Rich people apparently never gnaw on chicken wings. — Frank Apisa

They have servants to do that for them.

Re: George III:

He probably had porphyria, which is a genetic disorder impairing the production of "heme" -- an essential element of red blood cells. One writer, trying to argue that George III wasn't insane said that he was merely "manic". Hypomania can be quite pleasant, but last time I checked, full blown "hypermania" is a red flag for mental illness. Acute porphyria can make one feel and be quite sick, including mental dysfunction.

Take the discussion of "nigger" elsewhere on the forum. It is a term of derision rooted in the history of enslaving Africans (at least in the West; whether slave traders and slave holders in the Middle East had similarly derisory terms, I don't know). 154 years after slavery was ended, far fewer years after crude and pervasive discrimination against blacks was greatly reduced, we can not use this term freely. Nobody can -- not blacks, not whites. It certainly gets used, but not without a lot of freight. Rappers may use its freighted (fraught) loading for one effect, white power groups use the term's loading for quite different purposes. Blacks may use it in conversation to communicate one meaning, whites may use it in conversation to communicate quite different meanings.

Black, African American, and Negro also have fraught meanings that can't be dismissed. The history of the term clings to them, just as it does to Anglo Saxon, English and White.

The reason "fuck" has a much more casual decorum rating than "elbow" is its history. Words have histories, and their histories cling to them from generation to generation. The words we consider "too casual for formal settings" (like fuck, shit, asshole, pussy, cock, etc.) have been in use (in English, with equivalent words in other languages) since at least the transition from Old English to Middle English around 700-900 years ago. Chaucer's Miller's Tale is pitched low brow enough for those words to be OK. Chaucer's Nun's Tale was pitched at a high brow level. [Chaucer's 15th century readers would, of course, have been high brow.]. In the Nun's Priest's tale about Chanticleer (a lusty chicken) Chaucer chooses more decorous language. Rather than fucking Pertelote, Chanticleer "feathered" her.

He feathered Pertelote in wanton play
And trod her twenty times ere prime of day.

In some passages of classic Greek literature, "plowing a furrow" is a more polite term than fucking.

So, why do people set up (and enforce) categories of high brow, mid brow, and low brow? It has something to do with class. People with power (social, economic, hierarchical, etc.) generally prefer to control those with less power, and that includes policing the "brow" of proceedings. So high brow tends to go along with those who have power, and low brow tends to go along with those who have very little power.

TENDS -- not a rule. Richard Nixon had plenty of power, but in the privacy of the Oval Office he used plenty of very low brow language. But, important qualification, this was in the company of peers, NOT inferiors. Lyndon Johnson also had plenty of power, and he also tended to use quite a bit of low brow language, and not just among his inner circle.

The group who is touchiest about language is the middle-class mid-brow grouping. Middle class people (and here I mean aspiring to achievement, but not secure in their material accomplishments) very much want to use the language of the more powerful group above them, and bask in that kind of decorum. Unfortunately for this middling, mid-brow group, they often have fairly recent origins in the low class, low brow level--the memory of which they very much want to forget. So strivers, aspirers, upward reaching people are often the fussiest about policing decorum and language.

What's ahead? If I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for language etiquette rules to disappear. The sanctioned words might change, but the top honchos will still be policing language the riff raff gets to use in public.

Well, there is the matter of decorum. It isn't that "fuck" or "shit" are "adult words" and coitus and faeces are not. The former words are appropriate for one level of decorum and the latter are appropriate for another level. I would not expect that a doctor would ask me "Are you shitting OK?" I'd expect him to reference faeces and bowel movements. On the other hand, "Shit!" would be the appropriate response to a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Or "fucking shit" would be the appropriate term at a bar to reference something really stupid.

Policing adult language, as well as enforcing "political correct" language falls into he category of "boor control" or "controlling other people" or maintaining a "quality atmosphere". I disapprove of that sort of shit. But... some people can get away with it and some can't.

we should greatly limit gun ownership or better yet, just ban them outright. — Maw

Your proposal is a good idea. I'm in favour. However...

