. thats the self centered view, opposed to the group view.
its also very much the view of the religious right, they are definately voting selfishly and getting everyone else to agree. they have the religious majority and can mobilize to stop bills that might allow for rights for people they dont like (like the homosexuals) or allow practices they dont agree with. (and to make things worse, they are the ones who have the highest voter turnout.)

76. Der Digitale Planet (lecture)

Comment #109900 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 10, 2008 at 2:37 am

the ram isnt working....is there some other version? is this DRM?

(note:im running linux)

77. How Did the Universe Survive the Big Bang? In This Experiment, Clues Remain Elusive

Comment #109882 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 10, 2008 at 1:57 am

hmm i find colliders to be interesting, the way they find out about the nature of the universe almost seems akin to finding out how a car works by slamming it into a wall and analyzing the pieces.

78. Small, Yes, but Mighty: The Molecule Called Water

Comment #109878 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 10, 2008 at 1:46 am

i think life would have still formed if constants were different, i think it just wouldnt be life as we know it. i think one thing with the anthopic principal is that is looks at the universe in an egocentric means, much the same way the religious people do, they think only about themselves, it goes on the idea that everything in the universe is made perfect to support us. but it doesnt look the other way, we are made perfect to exist in the universe. its not a marvel of creation, its a marvel of evolution. given an environment life will tend to go to be best fit for that environment.

did life only form recently? or did life only form recently here? consider the very lasting nature of life, extremophiles for instance, capable of living in places we never considered life could thrive, it doesnt seem totaly improbable that life could form elsewhere, and live on planets or even satalites or asteroids where it might be thought life couldnt exist.
now there isnt proof for life on other planets, there isnt proof against, but there is a high probability (more than we can say for god) that life could form on other planets, that it could evolve, and that there could be creatures stranger than we can imagine, adapted to environments we know nothing about.

if the moon wasnt where it is, life as we know it may not exist, but this doesnt mean life wouldnt exist, it just wouldnt be "as we know it" and i think this goes for all those little things people say for "if this was different" or "if that was different" if it was different life may not exist, but this doesnt mean life itself is improbable, and life as we know it, including us, would not be alive, but somewhere on another planet (or if the constants go against the formation of planets, some form of system) some life would form, maybe even intellegence, and think "wow, this world was very well created to support me, there must be a divinity behind it"

79. Using the 'Beauties of Physics' to Conquer Science Illiteracy

Comment #109865 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 10, 2008 at 1:03 am

yeah, i pretty much always got by on memorization. i never needed to read, just listen to the teacher, remember what he said, and put it down. of course i think i also did well on understanding (i hope...) cus if it wasnt talked about, i extrapolated from information i did have to get the best possible answer.
now this was high school (also stateside) often i would regurgitate information, but i like to think i also understood it. for instance there would be a definition for something, i would usualy write it down verbatim, even people who cheat dont write definitions verbatim. and sometimes id lose that definition, but i still got the underlying concept.

my only issue was math, i could never do good at math, i cant hold more than a couple numbers in my head at once, the processes of multiplication division and even to some degrees addition and subtraction, they just dont go over well in my mind. i had to remember multiplication through factor tables, memorizing them, i cant get x * y without going through the factor table for x y times. so 3*4: 3, 6 ,9, 12. and i still have to use my fingers or i will forget how many times i have gone and over shoot it.
so i can attest that memorization realy isnt the best way to learn.

80. Hook, line and rapture

Comment #109390 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 9, 2008 at 1:24 am

At the end of the video Condell says that Christians "can't wait to die". While I understand his point, when you look a little more closely, it doesn't really seem to be true. Christians will endure agonizing illness and even more painful treatments in an effort to remain alive. If they were all so eager to get into Heaven, why are we wasting precious health care resources on them so they can delay the inevitable?

Of course the answer is, when push comes to shove, most Christians are as reluctant to die as the rest of us. Promises of Heaven only work when their fate is inevitable. Anything short of that and they hold on to life as tenaciously as the staunchest non-believer.

well, the bible is strict in the sense they cannot kill themselves, a martyr must be killed by someone else, or die of natural causes. commiting an act knowing you will die from it is considered suicide. (however only having the slight notion that you may die from it is another story, so charging a batallion believing god will protect you, isnt suicide. strapping a bomb to your chest and blowing it up...is)(though of couse there is an odd loophole (isnt there always?) where you may sacrifice yourself to save someone else. then its considered noble, and even knowing you will die if you do not renounce god, you still may not, that is martyrdom)

also under no circumstances may a christian renounce christ, even to save his own life. so if tortured to renounce christ they may not.

so in that respect at least christianity was better concieved than islam.
of course human nature and the bible are so often at ends with one another, so of course every human on earth fears death, mournes the dead, and no religion can wipe away the pain a parent feels at the loss of a child.
however it does a good job of convincing them that the pain doesnt exist, what psychologists would call repression. in fact religion is realy just a means of repression, no thereputic value at all, in fact it is psychologically damaging.

and the video makes me laugh, i litteraly slapped my knee at the "this is a dream prick" bit. the whole video was great, i like this guys work.

also about the views to rating inconsitancy, i dont know much about youtube so i dont know if people viewing the embeded up there count as a view, but then again the option doesnt exist to rate it from here so...i dont know. maybe youtube is just gay like that.

