Purely as an appeal to your selfish genes, you ’should’ be interested in a better local optimum.

Is there anywhere else that I can ground an appeal? In addition, I’m not sure I understand “better local optimum,” but we can return to that later.

Yes, it is an uphill battle. Your genes control a lot of the chemistry of your thinking and it takes a lot to impose your will on them. That is why enlisting them with “brotherhood” thinking is important. Common descent teaches us that we share genes with every living thing on the planet.

Is not my will all about chemistry as well? Do genes have less control over my will than my thinking? You’ve said we can outwit our genes. Is this out-witting something that is inherited? How is it inherited if not through my genes?

So, my genes can outwit my genes? And my chemistry can exert control over my chemistry? That sounds a bit like pulling myself up by my own bootstraps.

I can justify (to my selfish genes) my stewardship of the biosphere on the basis of brotherhood (aka selfishness).

Right, because of the “better local optimum” thing. Perhaps you could help me understand what you mean by this. Can you please order the following according to which will lead to a better local optimum?

a. Loving my neighbor

b. Loving Iraqis

c. Loving endangered species

d. Loving aliens

e. Killing or sterilizing persons who might pollute the local gene pool
f. Controlling breeding to enhance positive traits

Note that demonstrating that one item on the list might be more successful than another at reaching a better local optimum doesn’t really get me to “should,” only to “maybe I should and maybe I shouldn’t.”

Thank you. The reason I asked specifically about Japan is I’m very curious if the same deception is going on in other countries.

This story was paid for by the BBC in England and Discovery in America. This makes them biased participants, unworthy of fair coverage. The media circus is more than just hoopla, it is deception. That is my concern. Unfortunately, today in America people get their information from TV and few other sources. Most would not know where to go for actual research paper, or take time to find out.

I am fairly informed about the European countries, but not Asian. In case there was any confusion it was not my intention to make this personal. I am genuinely curios about your professional opinion and the climate in Japan on how research like this is handeled in general. I think over the last several years the Darwinist organizations in Europe and America have felt more pressure to make grand statements of missing links in TV and print. When behind the scences the research and debates among experts are much more reasoned, slower to make such broad claims and are largely unheard of in popular media here.

And I love people to get excited about science, just not misled intentionally when the dust has not settled yet and final assignments, test and reviews not made.

And please, no need to address me as Mr. unless you want to keep it formal and like me to do the same. Let me know if you do.

I’m not happy about the media circus that erupted around Ida! However, you asked about Japan, so I wanted to answer you.

I asked you about the facts surrounding Ida and the propaganda. The controversy is not a right wing/left wing issue.

So why the insults and sarcasm about dead Japanese gods to your people? You lost me on your point.

Pleaes read factual criticism from a scientist, an evolutionist…

“Other researchers think rollouts like this one are just too risky. ‘On the one hand, I view it as a major task for scientists to translate their work for the public at large,’ says Beard. “On the other hand, when you make these breathless statements, you have to have the goods to back it up. Otherwise, we all lose credibility with the public. The only thing we have going for us that Hollywood and politicians don’t is objectivity.”
—Christopher Beard, paleontologist, commenting in article by Ann Gibbons on last week’s media circus over Ida (05/19/2009), Science 29 May 2009: 324:5931, pp. 1124-1125, DOI: 10.1126/science.324_1124.

They have lost objectivity in the propaganda roll out of Ida. They sold their souls for nothing but a lemur and another empty branch. The actual research paper is more realistic and not propaganda.

You don’t need to worry about right wing politics. I got this directly from places like New York Times – a fading, far left cauldron of haters who still have some good journalist left that tell the truth. Ida is a joke. It is not a missing link, just missing evidence.

You need to review all of the evolutionist knocking this fiasco for what it is. Nothing but Hollywood fiction writing and bamboozling of broadcast TV.

Much of science today is losing credibility because in fact they have teamed with hollywood and far left politicians, going to extremes in many cases acting like fascist.

Americans are losing their memories since WWII.

But when Orwellian thought minders from the NSCE start telling scientist what they can or cannot write in a research paper, then it is the far left we must worry about.

And don’t forget, Hitler came from the National Socialist German Workers Party(NAZI in German), with Darwinian Eugenics, hating Christians and Jews

So you can rant all you like about right wing, but the reality is in America today and Germany in the past, it was the Socialist Left Workers Party, the Marxist Stalinist that ruined the world.

And today, the ACLU, a Communist inspired organization in America, close down all discussions and limit speech, attack and charge lawsuits against our cities, our states, our schools.

You have no real argument politically, or it seems logically.

How would u like it if some organization said you are not allowed to use a specific word in a publication?

Wouldn’t you be outraged?

Well, that is what the far left groups are doing here, Darwinist, Atheist at the NCSE.

It appears you could not defend Ida, so you attacked a strawman.

Why do we think the BSA is an ideological organization?

There is nothing wrong with government endorsing certain values i.e. duty, trustworthiness kindness etc.

In fact, a society that doesn’t demand it’s government endorse those values is a society that is going to fail.

In fact, if

Sorry, I realize that the lawsuit was leveled by the ACLU and not the government per se.

Whatever motivations the ACLU had in this lawsuit (they could have had more levelhanded motivations and a better premise), I think they would have won the lawsuit on the government support of ideological organizations alone, without the appeal to religious speech. If they had worded it differently they might have won. I think you are right in pointing out their motivations, but ultimately, they were right in objecting to this governmental preference.

Now I agree with you on that one, because it is obviously a government support of a particular ideology. The Boy Scout example, on the other hand is not. It is government attempting to avoid an endorsement of a particular ideology, and rightfully so. We have to pick our fights wisely.

And if they do anybody care to take odds as to which side?

OK, hey wait a minute. . . why are kindergartners at a public school being subjected to a “Coming Out Day”?

They’ve been doing it at Fort AP Hill since 1981.

Actually, they’ve been doing it since 1937 when the government let them camp at the Washington Monument.

And the place to levy objections is not the courts but with the Congress or the President.