AzurePhoenix

based off of what?

Hypothetically... my only problem with a pre-human terrestrial intelligence is the total lack of artifacts... similar for the earlier human civilization angle... an alternate "shadow civilization" that developed alongside but progressed further quicker isn't bad... but it seems hard to believe such a society could stay so secret... I just don't buy retrograde time travel... and coming all this way for asteroids seems like a bit of a poor investment... Personally i think the most likely option would be a species advanced enough to invest the resources to come all the way over furtively just for curiosity's sake. ... or, pre-invasion scouts, if they aren't "astro-ecologically" stable and do need a suitable living world and/or it's resources. But i don't see them just needing asteroids...

When we look out 10 billion light years away at a galaxy, we're not looking at it as it is now, but as it looked ten billion years ago when it was still quite young, while it's gone on to mature and develop in the interim. Likewise, the Andromeda Galaxy which is just as old as any of those distant galaxies is only about 2.5 million lightyears away, so we see it nearly as old as it is with far less delay. Also keep in mind that any distant galaxy is actually much further away by now than it visibly appears because of the accelerating inflation of space in the universe. Off the top of my head I think the visible "edge" of the universe, which looks about 13+ billion lightyears away is actually something more like 40 some billion lightyears away. And of course that's only the universe within our horizon of sight.

Peh, that's a rather naive, theologically-driven assumption that completely ignores both reason and behavioral evolution. Why is doing whatever i want to whoever i'd like bad without god? Cuz if there's nothing to stop me, there's nothing to stop them. Everyone's exploiting everyone else, no one wins. It's in all of our own best interests to behave cooperatively and empathetically. Even vampire bats do it. They have to have a certain amount of blood everyday to survive, but sometimes they can't get it, so they'll get blood-loans from luckier bats. But they have to repay the loan; a bat that doesn't repay will quickly be identified as such, and the bats that know it will refuse to loan to it anymore. Bats with genetic "cheating" dispositions die, and their behaviors weeded from the gene pools. Similarly, male cleaner wrasse will punish females that nip the scales of their "client" species. Even though eating bits of flesh is more nutritious than simply cleaning off parasites, if the wrasse keep nipping their clients the clients, a reliable food source, won't come back.Concepts of "proper" interactive behaviors will always develop in social species. Bats, fish, wolves, us.

I would like to point out that i was aware of the origins and simply meant to have fun coming up with rational, non-contradictory interpretations of it. Fuddies.

Well as I said, "as practiced" meaning nowadays. Back in the day was certainly a whole different ballgame... sigh... but yep, that's where the rationalization attempt failed was with the monotheistic slant. You just can't reconcile the trinity with the monotheism. Even just for fun. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I don't see how the trinity intellectualizes anything? Still seems to me that "Trinity" itself is simply a direct translation of "Screw It!" when faced with accusations of polytheism, regardless of any emotional value each component deity might offer independently.

Yeh, I know i didn't put this in religion, but even though it's religious in nature it's more of just a thought exercise, as anyone who knows me will understand that I'm in no way seriously trying to recognize or legitimize anything metaphysical, so i thought it better suited to philosophy. Anyway, so I was just thinking of ways to get the Christian Trinity to make at least a tiny bit of sense, because I've been reading a TON of christian apologetics lately and kind've got frustrated with their smug explanations of the trinity that still never made the sense they claimed they did. What I've worked out is that if you accept "God" itself as simply being the abstractly emergent property of the synergetic cooperative efforts of the three independent entities (The Son, the Father and the Spirit) and their collective works, you get a fairly simple rationalization of the idea. It does however reduce fullblown "God" (whatever that means, abrahamically) to essentially an organization, like the Boy Scouts. Which actually seems to be fairly similar to the concept of the evermentioned "Godhead" I guess, just explained point for point more explicitly with the final necessary conclusion clearly spelled out rather than politely unacknowledged. But I still can't get monotheism out've this... Problem is, if you accept a deity as any entity or even an abstract concept worthy of worship or reverence and actively worshiped, the three component deities are still gods, and so now is the organization itself, leaving you with 4 gods total (ignoring other potential divinities in Christianity, like angels or saints or even demonic beings.) I suppose you could simply say that the three AREN'T worthy of worship and not worship them at all, but I was looking for a reconciliatory explanation of Christian ideas as they're practiced and I can't imagine most Christians accepting that particular stipulation of my version. Anyone have any other interesting or preferably amusing interpretations?

the overwhelming, life-smiting power of his odor should prove sufficient

The Song of Ice and Fire series by J.R.R. Martin. Maybe.

