I remember someone posted something like this a year or so ago, something about a study that showed that Christians gave more in charity than Atheists.  Well, I found something in Wikipedia that corroborates that, but goes a little further.  Apparently Jews give more than Christians and, get this, Muslims give more than even Jews.  Aint that a hoot!  :) Here is the quote from Wikipedia: In the United Kingdom, Muslims today give more to charity than people of other religions, according to a British poll.[3] There, Muslims, on average, gave $567, compared to $412 for Jews, $308 for Protestants, $272 for Catholics and $177 for atheists.[3] Today, conservative estimates of annual zakat is estimated to be 15 times global humanitarian aid contributions.[4] Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24532694

In Genesis, chapters 1 and 2 describe two different versions of creation, and they contradict each other in the order in which things are created.  In chapter 1, God created things in this order: - plants - creatures of the sea and air - creatures of the land - man and woman together In chapter 2 he creates them in the following order:  - man - plants, including the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil - creatures of the land and air - woman If the Bible is infallible, then both versions must be true.  How can that be?

I was just reading Genesis for info on another debate, and came across the following line: Genesis 3:22: Then Yahweh God said, "See, the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil..." "one of us"?  Who is he talking to, and who are the others that he considers to be like himself?

Newt Gingrich argued during the last election that there was something called American Exceptionalism that meant that there was something about the U.S. that made it an exception to all previous civilizations, and that we would never fall.  I never heard an explanation of what it was about the U.S. that made it exceptoinal, but maybe I just missed that.  Anyway, what's your opinion?

Every once in a while I'll have what I consider to be the perfect poop, from an evolutionary perspective.  I think if you go back far enough, it's obvious that we never wiped after doing our doodie, and that there was probably an evolutionary advantage to having the poop come out nice and clean, without a lot of residue left over.  However, those days are long gone, and most of our poops require a pretty significant cleanup operation after they're done.  When did we slide from this presumed state of grace? Currently, pretty much everyone one in first world countries use toilet paper, and we view with disgust the practice in third world countries of using their hands to wipe.  Also, 'my' culture has a tradition of using leaves to wipe, if toilet paper isn't available.  I say this because this is what I was told to use when out camping when I was a kid, and also because of jokes about using cactus when in the desert, or accidentally using poison ivy.  Because of this, I'm assuming that historically that may be what our ancestors used. However, in all of these other alternative methods, I've never heard anyone suggest that it's okay to just leave it there till it dries and let if fall off naturally.  Everyone just assumes that the wipe is necessary. So my whole purpose here is really to gather information.  Are there any cultures around today that just let it sit, or does everyone wipe?  What about our closest relatives in the animal kingdom?  Obviously animals without hands can't really wipe (although dogs often wipe their butts on the ground, but this is usually long after pooping, so really they just let it sit, and then only wipe the dry crusty stuff off).

I've always felt that young children, including new borns, should sleep with their parents.  I think pretty much all mamalian mothers sleep with their children except humans, and even among humans, I think it's mostly in industrial nations that mothers don't sleep with their babies.  The trauma that I've heard kids go through when parents force them to sleep in a separate room, or even a crib in the same room, seems incredibly in-humane to me.  (I've never experienced it first hand, because all of my kids have slept with us when they were young.) Also, I think sleeping with your kids is an incredible bonding experience that makes them a lot easier to control when they get older.  By far the best memories of my life are playing with my first born son in bed before settling into sleep.  None of my kids has ever had any problems going to bed, and all through grade school they never had problems getting up in the morning to get ready for school.  I think all of this is due to the fact that they slept with us when they were young, and going to bed was always a fun experience; never stressful. The following article made me think of this again: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120907165259.htm It says that fathers undergo biological changes (namely a drop in testosterone levels) when they sleep with their children, and they mention how the evolution of that characteristic can only have evolved if our species has a history of fathers sleeping with their children. What does everyone else think?  I know there are also a lot of arguments in favor of having your kids sleep in a separate room, but I have a lot of counter-arguments just waiting for people to bring them up .  This is a subject I have given **a lot** of thought about.

I thought of something this morning (it happens occasionally), and I want to do a survey to see if the evidence supports it.  The question is, among siblings, who fights more, sister against sister, brother against brother, or brother against sister?  I'll post the theory after I get enough data to either prove or disprove it.

I know, this has been done to death, but new evidence has turned up suggesting that the egg may be the winner here:       http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/343197/title/As_Told_By_the_Egg To summarize, eggs contain fast evolving proteins on their shells as an attempt to slow down fertilization and reduce the possibility of being fertilized by more than one sperm.  Because these proteins evolve faster than most proteins, the article theorises that mutations in these proteins could cause new species to form.  The theory would then be that it would have been a mutation in one of these proteins that caused an ancestral proto-chicken to lay the first chicken egg. This isn't conclusive of course, few things are in science, but it is definitly an important development in this ongoing controversy. What do you think Joe?  Is this worthy of reopening this debate?