81. Can Atheists Be Parents?

Comment #108388 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 6, 2008 at 5:29 pm

even though this is from the 1970's it has something of a chilling resonance, and that quote the fellow up there gave from russle is more evidence of the lack of progress on this issue. that was from 1940's, the time from 1940 to 1970 is about the time from 1970 to 2000.

and actually based on that constitution, only atheists should be allowed to adopt, or people who would adopt their child, or raise their child, to NOT believe in one perticular god. since the indoctrination of a child early on precludes the childs ability to chose rationaly what god they wish to follow, so sticking to their constitution, the teaching of religion to a child would be illegal.

82. Researchers use neuroimaging to study ESP

Comment #108084 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 6, 2008 at 2:28 am

i never argue on anecdotal evidence as a matter of course. the mind is such a subjective thing that attempting to pull any level of objectivity from it is as likely as squeezing blood from a rock. (now sqeeze hard enough and you might bleed, but thats a totaly different thing) when people remember things, esspecialy things like esp or miracles, their mind has already taken hold of this idea, its formatted into their mind, trimmed and fit into place with other similar "experiences" and attempting to get more information from them would be futile, they didnt get more information, they got their answer and stopped there, they didnt think to examine the situation, they didnt take note of other causes, other issues, they only focused on the things which made it unique. and not only wont they be able to remember minor details they physically CANT, they arent there anymore, flushed with the short term memory.
3 people can see the same person and discribe 3 totaly different people, in court often witnesses will point to a defendant only because he matches the real person slightly and because he is in prison garbs. they dont remember what the real person looks like and may not be able to, maybe after some work details can be gotten, but after seeing that person, any hopes of getting a sketch are gone, they now have THAT person in their mind and no one else. because their mind latched on to an answer, a person to fill what was otherwise a hazy void, and whats more someone to have punished. and that person could go to the grave declaring the defendant was the one who did it.
the mind is not a video camera, it does not remember everything in perfect detail, it doesnt even remember things in video, it remembers things in events, in notions, in ideas, it doesnt timestamp, it doesnt even track how long something has been, it takes the flow of events as it remembers them, and using things it understands, basic physical constructs of the world, it makes video when you call it up. (except for me, which i for whatever reason can never call up clear images, perhaps why im a poor artist. i cant make images, only the events)
anecdotal evidence is not evidence at all.

83. Richard Dawkins - Science and the New Atheism

Comment #108080 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 6, 2008 at 1:50 am

hmm probably the most interesting bit, and it seems is one many have latched onto, is dawkins views on eating meat.
which to me the issue of eating meat isnt a big one, though im not a big fan of most meat, i do like chicken and some fish. but its not for morality reasons that i favour grains, fruits, and some vegetables, its entirely by tastes, i dont like the taste nor texture of most meat (i cannot eat a steak, i think i just dont have strong enough jaw muscles because i am there chewing one piece for like 15 minutes.incidently i also cannot chew gum for very long...)

but i should also place that i do not put the same level of abhoration on canibalism as others do either. the attachment of the living to the dead is, imo, unhealthy. some strange necrophilia (in some cases which goes so far as to be true necrophilia, which tends to be most prominent, someone cannot let the death of a loved one go, do not except they are dead and believe the body to be them, they have romantic and sexual intercourse with them in this deluded state. and realy the attachment of the living to the desceased body is only a lighter form of this disorder.)
and to me, if one can find use of the body of the deceased, let them. that is, if it can truely help someone (this doesnt apply to necrophilia as i mentioned, i find that to be telling more of a kind of repression and would do more harm mentaly than help.) i myself am an organ donar, full. what is done with my body post mortem has little to do with me. for it is no longer me, it my remains, it is an empty that once held my consciousness which has now run its course, and like the flame on a candle, is gone. the shell is not me, it is trash, how one wishes to dispose of it is up to them.

i kinda like the tibetan method of wrapping the body up and leaving it for the birds. as i have eaten the remains of the animals of the world, so too shall eat my remains. its only fair.
of course they cant have the organs, some people might need those.i see it as recycling.

equally such i would have no problem with my body going through the same processing method that road kill goes through. and that animals put to sleep in vets go through. which i imagine ends in animal feed.

of coruse any form of processing of bodies, or of leaving them for animals, raises problems if an actuall murder has happened, how do you sepperate the bones of the deceased from the bones of..well the deceased...but in this case the unaccounted for deceased. the murdered. normaly you can tell because they are 6 feet underground in a box...which usualy isnt the case for the murdered.
but supposing you take the deceased through processing for animal feed (i think we have enough animal meat we needent go the soylent green method...) well how do you tell the bodies of the deceased released from the morgues from the ones who were killed and dropped there to destroy the evidence, or even those killed by putting them in the machine.

