iNow

I know you're the moderator of this board, but I couldn't possibly disagree with you more on this point. Unsupported opinions have no place in either science threads or politics threads. Your worldview on this illuminates clearly why we keep having this conflict. This isn't about free and fair expression. It's about making a well-supported argument that is based on something more than just, "Nuh uh... I disagree." Nobody is being censored. Nobody is being muzzled. Everyone is free to express their opinion, in much the same way that I'm free to attack it as ridiculous nonsense while further strengthening my own points with citations, references, and precedents. Either way, we're still off topic. Your on-topic criticisms have been addressed, and I'm still waiting for you to reciprocate with something more than a response about me, my motivations, or how important it is to see the Politics board as a world of unsupported opinion.

Would you be willing to make a post now about the actual topic of discussion instead of about me?

Thanks for the kind words, SH3RLOCK, but just as a reminder, this isn't about "the extent to which a politician or bureaucrat can express religious beliefs," but whether there is any secular purpose, which does not violate the establishment clause in the First Amendment of our constitution, for putting quotes from the Christian bible on to top level DoD briefings to the POTUS regarding active wartime engagements.

Well, not all were Christian, but many were. In fact, most were deists, and strongly opposed to theistic dogma. Regardless, the founders took great pains to separate religion from government, so I wonder if you could clarify what point precisely you're trying to make. For further context, here's some useful information: Dispatches from the Culture Wars: The Definition of Theistic Rationalism This is an excellent description of the views of the leading founders - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin. In a new paper, Frazer argues that Gouverneur Morris, one of the most unjustly ignored of the founding fathers, also fits that description. The problem here is that most people have attempted to fit the founders into one of two categories, Christian or deist. But as Frazer notes, deism in that day and age was much more hostile toward Christianity than these men were: (Page 1 of 30) - Gouverneur Morris, Theistic Rationalist authored by Frazer, Gregg. Thus we could have Thomas Jefferson reject the notion that Jesus was anything but a mere human being while simultaneously embracing the ethical system of Jesus as the most perfect and sublime ever invented. And thus many of these men could talk of the many corruptions and lies in orthodox Christianity while simultaneously praising other aspects of that religion and believing that it was generally a good thing because it made people more moral. The Christian Nation Myth The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible. These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in Age of Reason, a book that so outraged his contemporaries that he died rejected and despised by the nation that had once revered him as "the father of the American Revolution." To this day, many mistakenly consider him an atheist, even though he was an out spoken defender of the Deistic view of God. Other important founding fathers who espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe. Fundamentalist Christians are currently working overtime to convince the American public that the founding fathers intended to establish this country on "biblical principles," but history simply does not support their view. The men mentioned above and others who were instrumental in the founding of our nation were in no sense Bible-believing Christians. Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was fiercely anti-cleric. ...and here... The Founding Fathers' Religious Wisdom In recent years, we have been told by a variety of conservatives that America’s founding fathers established the country under Christian doctrine—that we are a “Christian nation” and should operate accordingly. This notion—that our country’s roots are explicitly Christian—is both foolish and wrong, for it devalues the Christian faith and disrespects the genius of the founding fathers. <...> The genius of the founding fathers is they understood that Christianity could not only stand on its own but would thrive without being written into the laws and founding documents of the country. In fact, it was likely their own “faith” that led them to this conclusion. Many of the founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and Monroe—practiced a faith called Deism. Deism is a philosophical belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems. Deists believe in a supreme being who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws—and after creation, is absent from the world. This belief in reason over dogma helped guide the founders toward a system of government that respected faiths like Christianity, while purposely isolating both from encroaching on one another so as not to dilute the overall purpose and objectives of either. If the founders were dogmatic about anything, it was the belief that a person’s faith should not be intruded upon by government and that religious doctrine should not be written into governance. This site below, while much more forceful and not as