There are something like ... 200 million guns in the US. 100 million people own guns. Despite the absurdly large number of guns, the location and circumstances of killings is fairly circumscribed. There is a concentration of killings in zip codes that have high rates of poverty and marginality. Are the white guys doing the group killings mentally ill, terminally alienated, totally outraged, or what? I don't know, but it seems axiomatic that they aren't 'normal'. After all, we live in a society that is a regular factory of insanity, alienation, and rage. We can be thankful, I suppose, that most white guys who are at the end of their rope kill themselves rather than somebody else.

I really don't know if there is any way to address the individual problems of MI, alienation, and rage. As for dealing with these problems collectively, doing so would be revolutionary. I don't see any revolutions on the horizon.

I don't see much likelihood of retrieving at least 200,000,000 guns. Do you?

True enough, but I think this animal is equally representative of our blighted species:

Jackass

"When will America stop?" Or "Will America stop?" Oh... probably not.

The vast majority of Americans are remarkably non-violent. But, as noted, "the hood" accounts for a lot of the gun violence, and "the hood" is, in many cases, a behavioural sink. So, there you find -again- a small numbers of anti-social agents who account for a larger than proportional share of shooting and knife deaths (guns being more effective when used as directed).

As it happens, multiple death shootings are far, far more news worthy than thug shooting thug in the slums so are given lavish coverage. A thug's wild shot killing a baby in its crib inside a house is exquisitely appalling too, so that gets fairly good coverage. Otherwise, who cares? 12 bodies in one batch in Virginia Beach or 12 bodies over the weekend in Chicago's slums? No comparison in news value.

The urge to kill is, possibly perhaps maybe, universal but 99.9% of us are able to suppress that itchy urge. .1% (1/10 of 1%) are prone to pulling the trigger.

I'm not quite sure what ails killers. Around a third of Americans own guns, and very very few murders -- individual or group packages -- are carried out by these 100 million people (and I say that as a devoted foe of the NRA).

"Political Correctness", "the left", "the Right", are all a bit difficult to discuss because the terms are too fluid. We put the fluid terms in our squirt guns and aim as well as we can.

It seems to me that there is no necessary link between "the left" and "the right" these days. As American politics go, what I call "the left" (socialist organizations such as the Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party USA, Socialist Labor Party, et al) became moribund since... the 1970s -- at least 40 years ago. These organizations were based on Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, DeLeon, et al), had party discipline, had specific and stable views on economic and social issues, and published their views, and had larger and smaller participation rates over time -- the peak being the Great Depression, probably.

"The Right" has been a more or less consistent and cohesive interest group since at least the Great Depression. They generally occupied the conservative wing of the Republic Party, but have not always dominated it. There were once "liberal Republicans" too, and they were at one time dominant.

"The Left", such as it is today, is not a party -- it's a pronoun. The Right, on the other hand, is cohesive, organize, consistent, and in power. "The Right" opposed Social Security in the 1930s, Medicare / Medicaid in the 1960s, and enthusiastically helped end Welfare As We Know it under William Clinton. They did not disappear after Bill Clinton. They continued under Bush II, didn't disappear under Obama, and are here with Trump. Koch Brothers weren't around in 1934 but but they've been active in the last 20.

"The rich Right" knows what side of the bread their butter is on, and they work consistently and effectively to keep the butter as thick as possible. They are pretty successful. I doubt if "the rich Right" spends any time at all worrying about "the left", especially the pronominal left that is just a place holder for some disenchanted college students. Their hired political operatives might bait the academic non-entities to get them to act out, but beyond that, "who cares what they think?". Environmentalist are a manageable concern, and crazy crypto-fascist groups are annoying, but pose no risk apart from smelling bad. (The rich gentile folks in Germany had no particular problems with the Nazis. Nazis, Schmatzies. What do you all, Sieg Heil und Heil Hitler, want to buy these days?)

I'm fairly certain that most of the jabberwockies on "The Left" do not know shit from shineola when it comes to political and social analysis. The old leftists knew much more. Mostly they play word games. BORING.

