FreeThinker

Barcelona play the best football right now. I tend to follow players not teams. Ronaldino is simply briliant , perhaps one of the greatest players ever. So yeah, GO BARCA!

Milken,

Imagine a group of animals living in an environment where large horns are favored by natural selection. If the conditions change so smaller horns give an advantage to that animal, smaller horns will be favored by natural selection. So we have gone from animals with large horns to animals with small horns. Would you consider this 'devolution" or 'progression"?

Miken, how can you try and refute something you do not understand?

Darwin developed a hypothesis to explain the complexity of life on earth. His hypothesis was/is supported by a mountain of evidence. Do you think Newton was wrong about gravity or that Galileo was wrong about the earth orbiting the sun? Evolution is supported with just as much evidence as the two mentioned ‘theories’.

Evolution has nothing to do with how life originated.

Try and understand the fundamental principle behind the theory before you try and disprove it!

When I set my mind to something, I do it. I like the fact that I have stayed committed to keeping fit for the last four years. I do not drink, smoke or take drugs. I run my own I.T business and still study at university full time. I have a beautiful girlfriend, who is also studying science with me. Nice thread!

I think everyone should have a look at this.

 

http://www.psrast.org/defknthe.htm

 

Just to point out that our current knowledge of the workings of genetics' date=' evolution and biology in general is nowhere near complete or definite yet.

 

what do ya think?[/quote']

 

Do me a favor: Open your arms really wide and imagine that span represents the age of the earth. Your finger nails are the amount of time Homo sapiens have been present on this planet. The slight bit of dirt at the end of your the nails is the age of science. What gives you, or anyone else, the right to expect the ultimate understanding in such a short period of time?

I believe we need a "big bang" between the two sides so one can discredit the other so badly one will become widley accepted publicly. Teaching both in school is a start and maybe an end. Evolution being so superior should completely refute and become widely accepted. Currently, C and ID are hidden from laymen view.

You can not teach ID in a science classroom. Why? Because it is not science.

What exactly could I do with a microschope? Prolly just look at them hey.

You could always get a Biology book and observe where each part of the cell, in unicellular organism, is located.

I can see how believing in god, or gods, would be naturally selected. It provides comfort and, for most people, a sense of purpose. Placebo effect can play an important role in cure of diseases, and religion can be classified as a form of Placebo.

The problem with evolution is that its products DO appear designed. The pencil, most likely, started of as a rock that could be used to make imprints. Rocks that were better at making imprints were “selected” by humans until the rock evolved into the pencil (it could have been something else other than a rock, but that not the point). Natural selection works the same and it is easy to mix up design and evolution, especially for those who are not prepared to look at the evidence properly.

I get the impression that some of you look at selection in the wrong way. Natural selection does not mean to increase the frequency of alleles that are somehow advantageous. It means the extinction of genetic constitutions that are unfavorable. I hope you see the difference. Natural selection is always negative' date=' the only exception are mutations that directly affect the rate of reproduction.

 

Remeber the Hardy-Weinber equillibrium. Evolution doesnt occur on the level of genes (of course mutations are the reason of evolution). It doesnt even occur on the level of organisms. Evolution occurs on the level of populations. That is what most people forget when they try to reconsider an evolutionary pathway.

 

there are no mutations that have a general benefit. Genes wont increase in their frequency without selectional pressure. A population that evolves must shrink in order to adapt. in this case the extinction of the species is more likely than an adaptation that results in a new one. that means that for the survival of a population, genetic diversity in the genepool is essential for the capability to adapt. therefore there is no temporal correlation between a random mutation and the adaptation of a species. Its the combination of all genes in interaction with the environment that gives the fitness.

 

Genes do not evolve, genotypes do not evolve either. Only genepools evolve.

