Velocity_Boy

So, which entity are we actually discussing here? Dark Energy? As mentioned in your Thread Title? Or Dark Matter, as you went on to speak of (sort of) in the text of your OP? I trust you ARE aware they are two totally different entities. Or forces, might be more accurate. We actually not one scintilla what EITHER is comprised of. All we have done is given those two names to explain what is causing the cosmological phenomenons we have observed but cannot explain with traditional Newtonian mechanics. Or, Hubblerian or Planckian meahcnaics! Did I just make up two words? LOL. But its true. We simply observed that the galaxies in the known Universe are receding faster than they should, especially at the outer edges, so we say some sort of Dark Energy is involved. And conversely see the galaxies themselves "sticking" together tighter and more coherently then they should given our know understanding of gravitational mechanics. So we use the term Dark Matter to explain that. Which, btw has been around, the word, for a lot longer than most folks think: some 70 years now! The Dark Energy, though, is a repetitively new discovery. Only about a decade or so ago. Funny, eh? Despite all of our so-called advances in Cosmology, we now know that we DON'T know what 90% of the Universe is comprised of! Oh....the Creationists must be wetting themselves at this one! Thanks. http://www.space.com/4554-scientists-dark-matter-exist.html

Sure, the evidence is pretty compelling that this Planet Nine (this is the current appellation..NOT Planet X!) actually exists, but the thing is the distance, man. Twenty times as far from the Sun as Neptune? Almost 20,000 years to make one complete orbit around the sun? Pluto only took a comparatively speedy 250 years to make one full lap! Hardly part of what most would consider our Solar System. But I guess that, Cosmologically speaking, if ANY body is locked into an orbit around the star that we call our Sun, it IS a part of our solar (solar = "sun") system. So.....technically, Go for it, Planet Nine! Welcome Aboard! Looks like we found a replacement for the down-graded Pluto! But, we gotta get a better name for it. Planet Nine sounds like the name of a B Grade Sci Fi flick! LOL Thanks.

I have Bipolar Disorder, and as long as I am on my meds, I'm totally balanced and functional. But in the past when OFF medication and in the midst of a full-blown manic episode I have suffered from visual and auditory hallucinations. Although I am not sure that the adverb "suffered" is totally accurate, since I rather enjoyed them. Well...sometimes, that is. The bitch of it all was the Crash after the High. Thanks.

Well I cannot be sure since you hardly gave an objective and complete description of the symptomology, but based on your post I would hazard that you could well be describing somebody with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Or...NPD. Does any of THIS sound familiar? http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/narcissistic-personality-disorder

Well, I will tell you a relation between those two mental disorders. At least a relation between them according to my own personal opinion. (As well as many others in the Psych fields). They are both egregiously over-diagnosed in the United States. In fact I would say they are the two MOST over-diagnosed psych disorders in the USA today, and for the past decade or so. I myself am Bipolar. Diagnosed in my early 20s. Had many full-blown psychotic manic episodes. But I respond well to medication, and when on it am highly functional. (I am currently in grad school in Biology). But I have talked to several folks and heard about dozens of others who have been dx's with Bipolar who never even had a manic episode! Or a bout of paralyzing depression. All they had were mood swings. Which, ya know, is sorta part of the whole homo sapien brain thing. LOL. Autism is also over-diagnosed. A lot of it due to parents who want to slap a label on a kid they cannot control, or don't want to spend sufficient time with. Diet has a great deal to do with it, and I have a professor here at the U who has a private practice and has cured alleged Autistic kids by cleaning up their diets and replacing their sedentary lifestyle with some exercise. (Question: Why are all nearly ALL so called autistic kids total couch potatoes and have shitty diets? You don't really think that's a coincidence, do ya? I also blame Big Pharma, with their tendency to use meds in an off-label fashion for psychotropic drugs. It's like, hey let's invent a disease that we have a cure for! Thanks. Hope this helps. http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/home/article/is-bipolar-disorder-overdiagnosed/c823f5984a7e9a30f2c65f50f08d40e4.html

