Scientists Decipher 3-Billion-Year-Old Genomic Fossils 217
hnkstrprnkstr writes "MIT scientists have created a sort of genomic fossil (abstract) that shows the collective genome of all life underwent an enormous expansion about 3 billion years ago, which they're calling the Archean Expansion. Many of the new genes appearing in the Archean Expansion are oxygen related, and could be the first biological evidence of the Great Oxidation Event, the period in Earth's history when oxygen became so plentiful that many anaerobic life forms may have become extinct."
At last! (Score:4, Funny)
I can breathe!
Oxygen catastrophe (Score:2)
Just flip a switch and the earth gets flooded with oxygen. Where's Noah when you need him?!
Damned Stromatolites... (Score:3)
with their cyanobacteria cronies!
Let's get rid of that oxygen (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Let's get rid of that oxygen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Archea LvlUp!
Archea learned BREATH!
For the "but it's just a computer model!" trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
Go here. [google.com] Follow, read, and understand the links on the first, say, three or four pages of search results. Then, maybe, you'll know enough to have a meaningful opinion on the subject.
Re:For the "but it's just a computer model!" troll (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, the first result [google.com] is very interesting, and mostly understandable, because the ideas read much like similar programming concepts. And it even contains a car analogy!
The character ’existence of engine’ is compatible with the tree of Figure 2.1 (a) as the
motor is invented once in the edge connecting the root and the common ancestor of car and
motorcycle. The same character is not compatible with the tree in Figure 2.1 (b) where the
engine is invented twice. The character ’number of wheels’ is compatible with both trees.
Wait, what? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm confused. So they were on the Ark or what?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm confused. So they were on the Ark or what?
Why do you think they call them 'Archean'?
Re: (Score:2)
Robot Chicken got the facts about the Ark right. [youtube.com]
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
really, creationism is the 'elephant in the room' whenever you start talking about the fossil record
what I find interesting about the article is the layering effect of life. how the anerobic life got pushed out by the oxygen breathers and relegated to living in the cracks. good for us, but an extinction event for them. there have been many big extinctions, and each allowed some hardier form of live to make it to the next expansion. we are in a current extinction event (holocene), and have started to worry about an asteroid or some such wiping us out.
even that worry over our own 'extinction' bumps up against any number of religious beliefs, even if they seem to have an unrealistic timescale of tens of years, when any historical events have been separated by millions of years
so, gimmee something here, how do you discuss geologic events when people seem so driven to think in terms of their own lifespans?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Funny)
so, gimmee something here, how do you discuss geologic events when people seem so driven to think in terms of their own lifespans?
Very, very slowly.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
what I find interesting about the article is the layering effect of life. how the anerobic life got pushed out by the oxygen breathers and relegated to living in the cracks. good for us, but an extinction event for them. there have been many big extinctions, and each allowed some hardier form of live to make it to the next expansion. we are in a current extinction event (holocene), and have started to worry about an asteroid or some such wiping us out.
even that worry over our own 'extinction' bumps up again
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing has evolved, it has only specialized.
The bigger question is how this complex machinery of life developed in the first billion years of Earth amidst massive meteor impacts. People can call it what they want, but knowing that all life that has ever existed has existed essentially unchanged from three billion years ago defies explanation of "evolving" in first one to two billion years to the amazing complexity of how cells work and then staying pat for almost three billion years and only losing capabilities, not gaining new and more complex capabilities as one assumes from casual science study and reading.
Why would you expect the "gaining of new and more complex capabilities"? Evolution is not oriented towards perfection. It's oriented towards "good enough". So it's quite possible that all those 3 billion year old mechanisms have been "good enough" to meet all conditions encountered since then, in which case unless the "new and more complex capability" provided a substantial survival advantage, it won't have become commonplace. And since "more complex" generally means "more expensive in terms of energy consumption", any mutations in that direction could quite likely have been a survival *disadvantage*.
Re: (Score:2)
And since "more complex" generally means "more expensive in terms of energy consumption", any mutations in that direction could quite likely have been a survival *disadvantage*.
