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15 Mutations Resulted In Increased Brain Size
naoursla writes "Researchers at the University of Chicago think they have identified 15 mutations in a gene responsible for brain development that gave humans abilities of abstract thought and planning. The article is at Discover.
They plan to insert the gene into mice to 'to see what affect it has on brain development.'"
It doesnt seem too far fetched now does it? How long until global mouse domination?
The result of the experiment? 42.
Hammer of Truth
I don't think we have to worry, so long as we don't make rubber pants their size.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Big brains in small skulls might not be such a good idea...
"These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pandimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front."
-- Slartibartfast, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Here I am, with the brain the size of human, trapped in the body of a rodent.
I'm sure it would be quite depressing.
(Apologies to DNA.)
Actually, I'd like a super-smart mice for reading my email and filtering spam.
Hammer of Truth
a beowulf cluster of uber mice
Karma: It's not just a good idea. It's the law.
"Lahn found that the ASPM gene in humans has undergone 15 important mutations since we last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees, about 5 million years ago."
One would think that the asymmetric laterality associated with language would be one of the important "human" mutations. It's not. Chimps have the same sort of asymmetry as humans in the "language" area of the brain: 'Demonstration of a human-like asymmetry of Wernicke's brain language area homolog in chimpanzee planum temporale.' (Gannon, et al., 1998). I suspect there's going to be far more than 15 mutations required to explain things, going back much, much farther than 5 million years.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
root# diff gwbush_genome.map jdoe_genome.map
..what happens then? Mices learn to think and you kill'em as soon as you get the results?
Let's just hope the experimental subjects don't look at the writing on their cages and comprehend.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I for one do not welcome our humorless, witless, jackass slashdot cliche regurgiators. Get over it, you fucking preschooler.
They plan to insert the gene into mice to 'to see what affect it has on brain development.
Pinky: What are we going to do tonight?
The Brain: Same thing we do every night... try to take over the world!
NO CARRIER
Hypocrite.
(you had to see that one coming)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
They may want to look at the genetic mutations of dolphins and find out what made them have such a large brain, and be so intelligent that all that they do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around, whereas we build cars and buildings, and start wars.
What makes you think that a super smart mouse would put up with that kind of abuse?
When they start working on a Debigulator, _that's_ when it's time to stop. And crush them. Damned Lutherans.
Now, is it possible to exercise a gene?
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
Just wait until they bump into Mrs. Frisby. Never thought I'd see that childhood book come to life in my lifetime.
This is a boring sig
I, for one, welcome our new mouse overlords. -Dan (shocked, shocked! that no one else said that already)
Or why human midgets can have a brain size smaller than a chimpanzee and still have a genius IQ.
I think brain size is probably the least important determiner of human intelligence.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Bruce Sterling wrote a very funny story along these lines, called "Our Neural Chernobyl". In his story, the virus used to transport the genes escapes (naturally!), but doesn't actually turn out to be much of a problem for people, except for creating a few navel-gazers. (This goes with a constant theme of Sterling's, that raw intelligence is an overrated commodity.) But the fun begins when the virus jumps to other species. So you get racoons that learn to pick locks, coyotes that organize protection rackets against ranchers, etc. Collected here.
Technically, I think that would make you God's Advocate, which could be an important distinction, for billing purposes.
But yeah, race of hyper-intellegent rodents, not really getting my vote for the Bright Idea 2004 Sweepstakes.
I imagine walking out of the house one day into a giant springloaded trapped baited with porn and the latest ATI card.
What were you expecting?
There is no such thing as lower or higher species. We`re just matter.
I know certain people who never benefited from that mutation. I used to work with them!!
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Simply? No. If you are reading this, you are too late to improve your intelligence this way. (You're brain has already developed) You could try having smart kids by altering those genes, though.