but to me there is a sense of nobility in offering your body to the animals from which you have taken your meat from, its matter of giving back to nature, i dont think we need to stop eating meat, just letting meat have some back.

as for the ethics of killing animals, to me...its not an issue. animals will die, this is a given, we will die, they will die, everyone will die. if not us, then some animal will take their life, old age isnt as big of a killer in the wild as in human society. so long as we take their life painlessly, i dont see an issue. now veal, or kosher meat, thats another story.
kosher meat btw requires that you slit the cows throat and let it bleed out. veal of course is baby calves, generaly prevented from moving, under fed, under nurished, if you raised a person like that you would be considered barborous.
but for the most part, cows are in their native environment, modern cows are domesticated, removing the cows into the wild is like releasing all the dogs or cats from their owners or the pounds. like it or not, they are domesticated, and they are ours. argue the morality of domesticating an animal for food if you wish, but the people you argue with are long dead. and what we have is the reality of it.
i have thought about the subject at length, and...im in favour of eating meat. or at least the right to eat meat (overall i dont care for most meat...as i mentioned) i dont hold humans above animals in that right, just as every animal has the right to eat every other animal (while we can rise above it, i see no reason to)
that being said, if they swap chicken nugets with veggy nuggets in such a way i cant taste the difference, i wont care. so long as i can still drown them in BBQ sauce.
however i dont know if they would be able to replace the chicken i use in curry with chicken tasting veggies unless they cook the same way.

84. The empty myths peddled by evangelists of unbelief

Comment #108026 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 8:49 pm

In this sense the Genesis story is a truthful myth. It tells us that knowledge need not give humanity life or freedom; it may only bring slavery and death. There is no prospect of a return to innocence - once the apple has been eaten from the tree of knowledge there is no going back.

actually what you discribed is the myth of pandora's box, also reminiscent of the story of alice in wonderland. of course a pretty moral does not truth make.

85. Researchers May Remake Neanderthal DNA

Comment #107975 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 5:53 pm

little bit of both. but it is interesting the animals they mentioned reconstructing the DNA of...are all animals we drove to extinction.

86. New clues to why we see red

Comment #107974 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 5:51 pm

well the detection would be much like any form of light, in fact it doesnt need to be a certain frequency because the bird isnt trying to listen to the oldies...just find the source. it would have the advantage with each step of making the bird more capable of finding a telephone wire or radio tower to perch on (as i said these have less predators, and more perch area than trees, that is a selective force alone, birds already do this) the device would only have to detect the EXISTANCE and INTENSITY of radio waves (and would take probably a two antenae array, much like an insect has) in order to navigate towards it.
this device has places it could evolve, the ears come to mind, the eyes perhaps. what device evolves the ability is kinda irrelevant. what is relevant is that there be a selective pressure (in this case predation and being able to plot a course easy for a perch, though i may be assuming too much that finding a perch takes any amount of energy for a bird...
and i did mention that probably by the time evolution was able to occur, radio would no longer be used (we are currently moving away from radio as it is)

87. The Psychology Behind Cults/Religion

Comment #107969 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 5:38 pm

"church, synagogue, temple, mosque, dianetics center, jinja, mandir, kingdom hall, and shrine "

i question the use of jinja in that area, if i recall jinja is the name for a shinto shrine, which generaly doesnt have people going there every so often and being preached to, in fact there is no meeting place or real preaching of shinto, which is why most followers of shinto do not consider themselves religious.
the shrines are family owned and maintained. a shinto priest or priestess will be born to that shrine, the duties are mostly just to maintain it (clean it and such) also preparation for the festivals. when people go to a shrine its usualy just to pray, drop a coin in the area, clap twice, make your prayer, and ring the bells. though one could say that is a means to get the peoples money, its realy no worse than a wishing well. actually its pretty much the same thing. most people dont mind tossing a coin into a pond for instance, at the mall they have a fountain and people toss their coins into the fountain and make a wish, i dont even make a wish i'll just toss a coin in...i kinda like throwing things in water..i also like throwing rocks in rivers...i dont know what they do with the coins, but i dont much care it was only a penny.
i wouldnt put a jinja in the same area as a church though.
also i wouldnt put shinto as being a very dangerous religion, actually most eastern religions tend to be on the benign, least compared to the abrahamic religion. most eastern religions are less theology and more philosophy.

88. Fear Is Stronger Than Hope When It Comes To Fitness

Comment #107962 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 5:11 pm

most interesing, actually this is a method quite used in mind control, for instance scientology has this regiment in the begining where they "test you" and make up all these negative aspects about yourself, they say all these things are wrong with you but have no fear, they have the cure. basically its just like mentioned there, picturing a negative version of yourself.
also this seems to be the method which leads gymnists and celebrities to anarexia or balemia. its the constant "you arent pretty enough" or "you arent thin enough" there is usualy a coach of some sort there to tell them they are too fat and build up that negative image.
the fear of hell is a strong motivator amongst theists, you often hear the "what if you are wrong" bit. because to them the idea of hell is very real, no matter what people say about it being parable, its taken as real in the minds of theists, and they take this as justification because this same image of them suffering for all eternity in hell is very strong, the fire and brimstone sermons for instance preys on this very thing.

