Last weekend, I attended the Born Again Church Tour 2008 sponsored by Off The Map and advertised on this website. The last session I attended was led by David Kinnaman - president of The Barna Group, which is a Christian polling company that gathers data and statistics on spiritual trends in America. During this session, we were presented with statistical data showing us Christians how young non-Christians view Christianity (an insider’s view of the outsider’s view of us). All of the numbers seemed reasonable to me, but then again, I’m a Christian listening to data being presented by another Christian.
So I thought it might be interesting to see if outsiders would agree, so here’s my question - What is the outsider’s view of our view of the outsider’s view of us? Here are some of the key trends and data presented. See if you agree. Read the rest of this news item »
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.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Mike O | 3 Comments »Similar 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. Read the rest of this news item »