They will not reach near human intelligence. Mice start off with too small brains. And don't start trying to bring God into it. No-one will(should) listen to you. (Even /.ers have better things to do than get into that debate)
Nim Laboratories would like to announce the discover of the "smart gene". In the latest controlled experiments, rats treated with the gene using recombinant techniques has shown the rats' score 1000x better than normal untreated rats.
Will it work on Katz?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Anyone know an individual willing to use their telepathic powers to groom other people's lawns?
They ARE looking at the 2nd smartest species, presuming the smartest species knows enough to swim, eat, and play.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If you are the type to believe even human clones don't have souls, then I can see why intelligent animals could pose a problem.
Personally, this line of research makes me all tingly. Anyone can create a human child, it's so easy it happens by accident as often as not, but an entirely new intelligence! That's something to look forward to! The only question now is whether the bioengineers or the computer engineers will get there first.
Dolphins don't have thumbs.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I look forward to serving our mouse overlords, and want to let them know that I would be excellent at supervising the cheese factories.
... given the record of "scientists" and their truly vile and obscene pursuits throughout the ages ...
Please be specific. Names, dates, places. With an explanation of what makes these incidents vile and obscene. Also please include a short, well-written essay on why you are willing to use the products of such a vile, obscene pursuit in your daily life rather than living in the woods and living on roots and berries.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Frankly, I don't think this is funny in the least.
The purposeful attempt to induce human-like intelligence in a lower species strikes me as one of the more vile and obscene pursuits a man of "science" [whatever that is] could possibly undertake. And, given the record of "scientists" and their truly vile and obscene pursuits throughout the ages, that's saying something.
Frankly, it strikes me as an affront against God.
"Affront against God" is one of those meaningless, yet highly emotionally charged, statements that can apply to almost anything.
First: I presume by "God" you are referring to the Christian God. Not everyone is Christian. Chances are that you would be offended if a Hindu person tried to shut down our scientific pursuits by declaring them "an affront against Vishnu", or tried to stop you from eating beef owing to the cow's status as a sacred animal. Why should a non-Christian care whether or not the Christian God is affronted?
Second: How do you know that the Christian God would be affronted in the first place? The Bible, to the best of my knowledge, does not tell us (even indirectly) not to tinker with mouse genes in an attempt to make them smarter. Even if the Bible does contain passages that might be interpreted in this fashion, A) it's a matter of interpretation, and B) modern-day Christians already ignore huge passages of the Bible, so what's one more?
Third: What makes this "vile and obscene"? A statement like that requires some exposition.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
"If God wanted mice to be smart, He'd allow us mess with their DNA." - me
"What God wants, God gets. God help us all." - Roger Waters
Frankly.You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
I think it'd make life pretty interesting if humans had some competition once again. Maybe give species other than humans a fighting chance for controlling their own survival. I think certain corporations might think twice about razing that forest for development if they knew they'd be running into a pack of intelligent wolves. Of course, knowing humans they won't react well.
Well, I'm off to go campaign for a constitutional amendment giving all sentient beings the vote.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
It is just another sign of our society's moral decay.
It is time that those of us who care about morality speak out both loudly and often. We must speak truth to power.
This kind of experiment should be banned.
BTW: Great book. Covers what happened to his brain post autopsy. Full of neuro knowledge and witticisms.
Brain: Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Pinky: I think so, Brain, but where are we gonna get rubber pants in our size? ZORF!!
Karma: Bad (mostly due to all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes)
I hope that most people's brains would be smaller than chimpanzees!
