jp255

Your initial post contains a few factual errors, and some support for some of the claims you make would have been useful. The involvement of the mitochondria in the process of aging is a concern. Decline of function, accumalation of mutation and increased Reactive oxygen species (which damage DNA, proteins and lipids) are examples of reported changes as individuals age. There are a number of papers on this topic. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22399429 by Lee HC and Wei YH (2012). I couldn't find a free article in my quick search. The point is clear though. I disagree with your comment you make "the problem lies elsewhere". It seems to me that there are various problems which all contribute to aging, as opposed to one culprit as your wording suggests. This paragraph about cancer is incorrect and is contraditory. You state that young peoples' DNA isn't any less damaged then say the damage is probably alot less due to protection from surrounding cells. The paragraph itself doesn't read well, think more on the subject before posting and read up on the subject. I'm just going to give you a very simple explanation, you can read up on it yourself in more detail. Individuals accumulate mutations over time, some mutations contribute to the development of cancer and others don't, so the risk of cancer rises with age. An individual has trillions of cells which can all accumulate mutations, there is a risk that any one of these cells can become cancer. Whilst there are a very large amount of accumulated mutations in total amongst all of the cells, each cell will have a far lower number. Only one germline cell will go on to form the offspring, and any mutations it has will be present in all cells, so the offspring inherits only a small number of mutations from the parent. Dumbed down explanation but I think you didn't consider that somatic mutations are not heritable across generations, that all acquired damage is not passed on. Telomere shortening is not the only way to induce cellular senesence. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15734683 by Campisi (2005). DNA damage can lead to senesence also. It might be that those therapies can get past the potential problem as senesence can still be induced appropriately after accumulation of too much damage, I'm not sure how redundant the functions are.

The picture is correct, though the number of chromosomes is a little misleading. Clearer to draw the full amount of chromosomes from the start. As for male vs female. Maternal age is a significant risk factor of birth defects/aneuploidy. The underlying cause has been investigated and weakened cohesion looks to be a significant contributor. Papers below provide decent evidence to support weakened cohesion being a contributing cause of aneuploidy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939204/ - chiang et al. 2011 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22823533 - Duncan et al. 2012

This theory is a little out there. You are drawing crude similarities between an atom and our solar system and using then proceeding to describe the solar system as an atom. If the sun is a nucleus, what is the neutron and proton of the sun? What element would the sun be in the larger universe? The electron shell structure certainly seems off, that's for sure! You wrote: First, I believe that advanced life shouldnt exist in a healthy universe. In order to keep advanced life in check, the universe turns to its antibodies - in the form of asteroids. Have any evidence for this? Not totally sure why this thread is in Biology forum.

Life is a chemical system, is able to reproduce and is capable of evolution. In what way? Do you want to expand your post for the purpose of discussion and use non-fancy writing?

Do you have any links for further reading please? I'd imagine it would be an interesting read. It's still not entirely clear to me what you are intending to discuss and what the point of your previous posts in this thread were, but I will raise some points to hopefully improve your knowledge of some concepts. no. Genetic drift is the change in allele frequency in a population by chance deviation from the expected inheritance pattern, so it cannot result in a unique combination of genes as genetic drift operates on alleles already present in the population. There are however other random (some are not random) mechanisms which can result in unique combinations of alleles/genes, such as crossing over and independent assortment in meiosis for example. no, reproductive age does not impact the outcome of genetic drift at all. Though it can increase the speed at which genetic drift can act as time between generations is smaller. When you say greater genetic drift, I assume you mean greater deviation from the expected frequency. The main factor which can affect this is population size (smaller population size will on average be observed to deviate more significantly than the expected than a larger population). This is a little too simplistic, as there are important factors not considered. E.g. if during this environmental change a lot of the population die off then diversity might fall rather than increase as you claim.

your "data is not on your side" comment relies on extension of the conclusions of those studies to complex planned behavior, which I don't agree with. Even when considering simple behavior such as the finger movements, reference 23 shows that the readiness potential, which other studies have assumed to be the preparation of movement (and therefore the intiation of the decision to move), is present regardless of movement or no movement. This raises doubts and so in my opinion, it isn't clear what the cause of movement/behaviors is.