I agree with that, but what I'm saying is that the common perception of evolution is that life gets more complex by "evolving" but the most complex machinery of cells has stayed unchanged for three billion years, and that all life forms, from bacteria to yeast to fungus to plants to animals have the same cell machinery, the stuff we
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger question is how this complex machinery of life developed in the first billion years of Earth amidst massive meteor impacts. People can call it what they want, but knowing that all life that has ever existed has existed essentially unchanged from three billion years ago defies explanation of "evolving" in first one to two billion years to the amazing complexity of how cells work and then staying pat for almost three billion years and only losing capabilities, not gaining new and more complex capabilities as one assumes from casual science study and reading.
a) How long should we have expected that first billion years of evolution to take?
b) You should rephrase "not gaining new and more complex capabilities" to say "at the cellular level". At higher levels, progress has been phenomenal. (How much smarter are you than a single-cell organism?)
The origin of cellular machinery is indeed impressive, but unfortunately "I can't believe it could happen by natural causes in a billion years" tells us a little about the speaker's beliefs, and nothing at all about what actually happened.
As to why not much new has been added to that machinery since, maybe we have more basis for speculation. Competition from all-new "designs" is probably impossible, because the necessary building blocks would probably be oxidized, or digested by current organisms, before it could bootstrap itself into a new cell type. For variants on what we have, evolution is not a reversible process, so we can't expect cells to undo part of their history and try something else, any more than birds would evolve back into dinosaurs and go then forward again down a different path.
So we're probably stuck with consideration of add-ons to the current machinery. But there's no guarantee that something nifty would happen in that regard within any bounded period of time. Evolution doesn't provide organisms with things just because they are needed or would be useful. Possibly cellular evolution has reached a "local maximum" on the fitness landscape, from which there is no easy jump to something better.
And who knows... some of the past jumps may not have been particularly easy either, but merely fortuitous one-time events.
And evolution of macroscopic organisms has certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of the existing cellular machinery. Maybe it's good enough?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is that this is extremely complex biochemical machinery that is mind boggling to even imagine how this somehow came together.
I am more inclined to think it came from space than anything.
How would that make it less mind-boggling? It just relocates the problem. Does it somehow make more sense to think that life had a few billion more years to evolve on some other planet than just 1.5 billion years here on earth? I'm not trying to be pedantic here, I'm genuinely curious as to how you'd think "space" is a better explanation...
Re: (Score:2)
How would that make it less mind-boggling? It just relocates the problem. Does it somehow make more sense to think that life had a few billion more years to evolve on some other planet than just 1.5 billion years here on earth? I'm not trying to be pedantic here, I'm genuinely curious as to how you'd think "space" is a better explanation...
It means it provides for more possibilities of being engineered than initially coming together on its own in the initial anaroebic world. By it I mean the long list of ex
Re: (Score:3)
Engineered???
whoa buddy, it is a long way from recognizing that there are some significant developments in the chemistry of life (over the course of hundreds of millions of years) and jumping to the conclusion that there must have been some 'engineered' step that created an extremely complex reaction all at once.
do you like science fiction? I do most of the time, however the stories that really piss me off and make me want to rip up a few books, are they ones with 'shaggy dog' endings.
you know, where everyt
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think you (or any of us for that matter) have any comprehension of how long a billion years is, and it certainly is germane to your points. It's such a long time that you cannot really fathom it other than as an abstract number. The reason so much of what evolved in that first billion years in terms of cellular processes is still around is because it works. When something works it's propagated by evolution and combined in increasingly complex ways.
I still haven't figured out if you're just an a
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
"All current life was set in place nearly three billion years ago". Absolutely not - your view of the history of biology is very warped. Study more biology itself to realize what 'current life' actually looks like. Some important points:
1.7~2 Billion years ago: probable endosymbiosis of prokaryote into eurkaryotic cells, forming mitochonria. Much later than the 3 billion years you suggest, and an absolutely vital stage in the evolution of multicellular life. In fact, it is suggested that the emergence of mitrochondria is why we are here to day - without these powerhouses single-celled life did not have enough available energy to form multi-cellular organisms.