89. Researchers use neuroimaging to study ESP

Comment #107958 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 4:58 pm

epeeist, like someone else here mentioned, its impossible to prove something doesnt exist. its a limit of inductive reasoning. but this was evidence AGAINST it, on top of the much evidence against it. but just like you cannot prove there isnt a god, you cannot prove there isnt esp, fairies, magic, and so on, you cant prove a null hypothesis.

as for it being a waste, im not so sure, personaly i have always held that what people think of as esp or paranormal is just a mosaic of normal processes. if asked for instance how someone knew soemone was lying, its hard to say (most of the time) "this gave it away" there are so many small tells that in themselves is not enough evidence, but in total make a better picture. people tend to prefer one explanation, or if there are many tells they should all stand on their own, the interplay is more subtle so they dont notice it.
also, me and my friend joke and say one of us is reading the others mind, but whats actually happening is that after being together so much, when the two of us see the same stimulii, we come to the same answer at around the same time. for instance, me and my friend were watching an anime, forget which, and someone grabbed this guy by the face and caused a big explosion (which as we all know in anime only causes minor burns) and we both said at the same time "shishio!" (a character from rurouni kenshin we had both seen who used a similar attack)
it wasnt that one of us read the others mind, but that both of our minds reacted to the same stimulus in parallel. and this happens quite often.
other times i will observe someone, the way they speak, the way the walk, how they act, about them, and put these things together and many times know things about them, they didnt know. its not telepathy, its not clairvoyance, its just psychoanalysis. when someone says something and another one hears it, in many people, that persons mind is written on their face. their reaction, their thought processes in turn, their response, they all are a kind of tell, to use the poker term.

and this is natural to all humans, its just how perceptive you are. if you spend more time thinking about yourself you wont be able to read a person, and in fact you will open yourself to being read. but i imagine this was the first form of human communication, not what you said, but how you said it, your body posture, your facial experession, vocal inflection, the speed of your response, body language basically. thats all telepathy realy is.


actually what interests me are those monks that can raise and lower their body temperature at will. now i dont know how vredible this is, i have seen them on camera, and i believe IR camera, but has there been any real studies on this?
if its true, it means that humans are capable of controlling their subconscious, that all areas of the brain are available and people can change anything with the proper methodology.

90. New clues to why we see red

Comment #107749 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 6:37 am

most interesting, to me the idea of a colour ive never seen is fascinating, perhaps slightly because it is so impossible to imagine. how do you imagine a colour you have never seen, what do you call it, how would others percieve it. the visual range of the human eye is about 1 octave, around the same octave of light that filters through our atmosphere, its totaly arbitrary, if i were an alien and on my planet gamma and x rays as well as our visual rays filtered through the atmosphere my eyes (and my cells) would be immune to their harmful effects and able to see them. to me, much of the world would look transluscent, like painted glass, light would reflect in colours no one else could imagine, it would seem normal to me, if i saw you i would think "cant you see that man over there" to which you would say "there is no one there" "look he is right there behind the wall" to which they may check and see it is true (or worse think you mad) but to you it would seem so obvious that there is someone there because you can see him and so madening that no one else can. when you look at something which looks black to someone else and see shades and hues of colour, you discribe them, but to your dismay no one can comprehend.
our mind isnt built to comprehend things so unimaginable, our memories are built on our senses, our imagination is built on our memories, if we cannot percieve it, we cannot imagine it except to imagine it in terms we understand, we atribute IR to what we see in IR cameras or just a shade of red, and we picture UV as a shade of violet, but it is nothing of the sort. and the way it would play with the other 3 colours would be unique.

also, remember how vision as we know of it is defined by the light which filters through the atmosphere, from what i know of evolution (note im not a biologist) i predict some time in the future, a creature (probably a bird) will develop a sensory organ to detect radio waves. first off, they are reletively unique to this time, radio has existed on earth but was rather scarce, second, radio wave indicate the existance of radio towers and perhaps of power lines, thus for migratory birds the ability to fly towards sources of radio makes an evolutionary advantage (since power lines and towers have more area to perch than trees. and less predators)
thus it seems likely that a bird may develop a sense to detect radio (not to mention perhaps the ability for something akin to natural radar though i believe that requires the source to be the person percieving it...so maybe not radar..)
but then again, im still waiting for animals to evolve the knowlege to avoid cars...that may be just as likely eh?i imagine by the time such a mutation occured, radio would be long dead...much like animals by the time the evolved the understanding to avoid cars at one speed, will be hit with faster cars. maybe only the microscopic life can keep up with the evolution rate of technology (like that bacteria that eats nylon)

either way, i believe its possible for a creature to evolve a perception of radio (if not the eys, something akin to radio antenae) for no other reason than its a form of light available in abundance.
but that has little to do with the eye, except to say vision itself is arbitrary, to say 3 is all you need to display all there is to see is an argument from lack of imagination, and its not by definition your fault, its hard to imagine the unimaginable. and 4d vision or vision of different wavelengths, or different colour receptors, these are hard to imagine, it is hard to contemplate everything we ARENT seeing. its hard to miss something you never had. the old man syndrom "in my day, all we had was[...]and we were just fine that way. we didnt need any of this[...]" if you dont have it, you dont miss it. if you were a person in the 17th century you could never imagine needing a computer, everything you could need to [...] was right there.