objective about the approach, makes the case quite plainly. Since you've used quotes in your OP to assist in supporting your position, you will likely appreciate this particular site for giving a vastly different perspective on the topic, but while still using quotes. This site below shares numerous quotes from these thinkers which leave no doubt as to their religious leanings. The author ends his article (which I strongly advice you review for yourself) with the comment: Religion and the Founding Fathers With just these examples, you have the facts necessary to rebut any fundamentalist who proclaim this to be a Christian nation "just as the founding fathers desired". Even wiki has a link: Religion and the Founding Fathers of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Well, try to remember that monotheism is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Before about 2 or 3 thousand years ago, practically all human belief systems were polytheistic. Since humans have been around for at least 100 thousand years (and possibly as many as 300 thousand years), the current acceptance of mono versus poly theism seems to be more a factor of good marketing and strong principles of indoctrination at early ages than it is any representation of "betterness" of the belief system itself. That's an interesting question, and would probably warrant its own thread. Try to remember that communication itself is very common across the animal kingdom, and it happens in different ways. You have that first frog who croaked, that first squid who changed colors, or that first fish with an electric current, or that first something with a different odor/smell... These are all communication types, and when viewed in this larger context, it's more easy to see why and how language has become so complex and dense today among humans... a hugely social species. It's cool work, for sure, but obviously somewhat OT here. Thanks for your kindness. I appreciate that, and also am heartened to know that somebody besides just me finds this subject fascinating. Enjoy. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Interesting article I just read in TIME. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1179313,00.html What's the first thing you do if the ground beneath you starts to rumble and the walls begin to shake? Grab the kids and run? Check your home-insurance policy? Fall on your knees and pray for deliverance? All logical enough reactions, but not your very first one. Instead, even when faced with imminent disaster, you'll spend precious time asking, "What was that?" It's called the cognitive imperative, the uniquely human, hardwired instinct to link cause with effect that gave us a vital evolutionary advantage over other animal species. After all, the noise could be just a passing truck and nothing to lose precious sleep over. Delineating how we react to an earthquake is just one example of the cognitive imperative described in Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, British scientist Lewis Wolpert's enquiry into the evolutionary origins of belief. If the theme sounds familiar, that's because the search for scientific roots of religious faith is a hot, and heatedly debated, issue of the day. In his 2004 book The God Gene, U.S. molecular biologist Dean Hamer claimed to have located one of the genes he said was responsible for spirituality. Last month, the American philosopher and evolutionary theorist Daniel Dennett provoked more controversy with Breaking the Spell, in which he cast religion in terms of memes — cultural ideas that can spread, mutate and survive in our minds, whether or not they are good for us. <...> As a developmental biologist at London's University College, and one of Britain's loudest champions of the public understanding of science, Wolpert covers genes, memes, pain and various other angles in his book. But rather than just arm wrestling with God's faithful, his book attempts to survey the science underpinning all intuitive beliefs, including religion, that humans stubbornly cling to, in spite of the best efforts of rational enquiry to displace them: credence in the paranormal, magic and superstition; faith in alternative-health therapies; the conviction that sooner or later we're bound to win a lottery jackpot. Our belief engine, Wolpert concludes, works on wholly unscientific principles: "It prefers quick decisions, it is bad with numbers, loves representativeness and sees patterns where there is only randomness. It is too often influenced by authority and it has a liking for mysticism." It is no coincidence that the stubbornest of our "irrational" beliefs correspond to our fears of the unknown, the unknowable and the unstoppable — of disease, death and natural disaster. <...> More likely to start an argument is the author's novel proposition that the imperative to link cause and effect derived directly from our earliest hominid ancestors' discovery of tools as many as 2 million years ago. The ability to fashion a flint spear, he speculates, promoted a kind of causal thinking that was beyond other species: take a certain type of stone, hit it in just such a way, and it will leave a cutting edge. The later development of another tool, language, enabled early humans to explain the technology, and in the evolutionary twinkling of an eye we found ourselves genetically wired to seek a cause for every effect we see.

