Wuzzums

I think you need to define what you mean by "free decision" because the two analogies don't hold up. A gun at my head means there's an external agent which binds me to make a decision. In contrast, starvation is a physiological constraint, my own physiological constraint. So if the two are the same and a gun to my head doesn't make me free then any decision I take isn't a free decision because all decisions I take have physiological constraints. This of course implies there's no such thing as a free decision which doesn't make sense to me. For instance, picking out a sweater. I choose the blue one because I prefer the color blue. I prefer the color blue because my eyes or brain find it very pleasing. This is a constraint, a more lenient constraint to your life/death examples, but a constraint nonetheless and thus it's not a free decision.

I can give examples from my own experience. - guy starts a conversation with me, doesn't like where the conversation is heading and then he starts accusing me of wasting his time with stupid conversations - exam session, we choose a date for the exam, the teacher proposes another date saying something like "I can't do your date because I have a life too, you know", this goes the other way around too - friend takes his phone with him, his girlfriend keeps calling, he keeps complaining that the girlfriend keeps calling but he doesn't answer, nor does he text, nor does he shut the phone off - or an instance I've seen in many versions, when someone complains that they aren't taken in account by another and when they are, they go on the attack with phrases like "stay out of my affairs" and such Rule of thumb is, once you enter an agreement you're responsible for it.

In the example you gave, I think that B is in the wrong because he is responsible for the choice he made (which is to help A out). There are several ways the situation can be diffused as you probably already realized (B would call A and explain he can't come, or A will see why B had his hands tied and won't get upset, etc). But the more I think about it, the more I can find examples of this in reality of people willingly taking responsibility then acting as if others are are trying to take advantage of them.

Did a little portrait: But then curiosity took a hold of me and I wanted to see how much of a difference hair would make: Dunno if it's the fancy way I drew it but to me the hair just seems off-putting. Hope you like it.

So you were trying to disprove evolution by showing us an example that disproves Lamark's theory of evolution? That's like me disproving the whole science of astronomy because in the past they believed the Sun orbited around the Earth.

Haha. Funny thing is Alan Moore was the one that long ago implanted the seed of doubt in the powers that be. He wrote a comic, Shadowplay: The Secret Team, it's about this reporter talking to and army general in a bar with an american eagle for a head. Full disclosure type of conversation. Gets really emotional towards the end. Alan Moore is notorious for ambiguity, he lays down an obvious narrative and adds little clues along the way that by the end you're left with two different storylines. Like in V for Vendetta, in the movie it's pretty clear V is the hero but in the comics you slowly realize he's anyone but the hero. And by the end you feel like a dunce cause it's been staring at you all the way through, with V wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and all that. I wouldn't take anything he says at face value because he enjoys messing with the reader. The sense I get from him is that he's like a dream, there are the things he says with the words he chose, and then there's the symbolism of the words he chose that give another perspective.

Yes, thank you for reiterating your previous point and for the holiday wishes and right back atcha... but how about answering the questions I asked? I thought this was a conversation.

DNA just gave its first bearer an evolutionary advantage over the competition. It allowed the "thing" to either survive in the environment or reproduce faster than the others. Or it may have been the first molecule to even have the penchant for reproducing in the first place (in this instance both evolution and DNA coming into being at once, you cannot have evolution without reproduction). Point is DNA does not give rise to evolution, evolution gives rise to DNA. There are viruses out there that are RNA based, so by your standards evolution shouldn't work on them. Nobody can really say how DNA formed, or what lifeforms were before it, or if it's the best molecule for storing information. The science of abiogenesis deals with this. I never said DNA does not contain information. You're mistaking the information for the chemistry. Information is stored through the molecule of DNA, but the molecule of DNA does not need to store information to exist. I graciously posted those pics for you because you required as proof for cladogenesis mammals that developed fins, yet you somehow fail to spot the obvious and retort by saying "nobody knows"... but you know, don't you? I mean you yourself said: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_blood_cell (Is it a cell? Yes. Does it have DNA? No.) And why are we talking about cells all of a sudden? Of course you cannot have a cell without DNA if you define a cell as having DNA. We're arguing semantics at this point. For somebody that claims how nobody has any knowledge about evolution, you sure do have a lot of knowledge about what did and did not evolve from whatever.