91. For Motherly X Chromosome, Gender Is Only the Beginning

Comment #107744 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 5:42 am

well obviously when you put a man and a woman together, by these tendancies that you mentioned, the woman packs the bags, while the man pays. independantly both may cause inconvenience, the woman would hold up the line by not having payed while still loading the cart, the man may hold it up by not having the bags out of the area while others are going, or by not themselves leaving the queue as they load up the bags. together they reach an equilibrium of efficiency.

perhaps also an explanation could be that people do the thing they least like first, a woman may least like organizing the bag but give little mind to paying the bill, while a man may begrudge more the paying of the bill to the organizing of the bag.

but of course thats just advancing your stereotype, to be honest i havent seen this behaviour...i shop at wal-mart...so...the bags are already packed and on a spining thingy, i tend to pack it into the cart as they become available and then pay when they say the cost. then return to packing and leave the queue. but that's just me. mother when she goes shopping and i or one of my brothers are there just tells us to do it and pays....

92. Researchers May Remake Neanderthal DNA

Comment #107706 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 3:01 am

"its a liger, its pretty much my favourite animal, a lion and tiger mix, bred for their proficiency in magic"~napoleon dynamite.

sorry...i had to...

anyhow, about the article...interesting prospect, aside from studying the dna, lets face it, when you have one DNA sample...dont you want more? cloning a neanderthal would be waaay more effective means of understanding them than studying their dna, when you see how they act, interact, their level of intelegence, their ability for speach, the ability to create, their physical and mental differences, or if you can sequence a female to go with it, mating, parenting, socializing, much potential.

of course ethics comes in, they are homo, do they have human rights, are we violating them by studying them, can they even survive on their own, if so...is it right to release them to the wild after we make them. they couldnt blend into society and we cant just kill them...but they wouldnt be good for ecosystem...
maybe i shouldnt talk about problems to things that havent even been sugested yet...im not just jumping the gun, im jumping the purchase of the gun.

93. Genetic Engineers Who Don't Just Tinker

Comment #107701 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 2:40 am

Ahh, yer thinkin' small! Modify people so they can't be made hungry - give 'em photosynthetic capability. Poor is a relative term, like "below average" it can't be eliminated, but we could modify people to obviate bad things we associate with being poor, e.g. avoid the need for shelter by making people immune to weather. Instead of making factory workers happy we could create nonsentient critters to do factory work and free all the wage slaves. Best of all, we could modify government people so they don't feel the need to boss people around any more!

making people immune to weather is...well impossible...but what you can do is like they said grow a house. the poor could have a roof over their head, plant a seed and a house grows in some amount of time. the house could even be designed to produce human eddible foods (nothing fancy, not making roast duck or anything, but fruits, vegitables, grains, totaly possible. and produce them seedless and at a decent rate. (limited by surface area and effectiveness of bringing up nutrience from the soil and absorbing sunlight)

but you have a house, which runs itself. (though i dont think it could produce electricity, the amount of surface area would be too great. but it could produce a form of wiring, wouldnt be copper wiring, more like nerve cells. and be able to be plugged in.)
(if you can tell i have an overactive imagination, i do go a bit beyond the science into the "wouldnt it be cool if" area of science fiction. but often that area has its ways of becoming true. if there is a "wouldnt it be cool if" area, science finds its way there. nto always the way you thought, but it find its way.)

as for taking away the thing which allows for religion, i cant think of a worse idea. the very things which allow for religion, are perhaps some of the best things we have. religion just...hijacks them, it takes these great process (like my over-active imagination for instance, which can be a power to imagine the potential for something, to dream up and invent, or a power to believe, to create religious ideology. in many ways the writers of fiction and the writers of religion are the same, just one claims divinity and the other doesnt. the sense of awe in the universe, the desire to be loved, the desire to be cared for, the desire for order and purpose, the desire to see bad things happen to people who wrong you, the desire to find comfort, the desire to create, the desire to understand, the desire to dream. these are things which arent in themselves bad, and things that would have to be removed, to take away religion, and in many cases they would kill science in the process.
religion takes benign processes, and destroys them, and breeds to destroy more, like dawkins said it is a virus, it destroys these wonderful processes that make it possible.
unfortunately there is no easy fix for faith, no pill to take to convert the believers, no genes to remove to eliminate the problem, there is only education. only through proper education can you remove faith, or at least weaken it. you will probably never remove it, because superstition will always exist, just dont allow it to become dogmatic. astrology exists, and always will, but people no longer make important government decision on it, it connects to that desire for a deeper meaning, the desire to understand, to know, to remove the uncertainty of decision making, the idea of astrology give the promise of fate, the promise that by understanding the motions of the stars you can know what decision to make and when.
it also connects to the human desire for the occult, (which means "hidden" and refers to any hidden knowlege) because everyone wants an angle, a unique way to do something differently than everyone else, socialy, and from a darwinian standpoint, this is a perfectly reasonable thing. and many times it leads to a positive outcome (finding a new way to think about a problem gives unique solutions to the problem and advances civilization) some times it leads to a dead end like astrology or magic or religion, or new age mysticism.
sometimes beating new paths means you have to break from reason, because reason is the existing path.

