Posted on 08/14/2005 8:06:45 AM PDT by CarlEOlsoniii
Harvard University is launching a broad initiative to discover how life began, joining an ambitious scientific assault on age-old questions that are central to the debate over the theory of evolution.
The Harvard project, which is likely to start with about $1 million annually from the university, will bring together scientists from fields as disparate as astronomy and biology, to understand how life emerged from the chemical soup of early Earth, and how this might have happened on distant planets.
Known as the ''Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative," the project is still in its early stages, and fund-raising has not begun, the scientists said.
But the university has promised the researchers several years of seed money, and has asked the team to make much grander plans, including new faculty and a collection of multimillion-dollar facilities.
The initiative begins amid increasing controversy over the teaching of evolution, prompted by proponents of ''intelligent design," who argue that even the most modest cell is too complex, too finely tuned, to have come about without unseen intelligence.
President Bush recently said intelligent design should be discussed in schools, along with evolution. Like intelligent design, the Harvard project begins with awe at the nature of life, and with an admission that, almost 150 years after Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution in the Origin of Species, scientists cannot explain how the process began.
Now, encouraged by a confluence of scientific advances -- such as the discovery of water on Mars and an increased understanding of the chemistry of early Earth -- the Harvard scientists hope to help change that.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
That is a ludicrous statement! Some people are asking schools to study MORE about the origin and evolution (small e) of life - to examine the data without evolution tainted glasses and you call them "the forces of ignorance"
How Orwellian of you - if anybody looks beyond the evolutionist man behind the curtain - you can them ignorant. If anybody dares to question or even gather data that may run contrary to your beloved and cleaved to theory – you call them ignorant. You seem to believe your theory is so perfect that no further intellectual effort should be applied unless it contains the a priori assumption that Darwinist Evolution is the alpha and omega.
History is full tyrannies that follow this modus operandi - although the usual culprit was religion
Absence of data is proof of nothing. The absence of the 100's and 100's and 100's of thousands of transition forms that Darwinism predicts is proof of nothing.
Anybody that speaks in absolutes like "definitely wrong" in the realm of evolution does not grasp the nature of the subject or the evidence.
The Big Bang Theory - an immaculate conception...
(200+ in this list alone)
Nice try.
1. 200 is a teeny tiny fraction of what Darwinist evolution predicts - only a person of faith would consider this overwhelming evidence
2. Only bigots claim all people that disagree with them think and act in the same way.
3. I only represent me and your bigoted comment about the bogeymen you call "Creationists" does not apply.
4. This thread is about origin of life so I have no idea why you are doing a cut and paste of the Evolutionist party line . Evolution has nothing to say about the origin of life so your comments in this thread are pretty near nonsensical.
The Big Bang promotes the idea of a singularity, a point where all matter of the universe was compacted to initiate the event.
Evolution promotes the idea of a singularity - the DNA molecule, all life has it.
All in all, in terms of categorical logic, they are really inadvertent admissions that the universe and life are immaculate conceptions.
Thank Aristotle for logic.
It is an immacculte conception...
Categorically, they are both immaculate conceptions.
(Thank Aristotle for teaching me logic.)
Thanks for the ping!
And be just as perplexed.
Oh please. Blind fish living in caves lost their vision by the same process (losing genetic capability) as their seeing forbears gained vision?
There are different kinds of evolution. And there are different kinds of imagined evolution.
They're planning to hold 3 brown-bag lunch seminars, Drinks and bathroom access will be free for all participants.
Well, that's easy. Didn't Mithras slay a bull?
That is a ludicrous statement! Some people are asking schools to study MORE about the origin and evolution (small e) of life - to examine the data without evolution tainted glasses and you call them "the forces of ignorance"Yeah right. Just like Marxist professors don't want to teach Communism to their students - they only want to teach them MORE about capitalism (the supposed "problems" of capitalism, from the Communists' perspective). Neo-nazis don't advocate Naziism, they only want people to learn MORE about WWII (the supposed "problems" of the Holocaust story, from the deniers' perspective).How Orwellian of you ...
The IDers have retreated far from their original party line back in the mid '90s, because they keep getting slapped down by the courts whenever they try to push a positive curriculum for ID. But they're still fabian creationists. So now they've been forced to retreat behind a SECOND layer of lies. Pitiful. And strangely reminiscent of the Hollywood Communists, about whom I'm reading now.
1. 200 is a teeny tiny fraction of what Darwinist evolution predicts - only a person of faith would consider this overwhelming evidence1. Speciation happens to smaller breakaway populations, so their resulting fossils SHOULD be fewer than from the large, successful parent population or the later, successful new species population. Darwin hinted at this, but it was in the 20th century that the mathematics behind it was firmed up. This is now well-established.2. Only bigots claim all people that disagree with them think and act in the same way.
3. I only represent me and your bigoted comment about the bogeymen you call "Creationists" does not apply.
4. This thread is about origin of life so I have no idea why you are doing a cut and paste of the Evolutionist party line . Evolution has nothing to say about the origin of life so your comments in this thread are pretty near nonsensical.
2. & 3. are as incoherent as Fester's post 60. Please, post on, both of ya!
4. Hmmmm. Who was it who said, in post 48, that "Yeah, evolution accurately describes the fossil record as we know it...Evolution describes a fossil record replete with transitional forms - unfortunately this fossil record does not exist"? (I leave the answer as an exercise for the reader. :-)
But there is no such differentiation as "micro" vs. "macro" evolution. The "micro" version implying that separate "kinds" were created by God that then evolve, but that evolution is limited by some unknown mechanism.
All species evolved from a common ancestor. There is no "micro" limitation to it. End of story.
I almost sprayed my screen with tea, so absurd is this post. !!! Very entertaining, however.
I've never, ever heard the concept of the Invisible Hand associated with Natural Selection but it is a marvelous opportunity for discussion. I mean, it screams "intelligent design," yet, if Darwin believed in that, it really ought to be brought into the debate. And if he postulated that the Invisible Hand were an impersonal force, it would have left a hole in his logic large enough to fit an Ark through.
Makes me want to get a better handle on Darwin's understanding/assumptions about randomness. Randomness is the Almighty's way of keeping a sinful creation on a tight leash.
And of course it has never been said that the discerning of an Invisible Hand at work in the affairs of men precludes any planning or cooperation on thier part. Rather, the division of labor, and the distribution of goods and services require a great deal of planning on the part of the individuals who are engaged in the various component activities that make up the whole.
What would you rather them say? That they are researching how God Lego'd the Earth together in a couple days and plopped a couple humans down on it?
Huh. So much for geology, astronomy, and murder trials.
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