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
opposable thumbs are pointless if there are no fingers.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
In the early days (and some today), people saw vaccines as tools of the devil because they were not natural or God-given. But vaccines have proven themselves as a strong tool against deadly diseases. And it's due to the doctors who persevered in the face of stronger religious ideals then today. This is another step in medicine, and the benefits that can result from it cannot be overlooked. But if most God-fearing Christians (I assume you're refering to the Christian God) would like to have work like this stopped, because it's an "affront against God". It's not an affront against God. It's science. It's research. It's tinkering with this, seeing the result, and wondering if it can be applied to that. It's trying to benefit that human race. The only thing that can interfere with that is people saying "You shouldn't do that because you might piss off the invisible man in the sky!" Sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone. But that argument has been used too many times to prevent legitimate research. It's being used now to prevent stem-cell research. And that's something that I and many other people are really looking towards, because of certain genetic risks that I and my family are exposed to right now. I'd like to know that, in the event that these risks become reality, someone has worked out all the problems and can treat me. Because as it stands now...if I am ever diagnosed with the same illness as my mother, I would suffer the same fate as her. And that's something I would NEVER want to put my kids through...
Don't fear what the invisible man in the sky *MIGHT* think. If he is up there, chances are you will probably misinterpret his meaning anyways. Just look at the "My God can beat up your God" BS happening in the world right now to see evidence of that. Instead...fear the things you know for sure exist in the world...
as in the rats of?
I Don't Work Here
Thank you, I needed a good laugh.
People on this website think learning and understanding about the world is a morally good thing. Some of us think it's the meaning of Life (not my life -- the existence of life at all).
Even some of us with that attitude are religious.
I guess you're from USA?
The rest of the industrialized world (and the US coasts) thinks of "flyower area" as large suburbs of Teheran.
Sorry for flaming when you made my day, but I want my /. trolling-free and I used my mod points recently... :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Why doesn't some of the more contraversial scientists (human-cloning, clone-of-clone cloners, Clone-Aid wackos) take some other mammals (dogs or chimpanzees) and re-create these dozen or so mutations?!
The implication are staggering. Now that people are buying glow-in-the-dark fish I would really think there would be a market for these mutants. I just hope they don't start with mice, rats, or squirrels.
Mice already control the world, do they REALLY need more brainpower?
A blog I run for the wealth
And we can't have that, now can we?
As a Christian who believes in the sanctity of human life while not necessarily the sanctity of mouse life (please understand, I'm not trolling here), this raises concerns for me.
Let me start off by saying that I feel that there is something spiritually unique that comes with our human mind in terms of persistent experience through a long term memory, inter-generational passing of memes through language, and a higher-order basis for desire and suffering.
Once we pass this experience, some may call it a curse or a blessing, (I prefer the latter), on to animals, we are entering a new role of responsibility as a Creator. I think this sort of science is as inevitable as the nuclear bomb, and don't get me wrong -- I'd rather see it in the hands first of (aproaching-)democractic states, but we have to tread cautiously in my opinion.
Consider, where will this take us? Slave animals to fight our wars, clean our toilets, and tickle our fancy? Or a "brotherhood" (sisterhood if you prefer) of species working towards a better world? Probably both, but most likely, in my opinion, the former. As silly as it was, Planet of the Apes did raise some important concerns, as have many other works of science fiction. (Cue Charleton Heston shouting "it's a madhouse!")
I'm not saying that splicing those genes into a mouse is going to produce "human-mice" that we need to hire lawyers for to defend themselves against medical treatment, (although lawyers once again seem poised to score big bucks), but at what threshold do we create something which deserves fundamental human rights? (Cue Picard and Data in that STNG episode.)
Science is moving so fast that our understanding of the larger ethical questions is struggling to keep up. I urge you as you feel excitement about developments like this to look inside your own moral compass, whatever faith or wisdom molded your clay, and look for answers and new questions.
May the Creator guide our hands wisely, and may we please his aesthetic sense.
eat monkey brains (and its supposed to be a luxurious meal whome few can afford).
I see a new investment...:)
The lunatic is in my head
Only a Scandanavian scientist would come up with the theory that melancholy gloom and existential despair are what makes humans great.
I found it interesting that the moral implications of making smarter animals was just completely disregarded. And in reality, I wouldn't let it stop me as a researcher either. But, c'mon, I really was expecting more comments along the lines of Planet of the Apes and the Secret of Nihm.