Hi Seraph, Considering your question above, I'm not too sure why your thread was moved to P&S. It seems a perfectly valid scientific question, or, at least a question directly pertaining to an active research domain. Either way, despite your question not fitting into P&S, I'll try to provide another way of answering (while simultaneously ignoring most of the off-topic stuff above). Another approach might be to explore some of the articles about this topic to which I've linked below, and simply find out at which university the researchers reside. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=abiogenesis&num=100&hl=en&lr=&as_subj=bio+chm&scoring=r&as_ylo=2004 Another potentially fruitful set of search results might be these (although, I personally find those claiming to have evidence of supernatural influence to be a bit less based on reality): http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&num=100&q=abiogenesis+research+site%3A.edu&btnG=Search Enjoy.

Thanks for the quick turn around everyone. It's appreciated.

What I think is troubling me most, Pangloss, is that you're not so much rebutting my argument, but instead simply calling it bunk and moving on. The few citations you've actually shared have been addressed, and I feel that I have now provided enough context to show why those citations are not relevant nor supportive of your position. Basically, those on the "this is unconstitutional" side are sharing precedent and references, explaining why and how those references and precedents are relevant, whereas the other side of the issue is simply going, "Nuh Uh. It's all opinion, so you're wrong." That's not an argument... not a valid or useful one, anyway. That's what I find so frustrating, since the precedent we've been sharing and the arguments we've been making speak very strongly in favor of this being about much more than mere opinion, or simply free expression, but instead a very clear breach of our nations laws, constitution, and establishment clause. As I said, this has proven to be a big source of frustration for me. With every post, spending all of this time exploring our history, finding references from experts on the topic, researching the writings of our courts and founding fathers, explaining SCOTUS precedent and how it applies here to this case with top level Department of Defense briefings to the president of the United States regarding active wartime engagements being plastered with quotes from the Christian bible... and in response? "That is a matter of opinion." No, it's not. It's about laws and constitutionality... or, more specifically, the disregard for our laws, and actions which are unconstitutional for the reasons shown above. Perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree, but I feel confident that my position is the better supported one, and more reflective of reality.

One doesn't need genes or digital information to reproduce. You're trolling again, scrappy, and I'm sure it's not helpful to this new member who was curious to get a real answer to a question they find interesting.

I'm going to try to steer this back to the tone set by the well thought-out post The Bear's Key put forth in the OP. http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=3191 Reading violent scriptures increases aggressive behavior, especially among believers, a new study finds. The study by University of Michigan social psychologist Brad Bushman and colleagues helps to illuminate one of the ways that violence and behavior are linked. "To justify their actions, violent people often claim that God has sanctioned their behavior," said Bushman, faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research and lead author of the article published in the March 2007 issue of Psychological Science. "Christian extremists, Jewish reactionaries and Islamic fundamentalists all can cite scriptures that seem to encourage or at least support aggression against unbelievers." Bushman, who is also a U-M professor of psychology and communications studies, and colleagues at Brigham Young University and at Vrije University in the Netherlands, found the same relationship in two separate experiments detailed in the article. The first study involved Brigham Young University students, 99 percent of whom believed in God and in the Bible. The second study involved Amsterdam students, 50 percent of whom believed in God and 27 percent of whom believed in the Bible. <...> The researchers found that both the religious and secular students were more aggressive, delivering louder blasts of noise to their ostensible partners, when told that the passage they read came from the Bible. Aggressive responses also increased when participants read that God directly sanctioned violence. The increased level of aggression was greater among believers than among secularists, however. <...> The work also supports the view that exposure to violent scriptures may induce extremists to engage in aggressive actions. "It's important to note that we obtained evidence supporting this hypothesis in samples of university students who were, in our estimation, not typical of the terrorists who blow up civilians," Bushman wrote. "Even among our participants who were not religiously devout, exposure to God-sanctioned violence increased subsequent aggression. That the effect was found in such a sample may attest to the insidious power of exposure to literary scriptural violence." http://www.psychologicalscience.org/members/goToSynergy.cfm?issn=0956-7976&date=2007&article=01873 Violent people often claim that God sanctions their actions. In two studies, participants read a violent passage said to come from either the Bible or an ancient scroll. For half the participants, the passage said that God sanctioned the violence. Next, participants competed with an ostensible partner on a task in which the winner could blast the loser with loud noise through headphones (the aggression measure). Study 1 involved Brigham Young University students; 99% believed in God and in the Bible. Study 2 involved Vrije Universiteit–Amsterdam students; 50% believed in God, and 27% believed in the Bible. In Study 1, aggression increased when the passage was from the Bible or mentioned God. In Study 2, aggression increased when the passage mentioned God, especially among participants who believed in God and in the Bible. These results suggest that scriptural violence sanctioned by God can increase aggression, especially in believers.