Can you provide a citation for this please? I don't think that any of the studies on that wiki page explain much, if anything, about what determines the outcome when an individual is presented with a choice.

This is an interesting topic. Will it be possible for someone to have two biological fathers or mothers? I think the answer is yes in the future, but we need more knowledge and the experimental techniques are not there yet. To the TC, the biological father and mother both donate approx 50% of their genetic material to offspring. What you are asking will not result in two same sex biological mothers which both donate approx 50% because you want one of the mother's only to have their sex chromosome replace the sperm donor's sex chromosome. Why not replace all of the sperm's DNA with the mothers'? The biggest techincal problem with same sex biological parents is, I believe, the issue of correcting genomic imprinting. Imprinting patterns are erased and reset in a specific manner, which differs between each sex. Having two sets of gentic material both imprinted as "male" will most likely result in miscarriage (guessing). Two males should be easier than two women as monday said nuclear transfer is easier to do in an egg. I don't have a citation (not even searched, no time to now), but I believe there have been experiments that have done this in animals, I can't remember what the outcome was for same imprinting pattern animals but it wasn't good. That and ethics are the only things preventing it, otherwise two biological fathers should be possible (if imprinting wasn't a problem, we could probs do it these days).

I think you don't really need a theist's response to come to a conclusion. You believe in absolute morality so the following should make sense? a god that created this universe by choice, had the power to intervene in the events that occur in the universe but chose to let the children die is viewed by the absolute moral believer to be immoral. a god that created the universe by choice and did not have the power to intervene in any events is viewed to be immoral? (as it is still the cause of the shooting) a god that didn't have the choice to create the universe, but had the power to intervene in events and did so to the best of it's ability is viewed as moral. etc. You don't need a theist's response, and I don't think you will get adequate answers which will allow you to be able to have your questions answered (I didn't in a similar kind of thread). So I think it is best that you just leave it at the above, and if a god has the same description as one of the above then you label it as moral or immoral depending on the action of the god. I don't really know what absolute morality is, so the above might be wrong, but still you can make your own descriptions to categorise gods. I agree that the concept of free will has been called into question by neuroscience. Though I think the research has been misinterpreted by those who use it to claim that free will doesn't exist. I also disagree when you say the "data is not on your side" to JBrownsays, data to support either side is weak and isn't plentiful. The matter of illusion of free will vs free will is far from resolved.

I find this a little confused and I am not entirely sure what you mean by this. The simplest way to consider this is by the proportion of genes which are shared. This is not entirely correct because some keywords are missing. Your parents are a and b. You and your sibling are 1/2a and 1/2b, however you and your sibling share an average of 50% of your genes. Your children will share 50% of your genes (your equation is correct so I won't re-write it). Now this is not correct for all instances. The correct answer is, it depends. The % of genes shared by siblings can vary since the average % of genes shared by siblings is 50%, it can be lower than 50 or higher than 50. The reason that this is so is because of meiosis. The father and mother of the siblings have two copies of each autosome, and only one copy is received from each parent. So the siblings can inherit different copies of each autosome from each parent meaning they are unlikely to share many genes (there are assumptions being made here but you can see how it is possible). The % of genes shared by a father and son is 50% all the time. So the answer is dependent on the % of genes shared by the siblings, if it is lower than 50 then the father and offspring share more genes and are more closely related, vice versa. This is a simple answer (ignoring many things which make it more complicated). Edit: That diagram makes the assumption that the average shared genes is always 50% without mentioning it, so it is a little misleading with regards to correcting that statement you made. Also the diagram makes the assumption that the gamete which fertilised the eggs has an equal amount of parental and maternal DNA (this is in meiosis, so read up about that to learn where the averages come from if you still are not sure) (not true, again it is an average of 50% from each), this basically means that you can share more genes with your great great grandmother than you do with your great great grandfather.

