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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 05/12/2004 : 16:14:55
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Abiogenesis is yet a mystery, argued bitterly by both sides of the creation question. But with each, new discovery, the mystery gets a little clearer.
quote:
"It was basically something living in boiling acid," Rice said.
Although several new viruses were discovered, one in particular caught their eye.
After characterizing the structure and genome of the virus, they found that its protein shell was similar to a bacterial virus and an animal virus. The similarity suggests to the scientists that the three viruses may share a common ancestor that predates the branching off of life forms more than 3 billion years ago.
"This is something that was predicted but hadn't been shown before," Rice said.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040512/ap_on_sc/virus_discovery
Colonial bacteria that consume minerals, notably sulpher, and excrete sulpheric acid are well known, but these are a different breed of bug all together. And they were as good as known before they were found. It demonstrates how the ToE can nicely predict a discovery through extrepolating from known species. Pretty amazing!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
 Posted - 05/12/2004 : 17:01:40 [Permalink]
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The old 'fill-in-the-blank god', or "god of the gaps" just keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Thanks for the link, filthy. |
"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2004 : 06:53:44 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by filthy
Colonial bacteria that consume minerals, notably sulpher, and excrete sulpheric acid are well known, but these are a different breed of bug all together. And they were as good as known before they were found. It demonstrates how the ToE can nicely predict a discovery through extrepolating from known species. Pretty amazing!
I think you hit on a key point here: the predictive power of ToE is something that sets it apart from creation. Creationism has virtually no predictive ability. The nearest is has is the Noah story, and yet there the most obvious thing that can be predicted-- that the geological record would show universal evidence of a massive flood-- isn't there. Instead, it has to "piggy-back" on ToE and suppose that the universally similar arrangement of fossils in the record is somehow what we would expect a world-wide flood to do.
How can someone expect to teach this in a science class when there's nothing scientific about it? Ugh. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2004 : 07:29:45 [Permalink]
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| I went to a Catholic highschool and I was taught evolution in biology class by a "Brother of the Holy Cross." The Creationism argument isn't, at it's heart, just about whether God created the world or not, as it's easy to suppose that God used evolution as the method to create life as we know it. It is about whether the Bible is 100% factual, word for word, or not. Even in Religion class I was taught that the Bible, esp. the OT, was not intended to be understood as 100% factual. In this context, the whole Creationism/Evolution argument becomes far more earnest, IMO. Public schools in the US teaching that the Bible is factual frightens me on many different levels... So much will be lost if we regress as a society back into religous mysticism. |
-Chaloobi
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2004 : 08:16:01 [Permalink]
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| Chaloobi, a majority of creationists think that the Catholics are all going to Hell. Especially after the Pope, in the 1990s, issued an encyclical which said that evolution must be considered "more than just a hypothesis." My creationist, fundamentalist relatives think the Pope is an idiot for saying so. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2004 : 09:06:30 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
Chaloobi, a majority of creationists think that the Catholics are all going to Hell. Especially after the Pope, in the 1990s, issued an encyclical which said that evolution must be considered "more than just a hypothesis." My creationist, fundamentalist relatives think the Pope is an idiot for saying so.
But the pope is infallible, how can they say such things! |
-Chaloobi
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Trish
SFN Addict
USA
2102 Posts |
Posted - 05/14/2004 : 10:50:43 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by chaloobi
But the pope is infallible, how can they say such things!
Oh my, I almost forgot about that bit of catholic dogma. |
...no one has ever found a 4.5 billion year old stone artifact (at the right geological stratum) with the words "Made by God."
No Sense of Obligation by Matt Young
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying and vile!"
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
They (Women Marines) don't have a nickname, and they don't need one. They get their basic training in a Marine atmosphere, at a Marine Post. They inherit the traditions of the Marines. They are Marines.
LtGen Thomas Holcomb, USMC
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 1943
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