During the Iraq war, large numbers of Iraqis moved to Syria (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/).  Now, with Syrian refugees moving to Jordan, Jordan is worried that it might destabilize it's country (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/28/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE8610SH20120828).  Now I'm wondering if the Syrian conflict is due to all of the refugees it sheltered from Iraq.  Certainly this had to have some impact on Syrian society, but it's hard to distinguish this effect from the effect of the Arab spring.  It would be a shame to think that Syria is being punished for being gracious enough to help out the Iraqi refugees.  

My list would be: * Indian * Mexican * Japanese * Almost everything else * European/American (In case you can't tell, I just had Indian for lunch.  )

I'm just curious.  Joe said there were more republicans, and I have no reason to doubt him, but I thought a quick poll would be interesting.

Does anyone else notice this?

Our species didn't get where it's at alone (I know, I'm beginning to sound like Obama).  We have formed partner-like relationships with other species like dogs and horses.  These partnerships have benefitted our species emensely, and it's certainly arguable that we couldn't have gotten where we are today without the help of these other species.  However, now that we have machines to do the work that horses once did, and our use of dogs has also declined, it seems like these animals are kept more as pets than as partners, and their usefulness is becoming marginalized.  It seems to me that, someday, theses species will all but disappear unless we make specific allowances for them.  Do we owe it to them to make these allowances, out of respect for the help they gave us in the past, or can we just let them slide into extinction?  

One of the problems with gays in the military is that soldiers have to live in very close quarters with one another, and straight guys would always be worried that the gays are checking them out.  However, if the gays were all in their own troop, then that wouldn't be a problem.  Also, a problem with straight soldiers is that they have to be away from their families for so long.  The gay soldiers could do much longer deployments, maybe even be permanently deployed, because they can have their partners with them. They say Alexandar the Great was gay, and that the Greeks had a different attitude towards homosexuality.  I also thought the movie '300' was pretty gay looking (just from the previews, I never saw the movie).  When Alexandar led his men to conquer Persia, India and Egypt, they were away from their homes for at least 10 years.  I'm wondering if his army was so successful because it had a lot of gays in it.  I also wonder how our views of gays would change if we had all gay troops, and they did their jobs well. Of course, there is one problem with all gay troops, which I'm not even going to mention because it's so obvious.  But if it worked out well, maybe the rest of us could just pay attention to something else whenever the subject came up.

This is actually a very serious questions.  Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I spend a lot of time worrying about Genomic Entropy.  The problem is, it's too easy to survive and pass your genes onto the next generation, so there is no weeding out of bad mutations or genetic extremes.  People with really bad eyesight, too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, nasal problems (that last one includes me), asthma, bad teeth, to name just of few of the problems that people have, used to have a selective disadvantage, but our softer lifestyle combined with more advanced medicine enables a lot of people to survive who would have died out in earlier generations.  The result is that an increasing proportion of people will have these problems, and be dependent on the health care industry just to get by in life. So, the title of this debate is a little tongue-in-cheek, indicating that face/body types might have been a little more uniform when we had more selective pressure weeding out the extremes, but the real problem is with the increase of other, more serious problems, and an increased dependency on health care.

This discussion is about the research going into prolonging peoples lives, hopefully forever.  Most people think it would be great if we could all live for ever, but think about what the world would really be like if that were to happen...  

Are these really bones from John the Baptist?      http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre85e0u2-us-britain-bulgaria-bones/    

Of course, there are still wars now, and I'm not suggesting that we'll have no more conflicts, but are major wars, where one country attacks another, on the way out?

I mean no disrespect to Jesus in this question.  Certainly he began a new religion that changed the face of Europe, but was that his main goal?  In comparing Jesus with Gandhi, both were men of peace, both lived in countries that were occupied by much stronger foreign powers, and both, I believe, taught a kind of non-violent resistance.  Of course, much more is known of Gandhi than of Jesus, but Jesus did teach his followers to "love your enemies", "offer up the other cheek", and "give unto Caesar what is Caesar's", and I believe he was trying to teach a kind of peaceful resistance with these messages. Gandhi lived to see the English leave India, whereas the Jews executed Jesus, rebelled against the Romans, and were later defeated by the Romans and sent into exile.  My theory is that, if Jesus had succeeded in persuading the Jews to resist peacefully, they would never have been kicked out of their homeland, would never have had to displace so many people when they tried to return, and there would be peace in the Middle East today.  Do you agree?