and i dont know if i would like to see religion totaly gone. weakened yes. gone...no. i rather like the mystery and wierdness of some of these systems, when you dont take them seriously, they can be like any good work of fantasy. many times i read on forms of mysticism just so i can have something to write about in fantasy novels, or in video game stories. getting rid of fantasy to me would just be shame.
ultimately the answer is, i think it is both more honourable, and better, to have the things which allow for religion and elect not to believe.
to be able to read your child bible stories as being on par with reading your child grimm brother stories would to me be an honourable venture. tell them the stories, but let them know they are just stories, and then when they see people taking these stories seriously...they would look at them like they had 3 heads. like someone professing that there was an old lady who lived in a shoe, if you can do that, that is a world i wouldnt mind living in. have the grain of fantasy, of imagination, of creativity, they arent bad things, they are wonderful things, just inoculate your children against religion. teach them to be open, but not too open.

94. Tinkering with Humans

Comment #107687 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 1:46 am

i would say the idea of genetically engineering your child is dangerous, while i am in favour of the creation of bio-machines to serve us, i am not in favour of the idea of editing humans, one thing is just the child. if a parent selects for a child what they want their child to have, athleticism, iq, etc, they are basically mapping out this childs destiny, and i think that is too controling.
some things, yes, if you can increase a childs IQ...you should...but of course in a society where realy your iq is you livelyhood (lets face it manipulation takes some form of intelegence, so even the jerry fallwells of the world have the intelegence, they just arent academic) this is kinda like the issue of steroids. and it is a survival of the fittest situation (social evolution)
follows like this:
one parrent genetically engineers their child to be athletic and intelegent, smarter than einstein and more disposed to be physically fit (metabolism mostly, less disorders too. whether they work out is up to them) this child of course becomes unbelievably successfull (in something im sure) including in issues of romance (kinda hit or miss, but being athletic and smart gives you and advantage...but he could be a total jerk and not get any...like i said, hit or miss.)
this child being successful makes more parrents want the same for their child.
and similar results.
now no one is forcing everyone to engineer their child. just like no one is forcing everyone in sports to take sterroids. but those who dont are less competitive than those who do. there is a selective pressure. and when you reach a critical mass it becomes such that those who arent engineered are just about second class citizens to those are. if you do engineer children who break all known benchmarks, what of the average man, what of the child who wasnt engineered because their parents wished them to be born natural. they have the ability to chose...but that is only superficial, in reality...they have very little choice. if they want the best for their child, they would have to.

and then, since these children must reproduce, what of their offspring, can we acount for untold mutations down the line. in that manner it kinda goes to chaos theory.

bio-machines that cant breed and exist to service us is one thing, but changing us, at the expense of the un-changed...i dont support that.


now if you can genetically engineer a smart virus (a retro-virus which changes the dna of everyone it encounters to make them smarter, or the next generation smarter) and release it as an airborne virus...that would be nice...(unfortunately same issue arises, by nature such a virus would have to reproduce, and by nature of resproduction it would be subject to change...though a non-deleterious gene designed to allow them to be self destructed could be engineered, but thats getting WAAAY ahead of myself, which i do....a lot....)

95. I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer

Comment #107666 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 5, 2008 at 12:24 am

this isnt the holy grail or anything, but this is in fact a step in the right dirrection, and maybe in a way he didnt CREATE a new LIFE FORM, but he did create a new GENOME, and that in and of itself is something to be impressed with. that we can make a genome, program it with our own sequences, and boot it up into a cell, is something to be marveled at, if only for a moment.
if you can make a program to predict how these sequences will express themselves, then to kinda...evolve the sequences artificialy (before writing, set parameters, the end goal basically, and similate selective pressure and breeding/mutation) then you could concievably engineer a life form, using the existing cell as soemthing of a compiler (to use computer programming terms) you can design the life form on the computer (or computer cluster more likely) then like printing a document, print the cell.

personaly i look foreward to the distant future where we have bio-machines.

as for the ethics of biomachinery, understand, they wouldnt evolve at all...they wouldnt breed, like any machine they would be manufactured. every one would be the same, mutations wouldnt be able to occure due to the nature of the creation.
so consider instead of an engine in your car we could produce a biological engine which could turn the wheels at much higher RPM, and ran on simple material, trash for instance. like any organism it would of course have to be fed, one limitation is it could starve, though when not running it could be made to go into a stasis, im not sure how long a creature can maintain stasis.

but the infinite potential of the genetic code is what makes it so amazing.

and suppose someone does genetically engineer a super virus, someone can genetically engineer a super anti-virus, understanding the genetic code, being able to make biological machines which can do as we tell them, means we can counter them, we can understand them, we can reprogrogram them (for instance, reprogramming a virus to become and anti-virus.) we can even make things to fight them.
just as we can make bioweapons which attack the body, we can make biomachines that aide the body. and i think that greatly outweighs any harm the former could do.