I do realise that is a possibility. The assumption that the creator did know that life is a possibility in this universe makes the scenario more interesting to consider, since you couldn't really judge the creator if it didn't have any knowledge of this possibility. Whether or not the creator is my source or not has no impact on the conclusion I come to, and I'd ask you "Why should it?". As I have highlighted, there are ethical considerations about creation of life such as with the sod1 mice example. Why not apply those same considerations to the creator? creation of this universe is similar to the sod1 mice creation (assuming life will arise), just on a much grander scale. So for me, there'd have to be an inquiry into the intentions of the creator. How come you wouldn't need an inquiry in order to worship the creator? I have almost no knowledge about any religion, so I don't know what they state about their deity's intentions etc. For me, if I were to be an individual who were to adopt the belief which I am most comfortable with regardless of any evidence, I would still choose abiogenesis. The beginning of this universe being created by an entity isn't appealing to me, as it would bring in the whole creating life issue into the mix.

I do agree with your comment that people can be broken regardless of what conclusion they arrive at, and that calling someone broken is dependent on whether or not their capabilities functioned as expected. I don't think a physcologist/psychiatrist is required though. Tar, In this post you describe Immortal's claim as imaginary. Then you stated your own theory about God existing. Do you apply criticism to your own theory? like you do to immortal's belief? Also you made the statement "While I do not disagree with the existence of the numinous..." then shortly afterwards presented your theory of God existing. Does this mean you consider your theory not to be numinous? I am just wondering why you didn't write "I agree with the existence of the numinous..." since you stated your theory about the existence of god. Do you consider your theory to have similar amounts of supportive evidence as the belief in santa?

Do similar interpretations of religious experiences lead to the conclusion that the only possible cause of the experience was a deity though? I don't think so, so I don't agree with that conclusion. I think that these interpretations are limited in how much they can explain about the cause of the experience, if they can explain anything at all.

Immortal. You seem to disagree with Cuthber's opinion that deity believers are just as broken as santa believers. I agree with Cuthber's opinion (though I don't care enough to label santa believers as broken) because I consider the amounts of supportive evidence for each belief to be the same. I make the comparison because both beliefs use similar broken logic to adopt the belief (assuming the individual is critically contemplating them before adopting them as beliefs). You disagreed, so either you don't think the comparison should be made in the first place, or you consider there to be unequal amounts of supportive evidence? provide the reasoning for your disagreement please.

I agree with your perspective and your thoughts on broken, except for one change that I would make. I would remove "unable" from that sentence, since if someone is not aware that their belief might be false they do not have the choice to correct it (and if they did have the choice, how do I know that they wouldn't correct the belief?). Such a person would fall under the "unable" category and so I couldn't call someone broken for that. I, too, would also imagine there are people who have not critically analysed their own belief. Your example about your misguided belief is an interesting one and raises the question "Why shouldn't we then take the broken description and apply it to other instances of belief justified with no evidence?" I wouldn't call you broken for your misguided belief, simply because I'd imagine that you weren't aware that your belief could be wrong. Until you read up on history, you had a genuine belief that you willingly did correct when you were able to critically question that belief. The ability to (and being in a state of awareness to) critically question a belief is something which, IMO, is not under our control as I think there are various factors which can influence it (education for instance). For this reason I don't consider the inability to question a belief as broken, instead I only consider unwillingness to question/correct as broken. Would I consider someone unwilling to correct the belief that santa is real as broken?. maybe If were a character called Scrooge.

Thanks alot for the summary, this thread was made long before I joined (I only just noticed the search option too). It's a very interesting topic, and I do agree with your statements in the second last paragraph.

iNow, do you think all deity believers to be broken or only a subpopulation of people within this group? This has probably been discussed somewhere within this thread, but it is so huge it'd be hard to find.

