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To: shubi
Here are some examples from biology textbooks (high school and junior college) that convey to the student in no uncertain terms that the origin of life and its subsequent evolution is understood, and that it is a fact the it occurred by purely natural means.

Miller & Levine Biology Prentice-Hall (1993), pp.342-348:

"From the jumbled mixture of molecules in the organic soup that formed in Earth's oceans, the highly organized structures of RNA and DNA must somehow have evolved." "Although the origin of the first true cells is uncertain, we can identify several of their characteristics with certainty."

"At some point, an ancient form of photosynthesis evolved in early cells"

"Between 1.4 and 1.6 billion years ago, the first eukaryotic cells evolved, fully adapted to an aerobic world."

"A few hundred million years after the evolution of sexual reproduction, evolving life forms crossed another great threshold: the development of multicellular organisms from single-celled organisms. In the blink of an evolutionary eye these first multicellular organisms experienced a great adaptive radiation. Earth's parade of life was well on its way."

The following quotes are from Camp & Arms, Exploring Biology (1984) Saunders College Publishing, which has been used as a textbook in junior colleges in California, and may still be used today:

"Most scientists today believed that chance chemical events, occurring over a time span of more than a billion years, built up increasingly complex and life-like clusters of chemicals; some of these eventually became cells." (293).

"So, unlikely as living systems are, they had so much time to evolve that their origin was probably inevitable!" (296).

"Slowly, over a long timespan, some aggregates evolved coordinated chemical pathways that could carry on the functions of life: metabolism, information transfer, and faithful reproduction." (305). Dr. Lee Spetner

You were saying?

78 posted on 02/17/2005 7:56:02 PM PST by jwalsh07
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To: jwalsh07

If those quotes are actual(I suspect any quotes from creationists since they have been shown to quote out of context and actually alter quotes of scientists), the texts are incorrect. I would tell my students the truth. We don't know how life originated on Earth.

From that origin, I would also tell them it is almost sure that evolution is a fact and the ToE explains the mechanisms for evolution. The ToE is continually updated as new scientific studies come out.


86 posted on 02/17/2005 8:34:03 PM PST by shubi (Peace through superior firepower.)
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