96. Cheney and Obama: It's Not Genetic

Comment #107660 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 4, 2008 at 11:40 pm

hmm, one thing im most curious about in terms of geneology, mitochondrial DNA is never mixed to my knowlege. first off...how OLD is that DNA? mitochondrial DNA moves unchanged from mother to daughter or mother to son, the father makes no contribution to that. how far back does this DNA go? what forces apply to it? can it be mines for anthrolpological evidence?

also, yes...third cousins are pretty much unrelated genetically speaking, many find offense to cousins having romantic relationships though, however it is legal in many countries (including japan) and some states in the US.

but unless there is an evil gene, i dont think we need to worry about a genetic relationship between cheney and obama (though perhaps a memetic relationship could exist...but thats doubtful)

actually you would think this would look bad for bush, this means he is part french, something they should consider turning back on them (no offense to french people, i say that only because he had done so much to denegrade the french, including changing the name of french fries...)

97. Evolutionary comparison finds new human genes

Comment #107653 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 4, 2008 at 11:18 pm

hmm, this makes me wonder if there may be a time when we can make a computer to naturally understand the genetic language, be able to read it as a mater of fact, and use that to extrapolate information about something.
for instance, suppose one had an unknown creature (maybe an alien or something) and could read the genetic code, understand it at a fundamental level, then extrapolate all the ways this DNA could have been, extrapolate how it may have been once, and maybe even the environment in which it lived (since all creatures carry the unique print of their environment on their DNA, by taking how they were and all the ways they could have been, you can plot a course from where they were to where they are, and eliminate all the ways they arent, to see how they were best fit for their environment.)
or just taking the human DNA and showing how we could have been, and how we were. its kinda fascinating if you think about it.
now im sure it would be a loooooong time before technology ever allows for such a thing, but in the terms of potential, its pretty nice. and it would certainly prove beyond a shadow of a doubt (that is so completely even a creationist couldnt deny it) that humans evolved from apes. when you can physically play a video of the human evolution as recorded in the dna, the expression of all the different homonids, there are few who could deny that.

98. Are Scientists Playing God? It Depends on Your Religion

Comment #107547 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 4, 2008 at 6:00 pm

well what you are talking about isnt exactly cloning, its more or less invetro fertilization. it involves two genetic doners mixing, while cloning has only one genetic doner and the resulting offspring is exactly the same as him or her. in fact this is seen in nature and known as "asexual reproduction" and is generaly considered inferior to sexual reproduction (mostly in its ability to evolve and adapt to the environment)

there are real scientific reasons for cloning a person though, but one would question whether its right to bring a person into the world to study them...
but for instance a study of nature vs nurture, take some people who want to have a cloned child just like them. and then see if they grow up to be just like them (personality wise, obviously they will look identical) (though a proper test would probably involve the child not being raised by the doner due to influence from the parent to the growth of the child)
but such a test would probably encrouch on the rights of the child, and would certainly be an issue.
also one could see a reason a person would want to clone a child which would be psychologically...bad for them. if a parent wanted to clone a child they lost, this would be bad both for them and for the child. the expectation of this child to be exactly like the child they lost, their own not coming to terms with the childs loss, the childs eventual knowlege that he was cloned from his brother who died. these are things which are far from healthy. not in a religious sense, in a psychological or social sense.

however cloned bodies have their advantages too, for instance if one could transfer the brain from a peron who is dying to a new body, or encode all the person knows, the content of their brain, into another host, that person could recover from a critical injury or even death. (it is also worth noting that religious people first objected to the lightning rod, claiming lightning was the expression of the wrath of god and that no person has the right to counter this, to which ben franklin replied "god does not mind if we keep out the rain by putting a roof over us, or keep out the cold by wearing clothes, i dont think he minds if we protect our houses by putting up lightning rods" or something to that affect. and it worked. it almost seems you cant fight religion except on their own terms, if someone had said "thats rubbish, god has nothing to do with lightning" or "god doesnt exist" we wouldnt have lightning rods.)

but religion aside, the ability to clone new organs, even limbs, is promising. i recall seeing something like that in ST-TNG (i suspect gene roddenberry was an atheist, the religion content didnt realy come in much til AFTER he died. in fact the most religious people in Star Trek were the most violent, the klingons.) when they cloned a new spine for worf and transplanted it, then there was one of the movies, from the original cast, they went back in time, bones remarked on the savegry of modern medicine, he gave this one guy a pill and it grew his kidney back. the funny thing is, that could very well be what we are seeing, the potential to simply regrow a lost kidney, to replace a broken spine (though i imagine its no so simple to replace a spine, lots of connections...i dont think the issue of rejection was ever the problem, though maybe injecting stem cells into a broken area could regrow nerve endings) maybe even replace a broken body.

if my car tire blows i dont debate about whether i should replace it. nor do i call a priest to try and contact a spirit to replace to tire, i just replace it.
maybe some day we will see the body as such a machine, and when an organ fails...we will just replace it. and so long as that organ isnt the brain (and maybe even after...some day) death may be put off for a long time.
and i think THAT is a goal worth seeking. and it has been sought for centuries, how sad that when the goal the is in sight, and its no longer by the blessing of god, but by the blessing of knowlege that we find it, we would be blocked so profusely.

