Uggh

they're idiots.

Good gawd, the prevaiing ignorance in this country

They are so damned smart.

"UK Gov't Bans Teaching of Creationism as Scientifically Valid in Academies, Public Schools"

http://goo.gl/Jd8CCg

Without the French, I'm pretty sure we'd have gotten our colonial butts kicked.

willful ignorance breeds.

In fact, up until just recently in modern history, there was no real separation between the investigation of nature itself and the belief in the divine.

Scientists are not exempt from bias. As scientists, however, they are expected to adjust their beliefs in light of new data. I'm quite sure Newton would have done that even though he was something of a butthole.

More than a motivator. Their belief in divinity, in God, is what drove them to further investigate nature through scientific methods.

It's a position totally different from most creationists today.

But the major influences which drove this out of scientific consciousness were shifts in social views and religious interpretation of texts. They did not abandon the supposed duality of science and divinity because science somehow made their beliefs obsolete. Science itself will never make religious faith obsolete.

I expect that religion will do that by itself, but science really doesn't care. All science does care about is the data - nothing more and nothing less. Teleology doesn't really enter into it. There is no "Why" in the data. There is only the data, and that's all that matters in science. It may well be that early scientists tried to validate God based on their beliefs, but too bad for them. The data are what they are, and that's all there is. They can either accept that, or die thinking otherwise. In either case, it really doesn't matter. It is what it is.

The truth is that science itself is deeply interwoven into religious experience.

You cannot separate human history from scientific history. The two are the same. And we would not be where we are now in the scientific realm without the driving force of religion.

Science is not a distinct entity remote remote from ourselves. Science absolutely cares about data and trends and influence and doubt precisely because we care about all those things.

but I don't think that's true today. There certainly are scientists, particularly some physicists, who subscribe to that sort of belief and not without reason. I do not, however, believe that most scientists accept religion as a valid concept in the explanation of what we think of as reality, and I must say I myself do think there are better ways of viewing that reality. Some say that God is dead. My own view is that he/she/it was never alive in the first place.

and the structure of atoms.

Religious extremists want to ignore that in favor of a book based on ancient stories written down by men and collected, copied, miscopied, edited, garbled, translated, and mistranslated over and over. And they want to believe one relatively recent version of that took no poetic license, or told any parables or symbolic fables, but must be taken literally at face value only. They base this on the idea that their God is infallible and all-knowing, even though He cannot get the same dogma agreed upon by anything close to a majority of people, not even all the people who base their religions on the very same book.

If they paid closer attention, they might realize science has greatly increased the power and majesty of what we think of as God. The ancients thought God was the God of the Earth and the sky. And they thought the sky was pretty small. Now the concept of God is a divinity that created billions of galaxies containing billions of solar systems each. (Some think God created a multiverse containing an uncountable number of universes.) The concept of this newer, far greater God has only existed for a few hundred years. Knowledge that other galaxies besides the Milky Way exist doesn't date back even one hundred years.

Though he was not at all religious, Hugh Everett III, PhD (Yale in Quantum Physics), promoted this very multiverse idea. I won't go into it here, but if you're interested you can check it out on Amazon at ( http://goo.gl/my4Gjp ). He died long ago at a rather young age, but his thoughts, which challenge those of the great Neils Bohr, are only now beginning to be accepted by present day physicists.

(Shrug)

but I'm not sure.

Thanks for the thread, man4allcats.

600 mill may be a reasonable starting point for our iteration, but how many reset points, i.e.global catastraphucks, zeroed out a previous unique version? 600 mill may be the outside average bake time for sentient organization.

The authors of the upcoming July Nature article seem to entertain this idea as well. To me, it seems that the key is multicellular organization - not necessarily sentience. Undoubtedly, there were many subsystems prior to anything approaching sentience that must have been put in place before sentience could be achieved. Still, maybe that's why it took so long.

For all we know, Earth could have been "seeded" via asteroids from space,
bringing the 1st microbes to the planet.


Or not.



http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/08/is-dna-random-or-a-universal.html

perhaps earth was seeded by comets from Mars with the necessary nucleotides to get things started. In other words, in his view, we are the Martians. I don't know whether it's true of course, but it's certainly credible.

Our last universal common ancestor, although Luca probably didn't have DNA it was a life form 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago that covered the ocean floor for millions of square miles and became extinct over 2 billion years ago.

I hadn't heard of this one. For my own benefit, and for those who may be curious, I googled it. Here's the Wiki version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_ancestor

I understand later studies indicate that the cell wall mentioned in this wiki was not actually a wall as we understand it but a porous substance through which water could pass freely. They likely were able to exchange parts directly between themselves as needed. DNA's part in luca is still being explored and there are differing opinions. It's a fascinating subject.

You can't be serious... can you?
You mean it took God 2 billion years to create the sanctity of life on earth,
not 6 days? That kinda strains credulity, not to mention my faith in creationism.

I thought I had heard of it, and yes... it is a big fucking deal from a science perspective. Silly me, expecting an update.

It may be that old, but according to the linked article, it will be the cover story on next month's issue of the top tier science journal Nature. Apparently, many scientists still think it relevant. Sorry if you don't.

it is very relevant, and like I said, a big fucking deal. What I said is that the DATELINE is dated.

Also if you read the bit about Nature, that is where the UPDATE on this will come, including more research. It is, once again, a big fucking deal.

Please do not misconstrue what I said.

Thank you.

I won't, and please try to be less condescending. It will be appreciated. Thanks.

I will now put you on ignore.

It is best

Good bye and all the best.