evangelicals trying to hide hominid fossils

Ahnimus

Mookie Baylock wrote:

I'm definatly no expert in the mind, but I don't think that people 2000 years ago's minds were much different that ours. They did some pretty incredible stuff 2000 years ago and beyond. If you ask me, I'd say our minds were pretty much set at the current level between 30 to 50000 years ago when there was a huge increase in human material culture. By that I mean, if you travelled back 30000 years, abducted an infant and raised it as your own, you would see no difference in its development from a modern person.

That's what I'm thinking too, and since you mentioned nutrition I've made a correlate with brain activity. Because much of the synapse is dependent on potassium, sodium and other nutrients. Such as the NA+/K+-pump enzyme.

And of course we know that malnutrition can lead to problems with our brains.

Thanks

NMyTree

Ahnimus wrote:

Actually your first post was on page 4 and you tried to use some argument where an individual could make two opposing choices at the exact same place in space and time. An impossible and irrelevant hypothesis, because it can never happen. Read the thread again.

Actually you misinterpreted my example and I have already corrected you on your misinterpretation. But it's okay if you want to continue on pretending that your inaccurate interpretation, is the correct one. Actually, it's rather funny.

Ahnimus

NMyTree wrote:

Actually you misinterpreted my example and I have already corrected you on your misinterpretation. But it's okay if you want to continue on pretending that your inaccurate interpretation, is the correct one. Actually, it's rather funny.

NMyTree wrote:

A woman walking over a semi-frozen lake falls through a weak and brittle section of the surface. Her hands clutch tightly to thick chunks of ice, as she screams for help.

A man casually walking his dog along the shoreline of the lake, hears the screams and responds to her cries for help. He risks his own life to save the woman from certain death.

Is this not a response through a complex dynamical system of Free Will?


Alternate Version:

Same woman, same lake, same conditions and same deadly mishap. The woman clings for her life as she screams for help.

Same man on the shoreline walking his dog. But he can not bring himself to risk his own life, in an attempt to save the life of the woman. The woman dies

His refusal to risk his life does not make him a coward, but merely a victim of a complex dynamical system?

First of all, the probability of that happening twice is one in a googolplex (estimate 10^10^100) the probability of the person making a different choice the second time is exponentially greater. I don't see the relevance of the statement anyway. Perhaps you can explain it better.

Ahnimus

NMyTree wrote:

Is this not a response through a complex dynamical system of Free Will?

Free-will by definition is not a CDS.

"freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention"

Will is a complex dynamical system, but free-will is not.

Maybe that was the root of the misunderstanding. We really should define the terms we use, I guess.

NMyTree

Ahnimus wrote:

First of all, the probability of that happening twice is one in a googolplex (estimate 10^10^100) the probability of the person making a different choice the second time is exponentially greater. I don't see the relevance of the statement anyway. Perhaps you can explain it better.

It was never meant as as it happening twice. It was meant as two different alternatives, to the same situation/crisis, with two different outcomes; which you claim would both be covered by your theory as being predetermined, regardless of which choice is made.

Ahnimus

NMyTree wrote:

It was never meant as as it happening twice. It was meant as two different alternatives, to the same situation/crisis, with two different outcomes; which you claim would both be covered by your theory as being predetermined, regardless of which choice is made.

So, you are proposing two different outcomes from two different choices at the exact same place in space and time. That's a paradox my friend. It's an irrelevant question, because a person can not make two choices or go back and change their choice. They make one choice which is determined by prior experience, as is the difference between free-will and choice.

angelica

Ahnimus wrote:

You were digging to make your experience fact.

You don't realize experience IS fact?

Again, because you are not getting what is right before your eyes is not about me "digging" and making things up.

Ahnimus

angelica wrote:

You don't realize experience IS fact?

Again, because you are not getting what is right before your eyes is not about me "digging" and making things up.

One individual's experience is not fact!

Your theory that you can project thoughts or whatever has no proof outside of your experience. The brain emits EM fields blocked by the cranium, any of the Kaon-Pion theories are immediately debunked when you realize the half-life of the particles is 0.0000000124 seconds.