1~1.3 Billions years ago: complex multi-cellular life: While the diversity, resilience, and ubiquity of single-celled life is amazing, I find complex multi-celled life much more astonishing. That colonies of cells can cooperate, specialise and form complex life is a wonderful achievement of evolution. Of course, it took a mind-boggling amount of time. Still, a significant step the results of which are quite distinct from life of 3 billions years ago. So your assertion is again inadequate.
~600 million years: emergence of the first neuron.
~580 million years: nerves and muscles, working together; first eyes
~550 million years: brains
And so the list goes on. Perhaps a significant development every 10-20 million years.
~540 million years: hearts and circulatory systems
There is a giant change from single-celled life to cats, dogs, and humans. What you should be saying is that, as a programmer, you are amazed that all life on Earth has the same genetic code - that the 3 base-pair codon is almost universal in every cell and organism on the plant. I suppose I do like you perspective though, when you look at a yeast cell, an oak tree, and a human and realise they are all related, all cousins, all derived from an evolutionary chain billions of years in the making.
Re: (Score:3)
1.7~2 Billion years ago: probable endosymbiosis of prokaryote into eurkaryotic cells, forming mitochonria.
actually mitochondria enabled the formation of eukarytes.
Re: (Score:3)
honestly, when I read 'anaerobic' I am thinking less about modern anaerobic life forms that are involved in fermentation (some of which can even survive in an oxygen environment) and more about chemosynthetic organisms that live around volcanic vents and base their entire metabolism on hydrogen sulfide.
these are the anaerobes of the Archean era, the ones that were killed off by the onrush of oxygen that the photosynthetic life forms brought with them and forced down into the oxygen-less cracks of the Earth
I
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
I only read a page or two a day (first "Oxygen", and now "Power, Sex, Suicide" - and yes, that's all based on oxygen). But the revelation I had yesterday was that anaerobic bacteria essentially drown in oxygen, just as we would suffocate with too little oxygen
They don't "drown" in oxygen. Oxygen is a highly reactive substance, cut an apple and it browns fairly rapidly, expose iron to air and it will rust, those chemical hand warmers [wikipedia.org] take oxygen from the air in order to produce heat. Some organisms, called obligate anaerobes [wikipedia.org], can't tolerate an environment with high oxygen content because it poisons them by destroying enzymes and interfering with key biological pathways in those organisms.
When organisms came about that produced large amounts of oxygen (a byproduct of photosynthesis, as well as other reducing processes) they basically polluted the environment by producing so much oxygen. This oxygen "pollution" poisoned most of the organisms of the time until some evolved ways to break down and even use the oxygen. Once this happened there was an explosion of oxygen-using organisms. It turns out that since oxygen is so reactive it makes a great agent to "burn" (oxidize) other materials and produce energy.
However, there are many anaerobes [wikipedia.org] that can survive in an oxygen environment - some can even use a little of the oxygen when it's available. There's no hard and fast cutoff of how much oxygen is too much or too little. As levels rise there will be more wildfires and the less oxygen-tolerant organisms will struggle, as levels fall the more oxygen-reliant organisms will have problems. A partial pressure for oxygen of 0.15 kPa (15% at STP [wikipedia.org] - standard temperature & pressure) will certainly cause a lot of problems for many oxygen-reliant organisms.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't "drown" in oxygen.
I said essentially drown. The point was that oxygen using life didn't crowd out anaerobic life, the oxygen produced by clorophyll based life forced it to places with still no oxygen or killed it. If drowning doesn't do it for you as an analogy instead of disrupted enzyme production, then I'm glad everyone was able to see the technically correct explanation.
My point was made and clear to readers however. I was responding to the oxygen using forcing out anaerobic life.
There's no h
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing has evolved, it has only specialized.
So... Just as an example, how many homeobox genes were around back then, and doing the functions they do now?
I sure hope you're not saying you think evolution means new genes popping out of nothingness... Because of course every gene in existence can be traced back to a few, possibly even just one, orignal gene (or soup of short pieces of xNA, or whatever the first successful drop of self-replicating chemical soup was like). So in a sense nothing new has appeared since then, it has been just this original x
Re: (Score:2)
Because of course every gene in existence can be traced back to a few, possibly even just one, orignal gene (or soup of short pieces of xNA, or whatever the first successful drop of self-replicating chemical soup was like).
