pantheory

Yes, a very interesting story. There is no clear test or definition as to when an animal species becomes domesticated. The distinction is somewhat arbitrary between wild and fully domesticated. The dog may likely be the oldest domesticated animal. Dogs are social animals like humans. They have the instinct to hunt, are submissive to the alfa, and are very protective of their territory. Great qualities to become "man's best friend/"

The possibility of this has been known for nearly a century, and the sci-fi versions of it have been around at least 60 years. Some humans, Walt Disney for instance, had himself, or his head cryogenically preserved even though family members have denied it. The science of it is generally valid excepting freezing destroys cells (ruptures them) so a blood anti-freeze is needed. The sci-fi scenario is a type of suspended animation whereby an animal, human, etc. is cryo-preserved then brought back to life in the future. Those presently promoting this technology do not have all the pieces of the puzzle as yet but IMO it will happen in roughly the next 30 years concerning animals and eventually humans. The idea is that when you or a loved one are dying of a terminal illness you would have yourself or the loved one cryo-preserved. Your directive and money would enable you or them to come back to life when the illness can likely be cured. This is real science currently in development. This process does not forestall conventional aging so different processes and treatments would be needed for that.

Your quote reminds me a little of an old question. (paraphrased): What is better, a perspective of life, philosophy, religion, etc. that works for you, or one that has a lot more validity to it and is closer to reality and truth? Something like, what is better religion or science. Let the truth be known, there is no correct answer to this question for a single person. A philosophy that works means the individual would be generally happy, satisfied, and fully functional. If that person would learn the "real truth" he may not then have a fruitful and happy life. On the other hand people who start out with such "untrue" ideas may find too many questions leading to too many doubts, resulting in an unproductive and unhappy life until they come to a more satisfying conclusion concerning their beliefs. Of course there is no correct answer for an individual concerning what is better for them. They need to figure it out for themselves. Yes, an open mind is better. Making suggestions to someone usually can't hurt but trying to convince them, or convincing somebody otherwise may be wrong for them, regardless of "the truth" of it IMO.

Yes, wanting to win arguments over thinking straight is a big problem for most people. I have known this and certainly try to avoid this flaw, related to ego, as much as I become aware of it in my own thinking and behavior. Another closely related type of faulty thinking is explained below, called confirmation bias. "Consider what’s become known as “confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. Of the many forms of faulty thinking that have been identified, confirmation bias is among the best catalogued" In this article "confirmation bias" is called one of the most serious flaws in human thinking. This idea IMO is very important for everyone to understand concerning the likely pitfalls of their own thinking -- aside from realizing this flaw in others. Being reminded of it by this article hopefully will enable me to be more aware of it, attempting to avoid it in my own thinking. IMO both layman and scientists equally have problems with this flaw of thinking, even after it has been explained to them, such as in the OP link.

Welcome Comatoast, I detect intellect and humor in your chosen words. I think you'll like it here where intellect and humor are both appreciated and involved in many of the various conversations posted here. Browse and read the forums and chime in where you have interest. I think you'll find that most people here are very friendly. Have fun! "The fractal universe" is also a unique response to "Still have any gods"

Although this link can be considered scholarly IMO, they come to conclusions that are certainly not reliable, also IMO. Oral tradition that's old, of any religion or otherwise is certainly unreliable if not backed up by a lot of evidence, whereby the life of Jesus has no historical evidence to back it up, and little verifiable evidence for the validity of the Bible of any kind in the New or Old testament. The article states that the most reliable oral tradition of the New Testament is backed up by the teachings of Paul, the Pauline Epistles. The life of Paul has a historical backing, but his writings have always been in question as to their authenticity since they are known not to have been written in his own hand, penmanship. Paul was literate in several languages and wrote well in Latin and Greek, contrary to the literacy of probably Jesus or any of his 12 disciples if any other than Paul ever lived. But a Paul who preached Christianity about the time of the Biblical Paul did exist according to history, but are any of his asserted writings authentic? probably not IMO for reasons explained in the link below but Paul's alleged writings parallel some of what is known of his life. As far as oral traditions of the Bible are concerned most Biblical scholars agree that little credence should be given to unsupported oral traditions of Christianity hundreds of years old, contrary to the conclusions of the OP link. http://www.directionjournal.org/44/1/inauthentic-letters-of-paul.html

The above question is slightly miss-worded. The question should be "is the Greenland growing glacier an outlier in a trend of shrinking glaciers, or is all the data wrong and glaciers are not shrinking? Yes, a very good question that can only be answered by many continuing multinational studies. Preferred analyses IMO should have no preconceived prejudicial ideas of global warming as much as possible. According to the most reliable link IMO that I could find, Greenland as a whole continent has been losing ice for the last decade more than it has gained ice. It has gained ice to a reliable extent only in the last two years. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/24/greenland-ice-sheet-apparently-gains-mass-for-the-2nd-year-in-a-row/ but as explained in the title link of the opening post above this new trend, with variables expected from year to year, could last another 20 years according to their analysis and related paper. It seems peculiar to me that this same glacier now reported to be growing, was in 2016 considered by extensive study to be the fastest thinning glacier of Greenland. https://www.livescience.com/65080-greenland-glacier-growing.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190327-ls

Although it is a cool picture in that the light from background galactic light enabled this photo, it has little detail other than its unexpected somewhat oblong shape. Many expected a long-time exposure to show the orbital motion of materials surrounding the galactic central galactic black hole of galaxy M87. Instead its surroundings appear to be atmospheric with no observable motion. Galactic black holes where their spin motion is measurable are known to have relatively fast spin motion to them. Even though not observable the black hole's surroundings also probably have relatively fast orbital motion to it.

