MonDie

Well, one route is to provide alternatives, but I would have to know what guns are used for to know what could be an alternative. /edited out the dumb stuff/

That article is from 2001. Considering the the wide variety of approaches that could be taken, I wonder why nobody has developed a way to do this yet. Maybe it's not considered important. Maybe there aren't enough people who want it (lesbians are a minority). Maybe social conservative ideals are inhibiting such research.

If this is a semi-real situation, perhaps you could scare the coyotes off with an amplified blow torch. "Ezra Klein: Israel and Switzerland are often mentioned as countries that prove that high rates of gun ownership don’t necessarily lead to high rates of gun crime." "Janet Rosenbaum: First of all, because they don’t have high levels of gun ownership. The gun ownership in Israel and Switzerland has decreased." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/mythbusting-israel-and-switzerland-are-not-gun-toting-utopias/ Apparently, there have been some recent mass-stabbings in China. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-14/world/35813173_1_knife-attack-primary-school-middle-school It's interesting that this knife attacker didn't cause serious injury to anyone. My explanation is that it's less emotionally stressful for someone to kill with a gun rather than a knife, but that's just one hypothesis. We could try to lessen the demand for guns. After all, the only reason a black market gun trade would result from a gun ban is because the gun ban doesn't get rid of the demand for guns.

The difference: They're put in jail if they're caught buying or possessing an illegal weapon. Does anybody have information regarding whether the guns tend to be bought for the crime, or tend to be in the person's possession already? If they're bought specifically for the crime, there are two regulations that could counter this. 1) Create a delay in gun acquisition. The potential murderer might cool off before the gun is available (see quote 1). 2) Make sure they have a legitimate reason for purchasing the gun (see quote 2). Quote 1: Quote 2: The next question is whether such regulations would be strict enough to drive the market underground. Like any other market, the black market is run by profits. If there isn't a lot of profit in illegally selling guns, it will be difficult to get guns on the black market.

The Ds come before the Hs. Buddh-a, Buddh-ist, Bodh-i, etc. Maybe this was aimed at my post. Believing in god isn't as broken as beliving in god and embryo souls and divine penis proscriptions. That's all I was implying. Ahh, this topic again. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/65651-people-who-believe-in-god-are-broken/page-53

Not all Catholics are bad. I don't know anything about St. Teresa of Avila. However, I'm starkly opposed to many views linked with modern Catholicism. Even Catholics who don't embracing suffering often condemn homosexuals homosexuality (teen suicide) or demand rights for tiny embryos (poverty). That might not be the same as Mother Teresa's view. Mother Teresa thought the people in her care were brought closer to God when they suffered, thus she took few measures to relieve their suffering. I haven't finished the book by Colette, but the summary says she was exposed to diseases while she was in the order. This correpsonds with Sanal Edamaruku's claim that MT's homes for the dying were very unclean, exposing the inhabitants to infectious diseases. You can read Sanal Edamaruku's take on Mother T for more criticism. Regarding the youtube videos. When I said "I cannot," I did not mean "I do not," I meant "I cannot."

Response to Immortal's Last Post I currently cannot view youtube videos. If you could show me something else with similar content, I might understand your post. Anyway, my guess is that they set aside the problem of consciousness because they didn't know how to solve it yet. I edited something into my previous post after you posted, so I'm moving it here. Your views on religious faith are probably what led you to think Mother Teresa was a hero. Although MT probably had good intentions, she was not a hero. With the people in her care, she was primarily concerned with ensuring their entrance into heaven. She had little concern for their longevity, health, or well-being. She just wanted them to go to heaven. Mother Teresa actively discouraged the nuns from seeking medical training. Her justification was that God empowers the weak and ignorant. I actually have a book written by a former nun named Colette Livermore. She writes about how she planned to be a doctor, but she joined Mother Teresa's order instead. Because of this organization headed by MT, Colette delayed medical training for over a decade, until she was 30. If Mother Teresa weren't so fanatical, her organization could have done a lot for those poverty stricken people in India. Thus it puzzles me that people of India revere Mother Teresa. Based on your recent posts, I'm assuming you are not a Catholic. So why were you talking about Mother Teresa like she was a hero? Catholics think suffering is beneficial in some way, which explains Mother Teresa's behavior. Does your religion also view suffering as a good thing?

After reading a little more, I'm realizing how little is actually known about "Siddhartha." There's a good chance that I was attributing atheism to him on the basis of a quote that was innaccurate. We basically can't be certain about any of the quotes attributed to him. I'm not sure what you were trying to say here. Your conclusions about people and their positions led you to beleive in God? No, that wouldn't make any sense. Hmm...

