RobbityRobbityRobbity. Beep bop baDOO waaah. Oh sorry, I was just listening to Dizzy. Back to work:
. . . plus the Monera, which I suspect Christians never really had sympathy for anyway. Might ask a Jain though. Funny thing about the denial. Some of these critters being dismissed are what digest you in the grave. They get the last laugh. If only they could! Wait: that means we do. Huh? :bugeye: Whoa. )
But is the replication of a primitive cell any more magical than the random formation of chemical bonds which just happen to form polygons in certain organic molecules, isomers or crystals? I think not. I think we can all agree that anyone who thinks quartz has a soul just because Silicon likes to form lattices, or that DNA is magic because it magically winds into a double helix, is probably prone to seeing the Virgin Mary in the paint peeling from the wall. I would no sooner give a soul to a cell than I would venerate Hydrogen for teaching all the elements what an orbital is. And how bout them electrons? Particle physics is closer to magic than the sprockets and gizmos of a cell. But no one is advancing the idea that particles are sacred, or that they are alive. And yet they are truly created, not mere products of molecular synthesis.
Creationists will patronize us - even themselves - and browbeat us into submission over the idea that all of this was their Designer's opus magnum. But we grew up, we saw Dad putting together the bike one Christmas Eve, and now we know Santa is a myth. The only question is, how much longer do some of us perpetuate the myth? And how many ways? leopold is expressing strident atheism, yet he curiously clings to some of the romantic notions of the ghost in the machine. Seriously, how many people would naturally take this position if given plain facts, from the moment they first learned to ask "Why?"
At any level we choose (to the extent technology allows) we discover that Ultimate Reality boils down to some very fundamental physical laws being obeyed. An electron simply can't achieve stability outside of its ground state any more than conservation of energy can be violated. An atom will bond depending on the valence related to the electron configuration. Molecules acquire properties due to proportions of atoms bonding, and unusual effects that arise from intrinsics like geometry and polarity. RNA is one particular molecule whose geometry allows it to grow an image of itself almost like a crystal does. And so for DNA. Is that really life? Probably not. Certainly nothing to revere unless the pain meds are really working on our emotions and imagination. (Perish the thought that there is any recreational use going on out there.) Lipids happen to form effective boundaries between solutions of different concentrations, so that establishes the cell membrane as the natural consequence of a fundamental molecular property. And so on. There never was any magic, not at any level, not other than the laws of nature which are better characterized as mysteries - the same as Creationists ascribe to God, only without all the embellishment. Nature is a robot, not a person. And certainly not benevolent or beneficent, not outside of the ephemeral moments of well-being, just before all hell breaks loose.
Getting back to where this branched off:
We can think of ourselves is super-smart animals, that's understandable. But I think it's more honest to call ourselves insane apes. Animals wouldn't touch half the shit we mess with, not with a ten foot pole.
But think again. Have you never just thrown up your hands and said Shit happens. The accident on the highway that took the family of eight on their way to the church picnic. The lightning strike that started the fire that burned down the house that Jack built - including Jack. Every kind of unintended calamity. Cells don't "think" how to assemble proteins - the nanomachines (mitochondria, mRNA etc.) are fed the molecules (amino acids) to build proteins with, through random collisions of all of the stuff floating around in the cell's goo (cytoplasm). Next time you're amazed by this, just throw your hands up and say Reactions happen. keeping in mind it's the same as saying Shit happens which, as we are applying it here, is also the same as acknowledging that a lot of stuff about life is uncaused - From the emergence, survival or extinction of species all the way down to the creation of new cells. Sure, existing cells have assets to replicate themselves, and the primordial sludge where first cells created themselves did not. But the belief that sludge can not synthesize certain molecules needed to create cells where non existed before is way way too strict a limit. And evidently it's wrong. First cells got here, after all.
Both!Robittybob1 said:
To me the distinction is kind of silly. "Life from life" is so subjective, so borderline superstitious. It's as if there is something magic about a cell replicating itself as compared to the way a crystal grows, or the way a compound precipitates out of solution. Obviously at the lowest levels the cell is only undergoing chemical reactions. But at the same time it's experiencing systemic changes at several layers in the manner of a machine, so some folks feel the need to associate it with magic, as if we are uncomfortable with the idea of chemical nanobots ruling supreme over the biosphere. Creationists need a leader and they need to feel the magic. So they invent it. It's purely emotional. Somehow this bleeds over into the way the rest of people think.
The process of DNA replication probably doesn't give anyone a warm fuzzy any more than the idea of trying to kiss a lizard on the lips. I think we can probably label it "inert" and not start the holy rollers foaming at the mouth. But that's 90% of cell replication, and the rest is a division of assets, just before the cell wall closes--described as chemical reactions as well. My point is, cells are really nothing more than automatons. It's crazy that, by the time humans had advanced to the point of observing cells under the microscope, folks were still backward enough to feed the need to give organisms souls. There is nothing more sacred about a fertilized human egg than that of a chimp, or a lizard, or a maggot. It's no more sacred than a spore, a seed, or the primitive germ that forms a sponge or a jelly. And the part that comes next, during embryonic cleavage, is no more sacred than the mitosis of primitive bacteria, amoeba or protozoans. And did I say fungi and Euglena. (Let me get an Amen!, brother. I'm covering all 5 kingdoms in keeping with Pentacostal Science.