I mean, isn't anyone else worried that smart rats will eventually escape, steal electicity, and have to move a cinder block mouse home to the lee of the stone...
That is a real intriguing idea, but rats and monkeys seem more than willing to tweak their dopamine systems given the chance in laboratory experiments.
Maybe the whole swim, eat and play thing? The "aquatic ape" theory of human evolution makes a lot of sense, and the one thing humans are supremely well adapted for is shoreline life.
Look at the evidence - humans are relatively hairless, have voluntary breath control, a slender, streamlined figure is highly prized, they easily learn to swim at quite a decent speed, have hands capable of extracting food from all sorts of wierd shellfish, and _need_ large amounts of fatty acids such as those found in said shellfish to build their large brains, which, like dolphins, have strong 3d+t processing ability necessary for underwater hunting (though dolphins are obviously better at open water). And humans try to migrate to shoreline destinations to mate!
Once you think about it, the whole "savannah" thing makes less and less sense.
What if we give ourselves hooves? Wings? Erase the capacity for language? At what point do "human rights" cease to apply?
If we splice the genes of a human into an animal, would we call the result a human?
What if we give it human-like limbs, a human heart, or a human mind? At what point do "human rights" begin to apply?
Interesting times are ahead of us my friends, and that can be considered a curse.
(By animal, I'm thinking non-human, and I realize that is a rather debatable definition.)
Word is, they've spliced human brain capacity into snakes, 800-pound gorillas, and dinosaurs.
I think a better experiment would be to do the gene changes on a chimp.
I'm surprised noone's made any comments how this resembles the background of David Brin's "Uplift" saga... that humankind cracks the secret of intelligence through genetics, and passes the gift on to his fellow species.
What gets me is, once we realize that we *can* make our fellow creatures intelligent (or should I say, self-aware), then what? It is ethically immoral (to me) to then kill them, yet it is unfair to the self-aware critter to say "we were only doing this to see if we could, you're the last, sorry".
Oh well, I gotta get back to work.
Mod parent up please; excellent response :)
Why don't these scientists figure out how to get humans to use the brain we've already got. What do we use? 10% of it?
Well we have already created new species of life form - albeit at the bacterial level.
The classic example is the feeding of antibiotics to a petridish full of bacteria. Not all are killed - the ones that survived are used to breed more an repeat until the bacteria (after enough generations have passed) become dependant on the antibiotic.
So, from a theological POV (and yes this does go back to the mouse), if we've already created new life forms in the lab, what does that mean? If it is evolution in action - thats the simplest explaination. If its not and god meant for the new bacteria to be created under the appearance of evolution then He controls the amount of antibodies being fed to the sample (=> no free will on the part of the scientist) and how the samples DNA mutates on each iteration.
So if god does control the creation of life forms he's really using human scientists to give mice a step up, so there is nothing heinous going on as its god will these mice be given intelligence. If he isn't (or can't through non-existance) then the ethical implications need to be taken on board as He's already let us get away with making a new life form (however unsophisticated that little bacterium may be).
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
brain size is often completely separate from intelligence. look at the whale brain. its ridiculously huge, yet most of its brain is dedicated to body function and control. in fact, it is the encephalization quotient that is most important in determining the "smarts" of a species. this is a ratio between the amount of cortex dedicated to non-body function and body function. humans score much higher than all other species in this ratio, which means more of our cortex is dedicated to "thinking" rather than "breathing."
while dolphins have a plethora of brain folds, that too is not a good indication of intelligence. humans have fewer folds than dolphin brains. dolphins are a curious bunch, but its not really the size of their brain that matters, but how its appropriated.
I was going for a funny mod...but whatever.
The same thing I do every night. Plan to take over the world!
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky...
Try to take over the world!
NARF!
That's what popped into my mind. You get a
huge head, with itty-bitty useless legs
wiggling about. Also, the itty-bity tail,
mouth, eyes, nose, and dick.