Scrappy - Your post is a classic representation of the logical fallacy known as a strawman. As was explained to you repeatedly in your other discussions on this topic, nobody supports this idea of "poof." You are simply disparaging their positions and completely misrepresenting it, instead of arguing against their actual claims and evidences. One key issue here is that you try to mandate digital information appearing, while ignoring this not being a requirement to describe the process. It is your own goalpost and has nothing to do with the definitions or terms used in the scientific community. It's as if you're challenging evolution for not properly explaining gravity and nuclear fusion, and it's mistaken of you to continue to do so. On another note, I want to caution you against trolling, as this thread has a very clear question which was well articulated in the OP. Any further posts of the nature above will be off topic and I suggest should be addressed sternly and directly by the staff.

So, President Obama has found a way to quickly close Guantanamo Bay. Yeah, he's just going to turn it into a Pontiac dealership. (Jay Leno)

Yeah, it wasn't too bad. It does, however, speak a bit to the issue raised in the OP. As per the squeamish comment, let's just say that I've been practicing my marketing skills. Here's another video that's not brutal, but somewhat sad: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8040057.stm 'Prayer camps' chain mentally ill

Returning us all a bit closer to the actual thread topic... Here's a proposal for a test which speaks to the OP and thread title very plainly: ZkED8cWRu4Q Any bets on whether or not they'll find such a gene to support their case?

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seraph - The summary answer is that abiogenesis is accepted by nearly every scientist who isn't blinded by their religious views. Once religion gets involved, however, the acceptance of abiogenesis seems to decrease accordingly. One option to learn about what research is going on is to use the search feature on this site. Search for posts by member "Lucaspa" and the word "abiogenesis." Ensure that you return the results as "posts" instead of "threads," and you will see many references to current research on this topic. Lucaspa is a staff member here who is very well trained in biology, and he has posted rather extensively on this topic. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/search.php

If light did experience time dilation, then (since it's traveling AT the speed of light) it would experience infinite dilation, and time would basically stop relative to everything else. However, it doesn't help to think about it in this way, as it doesn't make sense. The reason it does not make sense is because something needs to have a valid rest frame in order to view/measure experience from that objects frame of reference. Since light is never at rest (it always, by definition, travels at the speed of light), it does not have a valid frame of reference, and therefore does not experience the time and length dilation/contraction we use when describing the experience of actual (valid) reference frames. Again, light has no rest frame, and therefore it is meaningless to try applying the concepts of time dilation, time contraction, length dilation, and length contraction. IINM...

These two threads have been moved to some forum where regular members (such as me) can no longer view or contribute. Can these please be reinstated soon? Thanks for any feedback or additional information. Politics: Top secret DoD documents containing Bible verses released Psychiatry and Psychology: How Religion Hijacks Neurocortical Mechanisms, and Why So Many Believe in a Deity * With the second thread above, another member here has already PM'd me trying to figure out what was going on, and why he could no longer find/view the thread. He'd expressed interest, and had a desire to explore the research shared, but since there was so much of it, hadn't had time to do so previously. Then finally, today, he had time to dive deeper into the links and supporting information, but the thread was gone and he now no longer has access to the abundance of data and research which was pulled together there. Any help in resolving this quickly would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance for acting on this request and moving these threads back to their original forums.

In all honesty, considering how things in my country have been proceeding lately, with the huge power and influence religion seems to be taking in our government, I really wasn't so sure, myself. I won't go so far as to say I was surprised by the courts ruling, but I can rightly say that I was incredibly relieved when reading about their decision.

