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To: Right Wing Professor

Cross examination starts on page 22 ...


95 posted on 10/20/2005 4:02:06 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (No response to trolls, retards, or lunatics)
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To: PatrickHenry; Right Wing Professor
I just got to where Behe's trying to portray Lynn Margulis's endosymbiosis as "saltation." I think he's getting away with a fast one, there. (I haven't read to the end yet.)

I'm sure she envisioned what was at first a symbiotic colonial relationship rather like lichens or stromatolites gradually becoming increasingly intertwined.

I can guess how Behe would lawyer his point. There's no halfway position in the difference between any particular given bacterial body being inside any particular given archaebacterial body and being outside of same. Well, there is, but it's the halfway point of a grape disappearing into your mouth.

Nevertheless, that doesn't mean suddenly one day all over the world all the bacteria that had been outside of an archaebacterium the day before were now inside of one. There could have been a very slow transition from all-external to all-internal symbiosis and I'm sure that's what most scientists mean now when they say they accept endosymbiosis theory.

I think someone (Margulis herself, perhaps?) could call Behe on that.

97 posted on 10/20/2005 5:45:21 PM PDT by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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