In this time and place, feudal regimes are not at all suitable. Indeed, the world became too complicated for such systems a long time ago. My "realistic regime" would be something like what countries have had for the last century, more or less: complex bureaucracies capable of responding to complex problems.

Of course, it matters what the animating spirit of the bureaucracy is. The Nazis had efficient bureaucracies, but their animating spirit was rather black. The US had a humanely spirited bureaucracy in the 1960s and 1970s, but under Reagan and Clinton the bureaucracy became less humane in some ways. It hasn't become more humane in the last 20 years (2000-2020).

Generally, conservative tending regimes tend to be less humane than liberal tending regimes.

You say: "Never mind about examples. I know ALL ABOUT IT from personal experience." Which means: "I don't want to talk about what you're talking about, I want to talk about what I want to talk about, so shut up and listen". — tinman917

Sorry. Quite often text comes across as harsher than verbal communication in person does. One would soften the effect of the same words with expression. What I meant to say, softly, is that after paying taxes for 5 decades and seeing how it works on a person to person basis, I understand what you mean.

If you want to make Christianity out to be a polytheistic religion, it seems like you'd have more luck with the concepts of God the Father and God the Son, both of whom are straight forward enough. Then there is sainthood and the practice of praying to saints. There is aside from saints in general, Mary, the mother of God. Then there are powerful angels (Michael, Gabriel and maybe Raphael). There is also Satan, the angel with the worst credit rating, but one who is apparently quite active.

I never found the Trinity a very useful concept, and most preachers have difficulty making sense of it to congregations. "It's a mystery" alright.

Unitarian view: there is God. Period.

Right, but there can't be anywhere that God is not located then. Including every cell of bodies, ever elementary particle, etc. — Terrapin Station

So, since God was the very first quantum mechanic, I am sure he has no problem being in the precise location of all those whizzy particles at once.

There are a lot of people all over Ohio. Had Cleveland crashed when you were still there (flaming rivers of muck, etc.)? Never been in Cleveland either. I've been in London, Ohio, and been across Ohio a couple of times. Why, oh why, Ohio. Song written by Betty Comden, Leonard Bernstein, and Adolph Green. It's from the play, Wonderful Town. "Wonderful" didn't reference any burg in Ohio.

This is just for your cultural literacy. Personally, I think the song sucks. Even if LB did have something to do with it.

The idea isn't that every location is the entirety of God. But God needs to be present at every location for omnipresence. — Terrapin Station

Yes, that's my understanding - God is present AT every location. Thanks for the tip on Akron, without which I almost passed up the all-expense-paid 2 week budget tour of Paris for the all-expense paid weekend luxury tour of Akron. What was your impression of Akron? When were you there?

Back in the 80's I read a good book on plant closings called "Magic City". The town wasn't named in the book but I'm pretty sure it was Akron. It was about how the plant closings affected the workers -- not positively. About the time I was reading the book, a large plant closed in St. Paul and the local PBS station did a series of interviews and follow-ups with a group of the workers. The electronics workers and the rubber workers had pretty much the same experience.

But all that is neither here nor there as far as this thread goes. How do you think God feels about Akron?

Full Disclosure: I've never been in Akron, Ohio or Paris, France. It's possible that both of them are fictional places.

So how would you say that God wouldn't be the same as Paris if he's omnipresent? — Terrapin Station

Because I said so? Will that work?

Wouldn't God have a problem being the same as Paris and Akron, Ohio at the same time? I mean, there are limits on what is imaginable, even for god, right?

Look, when people conceived and developed this version of god, they used superlatives: Creator of all things, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, Immortal, Invincible, God only wise, etc. Omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omni-magnum-cum-laude--whatever you want. God "created" the world. The world-creating god existed before the world, and is not one and the same with the world. Is this contradictory?

If it is contradictory, it wouldn't be the only thing about religion that is.

I've decided I'm going to my grave thinking that god is not one and the same as Paris and Akron at the same time.

You wouldn't suggest those folks be given a tax break? — Hanover

They already have received a tax break. Low inheritance taxes (or quasi legal dodges) is one of the reasons they have a pile to sit on in the first place.

But yes, the reason we tax rich people more than poor people is because that is where the money is. We just don't tax them enough.