The confusing part to me is not at all related to their reproduction, but the granting of inalienable rights and what that would actually mean.

Neither am I, however, I'm seeing zero non-waffling hand-waving support for the position that these comments from the Christian bible on the DoD briefings about an active wartime engagement aren't unconstitutional. Let’s put this into a slightly different form for context… This just in! High level presidential briefings regarding an active war engagement, briefings prepared by the Department of Defense, have quotes intended to sway executive decisions taken from the Quran. Below represent the cover pages given our president by the Secretary of Defense, with the US DoD seal affixed beside: 5:51: “O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians as friends, they are but friends to one another. And if any amongst you takes them as friends, then surely he is one of them. Verily, Allâh guides not those people who are the wrong doers.” 9:123: “O you who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are close to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allâh is with those who are the pious.” 9:14: "Fight them and Allah will punish them by your hands, lay them low, and cover them with shame. He will help you over them." "The Messenger said: 'Anybody who equips a warrior going to fight in the Way of Allah is like one who actually fights. And anybody who looks after his family in his absence is also like one who actually fights." "Believers, when you encounter the infidels on the march, do not turn your backs to them in flight. If anyone on that day turns his back to them, except it be for tactical reasons...he shall incur the wrath of God and Hell shall be his home..." (Surah 8:12-) This isn’t about personal belief or expression. The problem here is with this being on DoD briefings to the President of the United States about an active wartime engagement, and noting that the only people defending it are those who happen to share similar beliefs. line[/hr] Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802 Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Okay... Let me take a whack at your attempt at a rebuttal. Below quotes are from the aforementioned post #58: Your point fails because you are no longer representing the actual situation under discussion here in this thread. As has been pointed out previously, the issue at play here is not the mere "expression of religious views," it is INSTEAD the intertwining of said views with official government documents, and the plastering of quotes from the Christian bible on military briefings from the Department of Defense to the POTUS regarding an active wartime engagement. You equivocating that with merely "expressing their religious views" is both disingenuous and greatly lacks integrity. This is not an issue of mere expression, and relates entirely on where and how that expression was made. Please try to keep your arguments focused on the issue at hand and perhaps we can avoid some of these unnecessary misalignments we keep experiencing with one another. I say AGAIN: Nobody here is arguing that our leaders and officials in government cannot have their own beliefs, or that they cannot use the word god. While I do personally think it would benefit all of us greatly if they avoided so doing, that is not a valid description of the argument taking place here. This is SPECIFICALLY about the insertion of quotes from the Christian bible onto military briefings to the POTUS prepared by the Department of Defense regarding an active wartime engagement. I implore you! At least try to represent this matter based in reality, Pangloss. Your comments continue to imply that this matter is based on something much more trivial, as if the president exclaimed "God, I hate the Yankees" and we are roasting him for something so silly and unimportant. That’s not the case. This is a serious matter, and part of the challenge is that you continue to misrepresent it. Please… At least try to represent the matter based in reality. This is not a difficult request, and is precisely why you've seen the word "strawman" in this thread appear so many times. No, actually, I answered him with a point about how any mixture of religion and government in our official documents or official actions is treated by our constitution. This is a critical difference, in that this is not merely about personal "expression," but where and how that expression has taken place… which has been pointed out repeatedly to you and others already. I think perhaps that the funniest part of this quote is that your own argument implicitly defeats the position you are using it to try to defend. By citing the Lemon Test, you have defeated your own assertion. The Lemon Test would actually have prevented these quotes from the Christian bible from being allowed on the DoD briefings regarding an active wartime engagement since there is no relevant secular purpose for having them there. Now, when I challenged you to give one secular reason for allowing quotes from the Christian bible on to DoD briefings to the POTUS regarding an active wartime engagement, you responded that these quotes were there for "the morale of the troops." Excuse me? The "morale of the troops?" Since when are troops given visibility to presidential briefings from the DoD? That's certainly news to me? Your response is a completely bullshit answer since the audience for these documents was NOT the troops, but the president and other top rank military officials… Not to mention that the documents themselves were being used in an official governing capacity. Your position is simply indefensible. Point #3 in the Lemon Test regarding "entanglement" cited by you above is clearly infringed, and there is simply NO secular reason for having quotes from the Christian bible on these DoD briefings to the POTUS regarding active wartime engagements. So, I say again, your position is simply indefensible. And yet again, you focus solely on the word "endorsement," at the expense of the clear and precise context which has been brought to that language from the SCOTUS rulings and reading of texts from the authors of those words. It has been abundantly established that the meaning of “endorse” or “establish” has been consistently interpreted to extend beyond just those narrow few acts. As noted above, the Everson case is noteworthy for its extensive discussion of the purposes of the Establishment Clause, and for the fact that all nine justices agreed that the clause was intended to do far more than merely prohibit the endorsement of religion or the establishment of a state religion. In sum, I didn't find your post #58 to be a very useful argument regarding the topic under discussion. I found it entirely lacking and wholly off-point as per the reasons summarized above.