I have problems with capitalism too. What's your point? If believing in a god is associated with a desirable state, then it is the desirable state that is of primary importance, not the belief in a god.

A person's belief formation process will influence what beliefs they hold. I'm not sure if it works the other way around. In other words, people believe in gods because of certain irrational modes of thought, but believing in a god doesn't necessarily make someone think more irrationally than they otherwise would have.

I didn't read the entire article because it is long, but it doesn't seem to say Buddha wasn't an atheist. It says he wasn't a materialist, but I wasn't saying he was a materialist. I tried to find the specific quote in which he says there are no gods, but I could not find it. However, after a little looking, it looks like Siddhartha said some seemingly contradictory things about this issue. Anyway, I'm not a Buddhist. When I was a small child, I breifly learned about Buddhism and called myself a Buddhist. That's all. The books I read might have had a different leaning because they were on Zen Buddhism.

I didn't mean ad hoc. I wanted "after the fact," i.e. post hoc. It's weird that my edit time-span is already up.

I had an interesting thought about the ethics of not aborting genetically diseased offspring. The argument is entirely philosophical. I am a young, childless male, so don't know the instincts of a mother. In my view, abortion isn't harmful to the fetus if the fetus is not capable of wanting anything. This is because death is only harmful to the degree that it prevents one from obtaining things they want. However, things become more complex when you consider time. Taking away something somebody wants is bad even if the victim will be born in the future. For example, if I destroy the environment, my victims are the members of future generations. This puts a strange twist on abortion (for fetuses that aren't yet capable of wanting). If the fetus continues to develop, it will probably be glad that it wasn't aborted. If it's aborted, it can never be sad about itself being aborted. It's kind of an odd paradox. The paradox is that, in retrospect, abortion would have been bad only if it wasn't chosen. In this context, the concept is useless, i.e. it's useless to say the morality of an action is determined ad hoc. However, the concept is relevant to another issue. Is it wrong to give birth to a genetically diseased offspring? According to my view, abortion should only be obligatory if the offspring will suffer so greatly that it will wish for its own death. However, most genetically diseased offspring will not suffer to that extent. If they continue to develop, they will still say they are glad they weren't aborted. Thus, the mother still did a good thing, in retrospect, by not getting an abortion. Furthermore, although it is not good for a pregnant woman to drink while she is pregnant, we can still comend that woman for creating life.

I don't know if it's something Siddhartha actually said, but the irony is that Siddhartha was an atheist.

None of which he claimed it was. He said it was hearsay, as in: "It's only hearsay. Mark said it to me after he heard it from Sarah, who heard it from Joline." How would we go about investigating this supposed occurrence? As far as I know, we have no method for measuring supernatural activity, let alone supernatural activity that occurred in the past. Humans having super powers ≠ Humans were made in the image of God I'm assuming "such powers" are abilities that aren't explained by modern science. However, it would be more reasonable to think physics will explain any such "powers." We have no reason to think a god exists, let alone a reason to think God gives us powers. But that's assuming we even do have "such powers." I would bet MT couldn't pull off a miracle 2% of the time she was asked for one. She kicked a hole in the door and peered through it. "They've barricaded us inside! MT, I need you to shatter the room like you've never shattered before!" w00T! 200th post! What do I get?

Not quite. It would be right to dismiss your notion of god. Every hypothesis should be judged on its own merits, alternative explanations should be activiely sought, and any unnecessary metaphysical rubbish should be removed from the concept. Science 101.

When I was thinking about sexuality as an adaptation, I wondered whether excessive tendencies toward heterosexuality could be maladaptive, especially for species that put a great amount of nurturance into their offspring. If a female mammal is producing too many offspring, she'll probably invest less into each offspring. At what point does this become maladaptive? If it becomes maladaptive, she might stop caring for some of the offspring, but that doesn't undo the initial investment during pregnancy. Anyway, the two main explanations for genetic male homosexuality seem to be: the kin-selection explanation—homosexual men help care for related offspring the sexually antagonistic selection explanation—their female relatives tend to be unusually prolific This nurturance distribution idea would fill a gap. The combination of these three ideas would suggest an economical system that sustains genes that may make either sex androphilic.