Never mind about examples. I know ALL ABOUT IT from personal experience. I've never made much money, but on quite a few occasions a slight hike in income has put me in a slightly higher tax bracket. How about this for unfairness: my property tax (a hefty chunk which goes to support city and county services--it's as much as health insurance and co-pays) goes up because my assessed value goes up, even though I haven't done any value-raising maintenance to the house in 25 years.

Still I don't complain too much about taxes. The local government operations provide a lot of the services that make a difference to the quality of life here (like transit, police, fire, welfare, libraries, schools (not sure if the schools are helping very many) street cleaning and repair, health services, and so on. So do the feds: ss, medicare, medicaid, disability, defending America from Iranians who would otherwise force us to buy their entire pistachio crop a high prices, and so on.

I'm retired, so I'm not paying federal taxes--finally. Yes, the tax system is a blunt instrument, and those can be very painful.

present everywhere — Terrapin Station

I take omnipresence to mean present in all places at all times. So, under this notion of omnipresence God is present at all times everywhere. Time, in other words, does not pass for God, since God is present at all times at once, everywhere.

That's what I think omnipresence means. If I believed in God (as I once did) omnipresence would be a plank in my platform of belief. For God there are no mysteries, because God is present at the beginning and at every moment there after. (Beginning of what? Beginning of the Cosmos? End of the Cosmos? God is presumably infinite, so there is no beginning or end, but lots of sub-units of creation last only a little while. Like our esteemed selves, for example. "Death, like an over-flowing stream, sweeps us away. Our life is but a dream, an empty tale; a morning flower, cut down and withered in an hour" That seems to be a paraphrase of one hymnodist's work by another.

But then Isaac Watts was borrow from Psalm 90:

1 Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

2 Under the shadow of thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

3 Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God,
To endless years the same.

4 Thy word commands our flesh to dust,
"Return, ye sons of men:"
All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again.

5 A thousand ages in thy sight
Are like an ev'ning gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

6 The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,
And lost in following years.

7 Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the op'ning day.

8 Like flowery fields the nations stand
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower's hand
Lie with'ring ere 'tis night.]

9 Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

If God is you, then you don't exist.

I am present in front of my computer; I am present in my house; I am present in The Philosophy Forum, yet I am not coextensive with my computer, the house, or TPS. Why can't God be present in Paris, but not be the same as Paris? Or be present in your toilet bowl while not being the same as a toilet bowl?

Correct: HAD NOT rather than HAD.

Your focus on the sad case of Jack and Mary is trivial. A very large number of workers could work twice as many hours as somebody else and their higher income wouldn't put them in a higher tax bracket. Besides, you didn't specify how many hours either of them worked, or what their wages were. If Jack worked 1 hour for $10, and Mary worked 2 hours for $20, they would be in the same tax bracket.

In general, the American tax system is regressive, because the effect of the tax burden is heavier on lower income workers than on high income workers, or people who live off rent and dividends. Taxing someone who earns $50k and supporting 3 other people at the rate of 30% is much more onerous than taxing someone who earns $1,000,000 a year at 30%, even if they support 6 people.

Also, the services individuals receive from governments varies over time and place. Children receive educational services that adults don't. Disabled people receive services that able-bodied people don't. People receiving dialysis receive financial assistance that 99% of the population don't receive. And so on.

Progressivity and regressivity of taxes also changes over time. It depends who controls the Senate and House with veto-proof majorities and which side of the bread the politicians think has the most butter.

By your reasoning, then, everything is God; God is everything. Fine by me, but it seems to me in the scriptures God is not everything and everything is not God. At least that was the message I got several times.

That's not a flaw. Rather, there is a need to plan carefully. — ralfy

Right, I wasn't saying your thinking was flawed. What is flawed is the idea that a simple redistribution of wealth (a check arrives in 3 billion mailboxes) would fix everything.

I agree that a limited supply of material resources (exploitable metals, good soil, fresh water, stable climate) is a fatal limitation on both population and development.

