RyGuyFly

Thanks everyone. I appreciate your feedback. It will take time for me to recover from the authoritarian and cult-like religion of my youth. I will check out your links when I get to sit down at a PC. Another question... are there humanist songs? Lol. I'm asking because the religious songs of my youth meant a lot to me. But my conscience no longer allows me to sing them because they go against my principles. It's a weird thing.

I just wanted to add to this as I have found somewhat of an answer. The phenomenon that I am talking about is called a digenic epistatic interaction. I need to understand it better. But basically it is when 2 genes when combined do not have an additive effect but rather produce something totally different.

I remember watching a documentary on it and they were talking about the hypothetical issues. Like people being able to select for certain traits. That would hugely effect the future of mankind. Like if you could select for gender, eye color etc. If our capacity for genetic testing and modification improved you could even select for intelligence or physical fitness traits potentially creating 'super humans'. Who knows what that effect would have on society or humans in general.

Thank you. Very interesting. I personally have never observed Christmas so I find it odd that the majority of the non-religious don't see any hypocrisy in being involved with Christmas festivities and traditions. On one had I suppose if there is no God to judge you then what does it matter what you do. On the other hand it appears to me that Christmas is the product of centuries of lies and, in the past 100 years at least, heavy commercialism. I would think people would feel it was contradictory to the principles of humanism but it seems many people don't feel that it is. Its interesting that in the past when I was religious it seemed as though the people around me were very non-religious. But now it seems that everyone around me is highly-religious lol. Perhaps its just my perspective that has changed. I was there was an organization that one could belong to or a community that one could associate with.

I recently watch a youtube video with a speaker named AC Grayling. I was impressed because I felt similarly about most everything he was talking about. I had never heard anyone speak about these things before. So im oddly surprised that there might be other people out there that share my world view. I feel that I am a bit of a philosopher at heart and that these things are important to me. It seems like the people around me don't seem to care about these things. Its almost as if the entire purpose of religion is to suppress your capacity to learn, reason, or do. If there is a God that imbued us with these special gifts why would he forbid their use? That's essentially what religion does. Its just whitewashed with emotions. I was thinking religion/God is almost like a parent gifting their child a box of crayons and forbidding its use. And telling them the punishment for using the crayons is death, or worse eternal torment. And they say to the child that they themselves are the personification of love... That's not love. That's abuse! My other questions for you; Do you observe religious holidays? Like Christmas? Do you call your self a "humanist" like someone might call themselves a "catholic"? How do you find others of like mindset?

I was researching humanism and I'm a little confused. Is it a religion? Ideology? Philosophy? I understand that there are "humanist organizations" Do they have meetings? Churches? Congregations? Literature? Do they preach? I guess what I'm looking for too is it like an organization that people belong to? Like "baptized into" sorta thing? Like do you become a member? Or is it just like saying that you are of a certain school of thought? Your help us appreciated :-D have a good day.

Any thoughts on how many generations of selective breeding it would require to produce animals significantly different from the general population? Maybe for an example how many generations would be required to produce a pug-faced poodle if you started with regular poodles? I know many of the dog breeds have been "reshaped" over the last 100 years. So that would have to be less than 100 generations I would think.

I don't have a definite answer but "very deep" is relative. Certain cultures/languages tend to talk softer or at a higher pitch so what would be considered "very deep" in those would be different from a culture/language that encourages males to talk in a very deep voice. It would be interesting to see how much of that is genetic. Although I suspect a lot of it is learned.

As you are probably aware mice and hamsters come in a myriad of colors. But I wonder exactly what the different alleals are doing that causes the color change. For example I've been experimenting with breeding roborovski hamsters. They have developed a few mutations in captivity. Husky is a beige color, dominant spot which is some white ticking around the rump and ears, and recessive spot which agouti color fur only in patches emanating from around the spinal area. The odd thing is when you mix these colors you get unexpected results. For instance 2 dom spot and 2 rec spot allele results in an animal that is completely white. 1 dom spot and 2 rec spot alleles results in an animal that's all white with a single dark spot on its forehead. So I suspected something interesting might happen if you mixed the spot genes with the husky gene. The result is in the attached picture. The darker colored animal is the normal husky. The light colored animal I *SUSPECT* is 1 dom spot and 2 husky alleles. Further matings are required to prove this. But why would a gene that usually only cause some white patches around the rump and ears cause an entire lightening of the coat when mixed with husky? Or why would the different spotting combinations cause from my perspective bizarre results when combined. One would think that when combined they would just result in an animal that displays a combination of the 2 physical traits. Like normal husky coloration with white spotting around the rump and ears instead of an entire lightening of the coat? Thoughts? Edit: I can't seem to attach my pictures I'm not sure why.

