On the nature of evil, a response to Zomgitscriss

Note this is kinda a mess and I'm lazy, so didn't feel like fixing it. And I don't have enough readers anyway to justify cleaning it up. Note I have not perfectly quoted ZOMGitsCriss either, check her video out. I haven't attempted to misquote and a lot is word for word. This is in response to ZOMGitsCriss's video Evil, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt5J3EEjASs

"Why atheists Not obey the same morals that he or she believes in."
Because in truth they have conflicting beliefs that result from conflicting natures within us. Different parts of the brain compete to control our actions. Some beliefs are inherently a property of our biology, resulting from our genetic code. IN some sense all beliefs we have are the result of our genetics. Some are more forced upon us, others less so. Use of morals to guide our actions suffers from an inherent flaw and that flaw is morals are composed of statements, which cannot hope to cover all circumstances and cannot hope to be true in the end. They also suffer from the flaw in assuming that we have the power/strength in all circumstances to act on our morals in that moment going against other ingrained tendencies. They also assume we in fact remember an applicable moral for the circumstance we are faced with and that isn't always the case. It also assumes we have enough information and understanding to in fact make a moral choice, which is not always the case. Sometimes we are faced with situations that are morally ambiguous and are such because our lack of understand and are lack of information on the situations.

"Problem with a theistic God- Has to be all powerful and all good "
Really problems though with a particular definition of God. What about a nontheistic version of God, well anyways.
Both sides assume that God has to interfere directly with creation to exist. First to make the all powerful and all good argument, first assumes we even know what all powerful or all good means, which we do in fact do not. It also then makes the assumption that an all powerful or all good being being could actually exist. Well for one if it is in fact all powerful, it cannot be all good. It cannot be anything but all powerful. Once it is all of one thing, it cannot be anything else besides that. What would an all powerful being do with its power? We are biased towards our own physical reality and its countless limitations. Logically realities could exist with far more far freedom in expression. There is no logically reason that an all powerful being would directly concern itself with our level of reality. If it were it fact to concern itself with our level of reality how in fact would it make a decesion with which to act in our universe. Any action it would take would likely play favoritism with some one versus the other and would be a rather limited use of its power. Also to assume that a being could in fact be all powerful, is to ultimately assume we are completely powerless. To assume we are in fact powerless removes ourselves from the responsibility of the circumstances in our life. The Christian God is ultimately an illogical conception of God and thus could not in fact exist. As far as being all good, we also are making assumptions about such a being's understanding of good and what are its desires. In the end, we are placing the blame on the wrong thing. The whole Christian God, its ideas, is based on an argument being true by association. Basically you have someone like Moses or Jesus, who has a religious experience, and then you have these people who could after Moses or Jesus, who have had no religious experience whatsoever and they add on to the conception of God and supernatural realities and religious people take on faith that those who have had no religious experience at all could possible know anything at all about God, or heaven, or supernatural reality. Also the whole argument about God being all powerful and all good and such is a straw man argument, as these conception of God is not common to all people. Plus the idea of a thing being all powerful and all good is illogical and easily disproved.

"Evils that are not experienced by humans and not caused by humans, endured by other living things, animals eaten by flies, animals eatten alive by other animals"
We seperate humans from the rest of life. Hindus would say it is because of karma. Basically all these "evils" that animals experienced could or will be possible to be fixed by humans. The reality is you have a number of lifeforms that evolved its basic form varying at different times. And thus some animals end up adapting natures that are parasitic on other types due to an adaption. As far as one animal eating another animal, humans do the same. Such a nature allows a lifeform to spend less time on eating and thus requires a less developed digestive system, thus allowing a better developed nervous system and brain. Humans(mainly intelligence and such) in part came into existence because of eating meat. Our brains were further able to develop because of cooking. Simple fact is a lion for example only has a limited amount of ways to kill an animal and all involve some amount of pain for the victim. Lions are more intelligent than their pray. Humans also inflict a similar amount of pain of cattle that are often slaughtered alive. There isn't much adequate plant protein sources. I do believe via genetic engineering we could get lions and other carnivorous creatures to stop eatting other animals if we could provide them with an adequate plant based protein source. Also as humans encroach on wildlife habitats, less animals will exist to experience these natural sufferings. It may seem like excessive suffering is a kind of evil, but suffering triggers vastly increased controlled genetic mutations and without excessive suffering we wouldn't have the variety of species we have, nor higher intelligence. Simply put, no excessive suffering equals no humans. Also some organisms are needed to break down dead organisms, however sometimes they start feeding on living organisms. This cross over is in part due to lack of hygiene. Without access to a riverbed or some free flowing water source, animals aren't able to clean themselves. Without being clean they attract flies and other things that feed off of the animal even while it is still alive. Humans could clean animals, like cattle, sheep, etc. and if they did they would eliminate alot of the suffering these creatures would experience. As far as fly going into an open wound, it is hardly clean and it smells similar to rotting flesh. The fly is only doing what it knows.