The idea of "original sin" was, as I understand it, created to balance the act of final salvation by Jesus Christ. This wasn't Jesus' idea. It was elaborated many years later by theologians trying to make sense of Jesus' death and systematize a scheme of salvation.

As I understand it, Judaism is not focused on the Eden story the same way Christian are. For one thing, there is a "do over" in the story of Noah. Noah and his family are saved, everybody else is wiped out. We (figuratively) descend from Noah as well as from Adam.

Anybody has to wonder why people can't behave. We seem to be prone to error, as the theory of Original Sin suggests. None of us can go very long without doing something wrongful, in thought, word, or deed, and some of us go very, very wrong fairly often.

A modern, secular thinker can say, "Well, we are primates who house all the base urges of the animal world (of which we are a part), but hitched to those basic animal urges is a high level of intelligence and creativity which can take us both to the heights of goodness and to the depths or depravity. That's just what we are." That kind of thinking wasn't available to the Christians of the first century. (It doesn't seem to be available to some people in the 21st century either.)

it seems grossly unfair because we are saying to some people: “you have to pay more to get the same service as other folks who are paying less than you — tinman917

Wealthy people should pay more because they are actually receiving more services and better than poor people. How can that be?

Government is, as Karl Marx noted, a committee to organize the affairs of the Bourgeoisie (aka, wealthy people). Government provides many services which help wealthy people do business around the world. Sometimes these services are as crude as gunboat diplomacy, but usually the services are subtler. If it had EDIT: not been for the US Government deciding in the 1930s that control over Arabian (and other) petroleum reserves was a critical requirement, a great many fortunes in petroleum would not have been possible. That's one example.

Another example of government assistance is the construction and maintenance of ports and transportation facilities (especially highways). Everyone benefits from these services which facilitate trade, but they are a huge help in accumulating fortunes through trade.

Government activity designed to facilitate business is everywhere. Take the last Great Recession. Had it not been for a huge government bailout of very big financial firms, a lot of very rich people would have ended up broke.

Regressive taxation has been extremely helpful in assisting wealthy people getting much wealthier.

Get the picture?

Then God can't be omnipresent. — Terrapin Station

Why not? I don't see a problem in God being omnipresent in a cosmos that is separate from God.

It seems like some people are often in zero-profit / minimal loss relationships. No body is having a very good, time, and nobody is being beaten up or murdered. Neither the benefits nor the costs quite exceed the other. It's a draw.

There are reasons: One party likes having someone to blame, the other party feels they deserve the blame. Alcohol quite often figures into this, even if only one of the two is alcoholic. It is sometimes hard to balance things out, because the benefits in one area, and costs in another don't have a connection.

All this crap can exist in any relationship--gay straight or otherwise.

Why do people put up with meager maximum rewards?

One reason is the value of having "a relationship". Better to be in a crappy one than be without any. Loneliness can be very unpleasant. Relationships garner a certain amount of status.

People who are reasonably healthy and reasonably strong (referencing psychological traits here) will generally leave these relationships in time. If they are not reasonably strong and healthy, they may stay in the relationship for a long time.

People on both sides of these unappealing relationships, may not be aware of what they are doing, When both people are trapped in a kind of solipsistic habit of just seeing the world from their own narrow perspective, they aren't able to make a good judgement about their own behavior. Our capacity to persist in unproductive behavior is really quite remarkable. Even very bright people, even those with excellent social and observational skills, can miss the fact of their solipsistic POV.

There is a flaw in the redistribution scheme. Before I continue... I believe that the severe disproportionality of wealth should and could be corrected. Be that as it may, though...

If you take the wealth of the richest 2000, 200, or 20 and distributed it evenly to the poor, they would be much better off, but not for long. First, inserting a few billion dollars into the economy of Kenya or Laos would cause an immediate inflationary surge (too much money pursuing too few goods). One could slowly infuse the poor Kenyan's or Laotians share into the economy, which would be better. But however it was distributed, when it was gone, it would be back to business as usual.

The really difficult task of redistribution of wealth is to use the proceeds to develop the economy of Kenya or Laos such that they would produce more of the goods (housing, food, health care... whatever) that they wanted. Further, the proceeds should be plowed back into the Kenyan or Laotian economy to further benefit the people there, rather than already rich people.

