"Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy." - Ben Franklin
Posted on 11/19/2004 10:08:10 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
The nose is smarter than we thought. In fact, it just won two Americans a Nobel Prize.
Researchers Richard Axel of New York and Linda Buck of Seattle were chosen to receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Their citation says “for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.” Stated more simply, they discovered important details of “how we smell”—how we detect odors via receptors in the nose and information processing in the brain and nervous system.
The press release points out the sometimes life-or-death importance of the sense of smell. Newborn pups use it to locate their mothers’ milk glands. Humans use odors “to identify suitable food and to avoid putrid or unfit foodstuff.” Mosquitoes locate humans by detecting our odors, so the new research may someday prevent mosquito bites and malaria.
Nobel judge Professor Sten Grillner commented, “Until Axel and Buck’s studies, the sense of smell was a mystery.” This year’s laureates researched details of, in Axel’s words, “how the brain knows what the nose is smelling,” how it equips organisms “to detect food, predators, and mates.” For two scientists, acting alone, to map one of the major human senses, from molecular to cellular level, is unique in the history of science.
A “diverse repertoire of odorous molecules” excite some of the five million receptor cells in the nasal cavity. These cells generate coded electrical signals and send them to the brain.
Ms. Buck adds an ironic observation: “You might have a rose and a skunk being recognized by some of the same receptors.” But the brain deciphers those signals and goes on to distinguish ten thousand separate and distinct odors.
Previous Nobel laureates have researched other senses and found equally stunning complexity. In 1981, laureates David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel investigated the sense of sight. They discovered nerve cells that adjust contrast, detect motion, and perform numerous specialized functions. To explain how the brain makes sense of signals from the retina, their work uses the analogy, “ . . . as if certain cells read the simple letters in the message and compile them into syllables that are subsequently read by other cells, which, in turn, compile the syllables into words, and these are finally read by other cells that compile words into sentences” which proceed to the brain, where the visual impression originates.
Nearly a century and a half ago, Charles Darwin conceded, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” He wrote botanist Asa Gray, “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder.” And Darwin didn’t know nearly as much as we do about the sophistication of the signal processing from the eye and the nose.
All of this leads to a logical closing question: If researchers earn Nobel Prizes for discovering such intricacies in our sensory organs, doesn’t the Intelligent Designer of all of this intricacy deserve some recognition?
BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
Coffee is the first runner up as final proof of the fact that God exists, and He loves us.
Interesting! Of course, in Darwin's time, not much had yet been done re: information theory, molecular biology, etc., etc. His theory often seems to suffer for lack of such bodies of knowledge. Thank you Mr. S. for this post!
"If you want proof of God, I can provide it in one word:
chocolate"
That is a secondary proof.
The first and primary proof of the existence of God is ice cream.
what about beer? :) didn't ben franklin say beer was the proof??
Nearly a century and a half ago, Charles Darwin conceded, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”This is one of the all-time most popular creationoid lies. A classic of creationoid dishonesty. It's explained in context Here, scroll down to quote #2.8.
And this is why evolutionists change no minds.
What gets people upset is the method God used to implement His design.
He wrote botanist Asa Gray, “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder.”Interesting. A short, sweet sentence. It presumably ends with the word "shudder." But is that really the whole story? We've learned, through a vast amount of experience, that creationoid quotes should never be trusted. So we tracked it down.
Here's the letter. The website has a big bunch of text, so search on the word "shudder" and you'll find the letter, written in February of 1860, which was right after the first edition of Origin of Species was published. Darwin says:
"The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder, but when I think of the fine known gradations, my reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder."Now that's odd. I wonder why the second part of the sentence was left out? Could it be [gasp!] creationoid dishonesty?
In the sixth edition of the Book, pages 143-144, found HERE, Darwin says:
Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.He goes on at length, explaining how an eye could indeed be evolved. The article, however, gives the impression (by an out-of-context and truncated quote) that Darwin believed the opposite.
Such is the current state of "creation science" and creationoid integrity.
One of those morons of the oxy- variety, you know.
Thanks for the confirmation. :)
Why should we expect Charles Colson to be truthful? His use of misquotations is no different from the mendacity of other Creationists. Colson apparently didn't think it important enough to look up the original before quoting. Maybe he's bucking for Rather's job.
I try to be fair in these matters. It's the Christian thing to do. So my assumption is that Colson is a good man who has an idiot on his staff who puts this stuff together for him. In that case, Colson isn't much different from the typical creationoid who visits these threads and dumps in a load of garbage that he's unwittingly copied from one of those foul creationoid websites.
I can understand, and somewhat excuse, a person who has been badly educated, or even a befuddled dimwit, who has been led astray by evil people. But there's no excuse for those who have seen the standard creationoid arguments shredded here, yet who return, thread after thread, and post the same insane nonsense.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.