Had I not just read in depth enough to know how mistaken you are, I would have believed this statement from you. It represents the increasing complexity I said most people understand to have occurred.
In actuality, the complex functionality and genes that enable it are nearly unchanged. No
Re: (Score:2)
Because of course every gene in existence can be traced back to a few, possibly even just one, orignal gene (or soup of short pieces of xNA, or whatever the first successful drop of self-replicating chemical soup was like).
Had I not just read in depth enough to know how mistaken you are, I would have believed this statement from you. It represents the increasing complexity I said most people understand to have occurred.
In actuality, the complex functionality and genes that enable it are nearly unchanged. Nothing like what you portray here.
Can you give an example of such an unchanged gene? Some genes related to DNA handling proteins should be a good example. How unchanged they really are between archae, bacteria and a few lines of eukaroytes? Any references?
Because I'm under the impression, that even though the genes work pretty much the same (as they have to, since chemical stucture of DNA and the information coding are the same), the DNA sequences have actually changed quite a bit, actually about as much as it could have changed without bre
Re: (Score:3)
Can you give an example of such an unchanged gene? Some genes related to DNA handling proteins should be a good example. How unchanged they really are between archae, bacteria and a few lines of eukaroytes? Any references?
Because I'm under the impression, that even though the genes work pretty much the same (as they have to, since chemical stucture of DNA and the information coding are the same), the DNA sequences have actually changed quite a bit, actually about as much as it could have changed without bre
Re: (Score:2)
Once the lib/toolkit of genes got 'good enough' there was a big radiation of phenotypes. But now
Re: (Score:3)
so, gimmee something here, how do you discuss geologic events when people seem so driven to think in terms of their own lifespans?
I can help. I am the product of 18 years of Christian fundamentalist education, from Kinder through undergrad.
Focus on the processes and what happened and not on how you got there...say "over time" and just be as general as possible. Really it's sad that it's come to this, but just say "millions/billions of years ago" as little as possible.
The best you can realistically expect from a TRUE creationist is "how do they know that?" and "how does X geological or celestial event affect Y?" and that's OK. It's a *
Re: (Score:2)
It's a *conversation* instead of an argument.
Is it? Or is it just managing to avoid an argument by saying essentially nothing at all?
Maybe it's just a matter of different scale calibration, but a victory of that kind isn't worth the time I'd be spending on it. I'd rather just be silent. It's boring, but I'd take boring over the results of pushing the "crazy" button. And you ALWAYS end up pushing the crazy button sooner or later, unless you avoid the topic altogether.
(Or maybe you're just better at this game than I am.)
Re: (Score:2)
how do you discuss geologic events when people seem so driven to think in terms of their own lifespans?
You have to look for and find interested people first. That's what language skills are for, without communicating well we can't get very much done.
Re: (Score:2)
really, creationism is the 'elephant in the room' whenever you start talking about the fossil record
No, its not.
Re: (Score:2)
The fascinating thing is that the anerobic life were the ones that actually produced the oxygen; they changed the environment in such a way that the earth was uninhabitable to them. They produced their own downfall.
Re: (Score:2)
yeah, my parents always went for the whole, 'So, how do you know that a billion years isn't a "day" for God?' thing and sent me on my way. they were teachers (remain involved with religion) and never faced any of the conflict that the fundamentalists being to the table
so, what drives the desire to hold a belief in front of so much evidence to the contrary?
Re: (Score:3)
Nothing needs to drive it - they just ignore or explain away the evidence. Humans are inherently irrational, and we're very slow to change our minds about even mundane matters, let alone something which has been drilled into us since childhood and which heavily influences how we interact with those around us. The big surprise isn't that so many people continue to believe in nonsensical superstitious claims - it's that so many have managed to find their way out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
And the correct response is: If the Book of Genesis re-defines a common word like "day" to mean something completely different, then how can you trust anything else in it?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the original Hebrew word didn't mean a day, and was often used in other writings to mean an indeterminate period. If you're asking how you can trust a poor translation job, you may be on to something, but the original text didn't use the English word 'day' at all, let alone redefine it.