I just want you to bear this in mind.[/quote']

 

I disagree. Since a mutation will occur in an individual, more specifically a particular gene, the group remains invisible to natural selection. If we have a population of see gulls and one of the members is born with a better beak to catch a fish, natural selection will act upon the very gene that gave it this ability. The rest of the species will not play a part in the selection process. Even long after see gulls, natural selection will use that same gene in a future species as a point of selection.

and I suppose it isnt so far fatched to say that any fox that looked friendlier was chosen by the breeder subconceously. I think it isn’t so far fetched to say that any fox that looked friendlier/nicer/tamer was chosen by the breeder subconsciously over the foxes with more of a ‘wild’ appearance.

Any fox that was slightly darker than the rest of the cubs was chosen for breeding. When that fox had offspring, same method of selection was applied to the young. Twenty years down the track of human selection... you have your black and white fox!

 

Would the early hunter benefit from the better eyesight or hearing' date=' however intelligent he is? Would people leaving near the edge of glacier benefit from a dense fur, however good are their clothes-making skills? Would early humans living in dangerous and challenging environment benefit from speed and muscular power? So why all these abilities evolved the other way round?

.[/quote']

 

If the brain allready offered these advantages in a different way, where would natural selection apply the pressure? If you have someone who has dense fur, and someone that can make fire, natural selection would favour the "making fire" human. The human with more fur wuld have more weight to carry and therefor would not get away.

61 years and counting....

Yeh, not even one lifetime....

Yeah that "extreme pressure" has worked so well in the case of North Korea and Iran, hasn't it? We'll just TELL them not to re-establish their nuclear arms, and everything will work out great, right?

 

You can't even say that the reason current peaceful efforts has failed is because they're able to say that other people have them so they should as well. That's because it's not really conceivable that a larger amount of peaceful effort can be tried in either case. There's no sanction that North Korea, for example, could undergo that it hasn't already. And Iran has oil.

 

Furthermore, small countries could attempt to justify the re-deployment of nuclear weapons because they face conventional threats from much larger countries. Since the threat of nuclear retaliation would no longer exist in your hypothetical world at that point, who could say that they were wrong?

 

This is the kind of flaw in your reasoning that renders the rest of your argument moot, and is why most people don't fall into that trap in the first place.

I am not a politician to give you an exact plan to monitor nuclear development. These are the things that should be discussed between all the world powers. If our only hope is " lets nuke them back", what hope do we have? Even if we do keep the nuclear arsenal in the world, are you saying that we can not find another solution but " the ability to retaliation"? Obviously that is having no affect on Iran or North Korea.

You can have your children live in a world with nuclear bombs, I do not wish that upon my children.

I'd say it a bit differently: Given that we cannot disinvent the capacity to build nuclear weapons' date=' what manner of deployment of the weapons reduces the risk of catastrophe?

 

As I'll discuss in response to the rest of your post, I do not believe the zero deployment scenario promotes safety, even if it were possible. [/quote']

 

What does having nuclear weapons solve? It is only the path to more destruction. As we have seen lately, it does not scare other countries from developing nukes. Only thing nuclear weapons provide is the ability to end a lot of life’s! Even if Iran did launch a nuclear bomb and hit an American city, retaliations with a nuclear weapon will cause a bigger problem: more death. We have other weapons that are capable of destroying an entire country, and if a country was to launch a nuclear attack the whole world would unite, in fear, and that country would be demolished in no time at all.

 

If your analogy is right than we might as well arm everyone with man made viruses that could potentially kill all human life, after all we have the technology to do it.

 

Forming an anti nuclear pact at least sends the message across: no more nuclear bombs.

 

Agreed that you have less risk if the developer only develops a single weapon. This assumption is premised on the notion that there can be an effective inspection and monitoring regime that would prevent breakout.

 

Everything is an assumption. The question is: are you an optimist or a pessimist?

 

To avoid a breakout, you would need to have an inspection regime which (i) every nuclear power on the world agrees to and (ii) would provide something close to a 100% assurance that other nations are staying nuclear free. Again, it is extremely unlikely that the U.S., Israel, France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan, et al., will give up this power. However, assume you do and using current governmental systems, you put your inspection regime in place.