These are good questions. Whilst I did mention Utopia, I was using that as the best case scenario if one was to create a universe. We can't observe other universes with less harmful fitness landscapes (if they are possible) and/or less challenging environments. So we can't know if those less severe universes are actually better. My opinions have changed a fair amount since the start of the thread. I think a good way to consider this hypothetical situation is from the point of view of society. The process I go through (now) is considering the ethics of creating life, and weighing up the positives and negatives as rationally as I can. In the following paragraph, society can be replaced by "a rational person" assuming that societies laws and ethics are similar or the same as a rational person. I'd assume that most people also support societies laws and ethics as well. Society has various ethical considerations and laws about creation of life such as abortion and animal testing (transgenic and non-transgenic). I think the hypothetical consideration I presented is comparable to these, and would ask how society would judge an entity creating the universe. Consider the example of creating and breeding transgenic line of sod1 mice (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis mice). In most societies there are fairly heavy regulations and restrictions on making and breeding/keeping transgenic lines such as sod1 mice, and creation of such lines has to be approved in order to be created (intention of use is considered, according to wiki). So, creation of the universe should be judged in the same way the decision to create such lines of transgenic animals are. This is where the intention of the creator is examined, but the intention is unknown so various possibilities can be considered. What intention could society find acceptable to deem the creation of the universe acceptable? What intention's are unacceptable? would be important questions to ask An inquiry into the intentions of the creator are needed in order to come to a conclusion in this hypothetical scenario. Shouldn't an approach similar to this be applied to the situation (assuming one is honest and rational). Wouldn't we also have to agree that the intention to create this universe for the purpose of scientific discovery to advance medicine is acceptable (assuming we are honest and won't contradict ourselves)? I have no idea what various religions with a deity say about their god's/gods' intentions to creating this universe, and whether or not their god had a choice, and whether it created this universe to the best of it's ability. Would there be a difference of conclusion about the creator's decision from a religious view point when compared to societies/rational person point of view? Do people agree with this process/reasoning to justify an opinion of the creator's decision (and then ultimately using that opinion on whether one can worship/admire/respect said creator)? If so, what intentions do people think are justifyable?

Some of the best posts were on the first page. These posts are great. There are various factors that can contribute to the behavior of belief, and the poverty correlation suggests poverty is an example of such a factor that can, at least in part, influence the process in which an individual adopts his/her beliefs. There are probably many other factors, genetic and environmental, that we have no knowledge of which also influence belief. Many people have criticised the use of the term broken already, so I won't comment much on it. I wonder what labelling religious people as broken even achieves or allows for, and so I think it is unneccessary. I liked Zapatos' quote about the cars (I think it was Zapatos, not going to mine the thread for it), which when applied to this consideration says that you might think of religious people as broken and they might think of you as broken. Who is right and what is the point of this label? Furthermore there has been a recent thread about belief and whether or not it is a choice. The conclusion that most reached was that it seems that there might not be choice in what you believe. If this is true, then again the label would merely seek to attach a negative description to a behavioral trait which can't be avoided (if it even needs to be avoided)? How would this help? Assigning the term broken to collection of people who adopt religious beliefs isn't very helpful. Many more people care about the belief of a deity than the beliefs such as the one you described. Why these memes are successful is more complicated but that is a simple answer that you knew already. I think that religious belief and/or belief of a deity is influenced and potentially explained by genetic and environmental factors, and that there is perhaps no individual choice of which beliefs are adopted. I do agree that various aspects of some religious beliefs are a little extreme when they cause harm to others, but not all deity believers support them. I would agree on describing individuals who support the extreme aspects of deity beliefs as broken, but I don't think it is a useful term and I don't know how to define such individuals. If we could fix the broken extreme beliefs, then maybe it would be useful. This seems like something that would be difficult to fix (if it needs to be fixed). Do we have much control over how the prevalence of these memes change? What solution would you propose to fix the broken people? Remove their vote?

If there was a choice for the creator to make, then it would have been made since we exist. This would likely be worse than no choice at all, depending on the reason for choosing to create this universe. No choice would mean that the creation of this universe was guaranteed, as that is the only possible outcome and the creator couldn't prevent it. It would be better because the choice scenario would probably conflict with my personal ethical considerations (I can't imagine any instance in which I could justify creating this universe). Ok. I get it.

I'm not sure what the first half of your post was attempting to answer. The quoted response doesn't directly answer the question I asked you, and it is an unsatisfactory response. What do you find pleasing about malaria?