Alternately, some people claim the account in Genesis is metaphorical. Now I'm not arguing that it definitely is or isn't, but your argument seems to be that if it is metaphorical, it's untrustworthy in some absolute sense. I.e. "Carl Sagan used a metaphor of the Milky Way as the Backbone of Night in Cosmos, so how can we trust anything else in Cosmos?" Or maybe you're going as far as "The discoverer of the Benzine ring used a metaphor of a snake devouring its tail to describe it, so how can we trust anything in organic chemistry?".
Re: (Score:2)
The book is purported to be the word of god; why is god speaking in metaphor?
You expect me to be able to determine the motives of a being powerful enough to create a universe? Note that his son often used parables.
Why was man created too stupid to comprehend the true creation story?
Why were you too stupid to understand the difference between stupidity and ignorance? Do you think Galleleo was stupid because he didn't know about quarks and gluons? Sheesh...
Re: (Score:3)
so, what drives the desire to hold a belief in front of so much evidence to the contrary?
Well, I go to church regularly and I'll readily admit I'm not completely convinced of all of this stuff being true. However, the people at my baptist church really do care about others and I do, too. They've really touched my heart. I know every church is different and some (probably many, especially catholic) really turn me off with the condescending, "you're a sinner since birth" brain washing) so YMMV.
If you find
Re: (Score:2)
If I am wrong about these beliefs, then I will one day die and go into the soil and nothing more will happen.
Unless the Hindus or Buddhists are right, in which case you will be reborn.
Or if the Catholics are right, you'll be going to hell.
Or if the Jews or Muslims are right, in which case...I'm not even sure what happens but I can't imagine it will be pleasant.
But then again none of the above take too kindly to Atheists so you're probably safest betting on one of them...
Re: (Score:2)
There is actually nothing in the biblical text that precludes evolution all all the prior lifeforms.
The truth is, there's nothing in "literal" interpretation of the Bible that precludes anything. For example, some biblical literalists reject the big bang because it is so obviously in conflict with Genesis; others say that the recent discovery of the big bang proves that the writers of Genesis had an inside source of information, since the science so obviously confirms the text.
The nicest thing about literal interpretations of the text is that you have so many to choose from.
Creationism (Score:2, Troll)
40% of US residents believe in creationism. What are you going to say to them, huh?
Re:Creationism (Score:5, Funny)
40% of US residents believe in creationism. What are you going to say to them, huh?
As little as possible.
Re:Creationism (Score:5, Insightful)
If they continue to argue, hit them with a crowbar.
Re: (Score:3)
Or just skip step one. :P
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ultragod created God, obviously.
Who created Ultragod you ask? What a silly question. Ultragod is eternal and thus needs no origin.
Re: (Score:2)
class God extends God { ...
function allthewayDown() {
}
}
Re: (Score:2)
Stack overflow due to infinite recursion! Unless, of course, God has infinite address space, then he could find ways to work around that.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, for an all powerful god to create everything, know everything and control everything, that god must necessarily be much larger and more complex than the universe. So, who created this god?
He evolved.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, for an all powerful god to create everything, know everything and control everything, that god must necessarily be much larger and more complex than the universe. So, who created this god?
He evolved.
Blasphemy ... everybody knows that She evolved, praise be unto Her Noodliness
Prayer and Gospel reading in the Reformate Pastafarian Church this Friday at noon-time.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody, you're committing a logical fallacy. People educated in the modern era don't really believe the universe had to have a creator simply because it is big and complex. I'll bet you don't, if you know a little history of modern cosmology. So why are you reasoning from a principle you don't yourself accept? People generally believe that the universe could have been explained by a model that doesn't require any moment of creation (like the 1920's Steady State Model), but it turned out that a model that th
Re: (Score:3)
This sort of ad-hoc rationalisation can be used to account for absolutely anything imaginable. For instance, arguing that God created the whole Universe 5 minutes ago with everything in it and all our memories in a way to make it undistinguishable from a 13.7 billion year old Universe would be another example of ad-hoc rationalisation that can account for anything which is intellectually equivalent to your suggestion.
