Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Panic wrote:

As a believer in evolution, their situation bothers me as I belive that the strongest and smartest people will provide their childern with the best chances in life.

You've never seen idiocracy have you. Mildly entertaining. It'll be that night when you wake up screaming that will turn you into a "get off my lawn!" libertarian.

Well, yes and no. They did have one child through IVF.

Perhaps this was God's way of saying "Well, if you insist upon using your womb like an idiot even though it seems like doing so might kill you, or produce premature babies who may have struggles that you could have not inflicted upon them by focusing on your two, existing children instead of having more, we may as well put your simple-mindedness to good use by giving the child to another couple who doesn't have any."

Panic wrote:Implanting someone with the wrong embryo works against evolution as the baby will get raised by parents whos DNA is either stronger or weaker.

Hmm... I am not sure if this is flamebait, or you really do not understand what you said. Apparently you have a problem with "mismatching" DNA with parents or whatever you were implying. I am seriously perplexed by this statement though.

works against evolution as the baby will get raised by parents whos DNA is either stronger or weaker.

So... adoption is wrong as well? Throw those damn babies out, their parents are the only ones who can raise them. Right?

yeah,
Adoption is fine for purposes of meeting peoples emotional needs.
It's the same as getting a dog.

But from evolution's point of view it means that weak DNA that should have been dropped from the gene pool gets attention from a outside source promoting it's mixing with good DNA. ViseVersa strong DNA may be settled with a under achiveing family, meaning that it never reaches it's full potential.

Panic...

Panic wrote:If you want to debate it as a topic I'd be happy to.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't adopt.

No worries, I will forever immortalize this comment my friend.

yeah,
If you want to debate it as a topic I'd be happy to.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't adopt.

I'm saying that because-
the original parents arn't raising the child.
and the new parents are not raising their own child.

DNA isn't moving and mixing as nature intended.
This will either help the child or hider the child.

Panic...

Panic wrote:
DNA isn't moving and mixing as nature intended.
This will either help the child or hider the child.

You're missing a broad possibility. The lack of agreement with 'natural intention', whatever that means, could have no discernible affect at all.

We are not talking about baked beans here... so yes, the possibility that Panic is somehow right, has no bearing on the fact that he is pushing a pretty insignificant point to begin with.

Elessar wrote:I concur. Cherry-pickers like that piss me off.

There's usually more than one way to interpret any given event with respect to 'meaning', and its very hard to whittle down the number of acceptable choices without appealing to common sense, which is logically indefensible. Similarly, when discussing the uniformity of any moral standard, its important to note that there is no reason (beyond the aesthetic) that said standard has to be universally applicable.

yeah,

That's awesome! I'm getting a dog in a few months when I get my new house.

If a person can't conceive it's probably because of age or a accident or their genes are weak, I doubt it's because god hates them.
over millions of years this will mean that those who breed at a younger age and have less accidents will pass on their stronger/smarter genes. for the human race this is made of win...
Science Meddling with our genes will probably end bad for us.. IMO.
That's not to say that I believe someone who can't conceive shouldn't use IVF or adopt, as I think emotional needs of the here and now take priority. We can deal with the mutants later.


Panic

edit:
We are going off topic here, but also I think that irresponsible breeding of dogs has caused some breeds of dogs to have inherent health problems. I'm planning of getting a Red Setter.

I love the typical Red Setter's personality, but I've started to thnk 'do they have some form of canine asperges?'
And could this be due to inbreeding?

Panic wrote:Science Meddling with our genes will probably end bad for us.. IMO.

Wait... are you talking about GMO people now? Okay then... how did you connect this to adoption?

Science means very little in the context that you are presenting.

Panic wrote:...irresponsible breeding of dogs has caused some breeds of dogs to have inherent health problems.

With a bit of nifty editing. your question is answered.

yeah,
I ment that as the major issue with IVF...
straight up adoption doesn't mess with genes directly.

But alot of people now look to adopt children born through IVF and surrogates... this is science meddling with nature. especially when we start to think about designer babies.

Panic...

I don't think that forcing evolution is particularly wrong. But I will admit that it is particularly strange for people to do so. I would point out that trying to define what evolution is any more for humans, is a particularly difficult endeavor. People force good genes together all the time, we have always done that in one form or another. In some ways, what you are saying is that if two athletes want to have a child, but have no interest in raising it, we should not allow them to because they are being immoral. If they want to do that, it is their business, and I see no real reason to complain about something along those lines. As long as that child has a home and support, there is really no problem with it.