One can imagine this happening, but making it happen is quite difficult, especially if the end is to eliminate disparities of wealth.

I have no sympathy with the rich who would be dispossessed; that's fine by me. But actually changing peasants' and slum dwellers' lives takes time and expertise and a great deal of care (lest it blow up in everybody's face).

The development problem is the inverse of getting the American, European, and Asian industrial economies to stop producing and consuming so much so that the global climate won't be totally ruined for human habitation. It's damned difficult to get people to change, EVEN when changing means a better life in the future (or life at all).

God as the only being, in whom everything that was, is, or will be exists, seems consistent with solipsism.

Of course, God as conceived in the Western, Judeo-Christian scheme of things, made the world separate from himself. (It's all there in Genesis.) So the Western God of Abraham can not be a solipsist, because the world (cosmos, universe, multiverse?) isn't one and the same as God.

At least, that's the way I understand it.

Now, you wouldn't be the first person to deviate from the standard God paradigm. Some westerners, yea, even unto North Dakota and farther afield, thought/think that everything is in God, and God is in everything, such that everything that is what it is is*** God.

See that beautiful rose? God. See that bright star? God. See that manure pile covered with flies? God. See me? God. Want to see God? You are already there.

*** Just a bow to the man who made "It is what it is" famous, hereabouts.

I might say, partly in jest, that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because we aren't killing each other on a local level. Peace creates monstrosities. Violence makes people honest (edit: realistic). — yupamiralda

I might agree with you, partly in jest--but not a very big part. Nonetheless, you raise an interesting point about local level peacefulness and large scale armed conflict. If one were to sample interpersonal violence on a local level anywhere in larger scale battle zones (like Congo, Somalia, Yemen, Burma, Venezuela. etc.) it is likely one would find a lot of neighborliness, at least initially.

Large scale violence, such as occurred in Iraq or Syria, or in Nazified Germany, degrades neighborliness. Shia and Sunni Moslems had been neighborly until large scale violence had gone on for a while. Prior to the Nazis, many gentile Germans interacted with Jewish Germans on a neighborly basis.

Large scale conflict doesn't arise out of a lack of person-to-person neighborliness, it arises out of "Real-Politic" concerns: control over resources, territory, and populations. However murky it may be to outsiders, Real-Politic is operating in Congo, Yemen, Syria, et al. Large scale conflict tends to unite people--as it did the Russians, English, and Americans in WWII. But there are exceptions: The managers of large scale conflict may decide to achieve greater unity by means of isolating and delegitimizing a recognizable group (as the Nazis did the Jews, as the Burmese are doing to their Moslem and Christian minorities). Many a white American neighborhood has achieved a greater sense of unity by excluding blacks.

There is an element of Real-Politic in American segregation. People want control over their communities, and want to have things arranged as they like. As it happens, at least moderately prosperous white people have the means to achieve this goal, and certainly at least moderately impoverished black people do not. There is an eternal verity in this: Those who have, get more; those who have less, lose what little they had.

When and how the segregation patterns of the United States might change is very difficult to predict. Certainly, a lot of people are more or less contented with the way things are. The more ethically sensitive of us recognize that the present arrangement is unfair, but even the ethnically sensitive aren't willing to have things re-arranged too much.

"Is it fair for people to compare themselves or their deeds to those of Jesus"?

It seems pretty obvious that people should definitely not compare themselves to Jesus. If they think they compare favorably with Jesus, one can only urge prayer and fasting as a remedy (maybe with a kick in the pants).

I believe that the New Testament attempts to make Jesus look entirely righteous as he goes around preaching and performing miracles — Maureen

Given the purpose of the New Testament (to tell the story of Jesus--someone who was believed to be the Son of God) that makes sense. Why would the authors of the NT have done anything else?

but what is happening in his life outside of that, such as on a regular basis? Nobody knows — Maureen

Nobody knows, and it doesn't matter, because the Gospels aren't a biography of Jesus. What all Jesus was busy with between the his childhood appearance in the Temple and the inauguration of his ministry might be interesting. But it's idle curiosity on our part, because Jesus was born with a purpose, and the purpose was to die for our sins. Before he was executed, he introduced his people (the Jews) to the Kingdom of God. Then he died.

