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Re: Real medicine of which we know that it works but not how Not to escalate this futile argument further, but knowing something about music, the distinction you are putting forth is frankly asinine. Stuff that starts and stops with music in it is called a "song", whether it involves singing...

Re: Real medicine of which we know that it works but not how It might be a beat poem, as I have no idea what constitutes a beat poem other than taking Tim Minchin's word for it, but it's definitely a song.

Have you already watched this, Laurens? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T2umUoY00A It's a lecture by Andy Thomson, where he talks about origin of belief in gods from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.

Re: Real medicine of which we know that it works but not how "You know what they call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? Medicine." - Tim Minchin in the song "Storm".

The "induction version of Kalam argument" is not especially interesting or convincing one. It simply makes the mistake of equivocating ordinary causality, which we witness ( just to be consistent here: Again, we don't actually perceive causality, just a damn thing happening after another), with...

For Human and Chimpanzee ERVs: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC17875/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1779541/ and for K-family specifically, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00705-006-0792-1 I'll be later adding sources for how we know retroviruses are...

The talk origins article I linked to as well seems a little outdated, just a heads-up. It claims that 1% of human genome consists of retroviral DNA, totaling to ~30 000 ERV's in the genome, but just about everywhere else the figures are 8-10% and about 100 000 ERV's. (Belshaw R, Pereira V...

I'm curious to know if you're aware of shared endogenous retroviruses between various animals and if you consider them confirming common descent at all. In case this is new to you, retroviruses are RNA viruses that code their RNA into DNA by enzyme reverse transcriptase and plant the DNA to the...

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." - Richard Feynman

Josephhasfun, I do agree with Flew's definition, though I'm quite sure it originates from David Hume's work "An enquiry concerning human understanding". In the same section of the book, Hume puts forth a principle for accepting miracles which I agree with; "No testimony is sufficient to...

moonshine conjures spirit to meditate this is western zen result of thousands years of human history breathe in and breathe out

All that can be conclusively proven is that around the time gospels were written, it wasn't uncommon for biographies to detail miraculous deeds performed by the subject. I have to say, though, considering miracles by definition are extremely rare occurrences that defy what we know is possible...

When I said "uniqueness doesn't get us anywhere" I meant the statement to be in the context of figuring out ethics. Sure we are unique in the way we have more highly developed empathy than other species, but we are also unique in our ability to nuke the planet into wasteland. A trait being...

It was quite common in antiquity for historians to write about miracles the person had performed. It seems like in those times historians did not have the mindset or means to investigate the claims, so they just wrote down what people believed. In "Life of Pythagoras", Pythagoras is written to...

I don't think uniqueness is getting us anywhere. There's many unique things about humans we tend to value good and bad, so uniqueness in itself cannot be the sole criteria.

I'm admittedly no expert in physics, but I have hard time understanding energy as being immaterial. Rather I feel like the term "energy" is an umbrella mathematical abstraction of concrete physical occurrences. In a bit the same way that a thermometer is not any single material thing, but can be...

We're also fearful and aggressive and so on. Why value this one trait over the others?

I've just got to try to underline the full impact of this statement. If this is strictly believed to be true, then there's no distinction between accidental generalization and a "law of nature". For example "All copper conducts electricity" is equal to "All the candy in my drawer are M&M's"...

There's a couple of potential problems adopting this system of morality, 1. Whose happiness should I try to maximize? Should I be concerned with only mine, or also that of other humans and/or other beings capable of misery and happiness? Why? 2. There's possibility of qualitative difference...

UNODC published murder rates per 100 000 capita: United States 4.8 Canada 1.6 Northern Europe 1.5 Southern Europe 1.4 Western Europe 1.0 Australia 1.0 Firearm-related death rates (homicides): United States 3.6 [OAS 2012] Canada 0.5 [UNODC 2011] France 0.22 [WHO 2012] United Kingdom...