Posted on 08/15/2005 7:01:06 PM PDT by gobucks
Project begins amid arguing over teaching evolution. 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 fundraising 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.
"We start with a mutual acknowledgment of the profound complexity of living systems," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. But "my expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."
The theory of evolution has been both fascinating and religiously charged since its very beginnings, because it speaks directly to the place of people in the natural order. In another era, the idea that humans are the close cousins of apes was seen as preposterous.
Today's research of origins focuses on questions that seem as strange as the study of "ape men" once did: How can life arise from nonlife? How easy is it for this to happen? And does the universe teem with life, or is Earth a solitary island?
At Harvard, the origins of life initiative is part of a dramatic rethinking of how to conduct scientific research.
Many of science's most interesting questions are emerging in the boundaries between traditional disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology, yet universities are largely organized by those disciplines. Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, is a proponent of the view that universities must develop new structures to encourage interdisciplinary science. And new science laboratories based on this are at the center of the plans for a sprawling new campus.
The Harvard origins initiative is on a short list of projects being considered for this campus, along with the widely discussed Harvard Stem Cell Institute, which aspires to bring together biologists, chemists, doctors, and others.
I am skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouragedA truly careful examination however should be open to the possibility that a natural causality may not be found.
I don't talk a lot. And it isn't gibberish. You may not like what is said; but, that's par for the evo side. There is nothing of worth that isn't worth ignoring or slamming if it proves inconvenient. Science can never prove a lot of things.
That doesn't stop them running their mouths about many of those things as if they knew. And God seems to be the only thing science begs off about at any opportunity as though convenient to do so rather than admit there might be a God.
The plain truth is you have more evidence for the existence of God all around you than you have for macroevolution ever having taken place. Doesn't stop any evo from acting as though macroevolution has ever taken place and stating it has as though there were some magical proof somewhere out there in the ether.
One evolutionist I've seen in debate is fond of saying something on the lines of "you need some clarification in step 2" whenever he thinks a miracle is being proffered as the reason for something. Time is unproveable miracle of science. Whenever evos have no answers, they just beg vast amounts of time. I'd say that needs clarification in step 2.
Science is only bound by what scientists agree to be bound by. And largely, it's a copout. Scientists decided they'ed never deal with a whole class of science merely because they didn't want to deal with the concept of a worldwide flood. Surrounded by evidence of it, they close their eyes and refuse to examine evidence in light of scientific method and beg off that they don't bother in that area. They have agreed to be ignorant.. on a good many subjects. Mostly they agree to be ignorant of anything they don't like and are undermined by. That isn't science. That is a radical cultic belief system. And since the scientists have been too busy with their beliefs to do any real science, others are stepping up to correct the situation.
The days of the evos are numbered.
Moreover, they recognize the difficulty of trying to sell the absurd idea on what evolution REALLY believes, that man ultimately came from rocks.
We are not 'ape-men' but 'rock-men'
5. PROBABILITY The science of probability has not been favorable to evolutionary theory, even with the theory's loose time restraints. Dr. James Coppedge, of the Center for Probability Research in Biology in California, made some amazing calculations. Dr. Coppedge "applied all the laws of probability studies to the possibility of a single cell coming into existence by chance. He considered in the same way a single protein molecule, and even a single gene. His discoveries are revolutionary. He computed a world in which the entire crust of the earth - all the oceans, all the atoms, and the whole crust were available. He then had these amino acids bind at a rate one and one-half trillion times faster than they do in nature. In computing the possibilities, he found that to provide a single protein molecule by chance combination would take 10, to the 262nd power, years." (That is, the number 1 followed by 262 zeros.) "To get a single cell - the single smallest living cell known to mankind - which is called the mycroplasm hominis H39, would take 10, to the 119,841st power, years. That means that if you took thin pieces of paper and wrote 1 and then wrote zeros after (it), you would fill up the entire known universe with paper before you could ever even write that number. That is how many years it would take to make one living cell, smaller than any human cell!" According to Emile Borel, a French scientist and expert in the area of probability, an event on the cosmic level with a probability of less than 1 out of 10, to the 50th power, will not happen. The probability of producing one human cell by chance is 10, to the 119,000 power. Sir Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, was quoted in Nature magazine, November 12, 1981, as saying "The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way (evolution) is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." As one can readily see, here is yet one more test that evolution theory has flunked.
http://www.megabaud.fi/~lampola/english/17evidences.html
Amen.