In my previous religion it was specifically taught only non-abortive contraceptives were allowed. It was felt that the human life started at the moment of conception. Basically after the egg was fertilized it was considered the same murder to end the pregnancy. So in my old religion contraceptives that stop ovulation prevent fertilization of the egg to begin with and are acceptable forms of contraceptive. I am not familiar with all types of contraceptives but it appears some contraceptives just prevent the already fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus or from developing in general. So they would view that as abortive and as sinful. Its my understanding that some religions/churches teach that both the egg and the sperm are holy as well. And as such harming them, preventing them from functioning, or using them in a manner other than reproduction is considered sinful. Its my understanding that in this case any form of contraceptive tends to be considered sinful. I hope this is helpful.

Honestly I feel this banter is not relevant to my original post. I feel it is not productive. The subject was simply the terminology for the "loop logic" which I have discovered is called circular reasoning. Some have pointed out that faith is essentially the same thing as circular reasoning. I feel many times faith is indeed the product of circular reasoning. However according to the text book definition, faith is simply a total trust or confidence in something. I suppose one could argue that putting total trust in anything is poor judgment. On the other hand it would appear we all tend to put total trust into certain things some of the time. I feel circular reasoning is poor logic and, obviously, is often employed by humans. My experience has been that It is used by both people of religious and non-religious back grounds. It would even appear that both the educated and the uneducated can fall into its grasp.

Great question. I feel language learning is a multi-part talent. To me learning a new language comes in at least 4 different parts. There is speaking, listening, reading, and writing. I feel they are all distinct skills that are intertwined in the language learning process. So for instance you could be great at speaking, but do poorly with listening/comprehension and reading and writing. For me I felt the skills developed at different rates. I think ideally you would want to learn the basics of how the language works before digging in. Also how much you will learn depends on how motivated you are to consume the material. It would work best if you were reading about an interesting topic that you were already semi familiar with in your mother tongue. I feel like watching French movies would be more advantages than reading French novels. At least initially. Watching movies you get to see the body language and visual images to help you figure out what's going on. I learned Spanish and some of my training came from watching movies that I did not understand and reading things (out loud) that I did not understand. I also played video games in Spanish. I feel like the video game playing was really awesome because it gives you high motivation to understand what is going on, you are actually 'playing' and 'learning' at the same time! a perfect combo. Just my thoughts, I hope its helpful.

I thought of that too greenman. But I was also thinking that if they are writing a scifi story then the science doesn't have to be exact or real. its scifi after all. It just needs to sound convincing enough. but on the other hand...man... when movies are obviously scientifically uncreditable or unfeasible I feel they lose big points in my book.

Thanks for your responses everyone. Honestly what happened was I typed up my original post and then I accidently lost it all. (So frustrating) so I posted a different shorter version as I got fed up with typing on my tiny phone. Looking back I feel like the version I posted does not at all convey the ideas I had originally intended. My basic intent was to reach out and connect with others who are similar to myself. Basically people who are intelligent but come from a dysfunctional background. People who seek to better themselves. My intent was not to look for a dx. Historically I have spent a lot of time educating and examining myself and things I've been through and currently I feel like I have a pretty good idea of who I am, my strengths, weakness, things I need to work on etc. A lot of my struggles stem from my growing up in a chaotic alcohlic home and being in a damaging religous group (see my other thread in religion). If your not from a dysfunctional family it can be difficult to understand it all. It may seem arrogant but I feel being intelligent posed some unique sets of challenges in all this. Idk what i was thinking in the original post lol. I guess I was trying to keep things simple with out rambling about my history but I ended up with a messy post using unclear 'syndrome' stuff and got totally off track from the original intent of the thread. Anyways have a great day everyone

The closest thing I can think of would be a somesort of "intersex" individual or a sexual/genetic chimera or mosaic. Basically its when an individual is made up of two different sets of cells with different dna. Sometimes one set will be male and one set female. If you look up these terms you'll see that it's complicated and the extent of the gender mixing / blending varies from individual to individual. Now with this type of condition it's possible for people to have mixed or ambiguous genitalia internally and externally. technically it maybe possible for an individual to have a uterus and produce both sperm and eggs. I have never heard of anyone "self-fertilizing" but technically it could be possible if the individual was mostly female with functional uterus etc but had one ovary that produced functional eggs and one that produced functional sperm. Idk if this would fall under true hermaphrodite or not. Also the resulting offspring would probably not be hermaphrodites. Genetically they would be like the incestuous offspring of two siblings. Note: I just remembered you said it was for a short story. I have some other ideas depending on the nature of the hermaphrodites in your story. Like do they reproduce sexually or asexually? Some real life animal hermaphrodites are asexual and "self-fertilize". Others have intercourse to reproduce but the animals have both male and female parts. Yet others might change sex depending on the need of the population. Just my thoughts.