Posted on 06/23/2008 3:05:46 PM PDT by betty boop
Thank you so very much for your encouragements, dearest sister in Christ!
Indeed, man's proclivity for transforming the evolutionary space in which he evolves sets him apart. Although many animals are known to chose their mates and thus affect "certain features" of their offspring by "intelligent cause" - man imagines things, intends things, willfully does things which effects the entire biosphere.
How long before another Wimmer invents an "information sequence" and then brings a new virus into the biosphere for good or ill?
Thank you so very much for all of your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
Our intelligence in no way has made us immune to selective pressure. Indeed intelligence is something that people mate assortivly for along with a host of other traits including (interestingly enough) mid digital hair and incisor length. Strangely enough I have never said “look at the incisor's on that babe!”. ;)
“If there were no resonance in the three-helium reaction at the precise thermal energy of a star’s core, there would be no life at all.” Watch out, Lady Bird, Al Gore will charge you ‘carbon’ credits on that ...
True.... dimensions, realms, multi realities are quite beyond a humans speculation.. as a human.. Any speculation or view of reality is just that.. a view.. an observation.. John ch 10 seems to indicate humans have particular view(s) or realities, not always homogeneous except within certain intellectual and/or spiritual comfort zones.. called sheep pens.. And that is where they are SUPPOSED to be.. Self sorting realities.. Is one better than another?.. Probably not..
What a lovely plan God has, where humans can self sort themselves into sheep pens.. inditing themselves on one hand and satisfying themselves on the other.. What energy IS can probably be a lot of things.. as well as matter.. Water can possibly be a metaphor or object lesson for humans to understand energy/matter.. Water is indeed some strange stuff.. gaseous, solid or liquid or even oxygen merged with helium.. and ice floats.. so lakes/oceans don't freeze over.. Human bodies are mostly water operating much as the planet itself does.. Pure wonder is this earthly eco-system.. An accident?.. chance?.. it takes arrogance to say yes.. The human body is wondrous but the very planets mechanics are even more wondrous.. possibly, probably, even unique in the universe..
The leap to a spiritual dimension is not hard to make..
No animal ever existed that worshipped anything.. If man were an animal then they finally evolved to invent God(s).. then that scared them, then some of them un-invented "him".. and became mammals again..
Wow, Pipe, I didn’t take you to be such a mystik. You’d like my quiet porch at three AM on a summer’s evening.
"Consider also that the universe itself seems to be “informed,” in the sense of displaying evidence of some remarkable “fine-tuning” that guides its evolution. Physical chemistry itself rests on, is informed by, deeper principles: the physical laws, which in turn depend on certain ubiquitous universal constants — the speed of light; the value of pi; Plank’s constant; Plank time; the resonance precision required for the existence of carbon (a necessary element for life); the explosive power of the Big Bang precisely matched to the power of gravity (its density precisely matched with the critical density of the universe); the delicate balance in the strong nuclear force; the precise balancing of gravitational force and electromagnetic force; the meticulous balance between the number of electrons and protons; the precision in electromagnetic force and the ratio of proton mass to electron mass and neutron mass to proton mass; the Big Bang’s defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and gravity’s cumulative effect; etc., for examples." [excerpt, bold emphasis mine]
Errrr... Did you mean, "hydrogen"?
I think he is right, the oxygen/helium mix is being used for deep sea diving. It’s called HeliOx. It is used a lot by University of Miami School of Marine Science located on Biscayne Bay (which can be visited by the public).
Yes.. but could've been a Freudian slip?... LoL..
Water THATS FLOATS...
I didn't say that human beings were "immune" to selective pressure. What I said is they are (evidently) capable of modifying the evolutionary space in which selection occurs (for good or ill). The higher social animals have not been observed to do this.
Just a question, allmendream. When you say animals have "culture," would you say they have "culture" in the sense in which human beings have "culture?"
Or has "culture" become some sort of "leveling" term, by which one might say: "Well both man and animals have culture; and thus there's no substantive difference between man and animals"?
There is very substantive differences between Humans and other animals, the most critical being that we were given a soul by God. But Biology isn't something that separates us from other animals, the differences in our Biology is one of degree not one of kind. We are, after all, about 94% the same as a chimp over our entire genome and 98% the same as a chimp in our genetic DNA.
But it seems the differences in our cultural aptitudes are differences of kind, not of degree.
Are you suggesting that if chimps could share, not just 94 percent of "our" genome, or 98 percent of our genetic DNA, but 100% of both, then chimps and humans would be culturally as well as biologically indistinguishable from each other?
IOW, do you believe "culture" is a function of DNA?
How could culture be the function of DNA? Culture is the language, customs, practices, religion, etc that are taught to someone. Two identical twins raised in separate environments would have different cultures despite having exactly the same DNA.
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