Wrong Link: stem cells out of those
Hmmm.... what will catch the cats?
Forget Planet of the Apes, here comes Planet of the mice!
- Posted via Danger HipTop2 / T-Mobile Sidek!ck II -
I'm guessing that you're not really trying to troll, but be aware that "Jap" is considered a derogatory phrase... just spell out "Japanese," it's much less insulting.
--- Bwah?
I'll try not to remember that the next time you call us up to save your ass from the Nazis, the Communists, the terrorists, or whoever else you let take over your continent this time.
Normal mouse: "So what are we doing tomorrow night, Brain?"
Genetically engineered mouse: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky! Try to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!"
You are you aware of that what is an affront to your invisible pink unicorn has changed dramatically every few decades? Try "Why I'm not a christian" by Bertrand Russel. Read the chapter about why Thomas Paine became loathed. Then read his anger at the anglican church of his time (30's, I think) -- and realize that the dogma today has changed as much from then to now -- as from Paine's time to the 30's!
Arguably the origin of the modern democracy were USA, Britain and France. Pity that large parts are still a few hundred years behind.
As I wrote, your own coastal areas have left the middle ages, too... better not forget them, either.
Besides, this has nothing to do with anything.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Is is me or does it seem like we're breeding these genes back out of the gene pool at an alarming rate?
Oh well, I'm sure our new super-intelligent mouse overlords will take good care of us.
I understand when people spell a rarely used word incorrectly. (electricity.) That's fine. What I don't understand is when you spell it "Nimh" in the title and "Nihm" in the text. Is posting that quickly so important that doing a bit of proofreading is impossible?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Willard, Nimh, Algernon - Enough Said
We can not "give ourselves hooves" with gene-therapy ! That's a childish-hollywoodish misunderstanding. With genetherapy we can alter our children ! (if wanted ?)
To change adult hands into wings (or other stupid idea) would require the same gene change in ALL THE CELLS of upper limbs !
Adult genetherapy may succeed when its concentrating eg. one organ, adding other kind of cells and changing a small proportion working of the organ.
So does this mean we are all mutants? Like the mutant fish here
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
So does this mean we are all mutants? Like the mutant fish here
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
"You're right that over time skulls (and womens pelvises) would need to change to reflect larger brains..."
Well, though i'm sure you mean to say that the female pelvis' bottom diameter is related to the size of an infants skull, it still reads as though the keep their brains at their hips.
- Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?
BTW, humans are not good swimmers - we are *dead* slow. Dogs and monkeys have voluntary breath control. While we are not hairless, there are land dwelling mammals that are, including some pigs, naked mole rats, elephants, and rhinos. And our skin is unlike water dwelling mammals - poorly adapted for a aquatic lifestyle.
-MDL
Happy meals fund terrorism
So scientists are on their way to creating Pinky and The Brain.
Prepare yourselves to be ruled by super inteligent mice you fools.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
...wasn't named Algernon, was it?
No doubt, size isn't everything, but do you have any specific examples of that? On the contrary, all human little people that I've seen have had disproportionately large heads almost as large as that of a normal height person. Their chin and face may be on the small side, but not their skull. Look at a picture of verne troyer next to someone else kneeling down.
Can't wait till I start seeing this in my inbox: Enlarge your brain! 100% natural. Safe and effective!
no one would allow those experiments on dogs, because dogs are "cute", to paraphrase Dennis Leary ripping off Bill Hicks.
And doing those experiments on monkeys would make people afraid of Planet of the Apes becoming a reality.
You're talking dwarfism, I'm talking true midgets, who are perfectly proportioned.
. di r/work.dir/highlights/subject/bg0001aa.html
Charles Sherwood Stratton (General Tom Thumb) and his wife Lavinia Warren come to mind.
Stratton was 25 inches tall and perfectly proportioned. He could sing, dance and mime.