I know you don't necessarily believe in "domino theology", it is just something to use on
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Note that the Catholic Church, from it's very inception (which is when Jesus made Peter his successor), never believed that the Bible was to be taken literally at all times (especially in Genesis). My source [catholic.com] (Also, check out some of the other writings on that site: awesome resource!).
Re: (Score:2)
The argument I hear at times from Old Earth creationists is that in the original Hebrew text, the word normally translated as "day" also has a secondary more general meaning of "well-definex time span". Thus translated, the Genesis really speaks of six aeons of creation, each of unspecified length.
Of course there is still nothing in there on evolution. Unless you start to selectively consider it a book of moralizing fairy tales...
Re: (Score:3)
If God said he created in 6 days, but actually took billions of years
What is a day? You do know that time isn't absolute; someone falling into a black hole will experience a day while everyone else experiences thousands, millions, or billions of years depending on how close he is to the singulariy, and how fast he's moving.
It also ignores the premise for Evolution; a way to explain origins without God.
Evolution doesn't explain life's origins at all. It explains how and why life has changed since it arose. W
Re: (Score:2)
Simple. "God works in subtle, mysterious ways. Who is to say that He did not create the universe in such a way that the precise results He wished to occur would occur, like an intricate, universe-wide set of dominoes? Could not evolution be the means by which He created man?" If they continue to argue, hit them with a crowbar.
Crowbars are old-fashioned. Now you just publish their accounting records, evidence of millions in people's "donated" properties, under threats of punishment from above and below if they refuse.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is fine by me. I don't have a problem with Intelligent Design by itself. Now, when people try to push to have it taught in science classes or given equal time with scientific theories with vast amounts of evidence supporting them, then I have a problem with it. As a concept in and of itself, meh, whatever.
In fact, I see Intelligent Design as a step in the right direction. It's essentially theists saying "okay science, you might be right -- BUT GOD DID IT ZOMG!" As an intellectual I find it to b
Re: (Score:2)
Its self-importance, its "knowing" it's right until it can't possibly deny it's wrong anymore, the atrocities committed by it and for it, the way it is used as an excuse to sanction pretty much every horrible action in human history from wars and sacrifies to the Crusades and Inquisitions to justifications of witch hunts and slavery to modern-day gay bashing. All of these things I loathe.
Me too. But these are not religious qualities--they are HUMAN qualities. People did the things above because they were hu
Re: (Score:2)
You've never been hit with a crowbar, have you? Please believe me that when you feel bones breaking for this or other reasons, it's altering some fundamental truths, includin gthe nature of your relation to your deity and the rest of the universe. And torture has, occasionally, been quite effective in changing people's minds. It's just not reliable or safe.
Re: (Score:3)
40% of US residents believe in creationism. What are you going to say to them, huh?
"Awhh... forget about LHC... what do you think of Snooki? [theonion.com]".
Is this good enough?
Re: (Score:3)
To grab a fucking clue. Only the severely delusional believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis.
Re: (Score:2)
40% of US residents believe in creationism. What are you going to say to them, huh?
"Creating man and women incapable of evil is the act of a worthy God"? :-D
Re: (Score:3)
40% of US residents believe in creationism. What are you going to say to them, huh?
1) Go ahead and believe what you want.
2) Stay away from me.
3) Stay away from my school.
4) Stay away from my newspaper, website, street, neighborhood, job, and city.
5) You are free to go set up your own of those. Don't invite me.
Re: (Score:2)
By the way, does any noticeable percentage outside of US believe in creationism, or it is just a local issue there?
My impression seems that there is no mass debate about creationism in other countries even the most religiously conservative ones such as Poland, and even Vatican and the popes have repeatedly claimed that there is no contradiction between their faith and evolution theory or big bang theory...
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. You just decoded the entire reason I don't run around killing people.
What do you think would happen if people started thinking about this more? Maybe we would soon see a "Hey, we have been wrong before so we will think a little more next time" popular uprising.