Shit, if experience is fact then we live in a constant paradox. God exists, but so do Aliens, Spirits and Ghosts, Psionic Matter, the Multiverse, Unicorns, etc.. etc..

What of a person that faints, their experience is of "non-existence" does that mean they don't exist factually? Do I stop existing every night when I fall a sleep?

Mookie Baylock

Ahnimus wrote:

One individual's experience is not fact!

Agreed, experience is interpretation

Scubascott

Ahnimus wrote:

What of a person that faints, their experience is of "non-existence" does that mean they don't exist factually? Do I stop existing every night when I fall a sleep?

Heh. Good one.

angelica

Ahnimus wrote:

One individual's experience is not fact!

If I stand up right now, it is a fact that I have stood up. If I eat a sandwich, it is a fact that I have eaten a sandwhich--whether it's proven or not. It sounds like you can understand a science experiment but that you cannot grasp a simple practical, empirical truth. It may not be scientifically proven, and yet it's fact. If you cannot prove what you are doing right now, does that mean your experience is not a fact?

Shit, if experience is fact then we live in a constant paradox. God exists, but so do Aliens, Spirits and Ghosts, Psionic Matter, the Multiverse, Unicorns, etc.. etc..

I am not talking about my thoughts and feelings. I am talking about my observable behaviours. I used to have numerous highly observable mental illness behaviours. I no longer have them. That is 100% fact. The more you say it isn't, the more you show you do not understand basic empirics.

angelica

Mookie Baylock wrote:

Agreed, experience is interpretation

Yikes.

So if you listen to your favourite Pearl Jam song, are you saying that is up for interpretation? Are you saying if you listen to your favourite Pearl Jam song that it is not a fact that you did so? If you are saying this, I'm a little bit surprised to hear it, quite frankly.

Ahnimus

angelica wrote:

If I stand up right now, it is a fact that I have stood up. If I eat a sandwich, it is a fact that I have eaten a sandwhich--whether it's proven or not. It sounds like you can understand a science experiment but that you cannot grasp a simple practical, empirical truth. It may not be scientifically proven, and yet it's fact. If you cannot prove what you are doing right now, does that mean your experience is not a fact?


I am not talking about my thoughts and feelings. I am talking about my observable behaviours. I used to have numerous highly observable mental illness behaviours. I no longer have them. That is 100% fact. The more you say it isn't, the more you show you do not understand basic empirics.

There is a very very simple distinction between empirical and non-empirical experience. The fact that I type this message is empirically proven by everyone that reads it.

The belief that you traverse the multiverse and project your thoughts is not experientially empirical.

It's kind of funny, because stage hypnosis is viewed as real by the participants. But the person inducing stage hypnosis will tell you that he isn't doing anything, he's just implanting ideas and people feel inclined to carry it out because they are on stage. The feeling that they are acting because they are genuinely hypnotized is just their feeling, it's not real.

angelica

Ahnimus wrote:

There is a very very simple distinction between empirical and non-empirical experience. The fact that I type this message is empirically proven by everyone that reads it.

The belief that you traverse the multiverse and project your thoughts is not experientially empirical.

It's kind of funny, because stage hypnosis is viewed as real by the participants. But the person inducing stage hypnosis will tell you that he isn't doing anything, he's just implanting ideas and people feel inclined to carry it out because they are on stage. The feeling that they are acting because they are genuinely hypnotized is just their feeling, it's not real.

I'll take you glossing over these points as that they stand on their own:

angelica wrote:

"If I stand up right now, it is a fact that I have stood up. If I eat a sandwich, it is a fact that I have eaten a sandwhich--whether it's proven or not. It sounds like you can understand a science experiment but that you cannot grasp a simple practical, empirical truth. It may not be scientifically proven, and yet it's fact. If you cannot prove what you are doing right now, does that mean your experience is not a fact?

I am not talking about my thoughts and feelings. I am talking about my observable behaviours. I used to have numerous highly observable mental illness behaviours. I no longer have them. That is 100% fact. The more you say it isn't, the more you show you do not understand basic empirics."

