"Binary" Enzyme Created By Scripps Scientists Demonstrates Darwinian Evolution At Its Simplest

Scripps Research Institute / ScienceDaily News ^ | 12/19/2002 | John S. Reader, D.Phil, and Professor Gerald F. Joyce, M.D., Ph.D

[PatrickHenry]

101 placemarker.

[AndrewC]

The four base pairs of DNA are a subset of the possible alternatives. Game, set, match.

Bull, again. You are playing with yourself. You'll go blind. You haven't coded anything with snowflakes. We already know that DNA has four bases and codes things. It is repeatable, my point not yours.

[Dimensio]

Wait a minute, aren't we slaves to our cats now?

Yes, but some people don't realise that yet. Those who do accept their lot in life and treat cats with the resepect deserved will ascend to higher beings (cats) in the coming Next Thursday.

[Dimensio]

You're creation theory seems too weak to be taught in the public schools.

I guess you've got a point. It's far more believable that some entity whipped up the universe, the sun, the planet and life on the planet over a period of six days (even though it should have been powerful enough to do it all at once given the definition of the entity in question), that it created everything in some undefined 'perfect' state, that it created two humans and put a tree right within their grasp that, for some reason, it didn't want them touching (why put it there, then?). And, of course, it gave the entire universe the appearance of billions of years of age even though it was brand new at the time.

[MoGalahad]

Patrick, thanks for pinging me on this but I have heard the evolutionary view of things all my life and I find it to be dogmatic and patently unscientific so please drop me from your ping list.

Be good and live free,

MoGalahad

[PatrickHenry]

... please drop me from your ping list.

You were never on my list. Someone else must have pinged you.

[Lessismore]

that it created two humans and put a tree right within their grasp that, for some reason, it didn't want them touching (why put it there, then?).

This has always seemed pretty peculiar to me, also, especially since the entity (being omniscient) certainly knew what would happen -- first the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then the creation of the first fig leaf fashions.

Note that clothing made of skins were later furnished by the entity, which must mean that PETA is at odds with the entity.

[jennyp]

This has always seemed pretty peculiar to me, also, especially since the entity (being omniscient) certainly knew what would happen -- first the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then the creation of the first fig leaf fashions.

In the spirit of the upcoming Lightbulb Day festivities^*, here's an Ayn Rand quote:

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love - he was not man.

Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.

They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for Man.
from Galt's speech, in Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

^*Dec. 21, the shortest, darkest, dreariest day of the year; the day we celebrate Man's capacity for reason by going out & looking at all the lights.

[Dimensio]

Note that clothing made of skins were later furnished by the entity, which must mean that PETA is at odds with the entity.

Well, I guess that counts for a few points in this entity's favour.

[jlogajan]

This has always seemed pretty peculiar to me, also, especially since the entity (being omniscient) certainly knew what would happen

Actually, the whole concept of a God with perfect knowledge of past, present and future makes religion a ridiculous concept for just that very reason. God knows all future outcomes, God creates men of "free will" even though he already knows to infinity how each one will behave and whether that person will go to hell or not.

It is all fatalistic -- God already knows the result of his creation -- so what is the point? Is he hoping he suffers from amnesia so that he can be surprised by the results.

Or -- God doesn't know everything and therefore he's not qualified to be passing judgement on anyone else -- in which case he is nothing more than a cheap dictator.

[Stavka2]

Oh, so you can accept micro evolution, because it has already been proven in a thousand year experiment, but macro...well, sorry but we just don't have time for the 300 million year experiment. Kinda like saying: well, I can believe atoms are made of quarks but this whole molecules business is for the dogs.

[Stavka2]

Read up on the Orthodox Christian view of the "Original Sin", you'll be surprised...since it was the Catholics who changed it and the Protestants who kept the new version.

[Stavka2]

Or 3. the future is not written in stone but has many outcomes which God can see all of. There fore, our actions do have an impact on the end result. And as the creator, whether through Evolution or Poof, he has the right to judge his creation...definitly more right then some judge with all the human failings of a mortal who can send you to death row.

[jlogajan]

Or 3. the future is not written in stone but has many outcomes which God can see all of.

So he can see them all, but he knows not which will come to pass? Hmm, once you accept a limit to God's knowledge, you admit he is imperfect, and therefore not fit to judge -- for his judgements may be based in imperfect information, and therefore in error. Imagine condemning someone to eternal hell based upon bad information.

[Doc Savage]

Great! Now about that trick where a rooster turns into a cat?? Can you do that one too??

[laredo44]

but they cannot yet show a case where one species has definitively changed into another, at any level on the food chain

Perhaps not, but then maybe you could provide a definitive explanation on how the horse and ass can mate to produce the mule. Seems to me to be a pretty strong prima facia case of the evolution of two species from one.

[laredo44]

but they cannot yet show a case where one species has definitively changed into another, at any level on the food chain

Perhaps not, but then maybe you could provide a definitive explanation on how the horse and ass can mate to produce the mule. Seems to me to be a pretty strong prima facia case of the evolution of two species from one.

[Stavka2]

Being perfect and having total forsight of the future are two totally seperate things. Sorry, your logic doesn't sit, just sinks. You are linking two seperate things togather. As for judgement, a creator can always judge his creations. As for God, he has more right to judge then a human judge, but yet you submit to a human judge, do you not? And besides, in the end, you really don't get much choice. You can disbelieve Him, but He does't disbelieve you.

[jlogajan]

Being perfect and having total forsight of the future are two totally seperate things.

Only if "perfect" has no meaning. Lacking "total foresight" is a lack of perfect foresight, hence a lack of perfection.

I can walk into a casino, know all the possible outcomes of any game of chance, yet lose every penny I have because I don't know which of the outcomes will come to pass. That's God-like perfection?

So either God is all knowing or he isn't. Which is it?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Does make one wonder how this omniscience doesn't collapse the wave functions for the universe.