Much of the problems we have in "human evolution", are because of bad natural parents; the same cannot be said for most adoption couples. This is not to say that natural parents are bad (obviously), just that most problems do occur amongst "natural families", which is very obtuse in itself.

I am not sure I see a real problem with this, mainly because it is not some sort of wide-spread fad. The day that people ignore the fact that the world is full of "adoptables" and move on to create perfect little children; this is the day that we begin dealing with Gattaca-like situations.

It seems like we there is some confusion as to evolution, Social Darwinism, and eugenics going on here.

Lucklily we clarified the issue that men can't breastfeed. Thats a relief.

Ahtman wrote:It seems like we there is some confusion as to evolution, Social Darwinism, and eugenics going on here.

Have we learned so little from Star Trek?

I think someone learned a bit from Star Trek...

Nature doesn't really "intend" for anything to happen. It's not self conscious.

Sure it does, just not by our own perceptions, by it's own.

Hokey I guess, but the synchronicity of nature, and our ability to seemingly counter it, shows that in some way we are "superior" to the natural intent of the planet. I suppose this would mean that we are unnatural, but that would also be a oversimplification.

Are rockets natural? Are we nothing but an extension of this planets intention? Oooh, that sounded pretty cool .

yeah,
Adoption is fine for purposes of meeting peoples emotional needs.
It's the same as getting a dog.

But from evolution's point of view it means that weak DNA that should have been dropped from the gene pool gets attention from a outside source promoting it's mixing with good DNA. ViseVersa strong DNA may be settled with a under achiveing family, meaning that it never reaches it's full potential.

This reads like excerpts from the Diary of Charles Manson. How the hell are you defining 'good' DNA?

If a person can't conceive it's probably because of age or a accident or their genes are weak

Based on....?

over millions of years this will mean that those who breed at a younger age and have less accidents will pass on their stronger/smarter genes.

Have you SEEN some of the 14 yr old parents on The Jeremy Kyle Show?lol
Seriously though, there's a bit of a fascist undertone to some of your posts, man. Just a thought.

Wrexasaur wrote:Sure it does, just not by our own perceptions, by it's own.

We haven't discussed consciousness, or free will on this board. At least as far as I can recall. Might be interesting.

Albatross wrote:This reads like excerpts from the Diary of Charles Manson. How the hell are you defining 'good' DNA?

The kind that smells like roses and vanilla... yeah, that is the stuff...

You may find yourself asking what in the hell Wrex is on about with some of these pictures... well... I will tell you. The fact that Jar Jar Binks is locked in carbonite... is more than enough reason for me to show this image... oh man, that is good stuff... yeah, good stuff... I mean good genes, sorry. Not jeans man, genes...

How can you tell the difference between genes and jeans? Well... if you are wearing your genes your doing something right... If you are not wearing your jeans you are doing something wrong...

dogma wrote:We haven't discussed consciousness, or free will on this board. At least as far as I can recall. Might be interesting.

We had a thread about rights a while back, that is kind of in that same conceptual region... or vein, whatever really. I might be called out for using the word rape in a sentence that did not include boobs , j/k man.

You say locking Jar Jar Binks in carbonite like its a bad thing.

The way that this thread is going, I keep looking for someone to mention the doctrines of holy turtle pie. I do believe it addresses most everything that is good in the world.

Jar Jar has rights too man... unfortunately, they do not include having his mouth stapled shut. Real loss on that one... I expect more from some of these space judges in cases like these. Wait... Jar Jar Binks, Catapult, Mayonnaise? I think we may have a better way to take this one down. Jar Jar Binks mayonnaise, that sounds like a terrible... wait, Jar Jar Binks fired out of a catapult into a pit filled with mayonnaise? Yes, I think that will work just fine.

I'm coming in here pretty late, but that seems to be my forte lately.

Having grown up in a very strict charismatic christian home I am now a devout athiest on most days, the other days me being agnostic.

If there is a god/creator I think he kind of just set us up and walked away. I don't see him working in mysterious ways, and every time I stub my big toe it's not "the devil" trying to test me. Things happen, and it's life, there's not always some mysterious force behind everything.