 

How are you going to assure India that Pakistan is complying? How do you monitor a country with the geography and political system of China?

 

There are a lot of technical questions here that none of us know the immediate answers: With a stockpile of secreted enriched fuels, how long would it take a country such as the United States or China to renuclearize?

 

But the question isn't merely how long it would take to build bombs. The question is how long it would take to build bombs and position them on delivery platforms that could dominate the globe. In this analysis, the United States and sometime in this century, China, would dominate.

 

Suppose we have all disarmed and you have succeeded in destroying not just weapons but also stockpiles of weapons grade materials. Suppose, even that you have somehow agreed and enforced the elimination of delivery systems (submarines with missile platforms, MIRVs, etc).

 

We now live in a completely nuclear free world without weapons, materials or delivery platforms.

 

However, tensions remain. Incident occurs and distrust will ensue. You reference a historical time scale, so apply that to these issues and at some point things are going to go to hell. For example, the inspection program, rightly or wrongly, might lose its credibility. China might insist that Tawain give up all pretense of sovereignty. You could have an outright race; in fact, on a historical time scale, that much is a certainty.

 

However, let's assume that doesn't happen. China merely waits 30-60 years until it is strong enough and the United States is weak enough that both countries have a high degree of condifence that China could develop these systems before the United States could ever mount a serious response.

 

Even if China did not simply announce that it was rescinding the treaty, the global politics would drastically change with the knowledge by the United States that we could not prevent the Chinese from developing these systems and medevializing the United States. Of course, the United States would never let it go so far. At some point, we would have to renounce the agreement and act before some other Country got too far ahead.

 

Again, it is the process of renuclearization which I most fear. Now everyone knows that using nukes is the end of civilization. That might not be the case during a process of rapid renuclearization.

 

This is me thinking for about 15 minutes on a Sunday morning. Can you imagine what the think tanks around the world could make of these complexities? What is the impact of a technology of SDI? What about viruses and hacking and the way such a war would be fought in 30 years? There are a lot of unknowns but any way you slice it, complete disarmanent seems a dangerous fantasy.

 

But the “nuclearization” race is going on now, with good motive. All countries that feel less equipped than the super powers ( Iran, North Korea…) are in their own race to build nuclear weapons. If we ever hope to build a better world we must minimize the threat nuclear weapons cause. There are around 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world , reducing that number to zero will make the world a safer place.

 

I do think that it will be difficult to monitor possible ‘denuclearization’ attempts, but far from impossible. Firstly, it is being done today without nuclear power. Whenever any country tries to develop a nuclear weapons we see intervention by, at least, one super power. If the world was disarmed, this could become law. Of course it would be more difficult to monitor China, but we have to remain optimistic.

 

If , hypothetically speaking, China tried to rearm, the rest of the world would be in danger. Therefore the Chinese would come under extreme pressure from the rest of the world and their efforts could be stopped in time. At least the world would stand a chance to stop the Chinese from rearming.

 

If any nation decided to launch nuclear weapons, any way you look at it, we are doomed. Our only hope is to destroy them all, and develop a strategy to prevent ‘renuclearization’.

 

 

 

 

I cannot envision the structure you are proposing which preserves the sovereignty of nations and which can cover a country the size the the former USSR, the United States or China.

 

People could not envision the internet, yet it is a reality today!

 

 

I do not condemn any country on moral grounds for wanting to arm itself.

 

So what are the superpowers doing when they spend majority of their budget on the military?

 

 

What does it mean to say we will "work to disarm?" If this means reducing weapons to the point that we only have 3X overkill instead of whatever it is now (60X), sure but what good does that do other than save money? However, the real questions is whether we will retain the ability to turn any country that attacks us into rubble fit only for cockroaches. (Another legitimate question is whether we should advance counterforce - the ability to target nukes - technologies.)

 

Yes, 3x is better than 60x, at least it is progress in the right direction. Counter attacking with nuclear bombs doesn’t not solve the problem.