Lavinia Warren was 32 inches tall and perfectly proportioned. She worked as a shool teacher before being hired by Barnum and marrying Stratton.
Here's a wedding photo
http://www.npr.org/programs/disability/ba_shows
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Amy the witch was a rat, which jumped yet another shark.
Dude, you just described an episode of The Lone Gunmen, called Planet Of The Frohikes (or: A Short History Of My Demeaning Captivity).
You know? The one with the chimp who knows how to operate a laptop running Linux?
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
I imagine that dolphin (and whale and other cetacean) brains devote a rather large amount of processing power to signal processing, converting sonar returns to information equivalent to vision in humans. That sonar information is essentially serialized as it comes in (well, two serial channels), whereas visual information comes in in parallel. The former would take more processing power (or jellyware devoted to the task).
Yes, bats process sonar info too, but they have two advantages over cetaceans: the sound is travelling in air, at about 1/5 the speed it travels in water; and bats can have rather elaborately shaped external ears (which are somewhat moveable) that can acoustically filter and process the sound before it gets to the eardrum. (Human ears do some of this too, on a reduced level) An animal that lives in the water can't afford the drag of external ears (and to have the same acoustic processing effect, they'd have to be 5 times bigger to make up for the speed of sound difference).
-- Alastair
We attempting to be "good stewards" by equipping them with a potentially advantageous mental ability compared to their lesser siblings/cousins. I say potentially, because they might take to sitting around eating pizza, drinking soft drinks, and playing video games.
-Wade
"If God had meant for men to fly, he would have given us ball-jointed wrists." - unknown
(Hint: Watch a pilot bragging about a flight maneuver sometime.)
No, no.
Atheism's base is to not believe things to be true -- when there are no reason to believe them true.
You claim, without any proof outside your brain, that there exists a Xian god. The existence of a Xian ghod has as much support as an invisible pink unicorn standing behind you right now. It is one of an infinite number of possible theories about the universe without more support than voices inside someone's head -- like "Son of Sam" had.
You think there is more support for your (brand of) Xianity than Son of Sam's dog?
Consider all the different contradicting religions/cults in the world.
Let us assume there is a god.
Why would that god follow your specific cult? Why not "Son of Sam"'s or any of thousands of other theories about how a god would be?
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of different cults on the planet with contradicting messages. Just a very small minority of them can be true.
All followers of the cults claim divine inspiration through self suggestion (prayer, mediation) -- and hear different messages from their god!
That you are certain of your Xian god, despite the Hindus, the Bhuddists, the what you have, is hysterically funny!
Assume that all the other religions are inspired by some devil or demon? The problem here is that there are no differences in psychology between religions. (People die for their faith, etc, disregarding which religion they have.) So that devil has to be able to inspire religious feelings as strong as the god. That goes against all religions I know of.
The god could be a total liar and inspire different messages in different believers for fun. Also goes against all religions I know of (-: except if it's Loke having fun? Cool if that guy got his own cult, a 1000 years afterwards! :-)
(My guess, of course, is that religion probably is a tendency built in (as appreciation of music), that gets expressed in different ways.)
The existence of a god following one of the present religions is self contradicting.
Q E D
I have presented the argument above to numerous cultists and never gotten any answer except insults... You guys really don't want to think about it, do you?
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
I for one welcome our new large-brained mice overlords.
You answer with dogma internal to your faith. (-: Even claims the bible to be perfect!? :-) I asked for an answer, not a politican's answer-another-question. If there should be a god, why would he be Xian? (When discussing Bertrand Russel and faith/reason in protestantism -- read his chapter on Roussau in his big book on philosophy... you're wrong.)
(-: My fault -- I assumed that on slashdot even a believer would be able to reason. :-)
If the fault was that you couldn't understand my bad presentation of the argument, I'm willing to rewrite it. (But then you would have asked.)