. . . plus the Monera, which I suspect Christians never really had sympathy for anyway. Might ask a Jain though. Funny thing about the denial. Some of these critters being dismissed are what digest you in the grave. They get the last laugh. If only they could! Wait: that means we do. Huh? :bugeye: Whoa. )But is the replication of a primitive cell any more magical than the random formation of chemical bonds which just happen to form polygons in certain organic molecules, isomers or crystals? I think not. I think we can all agree that anyone who thinks quartz has a soul just because Silicon likes to form lattices, or that DNA is magic because it magically winds into a double helix, is probably prone to seeing the Virgin Mary in the paint peeling from the wall. I would no sooner give a soul to a cell than I would venerate Hydrogen for teaching all the elements what an orbital is. And how bout them electrons? Particle physics is closer to magic than the sprockets and gizmos of a cell. But no one is advancing the idea that particles are sacred, or that they are alive. And yet they are truly created, not mere products of molecular synthesis.
Creationists will patronize us - even themselves
- and browbeat us into submission over the idea that all of this was their Designer's opus magnum. But we grew up, we saw Dad putting together the bike one Christmas Eve, and now we know Santa is a myth. The only question is, how much longer do some of us perpetuate the myth? And how many ways? leopold is expressing strident atheism, yet he curiously clings to some of the romantic notions of the ghost in the machine. Seriously, how many people would naturally take this position if given plain facts, from the moment they first learned to ask "Why?"At any level we choose (to the extent technology allows) we discover that Ultimate Reality boils down to some very fundamental physical laws being obeyed. An electron simply can't achieve stability outside of its ground state any more than conservation of energy can be violated. An atom will bond depending on the valence related to the electron configuration. Molecules acquire properties due to proportions of atoms bonding, and unusual effects that arise from intrinsics like geometry and polarity. RNA is one particular molecule whose geometry allows it to grow an image of itself almost like a crystal does. And so for DNA. Is that really life? Probably not. Certainly nothing to revere unless the pain meds are really working on our emotions and imagination. (Perish the thought that there is any recreational use going on out there.) Lipids happen to form effective boundaries between solutions of different concentrations, so that establishes the cell membrane as the natural consequence of a fundamental molecular property. And so on. There never was any magic, not at any level, not other than the laws of nature which are better characterized as mysteries - the same as Creationists ascribe to God, only without all the embellishment. Nature is a robot, not a person. And certainly not benevolent or beneficent, not outside of the ephemeral moments of well-being, just before all hell breaks loose.
Getting back to where this branched off:
Now I would simply ask: how realistic is that, given that cells are mindless little chemical plants - that in the simplest of models they follow the same laws as when salt crystallizes (when seawater evaporates)?leopold said:
All other animals with brains have some capacity to "outsmart" others. So isn't this just relative?leopold said:
We are Homo sapiens sapiens - extra smart and very rarely also acutely gifted. But almost always at a cost. Van Gogh was also plagued by insanity and hallucinations - he cut off his ear, for cryin out loud (and I suspect he was) and eventually shot himself. As beautiful and masterfully created as his art was, it was also often - well, psychedelic. Was this the perfection of insanity? Many artists and musicians express dreams, visions and hallucinatory states in their work, whether they end up like Robert Schumann, Ernest Hemingway or Kurt Cobain. It looks like Van Gogh was in turmoil of one kind or another even in his most idyllic paintings.leopold said:
We can think of ourselves is super-smart animals, that's understandable. But I think it's more honest to call ourselves insane apes. Animals wouldn't touch half the shit we mess with, not with a ten foot pole.
But they all arise from primal instincts - including the ones developed through biological cooperation (socialization) which control against individual survival in favor of the good of the whole. We just think we've escaped our primal urges when we take on airs about being morally right. Of course what I just said completely demolished the whole premise of Fundamentalism.
That seems to be the purpose of good literature more than science. Here it's all about describing Nature in pure, raw (and sometimes a little disgusting) incarnations. We classify ourselves as Homo because of the same rules that we classify ants Insecta. There are no exceptions in nature, and certainly no label will ever undo the reality that we descended from ape-like protohumans.
Back to this. I think where we left off, Lewin was giving us those diagrams which show that no one among them ever denied anything fundamental to Darwin's theory, other than the more vibrant discussion they had about the tempo of evolution, which was your main concern at the beginning of this thread. No one at that meeting ever disputed common descent with modification, acted on by natural selection. Somehow you are drawing a completely different conclusion, or so it seems.
That would certainly explain the cause of your first remark!
But think again. Have you never just thrown up your hands and said Shit happens. The accident on the highway that took the family of eight on their way to the church picnic. The lightning strike that started the fire that burned down the house that Jack built - including Jack. Every kind of unintended calamity. Cells don't "think" how to assemble proteins - the nanomachines (mitochondria, mRNA etc.) are fed the molecules (amino acids) to build proteins with, through random collisions of all of the stuff floating around in the cell's goo (cytoplasm). Next time you're amazed by this, just throw your hands up and say Reactions happen.
keeping in mind it's the same as saying Shit happens which, as we are applying it here, is also the same as acknowledging that a lot of stuff about life is uncaused - From the emergence, survival or extinction of species all the way down to the creation of new cells. Sure, existing cells have assets to replicate themselves, and the primordial sludge where first cells created themselves did not. But the belief that sludge can not synthesize certain molecules needed to create cells where non existed before is way way too strict a limit. And evidently it's wrong. First cells got here, after all.If you get a chance to dig into Gould's theories a little deeper, I think you'll find something completely different. He's usually talking about mechanisms at higher levels than the population genetics and natural selection of Darwin's theory. Enzymes, by the way, are what cells use to operate on DNA and proteins. So all of that is already built into the lowest level cellular processes. But spandrels is also his explanation for the reason that certain traits that are not relevant to the ones under pressure will jump in the car with the ones that are under pressure. Obviously there are many levels and perspectives to evolution.