It will be chaos I tell you. People thinking thoughts.. talking to each other.. My god, I need my inhaler and HOMELAND SECURITY!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Overwhelming majority of the early non-religious scientists were burned at the stake or at least didn't get the credit they deserved in their lifetime; I guess that's a theistic selection of sorts.
Re: (Score:2)
Citation?
Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single non-religious scientist who was burned at the stake. Or are you counting Bruno, who was a Dominican monk, as I recall. And wasn't burned for being a scientist, but for being a heretic (no, not heretical about scientific beliefs, heretical in that he rej
Re:Creationism (Score:5, Insightful)
The overwhelming majority of human progress has come from people who were or are highly religious.
Or claimed to be in order to escape the current Inquisition.
Re:Creationism (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, many murderers, mass murderers even, are/were "highly religious" and of course, in the middle of those two extremes, there are many many many many many many many other people who have made no impact on society whatsoever, doomed to be excluded from the annals of history by their mediocrity who are (or were) "highly religious". You can't just hold up an example of a great scientist who was also religious and say:
"Look! That proves it!!! Human progress is impossible without Religion!!"
I think if you replaced Newton's headstone with a magnet and wrapped his coffin in wire, you'd produce a measurable current every time you did say that.
The "overwhelming majority of human progress" is in the past, due to the fact that the present is still happening and we can't see into the future. Society is becoming more secular. Many countries still have blasphemy laws. Some countries will stone you to death if you criticise a man who's supposedly an emissary of a prophet of a god. How many people were hanged/stoned/shot to death because of their godlessness who might have come up with calculus, or the "law of gravity" or the bagless vacuum cleaner or any one of a number of Really Great Things? How many were excluded from schools/universities because of accidents of birth, or because of their religious beliefs (which is pretty much the same thing).
How many scientists paid lip service to God and religion because it was an established social convention. How many scientists paid lip service to God because the church was giving them money? If you were studying at one of the earliest 12th-14th century(I think) church-run universities would you come out with a heretical theory that suggested that God might not exist? No. No you wouldn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Religion doesn't make human progress impossible!" That seemed to me to be GP's point.
If it was the GP's point it was a false dichotomy and a straw man. Making a process impossible is not the same thing as being somewhat of an impediment to it.
Simply namechecking scientists in one camp or the other does little towards determining the extent to which religiosity helps or hinders scientific understanding, as the poster that you're arguing against specifically points out.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The overwhelming majority of human progress has come from people who were or are highly religious.
That's because it took us 5,000 years of civilization to grow past our need to attribute everything we didn't understand to a mysterious power. Today we actually have the cognitive fortitude to admit our ignorance and lack of imagination. Those evolved among us do anyway.
Your "deeply-held belief", which is undoubtedly simply a circumstance of conceptive chance, rather than a profound understanding of theology and introspection, is not shared [lhup.edu] by a statistically significant number of modern scientists. So
Re:Creationism (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice logic! Got another one for ya: The overwhelming majority of murders and rapes were committed by people who were or are highly religious. Guess that proves that theists are inherently immoral, eh?
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you possibly derive this? Most murders and rapes are committed by family members: there's nothing like living that close to someone, especially someone under your physical care or control, to tempt abuse. Religion may ritualize it and set standards such as the child body changing of ear piercing, circumcision, or clitorectomy practiced by various cultures. But how many members of any genocidal army were genuinely religious? How many just followed orders and killed scapegoats?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think you understand the scope of this discussion. Generally speaking, it's a good idea to read the entire chain of comments, instead of just reading mine and then getting your panties in a bunch. Context matters.
Re: (Score:2)
The overwhelming majority of human progress has come from people who were or are highly religious.
Ignoring the dubious use of "highly" in that claim, we can also point out that all the foundations of human society and technology were created by polytheists.
Re: (Score:2)
It is hard to be non religious in a society where all education is inherently religious from early childhood, and a particular religious sect is mandated by both law and custom, with publicly expressed deviations (atheism being particularly severe one) punished by imprisonment or death.
But Newton wasn't, sorry (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What famous old trick?