I'm rather struggling to understand your comment. You are presenting it in such a way that it implies Obama can EITHER use his intelligence to write a well articulated speech OR use his intelligence to better our country, our policies, and our people... as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive. They're not, so what's the deal? Amazingly, he can do more than one thing at a time... Like walking and chewing gum. Please tell me this isn't just some regurgitation of comments you heard from his political enemies in the US, and expand on why you suggest that he is using speeches to fool people instead of to connect with them to find support among the populace for all of his other activities and initiatives. As for the OP... I'm trying to refrain from judgment until something actually happens with this. I want to see what he actually does, not argue about our speculations regarding what that may or may not be.

The courts found Kara's mother (diabetic daughter, prayer instead of medicine, disturbing 911 call when it was already too late, despite attempts by family to get action taken sooner...) ... guilty of killing her daughter. http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/45850182.html A jury Friday found a central Wisconsin mother guilty of killing her 11-year-old daughter by praying for her to heal instead of rushing her to a doctor. A Marathon County jury deliberated about four hours before convicting Leilani Neumann, 41, of rural Weston of second-degree reckless homicide. <...> Neumann's daughter Madeline died of untreated diabetes March 23, 2008, surrounded by people praying for her. When she suddenly stopped breathing, her parents' business and Bible study partners finally called 911. Prosecutors contend a reasonable parent would have known something was gravely wrong with Madeline, and her mother recklessly killed her by ignoring obvious symptoms of how gravely ill she was. During closing arguments, Marathon County District Attorney Jill Falstad described Neumann as a religious zealot who let her daughter, known by the nickname Kara, die as a test of faith. <...> Leilani Neumann's stepfather, Brian Gordon of San Diego, said he was disappointed by the verdict and the jury was mistaken. He said his stepdaughter did nothing wrong in trusting in God to heal her daughter. "We should have that right in this country," he said. There will be a vigorous appeal and an investigation of possible prosecutorial misconduct, the stepfather said. "I don't care how far we have to carry this. There will be vindication and exoneration." Gordon also said he was angered by Falstad's description of his family as religious extremists. "We definitely are not terrorists," he said. "We are Bible-believing, God-believing, Holy Ghost-filled people who want to do right and be right." I don't think he knows what a "religious extremist" is.

Quite right. The way I've always thought about it is that the "viscosity" of the inner ear fluid changes, therefore it oscillates differently with movement, and hence causes the cilia against which it pushes to fire differently... which all results in the signal reaching the brain to seem scrambled and more chaotic. Since it's such a finely tuned system to begin with, even that slight change in viscosity causes the normal feedback systems to get all "wonky." That's the technical term...

The questions seems to be, "What do you mean by treat as human?" Does that mean we "perceive" them as human? Does that mean we give them jobs and try to prevent them from dating our daughters? Does that mean they vote and get to hold seats of power? Does that mean they can declare their superiority over all other lifeforms and pollute the shit out of our planet since god told them it was okay? My inclination is that you are referring specifically to rights... such as those inalienable ones with which we're all endowed. TBH, I have a hard time wrapping my head around what that would even mean when applied to a non-reproducing, non-organic machine.