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Yep, all I really want to hear are some logical, rational arguments in favor of a God, that's it.

/sigh. Knowing our previous discussion, I don't believe you. There's too much history of people thinking and arguing on the topic for you to have not found a single rational argument, if that's all you were looking for.

But I said I would offer one, and so here's one from a systems engineering point of view.

I work with computer systems and building up software/hardware to collect information, process it, and pass it around. I can recognize the complexity of a system, and the level of effort needed to build complex systems versus simple ones. There's an obvious difference in wht it takes to rendering realistic 3D graphics versus displaying the simple text "Hello World!", for example

As such, I can recognize that the human body far exceeds the functionality of any human built system in history. There are an estimated 37.2 trillion cells in your body, all working together to make you continue to live. Those trillions of cells are grouped into a dozen or so systems throughout your body. Those parts working together using many nested layers of feedback loops. All of that starts from a single cell, working from its DNA blueprint.

That's an amazing design, and we don't even understand it enough to replicate it, let alone build something better.

The fact that the human body operates from an amazing intricate design is evidence for a superhuman designer. That is, a being that is above humans in ability to create designs.

The false positive rates, particular in comparison to true positive rates, for some of these tests can be quite high. In a study of the NonInvasive Prenatal Test (NIPT) they found that 2-3 of every 10 positive result of a particular - and particularly grim - genetic abnormality is a false positive. While NIPT is a different test in general, the underlying technology is next-generation sequencing and is likely shared with these gene tests as well.

Ya...no direct evidence...except for:
-Fossils
-DNA, aka the universal genetic code
-Common traits and stages of life across species
-antibiotic/herbicide/pesticide resistance in bacteria plants
-ability to change the characteristics of living things through breeding
-long term evolutionary experiments, such as Lenski's E Coli experiment

http://www.scientificamerican....
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evi...
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/

I see his citation and raise you these:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://rspb.royalsocietypublis...

By the way, implying 1% rabies infection rate is not a concern is ludicrous, as it's plenty to prevent eradication of a infection with human mortality rates, when undiscovered before symptoms, only rivaled by prion disease.

Well I can link to a paper that shows that cigarette smoke contains mutagens, which means that it is directly causing mutations in cell DNA. That is unless you are going to claim that mutagens circulating in the blood stream don't actually cause mutations in cell DNA.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

This has been known for OVER FOUR DECADES you stupid moron. Look at the data on that paper, it's 1974.

The basics are when smoking was first linked to cancer it was statistical inference with unknown mechanisms. That has changed in the intervening decades and the mechanisms are at least partially understood now.

Really? And that must be why there are more battered husbands shelters than battered wives shelters ...

60-70% of domestic violence is initiated by women. The reason we don't have "battered men" shelters is that it is socially acceptable for women to be violent, and that any man that "can't handle it" isn't a real man, and should be ashamed of himself. In the media, when women are depicted as violent toward their partners, it is almost always supposed to be funny.

MB...initiated widespread neuronal apoptosis....rapid suppression of evoked excitatory field potentials by MB...dose-dependent effect of this drug on cell death....exposure to MB at non-cell-death-inducing concentrations could still induce significant retraction of dendritic arbor

And what's the researchers' conclusion?

MB exerts neurotoxic effects on the central nervous system

Thanks, but no thanks. Parent poster, go peddle your pharmascam elsewhere.

Well, how this affects human biology *IS* tech related IMHO.

Sure, but so far there has been NO discussion here about the actual tech in these pesticides. TFA doesn't even name the pesticides affected. Instead, about half way through, it switches to an unrelated rant about Canadian tar sands.

Just in case anyone is actually interested in the technology, here are a few links:

Pesticides may block male hormones
Effect of Endocrine Disrupter Pesticides: A Review
 

The scientists that published that just must not be up on their literature or the author is just confused and the scientists are trying to talk up their research.

Here's a study that shows gender-related differences starting in neonatal brains:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

This makes it seem like they wish there were more female serial killers.

Well.. as long as they were killing men, of course.

History repeats itself once again. Not so long ago it was difficult to convict female serial killers due to the all-male jurors. One of the primary arguments for initial Women's Rights supporters was that unless women were judges and jurors other women wouldn't be held accountable. (See section #6: Chivalry Justice) Unfortunately, after feminists hijacked the women's rights movement they renounced accountability in favor of no-due process or accountability.