No. I repeat myself, chance has nothing to do with evolution. It's active selection of random mutations, active selection of chance. You're assuming that DNA one day sprung into being and simply poof, evolution started happening. Evolution has nothing to do with DNA, it's a process whereas DNA is something tangible. There's a huge amount of space between when you could can say evolution began and DNA came into being. DNA. To put it bluntly, it's more empirical evidence for that statement than we could ever wish for. I mean it's just a molecule present in every organism on Earth, I don't see how it could even suggest a common lineage (sarcasm intended). No, that experiment was either done by people that have no clue how evolution works, or you got it all wrong. I repeat myself again, it's about SURVIVAL. If you don't kill off the mice with long tails but just cut their tails off and let them reproduce, the long-tail genes will be passed on. "dowsed with large spurs of sudden change" And do you want to know why you don't see buffaloes and hippos with fins? Because they don't need them. Neither of the two live next to large bodies of water like seas and oceans. Neither of them get their food from large bodies of water like seas and oceans. Hippos don't even need to swim, they walk on the bottom of the lakes. Hippos with fins would be like an adult with a life-vest in the kids' shallow end of the pool. They don't need fins.

Judging creatures based on their appearance is fundamentally different than studying their genome. For instance, Stephen Jay Gould showed that "fish" as a class different to that of "mammal" does not exist. Like a fish can have more in common with a cat DNA-wise than with another fish. This is why the environment dictates what genes are turned off or on, or weened out, or selected, or however you want to put it. DNA turns the whole science of taxonomy on its head, and to my opinion utterly useless. Another example is that of dogs. Imagine you're an alien and see a pug and a greyhound sitting next to each other. There's no way you would even consider at first glance that the two are actually the same species. Evolution isn't random. It's specific selection of traits that appear randomly. Given one lineage and a changing environment, traits will be added on top of each other based on what makes the organism survive. If a trait is in detriment to the species then the whole species will die out. If a trait doesn't aid nor hinder survival it will be passed on. Another interesting fact is the development of the embryo. You might have heard that in the uterus, the fetus develops a tail which disappears, full body hair like a monkey's which falls off, and a bunch of other atavistic traits. This is because the genes are still there and get switched on much like they do in a monkey fetus, yet we added on top of them other genes that counter-act those genes and "switch them off". If there were such a mechanism by which useless information can be subtracted then those genes wouldn't be there. But it goes even more deeper, almost all creatures on the planet, mammals, fish, insects, spiders, etc have the same mechanism of embryo development. First it's a sandwich-like 3 types of cells, then it creates a digestive tract, then nervous system, blood supply, head, and so on. All creatures follow this narrative because long ago when this mechanism came into being it was effective enough not to be ever changed in billions of years of evolution. Every other trait that gives rise to the vastness of creatures was added on top of that.

So we shouldn't be vengeful, hateful and angry, and let God be vengeful and hateful for us? If that's the case, as you pointed it out, then you're worshiping a vengeful, hateful god. But isn't worshiping a vengeful, hateful god is in itself quite telling that you are vengeful and hateful? So that's not putting evil people behind you because what you're doing is literally delegating vengeance and hate. Now tell me, why do you think is it just for people that have wronged us to receive punishment? Furthermore, what's the algorythm of the punishment, should the punishment be more, less or equal to the crime?

I agree. I've had a friend that constantly did things that rubbed me the wrong way though I didn't know why. Only after quite some time after I've stopped talking to them I accidentally stumbled across the well known Cluster B personality traits. Looked into it more and saw a whole community of people that knew people with those disorders. Some of which had similar experiences to mine, down to specific wording in conversations. Uncanny. Honestly, these sort of things ought to be taught religiously in schools, assuming schools teach you anything in the first place.