99. Stem cell breakthrough

Comment #107519 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 4, 2008 at 4:57 pm

i think the move to skin cells was to be a natural progression, the main reason is...i imagine the DNA has to match, so if you are growing a new cell, it should match your cells. now im not sure how the embryonic cells work, though i imagine they match the dna of the zygote, not the person it will be going into. resetting cells from the recipiant into a stem cell state has the advantage that the DNA is determined to match, rejection is not possible.

also if you did grow a baby from a cell, it would be a clone, not a child. this is of course not recomended. its basically asexual reproduction, sexual reproduction is generaly always prefered to asexual.

as for saying who created me, well i would ask you to call my parrents, since by all means, they created me, not some sky creature. maybe a little appriciation for the people who actually gave you some 5-6 pounds of their flesh and the mechanisms to make more for yourself eh?

but this advance just shows, while the religious reich (i like that one, imma use it more) dicks around here in the states trying to prevent anything resymboling saving peoples lives, japan is getting the head start on us. maybe if we could get across to people that they may be missing out of a multi-billion dollar industry, the politicians might make a move.

100. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #107492 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 4, 2008 at 3:56 pm

on the issue of "should it be public" i don't imagine it should, now one could argue that if a president is going through a particularly difficult time (such as a divorce or threat thereof, marital problems and such) that this could hamper his ability to function, but why does this only apply to presidents, this holds true of everyone, presidents of companies aren't held to being fired for having marital problems, in fact many people bury themselves further into their work when having problem solely to avoid having to deal with it (though not psychologically healthy, it is often an effective motivation and can have healthy results for their work effectiveness)
the real reason though has nothing to do with how it would affect their ability to work and every bit to do with human voyeurism, the desire to know every scandalous secret that someone is doing, the more revered they are the more dirt they want on them. perhaps there is some Darwinian reason for that, the desire to elevate oneself over another, by lowering someone else, they believe they higher themselves in comparison, and due to the hierarchical nature of early man (the higher the rank of the person the better their chances to mate, the alpha male for instance gets the most mates then beta, gamma, and so on.)

and of jealousy, in many ways i do agree with you, but at the same rate i do think when dealing with a relationship you kinda compare apples to oranges. the love of a man to a woman and the love of a man to a nice wine are somewhat different (if only in a social sense, perhaps at the very biological sense they are identical) actually jealousy and the feeling of betrayal from a spouse is not much different from the feeling of betrayal of a leader (which you mentioned in an earlier article) when they change their mind on a subject. though a perfectly reasonable thing to do, people coalesce around people who have similar views as them, they live vicariously through them, and by that they expect this person to stay faithful to their ideals and to deliver their ideals into the public in a way they themselves cannot. and when that person then betrays their ideals, they feel betrayed. and in love i think we see a similar thing, it isn't just the love, it is the commitment, saying "i will be with you, and love only you" and when one betrays that the other is hurt by it. i think this didn't develop because of religion, i think the religious ideals developed because of this (and kinda perverted it a bit to give greater merit to abstinence or against homosexuality)
and another part comes actually when two people seek sex or love outside of the relationship, this can cause them to give more to the other partner and less to the original, they grow apart, and as they do any children they have with either could suffer. a child, for instance, who's father spends more time with his mistress than with his wife, is also spending less time with his son. also an amount of his money is going to his mistress and not his wife, who may need it again to feed or clothe or educate his son, or daughter as the case may be. in this way the evolutionary imperative you see is not gone, now sure it wouldn't matter if you spent resources on a child that wasn't yours, but it would matter if you spent resources on someone else rather than the mother of your child.

evolution also still has a selective force today, that being the force of society, which acts primarily on mating not survival, the ability of a mate to provide for instance for a child is important (why women favour rich or influential men, though that mans ability to spend time with their child may be less their ability to raise their child to also be rich and have the same selective force is important, also his ability to get by easier) now some women over-ride this, they also sometimes over-ride their desire for a strong, athletic mate, sometimes even over-riding their desire for a mate that can even provide a child (such as selecting a mate of the same gender) by that matter, people over-ride Darwinian desires (or perhaps simply take a different strategy, for instance a woman may select instead a mate who is more caring and understanding to one of physical fitness, such a mate may then have a memetic value in being able to pass down this niceness to their child who in turn would have the selective force.)
(you must forgive me i am kinda going from the top of my head, so this may be a bit rant-like. hopefully i am making sense)

none the less, i think there is some inherent social value in fidelity, for instance i wouldn't want a friend i couldn't trust, and i wouldn't want a mate i could trust. fidelity, to me, is quite important. also i hold the basics of reciprocity, i would not wish to be betrayed, and i would not betray.