Dekan

Granadina penetrates to the core. Words in English are too facile, and easily created, particularly when of an abstract nature, involving the suffix "-ness". We create a word. Then assume that this word must represent a real "thing", which actually exists in the real world. Sometimes it does - if we ask: What is an American? Everyone knows the answer. A US citizen. It's clear, and encapsulated by the word. Short, sweet, case closed. However, isn't it wrong to ask - what is "Americaness"? Because is any definite answer possible?

Psycho, I've quoted above an abbreviated version of your original excellent post - I hope that in doing so, I haven't misunderstood, and unintentionally distorted, what you meant to put across. The reason for using this short version, is to bring out a point that strikes me. Which is, your employment of expressions like "our brain", "your brain". These expressions seem to imply a certain concept - that the brain is "owned" by a seperate entity. An entity which uses the brain, but is something different and apart from it. Such a concept is of course entirely familiar to religious people - they call it the "soul". The soul makes its own decisions. In order to carry out these decisions, it makes use of the physical human brain - in somewhat the same way, that a computer-programmer makes use of a physical silicon chip. But the programmer is not the chip, any more than the soul is the brain. Sorry if I'm not being very clear! But I'm intrigued by what is at the back of your argument - are you suggesting that there is something outside the brain, which really makes the decisions?

Yes, I think you're quite right - the thought precedes the decision. For example - with regard to getting out of bed: First - there's a faint, tentative thought: "I've got to get up soon". Then - a bit later, there's a strong definite decision: "I'm going to get up now." This leads to the requisite physical action: getting out of bed. And this later decision, to take physical action, registers strongly on brain-scanning devices. Whereas the earlier tentative thought, is too weak to register. Could this be why brain-scanners are misleading researchers?

I wonder, why is gold dissolved by Aqua Regia. This is just a mix of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. And each of these acids, by itself, won't dissolve gold. Yet together, somehow, they can. This seems strange. Is the gold affected by the chlorine, in the hydrochloric acid? If so, shouldn't the hydrochloric acid work by itself - why is the nitric acid needed - it's got no chlorine in it.

Bloody women - aren't most of them just vacuous yadda-yadda-yadda. No wonder Newton stayed a life-long virgin. But you do find the occasional luminescent pearl.

self-deleted as too un-PC

Suppose we look at "engineering" done by other animals. Such as birds. Many bird species instinctively build nests. This nest-building must surely qualify as a kind of "engineering". So - is the nest usually engineered by the male bird - or by the female bird? I'd suspect that in most species, the nest comes from the male bird. If so, then doesn't that suggest that engineering is a male speciality. The female's speciality, is to utilise the male's engineering product, not to create it. Or to put it more succinctly - male psychology is creative, female psychology is utilitarian. Isn't that biologically sound?

Don't you think Modern Humans really are dominant and superior. Surely these facts must be persuasive: 1. We can kill all other animals on Earth, whenever we want. No animal can kill us, unless it catches us asleep. Or while we're being careless or stupid. Or politically correct. 2. We can kill all insects. Pesticide sprays and DDT are their final solution. The peril of DDT to humans was grossly exaggerated. 3. We can kill all Earth vegetable organisms, and all bacteria. Any bacterium which develops resistance to current antibiotics, will soon get smacked down by our lab guys. 4. We can make the whole Earth unhabitable, if we choose. Suppose we built 1,000 very large H-Bombs. Each with a yield of 100 Megatons. (That's easily achievable -the Russians tested one in the 1960's with their "Tsar-Bomba" - even though they downgraded it to 50MT for fear of breaking windows in Moscow). If all the bombs were jacketed in cobalt, they would produce a huge cloud of deadly radioactive fallout, that would enshroud the entire planet. And kill off all life. Except maybe the cockroaches. But they could be despatched by giant 100 MT DDT bombs, detonated by automatic control a few years later. The point is - all this could be done by only by humans. No animal like a ruddy chimpanzee or dolphin could do it. So I can't understand why some people insist on trying to downgrade Humans, and make out we're no different from animals. Talk about false modesty... We Humans really are different! We control the destiny of a planet! And perhaps in due course, the destiny of the Universe! So why try to belittle us?

