Following up on a couple of fairly serious posts on evolution lately, here’s a fun one about genetics.
I first heard about the Fainting Goats last week while I was on vacation. Fainting Goats are a breed of goat that suffers from a hereditary genetic disorder called Myotonia Congenita which causes their muscles to stiffen when startled. They don’t actually faint - they just sort of tip over.
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This anecdote might spur some thought on the “to fight or not to fight” debate.
I was visited at the weekend by a Jehovah’s Witness, a pleasant lady called Sue. I’ve had lots of encounters with JWs and similar (I’m sure we all have). It made me feel clever to cut through their foundationless beliefs with my twin swords of rationalism and scientific evidence. It also achieved nothing. Away they would go leaving me with the obligatory copy of Watchtower that I would never read.
I thought I might try something different with Sue so I invited her into my home after telling her that I am an atheist. At first, she came on strong with the Jesus/Bible stuff. I gave her unbridled airspace, just acknowledging what she was saying without offering comment on it.
After about 20 minutes on the soapbox, she said, “I get a lot of rejection and I expected the same from you as a non-believer. Yet all you’ve done is listen to me. You’ve been courteous and friendly and I’m not used to that.”
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How Evolution Works - Cells and DNA
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008Similar to last week, I’ll be using articles from www.howstuffworks.com as the basis for this post - in particular, their articles on How Evolution Works, and How Cells Work.
I’m on chapter three of How Evolution Works - DNA and Enzymes.
First, I should mention that I don’t have much trouble believing this aspect of the evolution topic. Why? Because we can see scientifically that this is how things work today. We can see it and reproduce it, and that is enough to satisfy the skeptic in me.
My questions regarding cells and DNA are not whether or not they work the way we think they do (unlike speciation, which we talked about some last week, and can only be assumed). My questions revolve around the origin of cells and DNA, the completeness required for the evolutionary process to work, and the spontaneous start of any of the processes involved.
1) Cell Structure - In their article on How Cells work, they give the parts of an E-Coli bacterium - the Cell wall, cytoplasm, DNA and Flagellum. Assuming a chemical origin to life, how could a chemical reaction produce a cell wall, filled with water, other elements and DNA, with flagellum to propel it? Even if a chemical reaction could produce the parts, I don’t see how it could produce the parts in that form. The flagellum is interesting because a chemical reaction doesn’t need to move - how or why would it develop things that make it move? NOTE - I know the E.Coli may not have come directly from a chemical reaction - but something did. And something was the first thing with a flagellum. So ultimately, for purely natural evolution to work, a chemical reaction produced a flagellum.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Mike O | 14 Comments »
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