It's not that we with there were more serial killers (female or male), it's just that we wish killers were recognized as such.

If you pick a black person and then pick a random victim, it's more likely the victim will be white than black, because there are more white people than black people.

Then why are there more murders committed by black people (against all sorts of victims) then would be accounted for by their percentage of the population? What is your point, exactly? Yes, there are more "white" people than "black" people in the general population. That's not what's being discussed. What's being discussed is the rate of crime coming out of specific demographics.

Income inequality if the largest driver of murders. Homicide has a r=0.8 correlation with income inequality.. 10% of whites are in poverty in the USA, but 27% of blacks are in poverty. Poverty (income inequality), crime, and race are all related in the USA. That's not good, but it does open options because there are a lot more levers available to pull. Reduce minority poverty, and minority crime will probably drop too. There are lots of ways to do that, but it takes a huge effort to do so.

Detergent is not a disinfectant.

Detergent (and even good old soap) doesn't kill _all_ bacteria and spores, but it's pretty efficient in killing most of active bacteria and fungi (link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... ). That's more than enough to delay the onset of mold long enough for the clothes to dry.

The autism claims are entirely discredited now.

Yes, but everyone is ignoring the fact that the DPT shot has been proven to be the cause of SIDS. An adverse physiological response of shallow breathing occurs 7-14 days after administering the shot. When's the last time you heard anyone advertise a stern warning about that?

Where did you read that? At some anti-vaxx site no doubt, read this instead.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bo...

Well that is a very interesting claim...that proves upon examination to be FALSE. In fact women constitute 80% of the student population of veterinary schools. It may once have been true, but it is no longer so.

Here are some quick links found by searching for 'wealth by gender'. NONE of them support your premise:

http://www.stuffyoushouldknow....
http://www.mariko-chang.com/sh...
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfor...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.smh.com.au/national...

Ability to metabolize toxins and excrete them varies widely between individuals, many people have deficiencies in their abilities. Children's ability to metabolize toxins are not the same as adults. To top it off, the resources in the body needed to metabolize them (antioxidants, enzymes, conjugating molecules) are consumed by many things in the environment --> Did the chem-lawn folks just spray your lawn? Did you recently repaint the infant's room before you brought the baby home from the hospital? New carpeting in the house? On a constant basis, you are breathing, touching, drinking and eating toxins -- everything is contaminated to some measurable degree today (with lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, etc)...usually in very very small quantities, but some of these things bio-accumulate. So how much stuff is your body dealing with when you get the vaccine and how will that affect development? The medications you might be taking all rely on the same chemical transformations and consume those resources as well.

In case you wonder if these toxins can have any effect, here is something produced by the United States NIH discussing the impact of environmental toxin exposure on children. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/11041...

Clinical toxicology (understanding the effect of toxins on the body) is not nearly as advanced as many of you probably imagine it is. Much of our knowledge comes from the last 15 years and a great deal is still not known. By the way, knowledge of clinical toxicology is virtually absent from the MD curriculum (at least here in the US).

And one last point to everyone who is pro-vaccine and antagonistic to those who aren't, I would like to point out that if YOU did not do the science yourself, then these issues come down to who you trust (I wouldn't trust Jenny McCarthy either). I bet all of you have an opinion one way or the other about climate change, but almost none of you have actually looked at the data and models yourself. Claiming "its science you idiots" when you did not do the science is pretty similar to religion....belittling someone with a *belief* that differs from yours because yours must be the one true god.

I'm not an anti-vax person myself, but I do suspect that at least one of the vaccines I received in the Army caused my current chronic kidney disease, which is caused by a misformed IgA antibody. I suspect that because I have a familial history of Ceceliacs disease, which is suspected by some to be related to IgA Nephropathy, and the timeline of when I developed IgAn coincides perfectly with the progression of the disease and the time that I received those inoculations. That, and this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Problem is this is hard to prove, and I doubt anybody would do any further serious research into it. Why won't they? Because the anti-vax movement has made anybody who does easily lose credibility, because the anti-vax movement repeatedly and often makes very stupid claims (autism? are you fucking kidding me?) that cause everybody else to come down hard on anybody who speaks honestly about any potential down sides of it.

