Posted on 08/21/2005 1:18:04 AM PDT by MRMEAN
Compared with fields like genetics and neuroscience and cosmology, botany comes up a bit short in the charisma department. But when scientists announced last week that they had figured out how plants grow, one had to take note, not only because of the cleverness required to crack a puzzle that dates to 1885, but because of what it says about controversy and certainty in science -- and about the evolution debate.
In 1885, scientists discovered a plant-growth hormone and called it auxin. Ever since, its mechanism of action had been a black box, with scientists divided into warring camps about precisely how the hormone works. Then last week, in a study in Nature, biologist Mark Estelle of Indiana University, Bloomington, and colleagues reported that auxin links up with a plant protein called TIR1, and together the pair binds to a third protein that silences growth-promoting genes. The auxin acts like a homing beacon for enzymes that munch on the silencer. Result: The enzymes devour the silencer, allowing growth genes to turn on.
Yet biology classes don't mention the Auxin Wars. Again and again, impressionable young people are told that auxin promotes plant growth, when the reality is more complex and there has been raging controversy over how it does so.
Which brings us to evolution. Advocates of teaching creationism (or its twin, intelligent design) have adopted the slogan, "Teach the controversy." That sounds eminently sensible. But it is disingenuous. For as the auxin saga shows, virtually no area of science is free of doubt or debate or gaps in understanding.
(Excerpt) Read more at american-buddha.com ...
"First, it makes the dates in the fossil record almost exactly concordant with the dates suggested by genetic studies for the origin of our species," Fleagle says. "Second, it places the first appearance of modern Homo sapiens in Africa many more thousands of years before our species appears on any other continent. It lengthens that gap. … Finally, the similar dating of the two skulls indicates that when modern humans first appeared there were other contemporary populations [Omo II] that were less modern."
Very intriguing!
Don't be silly. A few thousand of years in the earth's 4 billion year history is a relative second. BTW: The chart is latest theory being taught in schools.
You claim that inferior traits were breed out of Homo Erectus over time... Where have I made any such claim?
So, there was a large evolutionary jump and another completely different species was created through a freak birth?
Saying that rights are endowed by our Creator does not make it so.
Right to life: really? everyone? does your right to life require that I provide funding for your food and medical care if you don't have it?
Liberty? where is this in the Bible? not quite everyone...as in slavery (which is in the Bible)
Pursuit of happiness? where is this in the Bible at all?
That's pretty silly.
Lucy was a bi-pedal tree dweller.
I have a serious question and would like to avoid the "you're an idiot" nature of these threads.
This is directed to the pro-evolutionists primarily and it is a good faith attempt to understand something. So here goes.
IF God exists, then what sort of evidence would there be of that in the physical world?
If you say that that is not the province of science, then my response would be that science is not doing enough of its job. If you say that science must assume that God doesn't exist or at least if He does then there is no evidence of it in the physical world, then isn't the correct response that science the is by its very nature assuming a negative response to the question at hand?
Ask any philosopher worth his salt and he will tell you that it is possible that God exists. If that is possible, then I want to know how that is manifest in the physical world. But one problem is that I see science is not by its very nature willing to entertain such a discussion.
What am I missing here? If someone could give a good natured but hard headed post I would be grateful.
Since evolution admittedly has unanswered questions same as we of faith in intelligent design-the main difference here is that science and evolution plod along searching for answers, while we of the faith, need merely wait until the creator chooses to reveal the solutions.
I inew George Wald, personally. He was a strong evolutionist.
My view is that if God exists much as described by the Christian scriptures then there would be no evidence by which one could reason out his existence because he has chosen that this be so. If there were readily observable evidence of his existence, then faith would be irrelevant. Clearly then, God places such a premium on faith that he has intentionally concealed all empirical evidence of his existence.
Faith.
Why would it exist if God doesn't exist?
Yes, I know that certain malfunctions of the temporal lobe can lead to excessive religiosity, but if basic faith was a malfunction it would probably be bred out of existence.
Is that hard-headed enough? :-)
that was your characterization of the process of evolution. Not mine.
Chihuahuas have been bred out of wolves in a few thousand years. Some species are more plastic than others. Without DNA from the various intermediates, you cannot make assumptions about how long it takes to breed significant changes in form, or how many mutations it might take.
At any rate, many of the characteristics of humans are probably the result of female choice, a very rapid method of selection.
Yes. I think there should be a class teaching how the we had to struggle against the flat-earthers, the geocentrists and now the YEC's and ID's.
I hope you don't use the same approach if you get sick or if it's cold out.
If we were endowed by our Creator with certain rights, then why did we have to fight a war against GB in order to get those "rights" for the first time in human history?
Total BS. The quote is hyperbole, nice sounding, but essentially meaningless.
>>For as the auxin saga shows, virtually no area of science is free of doubt...<<
So true of science! Unfortunately, a point lost on religious evolutionists here.
Was that the one where the main suspect was a French Catholic Priest?
See even your chart has humans showing up and every other branch completely extinguished after surviving for millions of years. The article says the ice age showed up and wiped them off face of the planet, but the last ice age has been around for millions of years and only the last 15,000 years of earth's history has been warm.
Nyah, nyah, nyah !!!! ppppthhthtgh.
All you done is show that we need two more missing links.
PS. That is one of many reasons I regard ID as a fool's errand. Assuming that ID (which I regard as merely a Trojan Horse for biblical creationism) were actually successful in establishing its objectives - which for the reasons stated above I think would be utterly unattainable even if God exists - then one would not require faith to believe in God any more so than one requires faith to believe in the sun.
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