Amen.
Pretty big leap from non-life, to a single cell,(life) then to a complex cell.
Amen.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools....Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. (Rom.1:22,25)
Evolution is not science, since it is not dealing with facts but interpretion of those facts within a paradigm they have not established as even possible.
If life cannot come from non-life, then evolution is a false paradigm.
And who creates worms and viruses?
Or do they evolve by themselves with no intelligent design?
More astronomical then life coming from non-life?.
I think not.
Amen.
correction, must be possible
I love it when evolutionists always appeal to a scientific fact that is demonstrable, but state that no such demands be made for evolution itself.
And so it is with the origin of species - the theory of evolution is not merely one of many possible explanations, it is currently the best explanation, the one most in accord with the evidence available to us. Perhaps tomorrow the evidence will point elsewhere, but we are limited to what we have immediately available, as far as science is concerned.
No, because evolution goes against the laws of the Universe.
Biogenesis, life must come from life.
The two laws of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created.
The natural trend is to decay and disorder, not order and growth.
Yup, that is the core of all evolution dogma. And to be clear, 99% of the hardcore disciples will never vary from it, no matter what. That includes the scientific community, as well as the unscientific adherents like we see here on FR, the ones with their canned packages of evangelical material and their noble mission to save conservatism from us.
Bearing in mind that with God ALL things are possible, I do still pray for these people (and need to do so more often for sure) but I also understand that these people are not the ones most likely to benefit from the exposition of truth. Their minds have long been set and their hearts long hardened, and there is no doubt in my mind that they are the long-prophesied scoffers of Peter II, chapter 3.
There is, however, a vast number of people out there who can benefit from exposure to truth. And thankfully, we're beginning to open minor inroads into that terrain.
I do believe in the Big Bang: God spoke and BANG, it was. I readily and proudly admit that I bring that to every thought on the topic. It's way nice, however, that there's no contradiction between that belief and real science.
MM
Amen.
That is why they are terrified of ID science.
Even if those who advance it are still Atheists, the fact that the Universe shows order and not random chance leads one to the logical deduction of a mind behind it.
Here is a site on Behe, if you do not already have it.
Behe Responds To Various Critics Michael Behe, Discovery Institute © 2000 Michael Behe. Originally published at the Discovery Institute’s website. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. [Last Modified: 10 March 2002]
Note: Though Behe is not a creationist, this response to criticism is provided here for the benefit of those considering the questionable nature of today’s mainstream evolutionary paradigm.
ichael Behe, after the publication of his book Darwin’s Black Box, has come under consistent and intense fire from numerous critics within the so-called “scientific community,” who seem to have made it a high priority to discredit Behe’s arguments.
In the documents below are Dr. Behe’s detailed responses to several of these critics, aptly answering their various objections. While every article is well worth a reading, the last item (“Correspondence w/ Science Journals”) is particularly telling, considering so many evolutionist’s arbitrary, blanket denials of pro-evolution prejudice within the peer-review editorial infrastructure.
“A True Acid Test” (Michael Behe)—a response to criticisms of Darwin’s Black Box advanced by Ken Miller.
In Defense of the Irreducibility of the Blood Clotting Cascade (Michael Behe)—a response to criticisms by Russell Doolittle, Ken Miller and Keith Robison.
Irreducible Complexity and the Evolutionary Literature (Michael Behe)—a response to various criticisms by the likes of Jerry Coyne, Bruce Weber, Peter Atkins, John Catalano, David Ussery & Kenneth Miller.
A Mousetrap Defended (Michael Behe)—a response to Kenneth Miller and John McDonald, critics of irreducible complexity as described in Darwin’s Black Box.
Philosophical Objections to Intelligent Design (Michael Behe)—a response to various critics, including Jerry Coyne, H. Allen Orr, David Ussery, James Shapiro, Michael Ruse, Andrew Pomiankowski & Neil Blackstone.
Correspondence w/ Science Journals (Michael Behe)—a first-hand look at how the “peer-review process” handles challenges to Darwinian orthodoxy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.trueorigin.org/behe08.asp
And neither is the myth of evolution, something came from nothing, and life came from non-life.
“Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless.” Louis Bounoure. The Advocate, 8 March 1984, p. 17.
http://www.nwcreation.net/evolutionquotes.html
Amen.
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