There may very well be good reasons to not vaccinate in some cases, but those reasons will be hard to find when idiots keep crying wolf for no reason other than they happen to be Jenny McCarthy fans.

Still though, and I do myself admit, I still accept that it's better to have practically zero cases of polio in exchange for a few cases of IgA Nephropathy, even though I happened to get the shitty end of the stick (dialisys, which is where I'll probably end up very soon, is a lot better than an iron lung.) That said, even if it is proven that vaccination is the cause of my condition, I'll still support it anyways.

"Proven" except that the study says it's not statistically significant.

Here you go: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

On the other hand, just doing the atheist thing often falls into the same traps, but beginning from a different set of basic sentences (there is probably no God; science can explain everything; what is the scientific evidence for the efficacy of prayer).

Your argument falls apart here as there is no scientific evidence for the efficacy of prayer, therefore there is nothing here for science to prove. (Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health, Cochranme Study, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...)

If it's not adequately treated, I hope you enjoy E Coli in your lettuce.

Sure, if you want an E. Coli infection.

Video games also stimulate the flight or fight response flight or fight response. This has been showed to improve the emotional state of the brain.

It would be conceivable that the right kind of educational pornography may help young men to be better lovers. Communication has been shown to be the number one issue with sex and emotional responses to sex. Some couples even find pornography as a stimulus or template for their own sex lives.

Enough research has been shown that video games help young men and women as they have hurting. My personal opinion is that the dangers vary from person to person and can not be generalized across a wide audience. As far as addiction? I am addicted to water, I love the stuff and it helps me to live! However even to much water can be deadly.

Is the Maker Bot water-soluble filament safe to digest? I'd google it to find out, but I prefer the human contact of a question answered.

I had the same question and I don't mind googling: It appears water-soluble filament is poly vinyl alcohol, which is reasonably safe to ingest in small amounts. From the linked abstract: " A critical evaluation of the existing information on PVA supports its safety for use as a coating agent for pharmaceutical and dietary supplement products."

Looks like it.

"how many of those would find other successful ways vs would never attempt (or be successful at) killing themselves?"

Significantly less. Sample paper on the subject by Yip et. al., Lancet, 2012:

"Many empirical studies have shown that such means restriction is effective. Although some individuals might seek other methods, many do not..."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22726520

"Some even go further and claim that guns make you more likely to try to kill yourself (as opposed to merely more likely to succeed, two radically different concepts that they don't quite 'get')"

There is in fact pretty consistent support that even a brief barrier from effective means of suicide will result in someone not ever attempting it. Example paper: Yip, et. al., "Means restriction for suicide prevention", Lancet, 2012.

"Abstract: Limitation of access to lethal methods used for suicide--so-called means restriction--is an important population strategy for suicide prevention. Many empirical studies have shown that such means restriction is effective. Although some individuals might seek other methods, many do not; when they do, the means chosen are less lethal and are associated with fewer deaths than when more dangerous ones are available."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22726520

Green LED's provide more accurate heart rate monitoring.

The watch already has infrared LED's and IR sensors in addition to green; the "extra $0.45 per watch" is baked in.

Every engineer has to make a decision about where the point of diminishing returns lies for their design.

For every additional LED and sensor they use, more power is consumed. Does it make sense to shorten battery life by x hours for everyone just so it functions better for y% more users?

When have government ever gotten science right?
Really? The fact you would even ask that shows your ignorance.

Setting aside crank politicians who pass laws saying "abortion is reversible", or bring snowballs to show and tell on the floor of the Senate, the answer is "nearly always". The majority of research in this country is backed by the government in some way.

We know how and why aircraft fly because of extensive research by NACA (and no, it's not that stuff you were taught in school about Bernoulli), who then became NASA. the same NASA that then perfected spaceflight, put us on the moon, and is even responsible for a large share of the research and data gathering on climate thanks to their extensive collection of science satellites.

There's the National Institute of Health, the CDC, and other medical research entities of the government.