So OK, if you're gotta get snarky about it than I WILL say that as a Biologist and Psych devotee, I DO think that the female brain is "wired" a bit differently than the male's. We have actually viewed various images from brainscan tech like PETs and fMRIs that shows this. The females utilize different neural pathways in deducing answers to questions and in problem solving methodologies. They also use a larger and less concentrated portion of the brain. Their thinking tends to be a bit more tangential and abstract and less linear. Ergo....these differences would certainly be non-advantageous at the least and at most downright detrimental insofar as working in the discipline of mathematics. Ergo.....society still does tend to view females as being less Math savvy then their male counterparts. Summation....The answer as to why females are often less adept at Math is due to BOTH nature and nurture. But in fact is due more to Nature than previously thought. And there is this.............. http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ Or are you gonna call this cherry picking? Let me know if you need more help on this matter. It's what I do, smart guy. Thanks.

The mods here sound like they might be theists. LOL Or at least the mod who posted the above warning about the YouTube video disproving God. I mean, hey, I'm new here but is not deciding the validity of worth of a members link OUR job? And indeed part of the whole debate and discussion process. Part of the scientific empirical process? If the mods here continue to display such Jack booted thuggish mentality, with heavy- handed censoring I don't think I'm gonna last too long. I despise censorship among consenting and educated adults in any form. Thanks. Oh...as far as science disproving God, I would love to see it happen and indeed think it one day may, but I also think Carl Sagan with his parable of the Invisible Dragon in My Garage showed us all how difficult it is to disprove even the most absurd claims. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage

Sounds promising! That study and the whole neuron tagging thing. But then again, I thought when I saw those first PET scan images a couple decades ago...as well as subsequent computer driven brain imaging pics...that those would surely end any remaing mysteries there might be about the homo sapien mind. Guess not. Aren't as already pretty sure that clinical depression is the result of a lack of serotonin in the brain? Hence the significant success and efficacy of SSRIs at alleviating it?

Ya know, when I first read the title of this debate topic my immediate gut reaction was to say something along the lines of blaming the nurture aspect in that whole nature vs nurture argument. That is to say, girls are bad at math, or rather, not as likely to be as adept at it as males, only because they're taught by society to be that way. But then I recalled that with brain imagery technology we have learned over the past couple decades that the female brain actually DOES work differently, that is, processes input data differently than does a male brain. It also causes women to convey and communicate that data to others in different ways. As the old adage about how women will tell driving directions much differently than a man. They tend to think in non linear ways. They multi task better, which probably means they might not be as proficient focusing on only one task....o r equation?...as are males. If this were indeed true, I believe it would pose a significant detriment to being a math wiz.

Indeed. And I am sure that one day we will discover that the sol is NOT a constant. As we will find morphic resonance to be true as well. Hope this helps. Thanks.

This question is pretty much a no brainer. And I can answer it with another quote about religion from a famous person. Lenin. Who called religion an Opiate for the Masses. Indeed. God. Religion. All that silly superstition. Little more than emotional placebos. Which when ya think about it is what drugs are! Especially opiates and narcotics! And poor oppressed people usually pose less of a threat to the ruling class when they are sedated. Or doped up from belief in sky gods. LOL

You are going to get a lot of replies here that will tell us that the opposite of love is Hate. This of course, is wrong. Why? Easy. In order to hate something or somebody you must have a passion in regards to some form or tangent of that person. Or thing. Or situation. Whatever. Hate and love are two different points on a linear graph of human emotions that can be inspired. Key word here, folks.....inspired. Thus...we need a word for the opposite of love that requires no inspiration of fervent feeling that emanaated from the person who caused it. Apathy. That is the opposite of love. Uncaring, unfeeling, non caring total apathy. Hope this helps! Thanks.