"Free will and moral choices and there has to be evil. The amount of evil in the world and the unequal distribution of it. God should limit the amount of evil we can inflict on others, and therefore God does not exist because "evil" is not limited."
First of all, why is there is evil? Why assume it has to exist? As far as the amount of evil in the world why assume that God has to interfere in creation, why must he? Why do you assume that the amount of evil hasn't already been limited by us being here in the first place. In heaven or whatever we could have had much greater abilities to inflict "evil" on others.

"Angels having free will. Have free will manifest as a struggle vs causing damage to others. pay the price for someone else's free will."
You can't have free will without responsibility. We aren't paying the price for someone's free will. We are paying the price for someone having a weak will and being overalk being controlled by things that are not there will. Without intelligence, the will isn't able to manifest itself in a natural and responsibility manner.

"Addressing Natural evil: Earthquakes, parasites, volcano eruptions, viruses, all that good stuff."
Earthquakes are just the earth adjusting to tensed energy. They are in part caused by gravity from other planets and the sun pulling on earth to varying and non constant degrees. Volcano eruptions are also in part due to that. The gravitational force from other planets and the sun also serve to heat up the earth to a degree. Without volcanic eruptions you wouldn't have a lot of islands and landforms. Plus a lot of plant life is dependent on some kind of regular volcanic erruption. You have some of the most beautiful flowers that grow in volcanic ash. I don't believe we understand enough yet to make a decision on whether a virus is good or evil. However part of our genetic code is in fact made up of an endogenous retrovirus. Some parts are also the remains of former retroviruses.

"No evil = no good. Evil must exist in this world otherwise we would not know what is good or bad. Without knowing sorrow, we could not know what happiness is either. Fails to work on a practical basis experiences a world with only good in it. Saying we can only be happy with misery in our lives is only speculation. On the otherhand, there are some who only experience misery. An infant who is born with severe arlincon's disease, who only gets to live for a couple of weeks and is in constant agonizing pain until he dies. ... even though he never experience non-suffering"
First assuming that one is the opposite of the other. We also fail to experience a world with only evil in it as well. First most of this is just rare stuff. Well if you are saying that some only experience misery in their lives. Then I counter that with some people experience a near perfect life. Some people are born into a rich family. They have good genetics. Their parents are kind and devote time to their children. Those children grow up, go to a good college. They get a good job. They rarely ever get sick. They find a successful, attractive partner. They get married and have one or two kids. Their parents and grandparents die at a rather old age. Really some people just experience a near perfect blissful life. It is just easy from birth till death. For an infant who dies young. They have experienced via little of life and know very little of misery. Also young people are better able to cope with pain than older people. The older you get the more suffering you are capable of experiencing and the different depth are we able to experience misery.

"Someone takes you and performs brain surgery on you and wipes out all your memories. You get total amnesia and remember nothing, prior to this moment. Then he tortures you until you die. Do you think not having recollection of ever being happy will prevent you from feeling the pain the fear the terror of being tortured a I don't think so either. The point is if you can experience misery without knowing what happiness is, it's only logical that you can be able to feel happiness and joy without ever experiencing misery. If you are still not convinced, think Adam and Eve, they were happy in the garden of Eden without knowing what unhappiness is."
To put it simple, you are confusing physical existence with how it is viewed and mentalized. You consider physical pain to be suffering and it is to an extent. However as far as any need to experience both good and evil, it is more about experiencing a diversity of life and using that experience to better understand existence. Some things can only be understood through both pain and joy, like any good song it has both its sad moments and its happy ones. Some individual experience a tiny amount of pain and realize a great lesson, like learning not to insults others because they may insult you back. It may take a less astute individual a greater amount of pain to realize that same truth. Pain triggers a response in a living organism - that response is either a reaction or an action. Reactions tend to result in further pain, while actions can counteract pain. Also the brain has the ability to reduce our physical pain sensitivity. Anyone who has ever experienced some kind of pain like say a wound for instance that seems to be constant knows that the pain can temporarily vanish only to reappear later. This is due in part at least to the brain nulling the pain sensitivity, plus a pain neuron is not as easily excited if it has been recently excited.