To me the saying: "One individual's experience is not fact!" is self-evidently incorrect. If I smile right now, it is an experience and a fact. Court accepts experiences as facts all the time, depending on simple measures of interpretive truth-assessment.

Conclusion: Experience is fact. I don't have to "dig" to have the self-evident be true.

Ahnimus

angelica wrote:

I'll take you glossing over these points as that they stand on their own:



To me the saying: "One individual's experience is not fact!" is self-evidently incorrect. If I smile right now, it is an experience and a fact. Court accepts experiences as facts all the time, depending on simple measures of interpretive truth-assessment.

Conclusion: Experience is fact. I don't have to "dig" to have the self-evident be true.

Oh gee.

Whitness testimony is only 40% accurate, people glorify and magnify their experiences. This is very well-known by the courts as they work closely with the scientific community. The only time whitness testimony is taken as fact is by a jury. However, whitness testimony alone isn't sufficient normally for a conviction. As Paul Zak (Neurobiologist) says "you really need like 5 or 6 witnesses making the same statement."

It's implied that to prove a witness account as 100% factual, there needs to be direct correlations between several witness testimonies. Those people must testify in a controlled environment, they cannot be put in a position to share stories.

enharmonic

Scubascott wrote:

Really? Can you provide references? I'd love to read them. I doubt very much that you'd be able to observe any significant anatomical changes between us and people 2000 years ago. We may be taller, but I'd imagine its just because we eat better than they did. PS. hairstyles don't count as significant changes.

But yes. As far as I can tell. Evangelism = lunacy.

Height doesn't have a lot to do with nutrition, though good nutrition during formative years does support natural growth.

Here's some links, though like I said...2000 years is a blip in evolutionary terms.

http://wi.mit.edu/news/archives/2000/dp_0809.html

http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/evolution/HumanEvolution.shtml

A recent study (Ruiz-Pesini et al. 2004) of mtDNA has demonstrated that gene frequencies have changed over the last 50,000 years i.e. human populations have still been subject to evolution.

Some mutations in mtDNA may make aerobic respiration less efficient, so that the mitochondria generate more heat and less ATP. These mutations will be selected for if they are beneficial to the person carrying them - and they would certainly be advantageous for humans living in the cold climates that prevailed during the Ice Age.

Examination of the mtDNA from over 1,000 people has found that such a mutation is present in populations of Northern Europeans, East Asians, and Amerindians. Of those in the sample that live in Arctic regions, 75% had the mutation, which was also found in the 14% of the sample living in temperate zones. Some of the ancestors of these groups would have lived in Siberia, and all would have experienced the Ice Age's glacial conditions. However, the mutation is not found at all in people of African ancestry.

The study concludes that the correlation between habitat and presence of the beneficial mutation is evidence of positive selection for the changed gene sequence. That is, the mutation was selected for because those people who had them were able to generate more body heat in an extremely cold climate.

Ahnimus

enharmonic wrote:

Height doesn't have a lot to do with nutrition, though good nutrition during formative years does support natural growth.

Nutrition during prenatal development is very important.

Excess amounts of Vitamin-C can cause low birth-weight babies. Many, many teratogens exist to cause this same effect.

searchlightsoul

Evolution is simply a change in gene frequencies across generations which, over the course of evolutionary time scales such small incremental changes can accumulate to result in profound changes. Simply because you dont want to believe it doesn't change the fact that it does happen.

searchlightsoul

angelica wrote:

If I stand up right now, it is a fact that I have stood up. If I eat a sandwich, it is a fact that I have eaten a sandwhich--whether it's proven or not. It sounds like you can understand a science experiment but that you cannot grasp a simple practical, empirical truth. It may not be scientifically proven, and yet it's fact. If you cannot prove what you are doing right now, does that mean your experience is not a fact?

So whats the problem with evolution? It as as much as fact as earth is round and has been demostrated emperically by thousands of experiments and corroberated by many disciplines including palaeontology.

Ahnimus

searchlightsoul wrote:

So whats the problem with evolution? It as as much as fact as earth is round and has been demostrated emperically by thousands of experiments and corroberated by many disciplines including palaeontology.

Angelica doesn't have a problem with evolution. She has a problem with me