If you're going to tease someone for being stupid, first know what the hell that you are talking about...
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I've heard that logic as being attributed to Origen, so it goes right back to the early church. I'd say that's an old trick.
Re: (Score:2)
You've heard that Origen (who wrote commentaries of Genesis) didn't know the "Order of Creation"?
Plant and Animal... (Score:3)
Two fires that found a way to indirectly fuel eachother over the millennia by way of oxygen. Somewhat romantic, actually. Actually makes more sense to give a flower in that context.
Ryan Fenton
The Great Memory Leak (Score:3, Funny)
This is what happens when you don't free() your genes after you're done with them.
Re: (Score:2)
This is what happens when you don't free() your genes after you're done with them.
Why free them? Want to end like Manning? Send them to Cryptome or OpenLeaks... (one simply cannot trust Wikileaks for responsible leaks releasing).
What about mass extintions? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is not that every living thing died, but that very few survived, and those very few could had common recent mutations (i.e. resistence to cold around ice ages) that could be misinterpreted as ancient genes as found in different species.
Those things would be the Archaea with all our existing complex life infrastructure existing in frigid cold and hydrothermal vents deep under sea, and in earth heated sulphur lakes and high saline lakes. They were able to survive and pass on to us life.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, these guys just got an article posted to slashdot (and nature) describing how they just confirmed that evolution probably happened more or less how we expected that it did.
Nice snark, eh? Maybe you should drop some acid and read the paper. Might open your mind to some fantastic little details like coming up with an explanation of how most life on the planet manages to look at act like it does.
Yes, TFRP (The Fine Research Paper) broadly agrees with current evolutionary theory. No, it's not the Higgs Boson or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It does represent an interesting new look of a vastly important time in our biosphere - one that is fantastically difficult to s
And on the eigth day ... (Score:2)
If you think humans can't change the earth (Score:2)
Good thing for us, not so great for lots of anaerobic bacteria that may have been around before.
Mushrooms (Score:2)
The oxidizing event was the appearance of the mushroom which drifted in from spores floating through space.
Science Daily Article [sciencedaily.com]
The dates don't really match, but do they ever?
The Creationist's Galileo Moment (Score:3)
The Creationist's Galileo Moment : Genetics Proves Evolution
When chicken embryos start to develop they have teeth buds and the beginnings of multi segmented tails. As they develop their DNA tells the developing embryo to absorb them. Much like human embryo's absorb embryonic gill slits. Now if you turn off the genes that control this absorption instruction you get chicken embryos that develop long multi segmented dinosaur tails and meat eating dinosaur teeth complete with the serrated inside edge. Other studies have also been successful in regressing feathers into scales.
This is not hypothesis. This is not supposition. This is not interpretation. This cold hard, hold in your hands see with your own eyes type reproducible proof. It has already been done, in Canadian universities no less, and is documented and reproducible. One more thing. No DNA was ever added to the bird DNA. This was done using 100% pure chicken DNA.
They have proved that bird DNA contains genes that create dinosaur characteristics. The only way this can happen is through the evolutionary process.
So like when Galileo first pointed his telescope at the heavens and learned that Aristotle was wrong modern scientists have pointed their microscopes at developing bird embryos and learned that they are correct. Evolution is real.
Now just to make things easier for Creationists, yes I realize that you prefer to get your education from YouTube U. as I know reading non religious articles is such a chore for you, here are the names and institutions that you can use as starting points for your research. However you must remember to get the best results from your Internet searches do not to include the terms 'Bible, Creationist, Intelligent DesignID,religion,God' in your queries.
Deciphered! (Score:3)
The introns have also been deciphered:
AGTTACCATGGGA /* Support new standard RFC -3374, Oxygen as Fuel */ GGCTTCAAA....
prokaryotes = minimalism; eukaryotes = surplus (Score:2)
Eukaryotes have large DNAs, some approaching a trillion bases, with up to 99% non-coding junk and lots of duplicated genes. They produce a lot more proteins than simpler microbes. Nikc lane in a letter to Nature a couple months ago suggested the difference was the presence of mitochondiria that gives the luxury of 20x more energy than basic microbes.