"Evil=Justice. Another argument is that all the evil in the world is in fact justice. We are all sinners, therefore we deserve everything that happens to us. And with this I would also like to address the argument that God is testing us because they really aren't all that different. I always here what theists say that we cannot hold God accountable according to our moral standards. But I think we can. In fact God being the supreme morality, he should surpass our human moral standards. Let's take a parent - a father in order to punish his disobedient child or to test him will stop feeding him - will allow a neighbor to rape him - will allow another neighbor to kill his pets he loves in front of his eyes - will do all those terrible things to him. How would we deal with such a parent? We would obviously lock him up for being a sadistic nutcase and if he were to say he did that all out of love for his child we would be even more sickened by the creep. But then you have our father in heaven that allows such things to happen on a daily basis. You have children in third world countries, who get to eat once every 4 days and only water available for them to drink is filty mud water. You see them dying, starving, infected with parasites, losing their parents to aids and you think this is God's will and somehow in your mind you think they deserve it. Hmm. This is beyond disturbing. Any religion who makes people think like that is a sick religion."

I guess because God is posited to have created the universe in all its varying details that it somehow must be responsible for everything. Maybe that is the Christian God. I really don't know. I don't remember that being my conception of God when I was a Christian, not that I had much of a conception of God. A lot of this stuff is just religious philosophy, like St Aquinas, St Augustine, etc. Basically they tried to create a coherent philosophy from Christian doctrine, but I wasn't exposed to them initially. Evil is not really justice for something we have done. Evil is the result of ignorance and sometimes the consequences of that ignorance do not manifest immediately or rather they aren't noticed. Like for instance, a child never learns how to read and thus is not able to get a good job and dies of malnutrition at a young age. All so-called evil is the result of some kind of ignorance. The parent you have mentioned was a sicko. And the things attributed to God in the old testament were just desperate, very ignorant, people trying to understand the world. Basically everything they didn't understand was God or the result of God and thus they anthropomorphized their conception of God giving it emotions and suffering or such was the result of such emotion of God. Yawn. The reasons for why things happen are becoming a lot clearer and they don't have anything to do without supernatural things.

"God's plan-argument that this is God's plan, everything happens for a reason and that the endgame will be worth it to justify all this. Thy will be done is another way of saying the ends justify the means, which might be true if there are no other means to reach that end. Maybe that is just me that God cannot accomplish his plan without starvation and cancer and child rape, if this is the best he came up with, that is a pretty stupid God you are worshiping there. You know I don't believe in his existence. But if I am wrong does in fact exist, he is one fucked up unfit parent, and in no way worthy of praise. Peace."
I believe if there is in fact a plan for this whole mess that we live in it is to master all aspects of physical existence. If diseases or natural disasters are a problem it is our job to fix them. If animals are suffering it is our job to ease that suffering. We are here to take personal responsibility for the world we create. If the world is not in fact what we desire it to be, it is our job to in fact change it until it is. I believe we have the power to make the world into anything we desire it to be.
The argument for hell is weak. I have never heard a good one for hell and I have a hard time seeing how the bible argues for its existence. In fact a lot of Christians don't even believe in it. Mostly the stupid fundamentalist ones are the ones who adhere to such an idea because they need it to forcible convert the masses.
The bible is a collection of scattered writings by differing authors that was organized and to a degree written by the Catholic Church, which itself was a product of the Roman Empire, which partially fell due to the rise of esoteric Christianity, that and unsustainable corruption. Basically the Christianity at the time was turned from esoteric Christianity to exoteric Christianity. To put it more simple, the Catholic Church took the focus off of the individual and put it on an institution, which what Jesus was trying to get rid of, i.e. the use of religion for profit.
I don't believe the ends justify the means, but sometimes we are resistant to any kind of education, and sometimes we end up having to do things the hard way, like a child sticking its finger in a fire after being told not to and that they would be burned. If the child had realized the fire was hot, then it wouldn't have needed to test its hotness via personal experience. Unfortunately most people's education comes from the trials of life rather than a desire to know and thus learn more passively and thus experience more pain.