That is not enough in order to make it no longer difficult to worship him, at least for me. For me, it must be shown that the creator did not have a choice in the matter of whether or not this universe is to be created. Purely because If I were in it's position I wouldn't be comfortable being the ultimate cause of everything that happens in this universe and I wouldn't have chosen to create this universe. I'd think that this should be a fairly common opinion, that most people wouldn't be comfortable being the cause of everything. Shouldn't we apply ethics to the choice to create this universe in a similar way we do to the choice to breed knock-in alzheimers mice for instance? So further information is required in order for me to form an opinion of the creator and depends on the following: 1. did the creator have a choice to create this universe? if it had choice, then why? 2. did it create this universe to the best of it's ability? You are correct (and thanks for pointing it out). I was making various assumptions. Ones that other people might not have been making. My opinion is dependent on the answers to 1 and 2. To be more specific, I wouldn't be able to understand people who form positive views about the creator if it had the choice to create this universe, however if they form the a positive opinion about the creator because they think it didnt have a choice and created this universe to the best of their ability then I can understand. I'd assume that someone with a positive opinion of the creator, who believes it had choice, would be comfortable to create this universe if placed in the position of the creator. Isn't this something that society should consider unethical, in the same way alzheimer's mice breeding is considered unethical? What are the answers offered by religions to 1 and 2? What are other peoples' opinions on this matter? So, you are saying that I cannot hold an opinion such as the one I would have if the creator was found to have a choice to create or not to create this universe? You think that the creator only created what it saw to be good, and so freedom of choice is nonexistant? That is a little bit hard to prove, no? If you think this then what would you reply to a question such as this. "What good did the creator see in malaria, one of his many creations?"

I am impressed and amazed by the universe as well and I understand you there. However I would not admire or respect the creator for creating this universe as that entity would be the cause of all suffering. If this universe was somekind of Utopia then sure I would admire and respect the creator. It isn't though, and how many generations (during which there will probably be suffering, after evolution of pain sensation of course) does it take before an organism capable of contemplating the beauty of various features of the universe can arise? Is that worth it? You said it isn't difficult for you to admire and respect an entity which is capable of creating a universe such as this one, what would your opinion be of the creator that did create this universe? Stay the same or change? It is for these reasons I find it hard to see the attraction or allure of the idea of a creator, and wonder why so many people are happy and comfortable with the idea of a creator. Why couldn't the creator have created a utopia? Shouldn't the creator be viewed as a criminal in the eyes of most societies (according to law?)? You and Phi for all do make good points also. I didn't mention the creator's desires though.

I do understand that they have different views and opinions to me, and I realise it is unlikely that people who worship a creator have the same line of thinking as me. What I can't understand is how one can arrive at a positive view of the creator. So I ask "how/why do/can you worship a creator?" That's a great statement, a quote to remember. Before I started the thread I was only considering this scenario and thinking narrowly. After having read and considered your post, I think that your statement is likely to be true. A creator doesn't have to want that in order for people to be able to worship it though. Don't some people worship a creator even without the creator wanting them to?

I started this thread in attempt to find out people's views on how they are able to worship a creator of the universe. Discussion of whether or not a creator exists or not is not the intention of this thread, and I'd ask non-believers to ask themselves "would I worship a creator of the universe if it's existence were proven?". When I consider this question and ask it to myself, I respond no. If a creator's existence were proven even hypothetically I could not worship it, simply because I couldn't allow myself to worship the being/thing that invented/designed the concept of survival of the fittest, as well as many of the nasty possibilities present in the fitness landscape (genetic diseases etc.). I wouldn't consider the creator to be loving as some people do, and because of this I find it difficult to understand or even relate to people who maintain religious beliefs (only on this particular topic, and maybe a few others) and I find it difficult to understand how such religious concepts/ideas are so successful as memes! So I ask other people (that do genuinely believe in a creator without the hypotheitcal consideration), how can you worship a creator of the universe? Don't any of my points make worshipping a god hard to do? and would any non-believer's respond to the question? discussion of evidence for a creator is off topic.