I wanted to respond to this portion. In his presentation, Batson emphasized that these scales of religiosity might not measure what they were designed to measure. What you were saying is totally relevant in this regard. Batson suggests that fanatics would score very high on the intrinsic religiosity scale, so the scale might actually be measuring religious fanaticism (or something along those lines). Batson also mentions that, at the time of the research suggesting that intrinsics (who were low in extrinsic religiosity -explained later) were less prejudiced, there were preachers preaching about how it's wrong to be bigoted against certain groups. Thus people who were involved in the religious community would know what an unprejudiced person would say. Batson thinks this is why the "intrinsics" scored lower on these blunt measures of prejudice. This makes one wonder. If those intrinsics were conditioned to display an unprejudiced attitude, were they also conditioned to display devotion to their religions (just as you had suggested)? IMO, it's not implied that they don't actually believe. Perhaps it's merely the case that their religious beliefs are conditioned socially. Anyway, when you consider the studies conducted by Gervais and Norenzayan, which show that intrinsic religiosity is lessened by analytical thought, an interesting picture begins to form. Above, I said "intrinsics (who were low in extrinsic religiosity)" were found to be less prejudiced in the initial surveys. I said that because I noticed a previously overlooked point. Batson points out that, in the initial studies, the extrinsic and intrinsic scales were scored negatively, they were scored as if they were opposite ends of a spectrum. The problem, as Batson puts it, is that the intrinsic and extrinsic scales don't correlate at all, they aren't opposite ends. So, in those initial studies, the "intrinsics" were actually people who scored high in intrinsic religiosity and low in extrinsic religiosity. Although the point isn't made very clearly, Batson seems to say that, when this methodological flaw is corrected, the intrinsic scale hadn't correlated with prejudice at all. Note that this paragraph I just typed was about the initial studies, which used very blunt tools to measure prejudice. I'm linking to his presentation again since so much of this post came from that presentation. http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/science-and-religious-conflict-conference-does-religion-lead-to-tolerance-or-intolerance/dan-batson-with-commentator-steve-clarke

A general fear with gene therapy is that the patient will develop cancer, but, here, gene therapy is being used to treat cancer.

I thought "vacuous crap" was a reference to religion. I've been thinking about the "zombie" concept. Why would a zombie understand that the vivid mind cannot be tested for? If the zombie truly doesn't experience vivid mental phenomena, it has no reason to think there is something about the mind that makes it untestable. It seems like the zombie would only think otherwise if there were some sort of trick inside the brain. Unless someone shows me how that trick works, I'm going to go with the more reasonable explanation, which is that they aren't actually zombies. Does this mean the mind can be tested for? Well, at least for the people who can understand what the we're talking about?

But we have tested for the mind in one sense. We understood the mind before we understood the brain, and we used the hypothesis that the mind and brain are coordinated to map out the brain. Sure, when we want to look at any psychological phenomena in depth, we start talking in biological terms. However, to use the general replacement of traditional psychological explanations with modern biological explanations to argue that mind-brain coordination has never been tested for would be a bit ad-hoc. But there is another problem. Those scientists of the past might have been zombies. A zombie is only aware of "the mind." But it seems like we're talking about the existence of the vivid mind, the vividness that each of us think we experience.

An inactive spot would be a place where the gene doesn't get translated very often. I don't know exactly what might make it not get translated. Perhaps there is a repressor protein blocking its translation. The gene would be moved to an inactive spot through a translocation mutation. Alas, I've only read the unit on genetics in my "essential biology" textbook, and therein are the boundaries of my understanding. I didn't think the OP was talking about epigenetic changes in particular when they asked whether a mutation can be reversed.

Sometimes mutations involve genes being duplicated, so there are more copies of the original gene within the DNA. Warning: Speculations Ahead I imagine that the effects of such "copy number" mutations would be reversed easily. If a mutation in the new copy renders its products useless, if the new copy is "translocated" to an inactive spot, or if the new copy is totally removed, the result is probably going to be a reversion to the old phenotype, albeit with an altered DNA sequence.

Most Christians explain away the evils of the world by saying that God gave us free will. But, according to Berkley, if I impale you a child with a burning rod, I am only imapling/burning the child mediately; it is God who is impaling/burning the child immediately. To put a Berkeleyian twist on an old meme, "Why's God punching you? Why's God punching you? Why's God punching you?"

Hmm, is help ever required? That's an interesting ethical question. How do you answer it? This equation only determines how it would be best to preserve your parents' variations, but you only have half of each parent's variations, unless they share some variations. Note that I am defining "variation" in the context of the entire population. But they are no more likely to share variations than you and your wife are. You would probably be right if the parents were very similar genetically, because that would result in highly similar offspring. Also, if a DNA test isn't available, they could choose among siblings on the basis of sex. Similarly sexed siblings will share at least one of their chromosomes, assuming they have the same father. The daughters got daddy's X, and the sons got daddy's Y. On the other hand, a sibling that doesn't have the same father will only have 1/4 of your DNA.