Thoughts on addiction, religion, and life

The condition of humanity is constant addiction, is inner sadness, and we do not understand. Humans are driven, some unknown, something within, I cannot yet point to the origin, nor say why we are driven or for what purpose. We are driven by oneself, programmed desires and by other things. We are not purely mechanical beings. Just because we have a non-mechanical nature does not mean this non-mechanical nature is the result of God, a soul, or any supernatural thing. To rationally claim our non-mechanical nature is a result of a supernatural thing, one would first need supernatural experience of a supernatural reality(not physical; not to be confused with energies one may experience in the body in the involvement of one's religion), which at best few could claim. Even in the unlikely event you have an actual genuine supernatural experience, anything you see, is not necessarily what you may believe it to be based on your particular religious upbringing.

The non-mechanical nature of life is not governed solely by quantum-mechanical effects as quantum-mechanical effects do not logically lead to the observed behaviors of higher lifeforms. Also when you take the average of a large number of quantum-mechanical effects(a block of iron atoms vs a single iron atom) you approach classical behavior, which is mechanical and predictable in nature. To be clearer some scientists believe that quantum physics can be used as a way to explain the phenomena of life, and sometimes specifically of choice due to small apparently unpredictable fluctuations at the quantum level. No logical argument exists however to suppose that is the case. These unpredictable fluctuations are due however to a number of known causes. One is you cannot completely isolate an atom or proton or electron from the ambient environment. You have gravitational fields, electric fields, radio waves and other light waves(just radio waves are often unusually difficult to block), vibrations, neutrinos, and various other weak interacting matter that can disturb this particle that you are trying to measure. Plus by measuring a particle you are imparting some energy to that particle, thus effecting its motion.

Higher ordered lifeforms express a greater degree of this non-mechanicality, which begs the question why. Higher ordered life is at least partially the result of having a greater degree of specialization within cells, which comes with a larger percent of intron based dna. Most of science is the study of the mechanical nature of physical reality. However a non-mechanical nature exists within lifeforms and may even exist in things we do not consider to be life. However the non-mechanical nature of physical reality is a mostly unstudied science, which is due mainly to its unpredictability, i.e. we cannot find a direct cause. The closest explanation for the non-mechanical nature of physical reality is choice or something that resembles choice.

The physical sciences have advanced much lately in the past hundred years. However the understanding of the mechanical nature of physical reality is incomplete. Physicists have been desperately seeking a unified field theory, but noone has publicly presented one that is acceptable by the scientific community. Unfortunately without a unified field theory, study of the non-mechanical nature of physical reality maybe difficult to impossible. Geneticists are working on how certain dna/rna sequences result in certain traits in an organism. Even though this is a study of life, it is a study of the mechanical part of it.

A lot of human behavior is a response to being driven by forces unknown to us. We experience sadness when we lack new experiences, when we have no goals to which to base our actions and thus we are bored. We are driven to create. So, we turn to drugs. We turn to hateful beliefs blaming others for our problems. We turn to elitist religion, professing they have the sole claim to truth without a shred of proof. We imagine ourselves superheroes via our movies. We kill ourselves. We just want to escape. It seems endless the attempt to satisfy this hunger. And the more intelligent you are, the greater this hunger consumes you. You are driven to create and to understand. We try nearly everything, no matter how insane, often in an attempt to alleviate some unseen hurt. People live in a state of constant inner flux, going from one desire to another, one goal to another, experiencing brief moments of satisfaction, but no lasting calm.

Some religious people have argued that Communism is atheism and a philosophy. Firstly all religions have some elements of philosophy in them. Communists were anti-Christianity, anti-Judaism, basically anti the various religions that had formally been in power in that country, mainly Christianity as that had been the religion that had the strongest grip on the country previously. The Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in the imprisonment of the previous ruling family and they were later shot to death. The Soviet Union was a country of mandatory reading of Marxist and Leninist philosophy and massive brainwashing of its citizens was implemented at the educational level. Kids were encouraged to spy on their parents. People were killed for suspicions of going against Communist ideology. Marx, Lenin, and Stalin were worshipped almost like gods. It was government sponsored terrorism against its own citizens. Massive spending in military, and decreasing productive due to corruption and increased incentives to work hard resulted in the enviable collapse of the Soviet Union.

