Anything for a headline

This according to the Associated Press

"Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years"

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8R4H0Q00&show_article=1&catnum=-1

Sounds impressive, eh? I mean, if we can build life from scratch, who needs God?

Hold the phone. Lets look at this just a little bit closer...

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race.

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:
—A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.
—A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.
—A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

Hmm, is that all that's holding us back? Essentially all you need is, uh, everything...and a way to make it work. How stinkin' hard can that be?

Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School is optomistic. His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.

What? Not smart enough at Harvard to design things?

What HAS happened to our institutions of higher learning?

Sheesh...

Letting Darwinian evolution just design something? Figure out what happened later?

Is this science or the Red Green show?

I. can't. wait.

A Glutton For Punishment: Part V

So, what else have I found in my travels?

• Non-belief in God is genetically determined, no kidding!

As to the non-belief gene, here's a quote from a blog:"I may contest that the chance of god is a small percentage; however, that is not my predisposition. It's not incorporated within me. Belief isn't something one can choose to do." Now when pressed a little, my atheist counterpart allowed that it might be a combination of nature and nurture.

Even so, she repeated her earlier declaration this way: "You simply cannot choose to believe in something." There were other posters on that blog that agreed.

Wow. I was stunned, baffled, flabbergasted, taken aback, dumb-founded, flummoxed!

I don't think she actually thought through the implications of that statement. It would stand to reason that the converse should be true, that one simply can't choose NOT to believe.

Its not up to us..."well if I was born that way, I'm not responsible for what I do or don't believe."

Zero accountability! Y'know, they may be on to something...

Speaking of genetics, there was one other thing I found interesting in that post:

"Yet I wonder what's the obsession with calling something "god"? "

If we can point to something genetic, inborn if you will, I think that'd be it.

• Atheists are trying to come up with some type of iconic representation of their non-belief.

I saw a red "A" which I think Professor Dawkins came up with. I think the obvious reference to Nathanial Hawthorne's tome would confuse the issue. I'm sure they'll come up with something. After all, there's the Cross and the Star of David. Why not something representing um....well, what do you have really? I'm thinking a blank slate. There's nothing on there to begin with, and you can put anything on it you want...

Please be Patient, Y'all. He's got something to say...

No comment needed

Agenda driven science exposed...again

Check this out:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/08/09/did-media-or-nasa-withhold-climate-history-data-changes-public

Throw that in with the previous posts on the hominid neighbors that were supposed to be ancestors and descendants, you can see the human aspects of science:

• Smart guys producing scientific data with pre-conceived notions of what it should look like.
• Other smart guys with their pre-conceived notions about the other smart guys' pre-conceived notions producing scientific data, proving them wrong.
• The first smart guys starting the cycle all over again.

To quote again Dr. Anton: "This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn't do. It's a continous self-testing process."

Well, Dr. Anton, it seems that with scientists behaving like they do...y'know...like ordinary people + lab coats, the truth kind of winds its way along a crooked path.

And, maybe that's the way it has to be. What I'd like is a more even-handed approach to how the data is publicized. Dr. Hansen thru NASA has been trumpeting about global warming for some time now. Seems like a fundamental shift in what the data actually shows would be worth an equally publicized news story to that effect.

Still waiting...

Well, there goes the neighborhood...

Looks like this is getting some widespread attention:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070808/ap_on_sc/human_evolution

So, what we have is two species of hominids not behaving well. For one, they're supposed to have evolved from one to the other, in classic evolutionary linear fashion. Instead, it looks like they were neighbors. That is to say they co-existed at approximately the same place, at the same time. On the face of it, it does fly in the face of heretofore accepted anthropology concerning the evolution of man as we are now.

So, now what?

• There'll be more questions, more research, other evidence reviewed and presented, but in the meantime, we get this:

"Susan Anton, a New York University anthropologist and co-author of the Leakey work, said she expects anti-evolution proponents to seize on the new research, but said it would be a mistake to try to use the new work to show flaws in evolution theory."

"This is not questioning the idea at all of evolution; it is refining some of the specific points," Anton said. "This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn't do. It's a continous self-testing process."

Well, duh.

I would expect science to continue to do what it does and religion to do what it does. What' s telling here is that Dr. Anton is proactively defending current theory from...whom? Is she worried about other scientists that would challenge the conventional wisdom and her research.? Nooooooooooooo. She goes after religion first, with a warning: it would be a mistake to try to use the new work to show flaws in evolution theory. I'm thinking she and Meave Leakey have done a pretty good job of showing the flaws all by themselves. Is this going to be the same thing as science thinking we evolved from Neanderthals, then come to find out we didn't? We'll see...

Where I think science has gone haywire on all of this, is shifting its position of, "We can't include God in, we have no evidence indicating that", to "We have to pre-emptively, completely include God out, and don't ever mention that so-called creative entity again".

If they'd only worry about the how, what, where, and the when and stop insisting there's no 'Who', they could spend a whole lot more time figuring out the stuff science figures out.

A Glutton For Punishment: Part IV

So what else have I learned about Atheists?

• They're an oppressed minority.
• Its high time they came out of their atheist closets.

A common theme I'm seeing in atheist websites here is this concern that western countries like the US are mimicking the Taliban in creating an oppressive, all encompassing theocracy. Between fundamentalist politicians setting the ten commandments out in the public square and crackpot pseudo-scientific-warmed over creationism nutjobs wanting Intelligent Design taught in schools, they're feeling the noose of religious intolerance slowly tightening around them. The total takeover by religious fundamentalists of every aspect of American life is just around the corner! Can public stonings be very far behind? They shudder at the prospect.

sigh...

Now, taking a page out of the 'oppressed minorities that have no ethnic or racial component to designate them as such' playbook, they have this compunction to 'come out' as it were and tell people they're atheists, and darn proud of it.

double sigh...

Praying to a Milk Jug?

One could probably write a tome about how bad this analogy is, but I'll just go with this: unlike the immutable word of God, milk will go bad in a few days, and you'll have to throw it out.

As the risk of a very bad pun on a very good hymn, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness", the second line says, "there is no shadow of turning with Thee"