Um no, A god is thought of as a creature a sentient creature.
Trees have no self sentience, nature has no sentience according to beliefs. Icons and gods are two seperate thoughts and patterns.but both are possessed with belief.
But on a day to day level, indeed, on a lifetime to lifetime level, we never encounter God by any other means than his picture, or other visual/verbal facsimile. So, with respect to social influence, an idol and a God are the same. At least till God actually gets off his cloud and starts fixing stuff.
btw - see edited question in post above. I need help.
I’m lazier, I want the condensed milk and cookie version. Tabby wanna story from Xunzy-kins.
If you’re having trouble with the young lady, perhaps it is the food source.
What are you attempting to feed her?
Some mushed up vegetable shit. Organic, in that we buy the vegetables local and make it ourselves. But it’s not just that, it seems to be everything. Sweet, sour, etc. If it comes on a spoon, it is returned to sender.
Then you need to try rice cereal and the wife is going to have to pump and use breast milk … this way the young lady will have some familiarity with the food source.
Also, it may require the mother to hold her to feed the little one, until she is comfortable that mommy is changing only the food mode, not “abandoning” her …
I’m not lookin’ to be a douche here, really I’m not.
Let’s break it down:
Here is the thing, it is my understanding that the cancer risk is mostly due to intercolating agents in the smoke (like benzene and other aromatic compounds) as opposed to methylation – mutation as opposed to epigenetic modification. Now, I get your point, but he devil is in the detail.
Now, you have lots of cells, but that argument cuts both ways. We spend out lives in the diploid form, that means that each cell has two copies of every gene – most epigenetic modifications take out both at once and lead to histone modification where the genes are nicely wrapped up and put away in the closet like that ugly shirt your grandmother gave you. That is how we have different cell-types – through chromatin modeling. But when it comes to subtler forms of epigenetic modification, it comes down to how the cells differentiate. Which path they take along that line rather than how they actually perform. But the individual cell, at the end of the day doesn’t really matter.
I have no problems here. I just think that these are better modeled by neural networking and the hardware and software of the brain, as opposed to epigenetic factors. Expression levels, feedback loops, electrochemistry, ect. That is where the memes are. They can lead to other places (like I was talking to Mas about when people have the meme that living in feces is awesome), but aren’t necessarily genetic factors. That is the strength of memetics.
I agree. The “God of the Gaps” argument is a terrible argument and anybody who advocates it is just waiting to be let down. However, most philosophically inclined Christians don’t use that argument, at least not that I have seen on ILP. Sure, some crazy televanglists use it, they live on that stuff . . . but those guys are also idiots supporting idiots. It isn’t an effective strategy.
Look at what Ned has to say on ID:
While your position does effectively attack the God of the Gaps notion, you are chasing windmills because the God of the Gaps is a rhetorical position and not a philosophical one – so you are bringing a knife to a gunfight, I’m afraid.
I’ve been trying to approachably explain where I depart from your idea of memetics – specifically in the epigenetic arena. As I said before, I think that memes are best modeled by neural networking. The biggest argument for this position, I think, is that memes can be acquired quite quickly. You tell me a new idea, and I can generally understand it in real time. If epigenetics were the method of action for ideas, we would expect understanding to work on the order of hours (for protein synthesis) and/or days for cell-cycle progression.
Hmm, a couple of suggestions comes to mind.
Switch flavors say have three or four flavors of food, give her one bite of each then switch the feeding pattern of flavors, keep her guessing. Make it a game sort of. Praise her and make her laugh and smile after each bite.
Or (and no body groan and or get disgusted these two things have worked for other babies.)
Add some breast milk to the food , water the food down with breast milk and spoon feed her and if she is nursing put some food on the breast’s nipple, remove her after a suck or two and add some more. You may need to do all three, if she is particularly stubborn. Then wean her steadily, emphasis on steady, off these methods and off the breast once she gets the idea of solids. Each kid is different so you probably will have to adapt this to suit her and you. Best of luck.