Interesting stuff. For more than a century many have believed that there were a number of species that co-existed with homo sapiens whereby cross-breeding occurred which accordingly could explain the differences we see within humanity today. The first of these other homo species was discovered just 90 years ago, Neanderthals. They now have evidence for several species co-existing with homo sapiens: Homo Neanderthalis, Homo Floresiensis, Homo Denisovenis, now Homo Luzonensis, and probably IMO still more yet undiscovered.

According to my readings there were a great number of Jewish preachers of the gospel, itinerant "holy men" in Israel and Judah for at least a century before and after the time of Jesus, the first and second centuries B.C and A.D.. Such men were like the figure John-the-Baptist of the bible; some assertedly prophesied, others preformed what was believed to be miracles, like Jesus, apocalyptic prophets and healers, some were charismatic and many were Monk-like in their self-denial and service to there fellow man. In other countries similar men were Buddhist monks, Hindu yogis, and later on Saints of the Christian world. The Roman Emperor Constantine's mother (4th century) was a professed Christian and one hypothesis asserts that she wanted her son, a General and Roman Emperor, to become a Christian too to save his immortal soul. At the time Christianity was considered just another sect of Judaism. The idea is that Constantine saw Christianity as a possible means to unite the religions of the Roman Empire proclaiming just one national religion that many might follow. Also likely he thought that it might be the means to better control the populace. For this the Council of Nicaea was established to put together the writings of the then-known Christian religion, considering much of which was still oral tradition. All tradition was personalized into one imagined person, Jesus, also incorporating the old Hebrew testament to complete the story. If so the character of Jesus was probably modeled after traditional prophets, healers, and "holy-men" over the preceding few centuries which by oral tradition were believed to have lived during the first century AD and maybe backward in time up to five centuries, roughly the time of Buddha.

The original concept of the aether had at least one primary assertion. The aether was supposed to be the carrier of light, EM radiation, called the luminiferous aether, the "ocean" where light waves were assertedly created and traveled within. Others, including Newton, proposed aether as also being the pushing source of gravity, Optics 1717, second edition. There are still many theorists including myself that still believe and theorize an aether of some sort. So for us no aspect of the existence of aether has ever been disproved. Yes, such theorists are certainly a minority, never-the-less as you can see in the link below there continues to be a great number of these credentialed theorists still following and proposing new aether theories on an ongoing basis. http://sciliterature.50webs.com/RelativityDebates.htm

Them flatulent Martian cows must be pretty strange looking living underground and such. Yes they have found seasonal methane production in the Martian atmosphere but seemingly no clue as to its origin. One possibility of the methane origin could be a Martian underground microbial source.

Yes such a hole has been discovered but there are other possible causes for this other than global warming. The first possibility is that there is presently unknown volcanism under this area. Antarctica has many known volcanic activities under it. And secondly as the weight of a glacier increases with ice, it has greater weight and therefore more friction and heat is produced at the bottom of the glacier causing melting and sliding of glacial masses.

Many think the theory of aether has been disproved but in fact it was not, and there are many modern aether theories and a number of scientists that believe in aether today. The word aether is no longer popular so scientists have come up with different names for it such as the zero-point-field, space-time fabric, quanta-sized space, dark matter, quantum foam, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0604/0604207.pdf Modern aether theories are compatible with modern physics and published in peer-reviewed journals: I. Schmelzer, A Generalization of the Lorentz Ether to Gravity with General-Relativistic Limit, Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras 22, 1 (2012), p. 203-242, resp. arxiv:gr-qc/0205035. I. Schmelzer, A Condensed Matter Interpretation of SM Fermions and Gauge Fields, Foundations of Physics, vol. 39, nr. 1, p. 73 (2009), resp. arxiv:0908.0591 For the most part these theories are ignored but such theories can explain many aspects of physics that are otherwise much more difficult to explain.

This is a good posting for this topic since the word theory in science has no exact consensus definition. The meaning of "scientific theory" generally means a coherent group of propositions and hypothesis formulated together to explain scientific observations, contains a broad group of facts or phenomena in the natural world that has repeatedly been tested for confirmation through experiment and/or observation; such theories incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses; scientific theories must also be both testable and falsifiable. The theory of Evolution, for instance, is based upon Darwin's theory of natural selection. It contains the intuitively obvious cliche "the survival of the fittest." Those individuals that adapt well to their environment, live longer. Those that more easily and readily proliferate will have more offspring. Together a population will be dominated by better adapted and more prolific genetics. The theory of evolution also contains a very large amount of hypothesis that are less substantiated, some of which will change over time. The over-all theory is substantiated by a mountain of evidence, most of which cannot be disputed. Of course there are other factors involved in evolution such as epigenetics, gene folding factors etc. that play a part in both micro and macro evolution, that are not a part of the theory of Evolution via natural selection. Those still believing in God's creationism are rarely ever knowledgeable concerning the mountain of facts, experiments, fossil records etc. involved. Evidence can also be misinterpreted and rightfully disputed, but not a mountain of evidence. A mountain of evidence is more than theory, most of it is fact.