If you missed the point: The religious people are making a very extreme statement (a powerful supernatural being exists, he is a member of my cult). To not be laughed at -- considering the number of cults with contradicting statements -- you need very good support. Internal dogma isn't.
Yes, I've read up on religious arguments. They stink and never answer simple arguments like this. (I never read C S Lewis after finding this. Well, except for his self biography on when he became religious. Laughed my ass off.)
An irrelevant word definition. See 101-103 here. This was your main problem with atheism? (-: You are 99.99% as much atheist as me, it's just that you are atheist for a god less... :-)
Yes, yes -- I know about Xian dogma -- trinity ("3 for the price of 1"), etc. Internal dogma point for one of multiple Jewish heresies are neither interesting or a serious argument that it happens to be the only true religion.
Will just comment on this:
I friggin' well didn't! (For moral arguments I content myself with comparing a god who would torture people for ever with Hitler and note that arguably Hitler is less evil.)Who am I fooling, there is no way you'll answer my argument seriously -- you'll just spout bible references.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
humans are good swimmers in _shallow_ water, actually, a human fares much better in 3 feet of water with rocks and mangroves than a dolphin or shark. I do believe the OP said SHORELINE life. We ARE well-adapted for shoreline life. Your linked site successfully debunks a claim the OP did not make. I note in passing that there is much recent evidence that elephants, in fact, spent a fair bit of time in water, too.
But then the human is no longer swimming, but leaping to safety.
I do believe the OP said SHORELINE life. We ARE well-adapted for shoreline life. Your linked site successfully debunks a claim the OP did not make.
They were claiming that they believed the AAT, which the site I linked to debunks. To get the effects that the AAT claims, shoreline life would have to include substantial body immersion, and not just shallow water wading.
-MDL
Happy meals fund terrorism
My argument was, in short:
1. People have faith in hundreds, if not thousands, of contradictory religions -- only a few of them can be true.
2. There is no way to sort religion on psychology of their believers, since people of all religions literally die for their faith. Etc.
3. All religions I know of claim that they are inspired by a supernatural being -- and all other religions are just lies. (and/or inspired by a devil of some kind).
4. Point 2 and 3 are contradictory since, according to all religions I know, lies (or a devil) can't inspire the true religious feelings.
Not on 3: All religions I know of don't admit the possibility that god lies in his divine inspiration to some people.
Note on 1: Followers of all religions typically claim to have answered an argument and bows out of a discussion when they can't answer this argument...
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Note on 2: Followers of all religions typically refuses to answer this exact short argument. Just like you. They typically use an excuse like "You haven't answered my argument I presented afterwards", or something. (Just as an example of the similarity of psychology.)
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My point is that the psychology of faith is the same in all religions, as far as I'm aware.
In other words:
If there is a god who is a member of any religions (I know of), there shouldn't be a lot of other religions with exactly the same psychology of faith. Because that goes against the religion. (See my two formulations of writing this argument for details.)
You have NOT answered my argument. (Except with descriptions of dogma internal to your religion, which is not a relevant answer.)
My thesis, if I have one, is that:
Lack of intellectual integrity is the common denominator of all idealists.
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My argument is based on the similarity of the psychology of believers -- be it marxism, xianity, islam, etc. The only difference that the argument need is that not more than one (maximum a few) of a large number can be true. I.e., the religions are contradictory.
The interesting thing for the argument is not what religious people believe but that they believe.
Sigh. If you want, I can try to write it again for a fourth(?) time?
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I'm done. No more replies from me in this thread.
As I already wrote:
Read Bertrand Russel's history of western philosophy. Chapter on Roussau. This position of reason not being relevant is a later revision, after realizing that religion could be criticized. Invented as late as Roussau.
Let me express hope that yielding to an "ad hoc hypothesis" (look it up) as you did here, is the top of your intellectual achievements...
(Note that Xianity isn't making lots of converts since the "easy" nature religions et al. Without indoctrinating children while young and letting them grow up in a non-contradicting environment, they don't become religious. I live in a post-protestant society.)