 

 

A huge assumption. As long as Israel has nukes, and probably so long as Israel exists and possibly as long as the United Sates exists, Iran will want nukes.

 

If we disarm Israel and United states, all the other nations, the whole world would unite to crush anyone being suspected of nuclear weapons development. Plus, it would give a stornger ground to debate against any country that would try and arm itself with nuclear weapons.

 

 

I see it as far riskier as it creates the possibility of break out with severe risks as countries race to rearm. Mutually assured destruction kept the peace for 60 years. I'm afraid it is the best that we have and we have no choice but to try to reduce risk by keeping any other country, especially those who are unstable and hostile to the United States, from acquiring nukes.

We have one home, earth. We have a weapon that can destroy everything on this planet. If we keep the current number of nuclear weapons, we are always at risk of nuclear war. In addition, it gives the countries that do not have nuclear weapons ambition to acquire them. Nuclear weapons give individuals the power to destroy the world as we know it. Accidents with nuclear weapons cause additions threats to life as we know it. If any nation tried to renuclearizes the worst we could expect would be a one way strike, without retaliation. If everyone possessed nuclear weapons, everyone would retaliate. We have to be optimistic and try to reach a world free of nuclear weapons; our children will thank us for it. How long do you think we can posses nuclear weapons, without an incident occurring?

The fundamental question here is: do super powers with nuclear weapons make the world a safer place? I think not.

Lets take a hypothetical scenario. Iran develops a nuclear weapon and strikes a European City. In retaliation, that country strikes back. We all know the chain reaction that would result from this scenario. However, if only one country managed to develop a nuclear weapon and it was launched, the whole world could launch a counter attack ( non nuclear) on that nation. Two wrongs do not make a right, and retaliating with nuclear weapons will cause a worst problem than the one it was trying to solve.

But I think if there was a world pact for destruction of all nuclear weapons, it would be very difficult for any nation to develop the weapons. Of course the pact would come with regular inspections of countries and all the necessary steps to stop any development of nuclear bombs. We have seen in the past that super powers can use nuclear weapons for a lot less than nuclear retaliation.

No empire in the history of earth has managed to stay united. The Romans, Ottomans and more recently USSR broke apart. If we have any superpower in possession of nuclear weapons the whole world depends on the stability of that nation. A civil war in America could turn the entire world into chaos.

To stop ‘former super powered from re-arming’ itself with nuclear weapons the pact could allow, for example, full inspections by a group of scientists selected from a number of countries. This is just one example of course, the law could be enforced a number of ways.

The reason Iran is lying about their nuclear program is because they have to! How else would they develop nuclear bombs? When you have Israel armed to its teeth, how else would you protect you children but arm yourself? If Israel is disarmed, we would have a stronger case for disarming any of the Arab countries.

I believe the best we can do at present is work to disarm all nations of nuclear weapons. If such talks were in progress, it would be easier to stop countries like Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. All nations in the world look after their own children. While these countries are militarily less equipped compared to the superpowers, they are played like pawns. Look at Pakistan and India, no one bothers them because they posses nuclear weapons. Today it seems like Nuclear weapons guarantee that you will not be invaded by a *superpower*. There is two ways we can get an even playing field :1) disarm everyone or 2) arm everyone. No nation in the world will sit back and watch America control the world, and why should they?

I really dont understand where the argument is coming from.

Iran is run by religious fanatics? So is America!

Why should one coountry have all the rights to rule over others? What gives America the right to tell other nations that they are not allowed to develope nuclear bombs? If there was a agreement between ALL nations to destroy their nuclear arsenal than yes, I agree. As longs as one country has them, everyone else has the right to develpe their own.

Is the router wireless as well?

Yes, The Jews must defend themselves against the might of the Arab army.

People , there is more than one view to every situation.

Countrys like Iran are controlled by religious fanatical mullahs whose mindset is far different than the USA' date=' China, and Russia to name a few.