If you accept that he was born to take away the sins of the world, then what his life was like before he was baptized by John is irrelevant. If you believe he was nothing special, it really doesn't matter what he did as a young man.

This is in keeping with most Biblical characters: we read the words of the prophets (written on the subway walls) but we don't hear about what their adolescence was like. It didn't matter to the people who composed the texts of the Bible. Who cares whether Isaiah was a spoiled brat or neglected as a child? To the extent that it did matter, then they said something about it. (Abraham and Isaac, Moses, Jesus' odd parentage, etc.)

You have a habit of raising interesting questions.

Point 1, in the "for what it's worth" category: The bigger the planet, the stronger the gravity. The stronger the gravity, the more resistance against movement an organism will experience. Gravity beyond a certain point (don't ask me) is probably counter-productive for large organisms.

More nerves, more pain? Well... where are the nerves? Our brains, with at least 100 billion neurons, probably more, feel no pain -- themselves. Our brains interpret pain signals from elsewhere in the body. It does make sense that the larger number of pain nerves that are stimulated (by injury) the worse the pain will be. There are limits, sometimes.

Distraction can enable us to ignore pain (provided it isn't too severe, too long lasting). Other sensations, such as cold, can swamp pain (which is why putting ones slightly burnt hand in cold water reduces pain). Acupuncture, hypnotism, relaxation and meditation techniques can reduce pain.

Severe burns are so painful because many layers of tissue (all with pain receptors) are affected. Shingles is very painful when the varicella-zoster virus is very active inside nerve cells. varicella-zoster virus (chickenpox) can cause shingle pain for years. (The chickenpox vaccine does not cause shingles.)

FYI, there are separate nerves for pressure, itching, and for pain. Itching can also be quite severe.

Finally, pain nerves can stop functioning. Diabetes can cause peripheral neuropathy, where the diabetic no longer feels pain in their extremities (feet, hands) and may not notice injuries that can lead to severe infection.

As for the water thing that was verbally told to me — christian2017

As the old saying goes, "Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see."

You doubt that the theory rests on more than blue sky conjecture? I have no objection to your doubt. It's a free country [so they say]; think what you want! It has nothing to do with the price of tea in China whether the water came from Oort Cloud ice cubes or clever bacteria.

that would be hard to prove — christian2017

About as hard to prove as claiming that the cells, molecules, etc. DID have intent.

Some say cells or single cells are what formed the water on the earth. — christian2017

And by what means do those "some say" claim that these cells would have produced all this water?

H2O is native to the pre-earth solar system. The comets, rocks, and icy objects in the Oort cloud (and closer) are as old as the solar system, and they have been out there as ice for 4 to 5 billion+ years. When the solar system was much younger, earth was bombarded by both rocky objects (like the big one that hit the earth and created a liquid rock splash that made the moon) as well as many, many icy objects. The icy objects are probably how we got oceans of water.

Jupiter's large gravitational field probably helped things along by pushing/pulling/throwing a lot more objects into the orbits of the 4 inner planets than would otherwise have been here. Mars seems to have lost a lot of its water (it wasn't quite large enough to hold on to its atmosphere) and I don't know what happened to Venus. Maybe Venus was too hot. Not sure what Mercury's situation was either.

Alot of what scientists say about this original self replicating "creature" or cell is conjecture. — christian2017

Of course it is conjecture -- there were no eye witnesses and there are no fossils from back then. However, the theory does rest on more than blue-sky conjecture.

Should we be able to alter our genetics ... to make our selves smarter, stronger, more attractive, etc.?

I believe we should — SydneyPhilosopher

I don't see any point in making ourselves dumber, weaker, and uglier, so sure. However, breeding smarter, stronger and more attractive humans is not as easy as breeding fancy rats. Humans don't start breeding for quite a few years; It takes at maybe 40 years (might take longer) to fully assess intelligence, strength, health, and attractiveness. Someone kind of homely at 15 might be stunning at 35. And visa versa. There is the problem of matching partners and finding adequate parents. A lot of people that have existed would have been smarter, stronger, and more attractive had they had different care givers or were born in some other society.