There's the Pie in the Sky crazy projects division we know as DARPA. That would be the same DARPA responsible for the internet you are now using, space based data sensors to monitor the planet, GPS, nuclear launch detection, extensive material science breakthroughs, and computer science, and a few thousand other things we now take for granted. In fact, a large portion of the science and engineering occurring even in private industry in the 70's occurred as a result of a "brain drain" from DARPA, when many of its engineers and researchers left the agency as a result of budget cuts; those people went on to push the limits at Bell Labs, Xerox, 3M, and others.

Really, the list is HUGE.

Airplanes, cancer, space, lasers, computers, networking, cryptography, robotics, cars, agriculture, genetics, climate science, physics, chemistry, materials science, artificial intelligence, molecular biology, archaeology, medical imaging, data storge methods....and I've probably only covered less than 1% of the achievements of government led research.

Government rarely gets science right you say?
No son, Government rarely gets it wrong.

And when it does, it's usually because of undue influence and meddling like this here "secret science" bill.
---

Government's Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century: http://www.brookings.edu/resea...
Why Do Basic Research: http://publications.nigms.nih....
The High Return on Investment for Publicly Funded Research: https://www.americanprogress.o...

"There is no viable evidence" = "I'm too lazy to look"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Free)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Non-free but synopsis provided)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Non-free but synopsis provided)

And that's just a minute or two of looking. Thousands of studies have been done on fluoride for safety and effectiveness on a wide range of topics, not just public water fluorination. It works, we know how and why it works, it's pretty dang cheap, and it's been hailed as one of the top ten greatest public health achievements.
=Smidge=

"There is no viable evidence" = "I'm too lazy to look"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Free)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Non-free but synopsis provided)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Non-free but synopsis provided)

And that's just a minute or two of looking. Thousands of studies have been done on fluoride for safety and effectiveness on a wide range of topics, not just public water fluorination. It works, we know how and why it works, it's pretty dang cheap, and it's been hailed as one of the top ten greatest public health achievements.
=Smidge=

"There is no viable evidence" = "I'm too lazy to look"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Free)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Non-free but synopsis provided)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Non-free but synopsis provided)

And that's just a minute or two of looking. Thousands of studies have been done on fluoride for safety and effectiveness on a wide range of topics, not just public water fluorination. It works, we know how and why it works, it's pretty dang cheap, and it's been hailed as one of the top ten greatest public health achievements.
=Smidge=

I don't know about a Communist plot or thyroid problems, but numerous studies have suggested that fluoride lowers IQ:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Besides, the primary mechanism by which fluoride arrests tooth decay is in a surface application. Fluoridated toothpastes usually carry a "Keep out of reach of children" warning. The directions also state that for children under 6, such products should be used in small quantities and with thorough rinsing to ensure that it isn't swallowed.

Drinking fluoride to prevent tooth decay is like drinking sunblock to prevent sunburn.

In scandinavia, kids are also given fluorine pills

With their school lunches? Baloney.

Xylitol has very little - if any - effect on dental health. It's just a sweetener that is not sugar (does not cause karies).

Nope - plaque uptake the xylitol and try to process it as a sugar and fail, exhausting their metabolites and ultimately starving off. Here's the most cited link on PubMed but you're welcome to search all the others, including more recent ones.

The schools aren't investing in the program because somebody's brother owns a chicklet factory - they've demonstrated success with it.

Source: I read peer reviewed real scientific reports.

Except the ones on the topic that are easily to find?

I'm more concerned about this where I live: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... They have switched over a majority of municipalities to chloramine from chlorine and there is a good body of evidence it can do really bad things. Not directly, but by interacting chemically in different ways than chlorine did.

Practically forever. The basic materials such as silicon are among the most abundant in the earth's surface. The rarer elements are only used in small amounts.

Copper indium gallium selenium good luck with that.

And it's perfectly possible to make solar panels without causing pollution, if you don't mind paying a little bit more.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://chinawaterrisk.org/reso...

Gotta ask, is it an agenda you are personally pushing or are you just repeating something you didn't bother to question ?

There isn't enough CO2 in the atmosphere to make this work.

There was plenty of CO2 for plants to go around even before humans started burning coal at industrial scales.

This is basically just un-burning coal. And oil. And natural gas.