[/quote']

 

And you know this how? Western media?

 

Iran has also called for the destruction of Israel at any costs. I don't know where you come from because your profile is non-existent but I would think you would realize something like this without being told.

 

Bettina

 

But surely the right thing to do would be to disarm Israel of its nuclear weapons. It is no secret that the Jews dont like Arabs. If people who did not like me had nuclear weapons, I would want their destruction too.

 

 

FreeThinking

 

PS. I am from Australia

There is people who live in Iran and love it. How do you persuade them? What makes you 'better' than you Iranian counterpart?

Why?

America is the only country that has used a nuclear weapon. As far as I am concerned, we are all on an equal playing field. What makes the 'nuclear powers' more superior to the developing nations? If its ok for one, its ok for all.

hmmm..... All this talk about nuclear bombs. What about leading by example? Shouldn't America, China and Russia talks about destroying their nukes before telling other to do so?

There should be Rj-45 Jacks in the back of the router. Buy two network cables and plus each computer into the router. Once you have done this, you have to put both computers on the same subnet ( if the router is configured for DHCP , it should be done for you automaticly). Now on the computer where the files are create a folder and share it. Now place all the files you want into that folder. Go to your other computer and click " My network places". In the "computers near me" you should see the computer where the files are at. Bingo! Just copy/paste the files across.

FreeThinking

PS. I am assuming that both PCs have Windows XP and that the router has RJ-45 jacks!

Surely things like bad vision, slow response and bad hearing are genetically inherited. Since most bad drivers die in their youth, it would stop them from reproducing. Majority of deaths in the world are caused by car accidents. If we compare it to natural selection: we have the predator, the fight for food, the fight for mates. A gene that gives the animals and advantage in any of these fields will survive. Surely, in the present society, driving plays a role in human deaths. Good drivers will not die as much as bad drivers.

Even though it is true that bad drivers take a lot of innocent bystanders with them, it is still a fact that bad drivers are involved in accidents more than other drivers/people.

Richard Dawkins is truly an amazing human being. Sometimes people can mistake his passion for arrogance, but I wholeheartedly disagree.

Root of all evil resembles an adventure through fairyland; Magic water that cures people, Flying Goddesses, Communication with supernatural beings etc. In fact, if I did not read the title of the film, I would have called it Richard Dawkins in Wonderland.

In all honestly the program presented no strong argument against religion (the sort we are used to with Dawkins). There were no deep analogies as we saw in the Blind Watchmaker. There was no need for that. The religious representatives interviewed by Dawkins did not know the basics of Evolution. Pastor Ted, a close advocate to George Bush and the leader of the leader of Evangelicals, argued that ‘eye’s and ears appeared by accident’. One can not help getting irrigated by their sheer ignorance.

However, Dawkins remains remarkably calm. He is often accused of ignorance, and that was hardly at all seen in the program. All Dawkins asks for is a minute of rationality in the midst of all the fantasy. Science teaches us to ask questions, religion forbids it. If Dawkins is ever accused of arrogance it is only his passion in disguise. When You have someone like Pastor Ted talking about “accidental eyes” trying to argue with Dawkins, who knows the theory of evolution in-side-out, I can not help get irritated. Now who do we have teach our children: someone like Pastor Ted or Richard Dawkings?

Before you go criticizing Dawkings, take a second and think about his argument. We have animals that are conscious about the world around them. In the past the best they could do is make up stories about how the world works and how it came to be. The stories were about an even greater being who crated the world. The animals also decided that death was not the end, but that there was life after death. All was perfect, animals were happy. Through time, they discover that through analysis and experiments, the world revealed its secrets. These secrets enabled these animals to create inventions and manipulate certain aspect of the world. The “stories” did not agree with the findings, but the animals found reassurance in their stories. The world has many unrevealed secretes, but the animals decide to stick with the stories because they offer reassurance. Should we continue to live with the stories , or follow the path of scientific truth? Do we remain ignorant or march forward?

FreeThinker