Communist socialism is religious hate speech in disguise. It divides people into groups and kills its dissenters. Communists have believed in ideas without proof with extreme fervor and devotion, creating groups and defining who is evil and who is not under the disguise of philosophy. Words are redefined and a younger generation believes in a rewritten history. To accept what one is told without proof and without reason is to not engage in philosophy. Communist advocate the party line with striking parallels to Christian, Jewish and Muslim theories. Party ideology is forced on a desperate people hungry for change, for food, for advancement. The whole society revolves around one book, written by a man, and everyone is forced to live by that. If that is not religion, then I do not know what is. The Little Red Book by Mao Zedong of the People's Republic of China, during 1964-1976, is the most printed book in the twentieth century at around 6.5 billion copies, rivaling even the Bible.

We believe we know, but we don't. Knowing is not impossible but we have yet to attain clarity on the simplest of things. People live in fear of uncertainty. In uncertainty one feels powerless. So we pretend to know so that others may fear us. We advertise our dangerousness so that we may feel safe. Reality is we are powerless and death can come at any time. Before we as a people can arrive at any form of truth we must first be honest with ourselves and admit we know very little and assume things to be true that we have not seen. Both religion and science and philosophy seek to provide answers when often there currently aren't any valid ones available.

Even in science there is a certain degree of faith. Logical arguments aren't always right as they are often built on hidden assumptions they aren't true. And currently science holds onto quite a few incorrect beliefs, but most don't even realize it. People who read about science or even practice it often confuse the interpretation of reality with the actual observation of reality. Scientists often think the interpretation of reality is an observation of reality when it is not. Quarks do not exist. They are a mathematical model with no basis in reality. Multiverse theory is an inference from the uncertainty principle, which is itself a misinterpretation of reality. Uncertainty happens because at the level of individual particle we are dealing with both the quantized nature of matter and the wavelength/frequency nature of matter. Plus the point of contact of two particles can effect where the forces are applied, making measurement a difficult proposition because we are unable to measure without effecting the particle. At least science makes an effort to base their beliefs on observation.

Religious beliefs are notorious for not basing their beliefs on observation, but on personal preference. Despite whether people want to accept it or not, the brain operates via belief. And we act in accordance with our beliefs. Rational as we may try to be, we believe in something. Any sane person would try and match their beliefs to reality as close as possible, whether that reality be physical or something not physical in nature. All humans share the same physical reality and being of similar construction share a very similar human experience or at least the capacity to share a very similar human experience.

Morals are a type of belief, which seeks to label certain behaviors as either right or wrong, which are usually an imitation of behaviors that are deigned acceptable by a particular society/group and an avoidance of those which are not. Since we are talking about behavior in the physical world, morals are a product of the brain. Even if you read the bible and decide to have certain morals because of what you read in the bible does not mean your morality came from the bible. It still came from the brain. A different person reading the bible, still believing it to be true can come up with a different set of morals based on what they read.

The brain has 4 higher functions. The first is to experience/observe the world via the 5 senses and the nervous system. The second is to remember the world, i.e. reflect what we have experienced. The third is to understand the world (pattern finding, drawing conclusions, forming beliefs) done via imagination, emotion, reasoning, or just pure acceptance of an authority. The fourth is to act on our understandings/beliefs. Most people base their beliefs purely on the acceptance of some authority. Sometimes belief is also understood in the narrower sense of a belief based purely on an authority, i.e. without imagination, emotion or reasoning. Most science is done first via observation. Then by remembering. Then they use imagination or reason to come to conclusions. Then they act according to their conclusions. They then try and test their conclusions by further observation and a repeat of the process, strengthening the probability that what they believe is actually true. Real science is a recursive process of further refining our beliefs via continued tests.

As a disclaimer, since these are just ramblings, try not to make too much out of what is written. To be clearer, I am not arguing that a supernatural reality exist just because I have made arguments sortof related to that. However nor am I saying that there isn't a supernatural reality. I am unsure either way. Also since I have wrote it, then added to it after I wrote it, some sentences that were near each other got split apart from each other. Basically don't assume you know what I believe based on what I wrote as for one, unfortunately due to the imprecise nature of language, I may end up saying things that I did not intend to say. Feel free to ask questions if you are unsure about anything I have wrote. As this is just a blog, you pay for what you get.

Another random prophecy: In the future an increasing number of educated, developed countries will create some type of anti-blashempy law due to increased religious violence in the world. Also the chance of a nuclear bomb being denoted by one of the middle east countries(Israel, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon,etc.) will increase drastically.

Big Bang is Epic Fail

Big Bang equals fail. If you check a physics book you can find numerous objections to the big bang theory. Big bang phrase started out as a joke by Fred Hoyle. Big bang is basically universe starts from this very small hot dense area and expands from there. The big bang is sometimes said to come from nothing, which creationist argues is illogical, then they bring out intelligent design. The universe has been around for a very long time and in all likelihood much longer than what we believe it to be. Two ideas are said to support the big bang theory. One is the red shift and two is background microwave radiation.

Red shift of known spectral lines do not lead you automatically to an expanding universe for three reasons. One is many other causes of red shifts exist. Two since we only have been observing the universe for a short period of time, even if what we are observing is it moving away, it could start moving towards us simply because the effects of revolutional periods of that body, of which could last thousands to millions of years, are difficult to observe. And third Hubble's constant is not even constant and can lead to unreal results like faster than light travel.

Ok, on to background microwave radiation, despite the hype, this is not proof of the expanding universe theory. Simply put, the big bang causes background radiation, therefore background microwave radiation is proof of the big bang, but in reality err no. That is circular logic. The actual cause is not what people think it is. Non scientists don't understand the blackbody equation, nor what could give rise to a radiant blackbody. For one to observe a constant microwave background radiation everywhere, the universe would have to be in thermal equilibrium, which it is not. I could go into more details about the red shift and microwave cosmic radiation, but noone reads these posts anyways.

Atheist and theists argue over the whole origin of the universe thing. Atheist will cite big bang. Creationist theist will cite 6000 year old universe/earth theory. Both are epicly wrong. Non scientist atheist don't understand the math and ideas involved, like really understand it. That requires an education in physics to be honest. You can't just check wikipedia and expect to get it. Scientist usually just accepts it because they don't have a real interest in the area and it's the best theory that physical science has. What the creationist argues is much worse though and not even close to being right. Their argument is based on the age of historical records and thus what we have of recorded human history. A primitive culture writes down universe was created by God and therefore people just assume universe must have been created around that time, which is an illogical conclusion.

The actual reality of the universe is that black holes give birth to suns, to solar systems, and we have some actual evidence of such. The energy released from a black hole is under high pressure and high temperatures, so it is big-bang like. The big bang theory cannot explain the origin of universe without considering the most massive objects in the universe. Black holes(the big ones) are actually older than the measured age of the universe, inferred from radioactive isotope measurement. You can't just ignore reality, which the big bang theory does.

Prions, Viroids, Transposons and Strange Things that go bump in the night

If you haven't heard of prions, they are bits of misfolded protein that have the capacity to replicate themselves. Mad cow disease is one well known disease resulting from eating the brains and nervous tissue of cows. However under certain circumstances these proteins can be found in the organs of animals in significant quantities as a result of viral infection. Viral infection can also cause prions to spread to the milk and muscle, however even in such conditions, they are only found in rather small amounts, and should not cause mad cow disease. The naturally forming variation of this protein is also known to cause Alzheimer's disease and gene therapy in rats has been shown to cure the disease by essentially preventing the production of the protein. The prion protein is known to survive cooking and digestion. The mad cow disease in cows is known to have been caused by feeding the brain and nervous tissue of cows to other cows. We then eat these cannibalistic cows. Prions are also known to exist in fungi, but are not currently associated with a disease, well kinda. Some prions of fungus are known to protect one group of genetically similar fungus from another group of non genetically similar fungus by killing the non prion fungus. Kuru disease is a prion disease caused by cannibalism. The logical conclusion for prions is they are a part of the immune system, which is likely shared by all organisms from plant life to animal life. Basically prions protect an organism from foreign proteins.

Viroids are implicated in a number of plant diseases and are known to spread via a number of vectors. Aphids and seed spreading are common methods. Viroids are bits of circular, single-stranded, complementary RNA lacking the protein commonly associated with viruses. They also contain a shorter number of bases than viruses and are smaller in size. They do not code for protein. One such viroid is the potato spindle tuber viroid. It causes stunted growth, altered color, and leaf deformation. You can see the viroids in an electron microscope, however you are unable to see how it works because electron microscopes only take still pictures. A viroid like molecule is also implicated in hepatitis D, however it requires a preexisting infection, Hepatitis B.

Transposons are mobile genetic elements of dna, implicated in evolution. Sometimes they are cut and paste but in other cases they simply replicate. They make a significant portions of eukaryotic organisms. They can also be involved in horizontal gene transfer between different species. One class of transposons is involved in retroviruses. Some diseases that are attributed to transposons are haemophilia, sever combined immunodeficiency, porphyrias, and duchenne muscular dystrophy. Transposons can cause color changes in corn. Mariner construct transposons horizontal gene transfers are known to occur between tapeworms and humans.

Satellite genetic material can also be found in the cell. Satellite genetic material, whether rna or dna, can interfere in the replication machinery.

Thus I am brought to the point of this whole tirade. Infectious agents exist that are very difficult to detect. Increasingly these 3 elements and potentially variations of these will found to be increasingly found to be involved in disease and likely with aging as well. Also in spite of the common propaganda you find with forensics shows, the genome is not static. It changes in the course of an organism's lifetime. This applies to humans. Reproduction is also very active in the use of transposable elements, resulting in the slight variations from parent to child. The effect of a gene depends on where it is located in the genome. Genes are sometimes referenced as exons and code for protein. Introns are considered the non coding portion of the genome. However they code for specialization. They are the instructions for when a certain gene should be turned on or off and in what circumstances. Without introns there would be no cell types, no organs, etc. Also when they say a plant shares 50% of its genes with humans(or 95% with apes) they are referencing a limited set of base pairs and exclude certain genetic material based mainly on base pair substitutions, so contrary to what people have been lead to believe the similarity between humans and other species is not as large. At one time they only looked at the exons for genetic comparison. Currently the effect of introns is only barely understand and was initially considered to be junk dna. That idea is slowly being eroded. The mitochondria also has its own dna and is inherited from the mother. If I were to point to a cause of aging, transposable elements likely result in the genes in the mitochondria becoming dysfunctional until eventually one can do nothing but die.

Gene therapy in the future will likely be used to combat aging. However the human genome will need to be better understand. All species that people eat will increasingly have to be modified to combat the subtle diseases they cause in humans. Researchers in various places are already working on mad cow disease resistant cows. Also animals and plants will need to be modified and immunized against infectious agents. Also humans will also need to be genetically modified. This may not be an idea many like, but once the human genome is understood, a government sponsored human genome modification program should be implemented. The reduction in cost of both healthcare and education would be enormous as well as the huge increase in productive. No good reason exists against it once the technology exists that is both safe and well understood.

I tried to find base pair lengths for different animal species but was unable to find the data online for any except humans and that value was only a rough value. Humans are supposed to have around 3 billion base pairs(seen it listed as 2.9 billion, 3 billion, and 3.2 billion) and chimps have approximately the same. Humans have 46 chromosomes, while the ape species have 48. This is due to chromosome merging. Chimps and humans may have the exact number of base pairs or they may not. If there is a variation, how large is that variation? Chimps are considered to be humans' closest relatives based on genetic and molecular analysis, however orangutans display higher intelligence than chimps and more similar morphological features to humans than chimps. Eventually a greater understanding of genetics will reveal that orangutans possess at least some genetic traits that are closer to humans than chimps. Some genetic length variation(base pairs) may exist among the non-human primate species, however I could not find any data to confer or deny. C-values online(see http://www.genomesize.com/) were unreliable. The methods of gene deactivation logically have an effect on measured weight of dna. C-value among different cell types likely varies. Large variations also were reported for the same species, so I had to discharge that avenue. At least in eukaryotic life, cells divide by the process of mitosis, which involves the chromosomes breaking up and you end up with one extra pair of chromosomes. In meiosis, the number of chromosomes is halved, which then allows the male and female to each contribute genetic material. Various methods exist to alter the genetic code. Transposons, viral infection and plasmid gene swapping are a few. Geneticists have also come up with a few synthetic methods as well like use of zinc finger nuclease.

Basically to the point, potentially small base pair length alterations could exist on individual chromosomes which can give rise to an increase or decrease of the genome length. So potentially two people can have kids even though they don't necessarily possess the same genome length or contribute the same length for their haploids. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120159615/abstract illustrates that y chromosome length can vary among males. It is also possible that these small genetic length variations (coming from chromosome length variations) could result in birth defects even though they don't have an abnormal number of chromosomes. Accumulative genetic length variations could also result in speciation and maybe cause a chromosome to merge with another or to divide itself in two. The method of reproduction could effect this genetic length variation drift rate. Likely organisms that reproduce asexually can experience large drift rates. Maybe amoebas reproducing asexually can help to explain their large genome size. One chromosome could also lose some base pairs to another chromosomes, thus if one chromosome has a high mutation rate it could help to contribute to the changes in the other chromosomes.

Though the other primate species, like gorillas, monkeys, chimps, orangutans, etc. maybe classified as a different species than human, perhaps they should in fact be considered human or a variation of such(subspecies, another race maybe?). With the right challenging environment and selective breeding these non-human primate species could become even more human-like until their intellectual abilities nearly match our own. The main attribute that makes us humans is not necessarily what we eat or how we look, but the intellectual abilities that our brains possess. If such a day happens when other primates can talk like us(learning language), socialize with us, write poetry, participate in science, wonder over religion to the point where the only difference between us and them is our appearance and the fact we couldn't sexually reproduce, should they not appropriately be given the title human and thus afforded the same rights as other humans. As long as we continue to interact with other primates and manage not to kill all its members we will eventually see the day where other primates may be called brothers.

Random prophetic predictions: In the future some people will be born without having a father or a mother.

Nasa

These will start with some random ramblings, various thought bubbles floating in my inner thought space, so there may not be the consistency of a more well thought out post. First topic of discussion - Nasa.

Nasa is a U.S. space origination founded in 1958 in a response to the launch of the Soviet Sputnik into orbit. It has been a military organization from the start. It initially recruited talent from the U.S. airforce. It took over Jet Propulsion Laboratories. It gathers talent from various places, often consulting with local professors or local companies. Increasingly, perhaps due to budget constraints, it has been using getting help from various universities. See http://www.msss.com/(private company in San Diego) and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/ (European space station), http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/images.php university of Arizona(phoenix probe), california institute of technology(jet propulsion laboratory), university of Houston(various consulting from professors), and http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu (high resolution pics on the mars reconnaissance orbiter). Recently Lockheed won a contract to build a new spaceship for Nasa. Obama is also trying to merge Nasa into the Dept of Defense.

China, Europe, Japan, and Russia have all recently admitted to various space dreams - visit moon and mars - and to an extent have already begun to fulfill such dreams. Nasa has recently sent up a kinetic energy missile(Centaur rocket) to crash into the moon's south pole on October 8, 2009, supposedly as an effort to detect water on the moon in preparation for a moon base, except they have already found water in pebbles returned from the Apollo missions. So I am a bit baffled at what their purpose is.

Officially Nasa is very antagonistic to the idea of life being elsewhere in the universe. They say they are trying to discover signs of life, at least microscopic ones, but supposedly they haven't found anything and maybe there is some truth in that. Various maybes have presented themselves. You have the face on mars, pyramid on mars, a geodesic dome in a crater on Mars, some strange tree-like things and some strange black spots. They have also found signs of recent flowing rivers, like in the past few years and methane source. Some astronauts(mostly the old ones I think) have stated that noticed sentient type ufo/alien phenomena, but really who knows.

To bring a whole long post to a rather conclusive point, I am disappointed in Nasa. So many decades and not a single microbe has been discovered. Either they have found something and they have lied or they haven't found something and are just plain incompetent. However since many who work at Nasa are rather intelligent, I just wonder what is really going on. To turn the coin around, if there really is sentient type life in our galaxy besides us, why haven't they contacted us? It is possible they have and we have just shot at them. In that case I would suggest a large radio signal or perhaps a large light source. Someone would pick that up. Increasingly regular people just think Nasa is a waste and the money they spend could be better spent on more immediate goals. One might site all the technology that has come about as a result of Nasa, but simply put that technology could have come about without the billions spent on rockets, spaceships and probes.

But seriously though, you have Russia, the US, China, Japan, and Europe each with interests in the moon and Mars. I wonder if they know something I don't. A lot of our recent space program activity is in reponse to other countries. Some of the reasons are military based, but I doubt all are. Oh, and some substances can only be created in outer space(low gravity/microgravity- see http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home96/jul96/lowgrav.html for instance). Perhaps a new industry will be created in the future for substances created in microgravity.