"selection on its own always gets rid of information, never the opposite" "As creatures diversify, gene pools become increasingly thinned out." "the more specialized they become, the smaller the fraction they carry of the original storehouse of created information for their kind" This is not the case. We carry a bunch of junk DNA courtesy of the inability of natural selection to cut out information. Evolution creates patchwork creatures, it adds and adds and selects the one that's better fitted for survival. Gene pools become more and more diverse because diversity gives an evolutionary advantage. Carrying the genes for unneeded traits is an advantage given an ever-changing external environment. Like for instance, if you raise a baby in a completely different environment than that from Earth but fit for human survival you'll end up with something very alien looking yet 100% human. So if the environment were to change more dramatically (like shifts in gravity, etc) the lifeforms that can survive in such a place would have specialized to not be so specialized, thus the more specialized they would be at carrying more genes of different types of animals. The last quote just makes no logical sense in an evolutionary context. I have often found the case to be that dogmatic thinking leads to an inability to understand concepts like "feedback loops".

Strange how there was a professional photographer for all those events... Still, considering all the events he has to make up for, I'll maybe start praising him after he cures all diseases and brings world peace.

Fair enough. I can see how my wording seems aggressive by comparison. I'll keep that in mind next time.

I didn't know I was being aggressive. That was the impression I got from the post and that was the feedback I saw fit to give. I'm willing to change my view given new data.

The way you told the story seemed to me you didn't use peaceful parenting but something very similar to the classic good-cop/bad-cop strategy. Your kid was reacting bad towards the mother because why should he please someone who's abusive towards him, and was acting positively towards you to spite the bad-cop and/or because he didn't want the bad-cop to return. So why didn't you ask the child what he wanted to do? If given the evidence that he's capable of hitting the targets, and he's not hitting the targets, then it's clear he doesn't want to hit the targets. So if he doesn't want to hit the targets why was he there?

So you agree people only go there to get their beliefs reinforced by blatant propaganda yet still think they would change their beliefs given a contrary point of view? You can't go to a bar and get people to stop drinking no matter how eloquently you put it or how rock solid is your logic. The only reason the bar is there is because people want to drink. You cannot debate decision with reason and evidence, if you could we all would be living in a better world.

To blow their minds like that implies they never heard that point of view before. Like for instance when you tell a kid that Earth is just a giant rock in space, it will blow his/her mind. If you go to a church and say "there's probably no god" you won't blow anyone's mind, they're not there to get knowledge. It's just one giant circle jerk. Politics oriented media (which I admit is a redundancy) is the same. The only people who will get their minds blown are people that switched to the channel by accident.

Catch-22 The most accurate depiction of WW2 ever created. Deals with the military family, of course.

I believe the intention of the movie was to show how far parents would go towards protecting their children. It's a "did he or didn't he" kind of movie, so as a viewer you won't be invested in anything else including whether the children are alive or not. Nor does the movie spend any time making you care about the children. We don't even know anything about them other than they're little girls. What really bothered me about it was the motivation of the villain which was pretty much non-existent other than to drive the plot along.

....maybe: RED FACTION!

A friend of mine during the holidays whenever he met someone he said hello and added a quick "howhaveyoubeenhappyholidaysandahappynewyear bye". It saves a lot of time.

You do realize that saying skeptics are naive is self defeating, right? They're complete opposite states. Maybe you're using the terms differently. I tried to look for definitions of the two in your post but what I got is a rant about cartoonish mad scientists, the future and El Dorado... you're just all over the place.

South Park has always been good at having a go at both sides pointing out the fallacies in their arguments. Wendy was attacking Butters for being shallow because he wouldn't date an objectively ugly girl, then she was attacking people for dating objectively ugly girls because they were perceived subjectively as beautiful. I find women to be more to blame for their low self-confidence than men. How much time does a woman spend on make-up, hair, nails, jewelry, fashion, cosmetics, etc? And how many times did you see a guy compliment a woman on those things? At best she's lucky if her boyfriend even notices the color of her hair changed. I have never heard of a guy say "what I mostly find attractive in a woman is well kept nails". And they're incredibly cruel with each other. This one time I was with a group of friends, and 2 of the women were berating this handsome guy for being in love with a less attractive female. And their arguments were only limited to looks. I think it's because women constantly compare themselves to others. If a guy says he likes some trait (not necessarily limited to appearance) in a woman and the woman he's talking to doesn't have said trait then he's mostly likely gonna get attacked and accused of being shallow, living in a dream world, having unrealistic expectations, being out of his league, etc. They take it as if it was a personal insult.