Besides, this bears on my personal moral. Not being able/allowed to reason -- and just accepting truths without questioning. That goes against all dignity.
The scary part of the US fundamental revival is the tendency for religious people there to stay out of hard science. Seems a bit like the social changes in Rome, which changed the social class they recruited soldiers from...
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Should be:
Let me express hope that yielding to an "ad hoc hypothesis" (look it up) as you did here, is not the top of your intellectual achievements...
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Even if you argument hadn't been an invalid ad hoc thesis (see other comment), your position on this shocks me.
What you're claiming, really, is that no matter if your opinion is shown to be impossible and self contradictory, you will not change your position. Those are arguments based on reason.
I try not to be judging and condemning about people as long as they don't hurt others, since they might have had much harder lifes than I have had.
But that people really needs their beliefs so much that they sell out their intellectual integrity so badly, makes me ashamed to be human. This is my honest opinion and why I bother to argue with believers.
(No, it's not an argument that your religion is true that you feel this emotional need. Same problem here -- the same emotional need is ingrained in people of other cults.)
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"Those are arguments based on reason" can be removed. Sigh. Cut and paste, cut and paste.
I realized who your heroes are!
You ignore all arguments based on reason and facts -- and argue that you only accept faith.
Remember Galileo?
The officials from the church refused to look through his telescope to see if the moons of Jupiter really went round the planet.
Those guys must be your heroes! They used exactly the same arguments as you do!
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Just as long as they don't splice them into sharks. That movie was creepy.
What are you talking about? They have huge heads for their size. Their bodies are perfectly proportioned. Their upper skulls are disproportionately large. If they were 5 or 6 feet they'd be unable to wear even XXXL hats.
Brain size has very little to do with intelligence... It comes down to the number of wrinkles in the grey matter as an indicator of cognitive ability.
Hence, I have a bird with a brain barely bigger than a fingernail that has a vocabulary (about 400 words, African Grey Parrot) larger than many 5 or even 6 year old children. He even knows how to form his own coherent sentences to ask for what he wants. His brain has more folds and wrinkles than a handful of raisins. Diver, my now deceased Harris' Hawk (W. Nile virus, $#@!!), while not capable of speech, upon necropsy displayed this same high density of grey matter, and I swear would have talked just as well as a grey parrot, had he the vocal development. His specialty was flying and hunting though, and he was the best (We miss you Diver).
On the other hand (I have different fingers), my dog Sugar has a brain the size of, an apricot, I should say, and is about as bright as a lead lightbulb. Her brain is also prolly as smooth as a chicken egg (or so we joke). Reptiles display this in their very small and comparatively under-developed brains.
Granted, there are advantages to incresed volume. Two brains with an equal number of folds but of differing sizes will be unbalanced by comparison, but I doubt we've genetically maxed ourselves in that department at this point.
IANANeurologist either, but I did take a lot of biology way back when (my favorite class). Pardon any inaccuracies, but I've essentially communicated the point, I think.
Besides, a softer skull at birth that gets larger with age and development is not beyond reason. My head is considerably bigger now than it was when I was born. There is no reason to suppose that one's skull could not grow to be much larger than present through puberty or beyond.
No offense, but I am baffled that somebody modded your post insightful. The only, and I do mean only reason humans do not have astronomically large craniums is because at no point in our evolution have we ever had need of one. Realize we've not existed as Homo Sapiens for that long, comparatively speaking, and have a long way to go yet. If we need huge skulls, we will get them eventually. The size of your hips and birth canal has nothing to do with anything except a bad mixing of genes if the unborn child's head is too big for the mother to give natual birth. Unfortuante, but irrelevant in the grand scheme of evolution... Also hence our continuing evolution in that we used our well developed brains and intellect and came up with the C-Section; Though I must admit I think that in some cases medical science is seriously undermining human evolution for the worst.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage