Shinjula

Ok thanks for putting up the link. It all seems bit dubious to me, a quick bit of research shows IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen. makes up half the graph and has severe problems with it, ignoring the fact that the author has been linked to Nazism which is a bit of a strawman the sample sizes are very critisiable, less than a few hundred per country. The other half of the data comes from the Pew Global Attitudes Project which has similarly low sample sizes, around 800 max for a country and in some cases much less, put the two together and you get a recipe for disaster. I did wonder when I saw the graph, cos IQ should be completely independant from country. Now I could undesrtand if it was level of education which would differ but I think with such low sample sizes it would be very difficult to discount error and bias. To the guy who said that Atheists consider themselves superior, I have to say that in my experience that's not the case. Its far more about simply not believing or lack of relevance in their lives. I've not met many Atheists who consider atheism a sign of intelligence and those that I have I personally do not consider very intelligent, just arrogant. Oh and can we lose the enormous quotations please? We can look back in the thread to see what others has said if we need to.

OK Sure not a problem, it gets a bit confusing in here, yeah sure the smell isnt one of the nicest to non smokers, I just thought it was worth saying that thats not really a basis for judging it harshly.

I'll say it again, I'm not special, im just observably different from looking at my life.

Can you give us a source for that graph? Cos I dont believe it I'm afriad, mostly because I doubt that IQ varies by country, it should be roughly the same no matter what geographic region.

dont forget eating garlic, farting, painting, cooking food anyone else doesnt like, using perfume/deodorant others dont like & also not using deodorant (hmm we'd have a problem here)

Thats an interesting counter to the point of humans created time, humans also created the concept of non-existence, you cant consider time not to exist since non-existance is just as much dependant on humans as time.

I do indeed smoke, and so obviously it doesnt bother me at all, but the fact that it smell bad is no more heinous a crime than that of farting or eating garlic.

Um, it doesnt make me either, thats the point. I'm not special simply because I'm different, I just am.

I realy don't know what you're talking about, or what you mean by "bugs". Its a reference to the film Starship Troopers As for the smell, those complaining are really going to have to get over yourselves, its one thing to complain about the health problems, even secondary smoking for which the evidence has been completely overblown (I'm not implying it isnt true that second hand smoke does increase your likelyhood of cancer, but the studies were specifically only about people in confined spaces with smokers). However implying that the smell is anything other than the tiniest of irritations is great egotism.

Well maybe thats how life is for you, but maybe for some of us life isnt like that, maybe some of us are different? I'm 36 now, still havent met anyone like me. I know it seems silly, but you've got to consider that if you dont find yourself particularly different, its not logical to conclude that we are all the same from that evidence, you can only conclude that you youself aren't particularly different. If you then come across people who say "well actually things are a bit different for me" to then say to them "Well you aren't really different" is just ignoring evidence to the contrary to keep your world view the same. Trust me when I say, there are people out there who are very very different. Not just from the mainstream but also from each other. I have lots and lots off friend who are different, we hang out together because we find it difficult to get on in the world because we dont readily find a place for ourselves, so at least we have one thing in common, but we dont really have anything else in common.

Sorry who are these people? only the sensible ones? who gets to decide? So your fine with the government mandating what you are llowed to eat, how much you are allowed to sleep, what entertainment you are allowed to do, how much you are allowed to drive, and further than that how you are allowed to feel and what you are allowed to think, all of these affect your health. Think, no more sweets, no more chocolate eclairs, no more violence in tv mandated exercise plans, only an allowable amount of anger, strictly forumlised social interactions, what a dry and barren and controlled world that would have to be.

>>"radically deviant behaviour." Not quite sure what you mean by deviant, theres a large negative connotation to the word, which I'm not sure you are meaning, since in its literal sense its just a derivation from "deviation", which makes sense in the context. Personally I do deviate quite largely from what is usually socially acceptable. I often challenge people when they behave (to my mind) unethically. Perhaps a little background is needed though. I'm a 36 year old male, and mostly hang around with people younger than me, most of the people I know are from 20-30 years old, most of them are very cynical and a lot of them are adherents of the "Moral Relativism implies morals are a waste of time", and most of them have no emotional intelligence at all (being typically men) so some of them entertain themselves with things like griefing, some are mean to each other in the jovialest sense - i.e. they take the piss out of each other as a form of entertainment and most of them take out their anger in their lives on others without consciously dealing with it. So when conflicts occur, and they do with (to my mind) alarming frequency, their responses are unanimously "ignore it and maybe itll go away". I'm the only one in my group that is proactive against such conflict. I'll go out and try and talk to both parties and try and get a peaceful resolution. I'll try and energise others not involved to help resolve the conflict also. I actively investigate my own emotions and am always ware of what is happening emotionally around me. By the standards of the community I find myself with radically different behaviour to those around me. Of course being emotionally intelligent isnt the most amazing thing in the universe, there are plenty of emotionally intelligent people about these days, but in the context of the world i live in its very unusual.

And the only reason no one disputes gravity is because we've had four hundred years since the revelations of newton for the church to sort out their problems and get on board with the fact that its true, instead of the hundred and fifty years since darwin - it takes them a while to get on board with these sorts of things. For some reason a hundred and fifty years worth of evidence showing that in essence the theory is complete correct and tested to be true (I say in essence as there are always tweaks to be made to any theory despite every tiny tweak being taken by those against the theory as proof it is wrong *sigh*) isnt enough evidence.

Not every belief needs to be taught, but Creationism is very interesting precisely because of the way it is being used as a political tool by the religious right in order to influence schools, its part of what's known as the wedge strategy, actually I would think more than Comparative Religion it should be taught in Politics, particularly with emphasis on the methodology of "Teach the Controversy". But in terms of comparative religion its still a very interesting phenomena as its one of the few beliefs which is trying to combbat rationalism from the inside. And finally it should be taught because frankly our children should be warned against this sort of thing.

Its not a matter of not teaching Creationism,its a question of where in the syllabus it should appear, its not science its part of comparative religion so obviously scientists are gonna object when Christians tell us it should be taught in science. Obviously Creationism is a belief for a lot of people, so needs to be taught, but in no way is it science.

Actually it gives us the best of both worlds, it means those of us who want to find commonalities with others can do it, and those who want to stand out can do it too.

except that we are all different. Every feature of humanity is on a bell curve, no two people are at the same point on every bell curve and everybody will be at the edge of one bell curve or another. Being different doesnt have to mean dressing different, or listening to unusual music, being different is simply realising that no one thinks like you do, because nobody does. We all think in such radically different ways about things, its easy to be different

Well thats a daft argument, hes almost certainly against lesbianism too

Yep its a really bad argument against a really bad argument, thats the major problem with forums, theres idiots on both sides, if theres one thing more annoying than arguing with an idiot its having an idiot on your own side derailing the debate. So apologies for the idiots on our side, but still, the argument that being gay is wrong because we cant reproduce is still stupidity on a grand scale.

Nonsense, whilst there are plenty of people conforming to the stereotype of non-conformist,especially plenty of fashion victims who wear whatever groups colours is fashionable this week, be it goth, emo punk or grunge, that doesnt mean every one conforms, its easy enough to find your own path if you look for it.

It's also been theorised that homosexuality evolved as a means of providing parents of offspring with an alternate carer, so that in social groups when parents died or were needed else where (in times of low food availablity say) their offspring could be put with a surrogate who was physically strong enough to defend them but had the ability to bond with children the same way mothers do - i.e. a caring nurturing male figure. Lesbianism has been theorised to be the opposite, so that a social group would have very strong female figures who could defend the nest whilst the males were away hunting. Whether or not this is precisely the reason behind our existence is neither here nor there, no matter what there wil be some evolutionary reasons for homosexuals, given we have survived, its not like we pass on our genes, so if those genes have survived it is for a reason. If its not genetic (and that is by no means certain) then we have survived because there is quite simply a place for us to do so.

Cool, glad that seemed to intrigue you, also feel free to ask me any questions on bits your unclear on, those youtube vids i put up are excellent watching.

Um, cos he got reminded that we live on the same planet as a bunch of hate mongering bozos perhaps? Ok sure, what do you expect when you come to a thread like this, but even so, when someone idly says your wrong as a person, as opposed to an opinion you might hold most people are going to react, and then when they say something as daft as "I'll only respect you if you can have a baby with another man", instead of respecting people simply for being people, well im not surprised he got annoyed.

Hi lenticular (seen you on a couple of other threads) You can indeed make a triangle with 2 obtuse angles, in fact you can make one with three obtuse angles, the phrase you are looking for is "Elliptic Geometry" Perhaps it would be easier to explain how to make a triangle with three right angles.... Imagine standing at the north pole, then face south and walk a mile in that direction, then turn 90 degrees to your left and face east, then walk another mile. Finally turn another 90 degrees to your left and walk another mile north. You just marked out the edges of a triangle with three right angles. Now some of you might say yes but the lines werent straight, true in this case, however there are in mathematics geometries with the same properties as the surface of the sphere which stay flat and in those geometries triangles an indeed have more that 180 degree in their interior angles. If you substitute an ellipse for a circle you can get triangles with 3 obtuse angles, if you subtitute a hyperbolic surface for the sphere you get triangles with angles which add up to less than 180 degree. Now you can go talk to your maths teacher and ask him to explain why he [bleep]ed at you for trying to do something which is a fairly basic maths concept (at least within the last hundred years or so) called non-euclidean geometry This picture below is by M.C.Escher and uses the poincare representation of hyperbolic geometry to show in euclidean geometry what a tiled pattern in non euclidean geometry would look like... and heres a similar one for Eliptic Geometry Theres also a two part vid on youtube thats really good which also talks about knot theory and how it relates to hyperbolic geometry which you might find interesting [in a really approachable sort of way, you dont need a degree in topology to understand it]. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AGLPbSMxSUM http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MKwAS5omW_w

Um, you think homosexuality is just wrong, and you dont think your homophobic? I think I may have news for you, yes you are. If your judging a set of people based on (from what youve said) no reason at all, thats pretty offensive.