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To: Cinnamon Girl

"...Also, I will have to read more about the retrovirus because what you said doesn't support evolution, in my opinion. It still operates on the assumption that if DNA is similar it must be from the same exact source. To me, that is a leap and the "missing links" haven't been found.

When both the arrangement _and_ the location are too similar (they don't have to be identical) the odds are very much in favor of a common source.

That's how we recognize plagiarism. The word "four" is not likely to be recognized as plagiarized. If I write "Four score and twenty three apples jumped off a tree", guess what jumps to mind? Even with the change at positon 4 ("twenty" instead of "seven").

But all of the word have meaning in human converstion so it's not impossible for the phrase to have been spontaneously generated.

Fortunately, thanks to Lewis Carroll, we have a parallel to the viral insertion. He created some words and arranged them into phrases that have no prior independent meaning in human discourse.

Thus, if I say: Yesterday, when 'twas brillig, we can pretty much assume common source.

Or, we can assume "God (ID) did it. If we do that, however, there is no point in furher research because there is no significance to the finding, or to any finding. If the apple fell off a tree, well, God (ID) did it and it can change at any time. Silly? Yes, but the only reason for the hysteria over the recognition of evolutionary processes is that some people have a faith so weak that they can't get past those first few words of the Bible. If they are not literally correct, in the modern interpretation of the words, they the whole Bible goes out the window.

There is a less benign interpretation of the anti-science position but I'll omit that for now.


192 posted on 06/27/2005 6:11:39 AM PDT by From many - one.
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To: From many - one.

I'm not sure what you're talking about with "anti-science." Can you recommend a good source to explain how the original living creature came about? Michael Behe, a biochemist (who has been published in peer reviewed publications) believes there is evidence to support decent from a common ancestor but I think his question is "how does a complex biochemical system achieve its function?" So that's another two questions I have: how did the original common ancestor come about and how did it happen that all these extremely varied complex systems stemmed from it?


193 posted on 06/27/2005 10:11:27 AM PDT by Cinnamon Girl (OMGIIHIHOIIC ping list)
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