Ooh while you're at it you should give the Book of Mormon a shot. I've only gotten through a third so far, but it is an experience

The Ashes of Worlds by Kevin J. Anderson (sci-fi...ish), BloodFever by Karen Moning (Fantasy) and The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. And the next in the line up are We by Eugene Zamiatin, whatever other Dawkins catches my eye, and some Sherlock Holmes. I know my store carried it, but it sold out quick

Breast size really isn't related to any significant increase in milk production. The sexual selection hypothesis makes a fair bit more sense. I think it's better to look at what other primates have got vs what we don't. When a female chimp is in heat, her genitals get prominently bulbous. In humans this doesn't really happen (it would be a major impediment to walking erect.) Instead we've evolved more all-year signs of fertility in the plumpness of the butt and breasts, big breasts acting like a peacock's tail. - Edit A second point I think I should add; In gelada baboons, females spend most of their time squatting with their genitals obscured, so they've developed an alternative indicator of sexual receptivity, also on their chests as in humans, with patches of bare skin on their chests that resemble the genitals in shape and swell and redden just like their genitals. Their modification took a different course than ours' did, but the point is similar.

I don't suppose you'd accept the Bible zombification project as one?

Edmond... hypothetically (thereby speculatively, thereby not scientific and thereby well-placed in the pseudoscience/speculations section) isn't it more pyscho-developmentally feasible and assumptively parsimonious to speculate that socio-cultural expectations contribute to the development of someone's personality based on what others EXPECT them to be like based on their appearance? (assuming those same tohers would treat the person in question accordingly)

until the thing went off in that universe and popped um immediately after the realization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality ^ A thought experiment by Hans Maravec back in the eighties. Cuz no one's willing to try it. Pansies.

Indeed. The first I heard of it this morning was incessant radio-babble about how Obama was Putin's bitch.

You wanna destroy mankind even more than I do, dontchya?

For me, as a moral relativist, it would change nothing morally. Philosophically, as a pragmatically utilitarian rationalistic empiricist, it would change nothing for me either, except possibly to confirm or discredit speculative hypothesis about the frequency of life beyond earth. Scientifically though, it opens up all sorts of possibilities. We'd finally have an outside reference about an independent genetic form, whether convergent with our own or not, the conditions life can form, evolve and survive under, the paths and forms it can take, its chemistry etc etc etc and beyond.

I have to agree with A Trip on all counts. One point being that regardless of its capacity to suffer enough to satisfy the requirements of some people, unless some explicit purpose is being served such as for the sake of medical experimentation or the killing itself (I'm happily pro-carnivorism) etc, I have the personal conviction that living things deserve at least a modicum of decency, and shouldnt be left to rot their entire lives under such abhorrent conditions for the sake of value. And growing up in Arizona, I've had lots of exposure to free range beef cattle, living fairly decent lives as compared to dairy cows penned up and packed together in barren corrals under hot tin shades. I'd much rather be cow of the meat industry if i had to choose between the two. I don't think vegetarianism is the right way, particularly since buying meat from free-range sources increases competition against factory-farmers, which i would imagine is a more effective tactic than simple boycotting. Plus, I'm largely practical. We evolved omnivorous. Animals eat other animals and animals are eaten. That's nature. Nature = red in tooth and claw... and beak. It's extended cruelty I don't like.

Sigh... go to this link, it gives a general overview of how speciation occurs and species diverge from common ancestors and why those ancestors don't necessarily all become other things -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation. Basically it boils down to the fact that circumstances are different for different populations. Or if two of those populations are separate, even if the circumstances are exactly the same, they can evolve down completely different paths due to such things as random mutational variations (they won't just coincidentally get all the same mutations). Etc etc etc.

Look, basically some populations of our primate ancestors evolved into other forms of primates, such as into us, while some populations of those same "ancestral" species evolved into other forms of primates while some other populations of those same species stayed relatively unchanged over the aeons. Make sense?

well as pointed out every living thing is as "in transition" as every other; as for looking for what you seem to be looking for you're better off looking for a list of living fossils I would assume to satisfy a desire for examples of living species that sort've fit between other more and less derived species. Coelacanths or whatnot. But realistically a modern taxonomic/phylogenetic tree should be good enough, and just looking at it you can see how everything flows into everything else and branches out.

Of course I'm kidding and of course I'm cruel But clarification of context; "children haven't endured the chronic suffering that is life itself long enough to have earned the right to become blissfully addicted to narcotics recreationally"

padren, have you ever heard of little things like mockery or humor? I'd like to direct your attention upwards to just such an example. *I'd like to point out that it's someone else's turn to mock me in recognition of my mock-failure to recognize padren's mockery of ydoaPs's mocking, and so the thread may limp on*