It sounds like she is and she knows what she wants and will accept no substituitions with out work. LOL I pity you and her future husband. ROFL
As a grandparent, I am loving this. It is sooo much fun watching the grands raise holy hell with their parents. The perfect payback for all the shit we had to put up with… 
Oops. I’m supposed to be supportive…
I’ll buy off on the rice cereal bit. We used to mix the cereal and milk into a thin gruel and bottle feed it through a rubber nipple with the hole slightly enlarged. Then on to spoon feeding the stuff and gradually adding veggies and whatever else till the weaning was complete. You have to be as sneaky as the baby…
LOL Babies can be a religious experience. “Oh my god she is so cute and sweet” " Oh my god! look at how adorable"
Just wait til puberty hits, then it becomes a testimony of faith. LOL The phrase “I swear to GOD” becomes a daily occurance when dealing with pubesent attitudes. Get the duct tape and pad a closet just in case. No thats not for them, it will be for you and your spouse when the kids drives one of you crazy.
Hey Everybody, thanks for the tips on the baby front, will try them all on Aleyna, hell, I might even try some of them myself, certainly would make breakfast more kinky.
Hey Xunzian, thanks for taking the timeout to educate me. Much appreciated. =D> Your knowledge of scientific scripture is deeper than mine, though I’m thinking you are wilfully misunderstanding my view of the meme/group fitness relationship to make me look like a bumpkin fresh from the fields. ie:
Oh yeah, like I really have been wandering round saying cognition is epigenic in the day to day cut and thrust of higher brain functions. 
Still, you wrote a readable mini-essay, a little poetic licence is allowed I suppose, well done.
So let’s drop the science. As you say, perhaps the Devil really is in the details - and our little pointy-horned friend is clouding the issue.
Let’s try psychology:
It’s been observed that people of an insecure nature exhibit the Forer Effect basically a bias toward judging true positive descriptions of self - this tendency is exacerbated if the figure complimenting you is of high status, or authority… But you see where I’m going with this.
Now you must admit, being something “made in God’s image to hold dominion over the Earth” is a little more of a positive stroke than “Well, I suppose we’re some kind of animal then, I don’t know really son.”
Swell your breast with pride believer, be of positive mental state, now go forth and multiply.
Context is everything. Read the next chapter where we find out that “all we are is dust in the wind” [cf. Kansas, the band circa the 1970s].
Ahh - But Felix - We are dust with a destination in mind.
Big difference.
Felix,
OK, we’re dust. But who controls the wind? 
Solar radiation, gravitation of the moon, tides of the planet and the gravitation of the earth ~ all in unison with properties of thermodynamics.
Sorry to go back to the bread and butter of a thread that’s developing nicely, but doesn’t mainstream monotheism emphasize faith rather than utility? The argument that people believe religion because it offers them “a positive stroke” of psychology or epigenetics is an alternative explanation for faith, but it doesn’t speak to God’s existance one way or another: my faith or that of others is hardly proof that God exists. I believe in God because that’s how I see reality, not because I’ve decided it makes my life easier or helps society in the long run.
My seeing reality through faith doesn’t offer credence to God’s existance either; I may very well do so for the same basic reason I’m subconsciously inclined to believe a horoscope’s conclusion about my life. But that doesn’t make a difference, because either way belief in God is still a part of my perspective; I’d need to see something different about the world for it to be otherwise. So Tab, why should your argument shake my faith?
Tentative-- If you want to take literal sense of the dust in the wind metaphor, I say that one molecule of dust moved and all of them started to move and didn’t stop and won’t stop. Everything in existance is represented individually by a molecule of dust each.
Which was the first to move? Choose one depending on your beliefs:
- God
- The Big Bang
- Something unexplained yet of the same concept as the above two.
I choose 2, 99% of me says it is wrong but I would rather choose and be wrong than wait until I am dead to be proven right. It is like Oscar Wilde said:
‘‘It is the best thing to be right, what is better is to live long enough to realise it.’’ or something to that effect, I have a terrible memory for specifics, well, you get the point!
Since I am now a ‘paw paw’ myself, I share your glee.
You’ve probably seen a sign like the one we have here at home that says:
Looking back on it all, I feel that mama and I were fully deserving of some kind of reward for our restraint.
Thanks, God!
Hey Alun Aedicita,
Of course not. I’m not trying to prove God’s existance/non-existance either way. I’m just saying that religion in whatever form is so widespread amongst the peoples of the world because it was, even sans God, an adaptive social feature, giving decisive advantage over an irreliegious group competing.
I don’t know. If I believed my car worked by magic, gremlin power or whatever, then someone opened the hood and showed me the engine - working jus’ fine without any Gremllins in sight… Then perhaps I’d reconsider my faith in Gremlins.
But that’s just me. I’m beginning to think I’m alone.