Can we blame Columbus for mass emigration? He accidentally brought the existence of the Western Hemisphere to the attention of Europeans, but it doesn't seem to me that mass emigration began in his lifetime. His, and the subsequent efforts of various explorers, immigrants, conquerors, etc. advertently and inadvertently brought about plenty of changes to the Western Hemisphere.

I don't understand why somebody wouldn't adapt to and exploit the environment as it is like the killer apes they are — yupamiralda

Yeah, well, for the most part we all pretty much behave like the naked, smart, ruthlessly exploiting, short sighted, killer apes we are. Though, you have to acknowledge that we don't kill each other nearly as often as we could. Most of the time we are officially "at peace". On a macroscopic sale, the world is indeed going to hell in a hand cart, but on a person-to-person basis, it's relatively peaceful.

Revolution: The Beatles, John Lennon / Paul Mccartney

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be
All right, all right, all right

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be
All right, all right, all right

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be
All right ...

Here is an article from the New Scientist that talks about self duplicating molecules and life.

"Nuclear" here refers to the "nucleus" of the cell. The nucleus is a sub-cellular structure that contains the organism's genetic information. The genetic information is packed into smaller structures, "chromosomes". The nucleus of a cell and the nucleus of the atom are two altogether different things that just happen to have the same name.

It's been a long time since I had a basic biology class. The structures of the cell, and the DNA, all get very complicated.

What SophistiCat was referencing was this:

About 3.8 billion years ago, the earth solidified into rock. There was water, rock, and a mixture of gases. No life. After about 3.5 billion years ago, there was apparently life of some sort. How did we get from "no life" to "life"? The theory goes that were molecules that could form duplicates of themselves. They could do this because of their natural physical and chemical properties. Self-duplicating molecules doesn't require an outside agent or any "intent" to duplicate. The molecules just did what they could do. The molecules could also link up, which is also natural. Self-copying, linking-up molecules got more complicated. At some point in the long stretch of time, the self-copying, linking-up molecules became something we would call "life"--that is, the life forms were able to become more elaborate, maintain themselves, and duplicate their more complex form.

We don't know where on earth this all happened. It might have been inside rock, in thermal vents, in hot slop--we just don't know. But it did.

"Desire", "intent", "a plan", and so forth just don't figure into life at this point. Chemistry and physics governed life on earth. Whether physics and chemistry still govern life on earth (including us paragons of animals) is the heart of the debate about free-will and determinism. But even if one is an ardent believer in free will, one need not think that single celled life had a will. Will presumably requires a complex brain capable of making independent decisions rather than just being a wet robot.

Some people think we are wet robots; some people think we have free will. Maybe it's a mix -- I don't think there is a definitive answer. Since we are immersed in the problem, we can't give an objective answer.

I don't know. The question you are asking goes back to the beginning of life on earth. Once a cell formed, however randomly, accidentally, or purposively that happened, there had to be a way for that cell to make more of itself OR life would have amount to that one, single cell, and that would have been the end of the story.

We could guess that the initial method of reproduction was reproduction through cell division: the cell dust divided itself or got divided and then there were two, then 4, then 8, then 16, then 32, 64, 128, and so on. There was some development over tine: Some sort of genetic pattern developed, and more than one kind of cell came into existence. Prokaryotic cells (E. coli for example) do not have nuclear structures--the chromosomes aren't clustered into a structure (the nucleus). Eukaryotic cells (creatures like you) do have a nuclear structure, and your nucleus divides before the cell divides.

But again, your question goes back to the beginning and nobody was around to observe what (or how) it happened, or nip it in the bud. Nobody was in the lab at that moment to pour the first cell into a bath of acid to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

The kind of cell division that goes on after an egg is fertilized (mitosis) didn't happen right away. It took millions (billions) of years for that system of reproduction (sperm, egg, union, cell division into new complex organism) to develop.