Gee, I dunno. A closed minded reactionary? LOL

http://www.webmd.com/brain/picture-of-the-brain

Hey all.....new guy here. thanks for having me! I am a post grad Biology student currently working in my Master's here in Texas. One of my earliest Biology "heroes" and indeed one of the figures who got me interested in entering the field was Rupert Sheldrake. He of the infamous Morphic Resonance theories. Well, I reckon they are actually hypotheses. As none of them have been proven. Most are very controversial. If not incendiary and considered by some of the more staid of his colleagues to be downright heretical. But yet, they have always fascinated me. I still work on them. Trying to find evidence of them. Nature's Memory. It Learns and communicates with others of its species. And we are talking about flora here, not just animals. And the animals who DO communicate do so by means of a sort of telepathic field. they need not ever come into contact with each other. This is his Morphic Resonance. So I was wondering if we had any fans or even believers of his work here? I also welcome comments negative to his work and ideas. All comments are welcome. I am just curious to what sort of Sheldrakian Opinions we have here? For those not familiar with Dr. Sheldrake's work, here you will find a brief primer........... http://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction Thanks.

Your ideas here of what your god might be like, as well as what he might not be like answer Nothing. In fact, the sort of god you posit actually raises more questions that it answers. We do not need ANY concept of god in the sciences. He just does not apply. Inapplicable! A non sequitur. Like proposing a carburetor for being responsible for a gorgeous piece of classical music. We can explain with great accuracy what happened from -10^43rd of a second after the Big Bang. And since Time was created with the Big Bang, there is no need to speculate what came before. Religion and the need to create gods are simply an undesirable by-product of the evolved homo sapien mind. Just like our obsession with seeking patterns and causes. Even when there are none. Christianity of an offshoot of Bronze Age Hebrew Mythology. The Book of Genesis is a fable, and never meant to be taken as literal. Yahweh is one of the most loathsome characters in all of fiction. A murderous and tyrannical and capricious Bully God. As likely to have actually existed as Thor or Zeus. Hope this helps! Thanks.

It's a common misconception of laymen and many other folks---including, very significantly, Creationists!--that we home sapiens are descended from apes. From monkeys. It didn't happen this way and the Theory of Evolution explains how it did not very explicitly. We only shared a common ancestry with apes and chimpanzees and baboons. From which we "broke off" some six million years ago. There was no "missing link." Another misconception. There was no "ape to man" morphology. There was no "first man." Or, last ape. We are primates. We are of the species hominid. We are of the species homo. Of which there have been some 27 different subspecies. IN this regard, we are truly the Last Apes Standing! To put it very generally and in a non-science and mundane term. Probably the first subspecies of homo that one could say arguably resembled us today lived around 100,000 years ago. Just before we made our way out of Eastern/Central Africa and headed for Europe. Homo habilis...or "handy man." (He built and used tools!) Evolution is a theory, yes. But in science the word theory carries far far more weight than it does on common everyday vernacular. Like when you say "I have a theory why my boss is such a jerk: he's not getting any sex from his wife!" IN science, a Theory is a collection of facts. All of which became such by experiments and observations and by passing all challenges and tests thrown at them when they were simply ideas or hypotheses. A theory than can be said to be MORE than just a single fact. Evolution has passed every single test or challenge or debate ever thrown at it. With flying colors. (I think I just paraphrased Dawkins! LOL) There really is no other theory or even hypothesis that comes close. Not even a distant second, really. Of all the tens of thousands of fossils we have found over the decades--and yes we have those Transitional Fossils that the Creationists say we don't) not one of them has ever contradicted our understanding of how Evolution works. Rather, they have all confirmed it. Over and over. And we now have far more evidence than Darwin did 150 years ago when he wrote his landmark book, "On the Origin of Species." So don't worry about Evolution being thought of as weird or spurious, and don't expect it to be overturned. Odds of than happening are very very slim, on the order, I would say, of close to A Million to One. Like this! 1,000,000 to 1.