My buddy just bought a car, and all he could do was talk about how god had blessed him. I tried to explain to him that no, it was probably all of the effort he put into fixing his crap credit, and all of the work he did to earn a living. But he refused to take credit for his accomplishment and acted as if he was worthless without god's attention.
This is one of my main issues with religion, and monotheists in particular. They put everything on god. When good things happen they are being blessed and it validates their faith, reinforcing it ad nauseum, and when they screw up and do something horrible it's merely the devil messing with them, or their weak carnal nature which can't really be helped and isn't really their fault. When mom and dad die in a car accident it's "everything happens for a reason," and when you get fired for being a slacker it's the devil hating on you. When you can't stop being attracted to men it's a test of your faith, so on and so forth.
Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.
I'm not saying all religious people are like this, I have great respect for men like C.S. Lewis, who actually understood what he believed, and enjoy listening to people who are pragmatic in their defense of those beliefs, but I cannot abide most people's ignorance when it comes to religion.
So in summary:

I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club,

Lint wrote:
This is one of my main issues with religion, and monotheists in particular. They put everything on god. When good things happen they are being blessed and it validates their faith, reinforcing it ad nauseum, and when they screw up and do something horrible it's merely the devil messing with them, or their weak carnal nature which can't really be helped and isn't really their fault. When mom and dad die in a car accident it's "everything happens for a reason," and when you get fired for being a slacker it's the devil hating on you. When you can't stop being attracted to men it's a test of your faith, so on and so forth.
Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.
I'm not saying all religious people are like this, I have great respect for men like C.S. Lewis, who actually understood what he believed, and enjoy listening to people who are pragmatic in their defense of those beliefs, but I cannot abide most people's ignorance when it comes to religion.

Being a current "christian" (whatever that even means these days), this is precisely what I hate about Christianity, church, and many fellow "believers". We do go around blaming everything on either God or the devil. The older I get, I believe its in between "God doesn't care" and "God is the puppet master". Apparently most "Christians" have issue with a God that demonstrates restraint of any sort.

dogma wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:Sure it does, just not by our own perceptions, by it's own.

We haven't discussed consciousness, or free will on this board. At least as far as I can recall. Might be interesting.

You, my friend, are an optimist. I suppose that is why you are no threat to Iran.

Wrexasaur wrote:Sure it does, just not by our own perceptions, by it's own.

Nice non-statement, there.

Interesting use of, punctuation.

Here is another non-statement though... in fact a few.

Bananas. Apples, Oranges, wallabees.

Perception is an acceptance of the non-statement, without regard for "external" matters. When you begin to take into account everything, i.e. feign omnipotence, you loose the ability to have a perception. In other words you trade your view for many, and more often than not... it ends up making no sense at all.

Using constraints and other methods of organization, you can develop an envelope theory that can be applied to many things. Not only beings as we know them, but life as it is. I see no reason why the planet itself could not be classified as a form of sentient life, not omnipresent, but self aware on many counts.

I could go as far to say that the state of self awareness a planet has achieved (without any comparative information as to what a thriving planet would actually constitute), is reflected in the functions of life that take place within. You develop processes of elimination to construe what is and is not fact; this is a natural process of the planet itself, a experiment of constant trial and error. This "natural experiment" does take many forms than can be easily anthropomorphic, as to be understood in a clearer fashion.

Would I consider the planet a form of life? Yeah, why not? Would I consider the universe itself a form of life? Well... I am not sure how accurate a statement like that would actually be. Perhaps a "canvas" for life to take place, but no where near as tangibly "self-aware" as an individual planet; perhaps even entire solar systems if you begin to really think about it.

The "idea" that we are just an infinitely reflected microcosm of the universe (i.e. the simpsons zoom in clip) is a pretty silly one, but entertaining nonetheless. MIB had a good clip like that as well, but the metaphor is lost when you begin to analyze the real-life implications of such a circumstance. There is potential for that activity to exist, no doubt, but the assumption that all life is an imitation of a pre-assumed form, limits us to a very specific view on such an idea.

Rambling on here... the marble is not indicative of containing more marbles. It does however contain (by default) the plausibility of existing in the same form, but in different places. So this "existence" of existence is only lateral persay, whereas the "existence" of existence within itself would be a foregone, or pre-conceived notion.