Could the neurological basis be, that our brain receives a better supply of blood, when we're lying down. Because the blood doesn't have to get pumped "uphill", as it does when we're standing upright. This increased blood supply, must improve the brain's performance. And this might generate new thoughts, and open the the mind to insightful ideas, which might not occur in everyday vertical mode. Didn't a poet once write something like: "And oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood....." He had an insight into the ideational benefits of the couch. Freud may have cottoned on to this. Of course, there could be a cruder explanation for the couch in psychoanalysis. It's to impress the patient. Suppose the patient was just sitting in a chair, when interviewed by the shrink. That would be very ordinary. Whereas - if the shrink makes the patient lie down on a big leather couch, doesn't that make the patient think something special is happening - which justifies the shrink's huge fee?

But Greatest, surely the examples you cite, Sodom and the Flood, don't show God enforcing His laws. They show Him punishing people for disobeying His Law. And that is the crucial difference. Obviously God could force us to obey Him. But of what value would such obedience be, if forced upon us? We would be nothing but robots, forced to obey God's programming. No - God wants us to behave righteously, and obey His laws, of our own free will. He wants us to choose to do the right thing, because it is right. Not because He's forced us to do it. He has offered us plenty of guidance on what is the right thing. Guidance is provided by the Bible - and especially, by lucid advice straight from the lips of His personal representative on Earth, Jesus Christ. How much more can we ask for? But at the end of the day, it's up to us to choose. If despite all the good advice, we still choose to behave badly - of our own free will - then it seems to me, that God's acting entirely within His rights to punish us.

There might be seasonal variations in natural sleep duration. After all, the natural reason for sleep must be, to stop us moving about at night. During the night, we can't see things properly in the dark. This might lead to harm - we might collide with unseen things, or get attacked and eaten by night-time predators. These bad events are forestalled by sleep, which makes us keep still at night. And night lasts longer in winter, than in summer. So possibly, humans are adapted to sleep longer in winter. I wonder, have you considered this as an additional factor in your sleep equation?

No sarcasm intended! How can you possibly say evolution is "non-directional"? Surely evolution always goes in the direction of increasing complexity. You won't deny that on Earth, life started with simple, single-celled organisms. And these gradually evolved into more complex, multi-cellular organisms. These organisms showed the trend of evolution - which is towards increased complexity. This complexity has reached its peak, for the present, in the the human brain. Which is absolutely the best brain in the world. I think you've been unduly influenced by political correctness, which asserts that nothing is better than anything else.

But surely humans are above other animals. Animals are stupid things, which just run around obeying their biologically programmed instincts. These instincts cause animals to feed, fight and copulate. But not to invent culture and civilisation. Our wonderful cultures and civilisations are strictly human creations. We've been able to create them, because we are superior beings - we have intelligent minds, which the lower animals don't have. Therefore, we should not be too modest. Don't say we're "just animals" - we aren't!

Viewing the stars, on a clear night, through 7 X 50 binoculars. My eyes seem to plunge further than the mundane world. And a voice whispers: "You are seeing the work of the Lord God!"

Isn't it as absurd, as if Newton's "Principia", were published with Aristotle's "Physics" - bound together in the same book. And the book was supposed to be an authoritative guide to science.

Aren't Arab suicide bombers, technically, biological weapons - their brains are infected with a deadly disease, ie Islam. This makes them think, that by blowing themselves up, they will spread the disease, and infect others. Is it likely, that this will work?

Surely, this is the whole point of the Christian religion. Yes - God does have responsibility for what he created. He created human beings. And we human beings, always fall into sin. Sinning is in our nature. We can't help doing it. So by ourselves, unaided, we cannot attain salvation. God recognised this, and provided the aid we need - in the person of His son, Jesus Christ. Christ took on the burden of human sin. He assumed responsibility for our sins. And paid the price, by suffering in agony, nailed to the cross. What an amazing act of moral responsibility! God, the majestic King of the Universe, submitting to such humiliation, at the hands of us sinners. In order to save us. If that's not stepping up to His responsibilities, I don't know what is.

Many thanks for the link, Ringer. Dehaene's book looks fascinating. Inexpensive copies seem to be available, I'm getting one. Isn't it amazing what a huge expanse of ideas, modern Science has spread out to encompass? A new idea is becoming hard to find - someone's already written a blasted book about it!