Plenty of CO2 for some plants.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

but I know that I am one of the lucky few who gets to enjoy an adverse reaction to aspartame. From a purely anecdotal view,

It's not an anecdotal situation. Aspartame contains phenylalanine, which some people cannot process. This results in a condition known as phenylketonuria, or PKU. If you overload the phenylalanine hydroxylase metabolic pathway, you can suffer from mild forms of PKU even if you are not totally deficient in that enzyme.

The levels of aspartame normally consumed shouldn't be a problem except for PKUs, unless you switch to sugar-free koolaid and drink gallons of the stuff. If it's giving you problems in diet drinks, then you probably can't eat a bucketload of turkey without feeling it, either. Turkey meat is high in phenylalanine, too.

Aspartame and a few of the other artificial sweeteners are excitotoxic (they overexcite some neurons to the point of death). For example, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... and other research like it. The main counterargument is that studies showing excitotoxic effects in vivo have always been done with doses significantly higher than would be ingested using regular consumption of foodstuffs in which artificial sweeteners are used (indeed, a benefit of advanced artificial sweeteners is that they reach the threshold of sweetness when very dilute). While even a good deal of overconsumption of artificially sweetened soda drinks may not reach the amounts having been shown detrimental. However, I've found no safety evidence either way regarding very long term exposure at lower intensity, over decades. For me, that's cause for caution and limiting consumption (though even I don't totally avoid it, and that's from someone that doesn't particularly like the taste of soda drinks).

You are incorrect:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

oh really?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

just the taste of a sweetner can trigger insulin production, and therefore is triggered with aspartame.

Performing a quick search - Aspartame does NOT induce an insulin response:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
From the abstract "The indicated increased clearance rate of plasma Phe after albumin may be caused by the significant increase of insulin, on which aspartame had no effect."

Could you cite your source where Aspartame does induce an insulin response?

"Neonicotinoids in bees: a review on concentrations, side-effects and risk assessment"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

"Many lethal and sublethal effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on bees have been described in laboratory studies, however, no effects were observed in field studies with field-realistic dosages."

As they say there's need for further study regarding synergistic effects and the like. But real exposure effects in the field are what counts, not just laboratory findings. Otherwise it's like finding that table salt is OMG-toxic as studied in the lab, even tho we know it's safe in normal realworld use.

The doc's "HEAVEN" project is published in PUBMED so...if it's fake, he fooled NIH. Not that there aren't bad papers submitted on a regular basis...

Isn't questioning the efficacy of the vaccine a bit moot at this point? It's well-established that the rate of measles occurrences has declined by more than 99% in the US since the prevaccine era. No doubt, there are several contributing factors (e.g. decrease in measles parties, as you said), but there's no way to account for that change absent the consideration of the vaccine (e.g. measles was endemic before measles parties were a thing, so it likely isn't that measles parties are gone). Suggesting the link is "tenuous" seems rather disingenuous. It's possible the vaccine may not be effective to the degree people claim it's effective, but suggesting there's even a possibility that it's not effective at all is rather absurd.

The effects will last about 30 seconds, during which you will have all sorts of dreamy thoughts about how huge the universe is.

...and hopefully not die:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

I think that it is debatable whether the widespread use of antibiotics have exposed an existing population of antibiotic resistant bacteria, or if there have been recent mutations that have allowed bacteria to survive antibiotics

This paper discusses bot the existence of antibiotic resistance strains of bacteria, and the non-mutative processes that are involved in transferring resistant r-genes between different types of bacteria
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Works on rats. Sorta.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
J Physiol. 1955 Jun 28; 128(3): 541–546.
PMCID: PMC1365902
Reanimation of rats from body temperatures between 0 and 1 C by microwave diathermy
R. K. Andjus and J. E. Lovelock

Of course, nobody has frozen a rat solid, put him away in a freezer, and then reanimated him.

It is junk science, some creatures can indeed be frozen and revived because of unique properties of their physiology. Humans cannot.

So far it has been proven that organs can be cryopreserved and restored to full function. A rabbit kidney was extracted, cryopreserved to liquid N2 temps, re-warmed, and implanted into a living rabbit. It survived solely on that kidney for 48 days until it was euthanized to study the kidney. Physical and biological aspects of renal vitrification

In fact, by decapitating this girl and digging her brain out of her skull, they've guaranteed she is forever dead.

Here's a concept that you may not have heard of before: Information-theoretic death.