The gay gene

The debate whether homosexuality is a personal choice, a biological makeup or a combination of both has been a hot button issue with many individuals, especially in religion. The study going on in this article says that someone by the name of Dean Hamer is doing a study and trying to find a gene that is passed from mother to males in the family that is responsible for having the gay trait.
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/born-gay

In the homeless guy case, where you could kill him in order to save five others, maybe that homeless guy would become a doctor in the future and save many. But if you kill him then, then it wouldn't be as beneficial to society in the long run.

I was looking over Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett's comments on religion and science, and they kept bringing up the question of if one should believe faith or science? What do you believe in: something that you have a feeling but have no proof, or do you believe in science which may have hard proof but there is no deep feeling (that feeling of faith)?

Good based on what?

So instead of wondering if and how people become evil, I wanted to concentrate on how they become good. The guidelines for what is defined as good is usually determined by a sacred scripture. Here is a question though, who wrote or translated that scripture? They surely had some bias so even if the message was from a higher being, the scripture has been distorted and yet we base our perception of purpose, good, and evil on them.

The mind in control?

Look at the link and see if you think that this is frightening? People can understand how the mind works to an extent where they can connect a living thing to a nonliving thing and function as if it were a part of the living thing. This frightened me a bit at first. How do we know that certain people's understanding of how the mind controls the rest of the body are not already manipulating other things without the rest of the world knowing. This is to say that a few curious people fiddle around and results in a new discovery over complete authority over others, nonliving and living. Free will would be only a luxury that the authority possesses.

Identity and Conscious

In the case with "Genie, a modern-day wild child", I looked at Genie as any other creature. She did not know how to talk, interact with humans, nor understand how to use her senses as we do. In the reading, they described her as a stange-bunny and other animal like characteristics. Is Genie still not a living creature and has feelings and a conscience? Couldn't all creatures have a conscience then? Just because they do not understand how to act the way humans have been taught to act for generations. We tough to understand if something is soft, while Genie may lick the object to learn if it is soft. What is your stance on whether other creature have a sense of deeper feeling and conscience than some people may give them? Humans sure enough talk about other creatures as lower beings compared to humans.

Thinking lower of the mindless

Today's discussion of what had a mind made me question if the though that less complex animals and organisms are not viewed as equals as humans. They are neglected and tested on as an alternative of the superior human. There was an article that reveals that the FDA releases a guideline for genetically modified animals. This scared me because now the idea of genetically modifying becoming more common and slowly more accepted. The FDA has created a guideline and therefore the idea and possibilities of how to do such this are now more easily accessible. All you got to do is follow the guidelines. Are we neglecting other organisms due to our complexity and intervening into the lives of other organisms who just life off of instinct?

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/36614/title/FDA_releases_guidelines_for_genetically_modified_animals

Knowledge of One's Self

In the "Knowing Our Minds" article by Alex Byrne made me realize just how limited we really are to our perceptive of others and ourselves. When we judge someone else, we use our senses to analyze the situation and hope we are judging the situation on truth. With judging ourselves, we believe that what every we experience throuhg this first-person perspective is truth. How scary is it to think that whatever method we use to judge ourselves is completely different from the way we analize everything else. This conciousness that we use to judge and know ourselves does not have a logical explanation. Are we not just billions of cells interacting wiht one another through chemical interactions ? So where does this concious come from. This concious that gives us this perpective of how to judge things around us and how to judge ourselves. Is it part of a control feature that is secretely imbeded into our brains so that we function a certain way. Is it part of the authorative control or is it a gift from God?

Interviews on Media

In the readings about how the media was controlled, I realized how few interviews the media did with the people of Iraq. Are not they the people that the United States went to war to liberate. Would not we want to know how they are being liberated and their view on how liberation is changing their lives? I understand how sometimes you focus on one side more than another but there is always another side whether one chooses to recognize it. There might as well be another documentation like John Pilger trying to be released to the public where the civilians of where the war is taking place are voicing out their thoughts. This made me think of the tree in a forest method being used by the government to conceal the people's voice: If we do not hear them, are they really yelling for help?

GPHIL post 2

The idea of how the United States does not realize that their reaction to these terrorist are terrorist attacks is shocking. Everyone know the golden rule of do to one as you would like done to you. Wait so like is this suppose to be like "an eye for an eye," because i though that was Hammurabi's law and not The Constitution. In these cases its more like "an eye" for two entire bodies. It does seem ridiculous that people in America react so dramatically to the such events, when such events occur in other parts of the world daily. This fits in with the living in a cave idea, we just want to stay safe in our safety bubble and look at the pretty refection instead of popping our bubble and revealing the countless suffering and problems with he world. Isn't the governments use of military force to respond to these terrorist attracts over done?

Alright, how many know the way some places make jeans? Jeans are died in iodine and then washed. The new hip look of fade is created by washing those jeans and sometimes washing them with rocks. The dye washes off and is released into the environment along with the scrap or old fashion clothing. This is the case with most clothes manufacturing places in third world countries. The amount of pollution produced is rediculous. In addition there is no agency or enforcement to try to control the pollution. How do you guys feel that consumer's (especially youth) high demand in new fashion and styles are creating a problem in other parts of the world. This not only impacts the enviroment, tainting nearby rivers and destroying the ecosystem, but it also causes the issue of low pay. Employies get the dye into their hands and eyes. Did you ever stop and think where your clothing came from and how it impacted the environment and other people?
check it out: http://www.ehponline.org/members/2007/115-9/focus.html