You're right - human brains probably use only a fraction of their potential. For example, every normal person has the potential, to learn to read and write. This ability is built into our brains. Modern people use this innate ability, to become literate. Yet the prehistoric people who lived 10,000 years ago, were illiterate. They didn't read or write. Was this because their brains lacked something? No - their brains were as good as modern brains. The prehistoric people just didn't use the "literacy" potential of their brains. They didn't know how to. The potential was there - it just wasn't used. Couldn't it be the same with telepathy?

If the purpose of Hell is to deter people from committing sins, then it obviously serves a good purpose. Just as jails deter people from committing crimes. The snag is, Hell might be better than Heaven, for some people. People such as masochists, who enjoy having pain inflicted on them. They'd be eternally experiencing pain in the traditional Hell. So they'd find it a place of eternal enjoyment. And therefore, from their point of view, a "good" place to be in. This would of course, detract from the deterrent and "punishment" function of Hell. If you're actually enjoying the Hell experience, you're not really being punished. To get round this, perhaps God sends the souls of masochists, not to Hell - but to Heaven. There, they will experience eternal freedom from pain. This pain-deprivation will make them eternally miserable. So the traditional dichotomy - all the saved souls go to Heaven, all the damned souls go to Hell, may be too simplistic. God is more subtle in His punitive policy. He sends each damned soul to whichever place they'd least enjoy being in.

You seem to be right. Otherwise, how could Maths be done by computers? Computers only do addition and subtraction - and subtraction is just negative addition. So computers are really just adding-up machines. Yet these adding-up machines can solve complex problems in Maths. Doesn't that prove that Maths, ultimately, must boil down to nothing more than adding-up?

That raises the question - could a telepathic person bear to go on living? The question was addressed in John Christopher's haunting SF short story "The New Wine". Biologists discover that humans have a natural telepathic ability. But this ability normally gets "suppressed" at birth. The biologists find a way to prevent this suppression, so that all children grow up as telepaths. The result? The human race quickly becomes extinct. A last survivor, explains the reason: "The telepathy killed them... because people have got bad minds. I guess you all know what you're like, if you look at yourself deep down and honest. Liars, cheats, murderers. We're all like that - always have been. What comes out of our mouths, has been through a filter. But there were no filters for the telepaths. It hit them and kept on hitting all the time. The better anyone was, the quicker it killed him." So probably, it's a good thing we're not telepathic.

That's an interesting suggestion, about residual fish DNA. Nature films show fish swimming around in shoals. Each shoal moves as a co-ordinated entity. With all the hundreds of individual fish within the shoal, rapidly veering and darting, this way and that. All together in perfect unison. With split-second timing. Perhaps it's a kind of bio-magnetic telepathy. And if this ancient "telepathic" talent, is still residing somewhere deep within our human brains, it might explain one phenonomen: "Synchronised Swimming" as an event in the Olympic Games. Maybe the Synchronised Swimming teams are attempting, subconsciously, to fulfill a deep human urge - the urge to obey the programming of the ancient fish DNA. Might that not account for why people seem to find it fascinating to watch?

As we now know, the latest data from the LHC's ATLAS and CMS dectectors, excludes a Higg's mass of between 145 and 466 GEV. Higgs might be in the lower range 115 - 145 GEV. But this range seems difficult to work in. So a final verdict may be delayed. Suppose the verdict is - there's no trace of Higgs. Would that mean the end of the Higgs concept. Or just that the LHC is inadequate to detect such a radical particle. A particle which endows mass, might possess radical properties. Possibly, higher Dimensional properties. Eg, a (non-time related) 4th Dimensional extension. Would such a 4-D extension be visible to the LHC? The LHC is, after all, an apparatus built in only 3 Dimensions. So perhaps the 3-D "eye" of the LHC, can't detect the Higgs - just as the 2-D eye of a "Flatlander", couldn't detect a 3-D object such as an atom?

Suppose the USA had taken that view, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941. And President Roosevelt had gone on the radio, and said: "Despite the attack, we must love the Japanese Imperial Government. They may be our enemies, they may hate us, but we love them. So we're going to be good to them. And our goodness will begin, by our peacefully welcoming a Japanese Occupation Army into Washington State, Oregon, and California. Once these West coast states have been occupied, we shall do further good - we shall open our East coast states to occupation by Nazi Germany. Because we love our enemies. " Would you think that a wise policy to pursue?