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Intelligent Design and The Inner Life of the Cell
Studio Daily ^ | Jully 20, 2006 | Beth Marchant

Posted on 12/08/2006 7:17:52 AM PST by WhatsItAllAbout

The Inner Life of a Cell, an eight-minute animation created in NewTek LightWave 3D and Adobe After Effects for Harvard biology students, won’t draw the kind of box office crowds that more ferocious˜and furrier˜digital creations did last Christmas. But it will share a place along side them in SIGGRAPH's Electronic Theatre show, which will run for three days during the 33rd annual exhibition and conference in Boston next month. Created by XVIVO, a scientific animation company near Hartford, CT, the animation illustrates unseen molecular mechanisms and the ones they trigger, specifically how white blood cells sense and respond to their surroundings and external stimuli.

Nuclei, proteins and lipids move with bug-like authority, slithering, gliding and twisting through 3D space. “All of those things that you see in the animation are going on in every one of your cells in your body all the time,” says XVIVO lead animator John Liebler, who worked with company partners David Bolinsky, XVIVO’s medical director, and Mike Astrachan, the project’s production director, to blend the academic data and narrative from Harvard’s faculty into a fluid visual interpretation. “First, we couldn’t have known where to begin with all of this material without significant work done by Alain Viel, Ph.D. [associate director of undergraduate research at Harvard University], who wrote and guided the focus to include the essential processes that needed to be described to complement the curriculum and sustain an interesting narrative. I’ve been in the medical animation field for seven years now, so I’m a little jaded, but I still get surprised by things. For instance, in the animation there’s a motor protein that’s sort of walking along a line, carrying this round sphere of lipids. When I started working on that section I admit I was kind of surprised to see that it really does look like it’s out for a stroll, like a character in a science fiction film or animation. But based on all the data, it’s a completely accurate rendering.”


TOPICS: Philosophy
KEYWORDS: crevo; darwinisdead; design; evolution; intelligent; postedinwrongforum; religion
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To: Wormwood
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Pinging myself for later

21 posted on 12/08/2006 10:05:27 AM PST by Wormwood (Enjoy this post while it lasts!)
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To: jas3
So you are saying we as the "Intelligent Designer" can do a much better job, LOL.
22 posted on 12/08/2006 10:06:05 AM PST by WhatsItAllAbout
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To: WhatsItAllAbout
Just thinking now. Say you walked into a new Universe's Control room which contained all the controls that set the constants for that Universe, such as the speed of light, the fine structure constant, the weak and strong nuclear forces, and all the others, about 30 in all, how do you account for their settings? Any deviation of just a few percent off of any one would prevent life.

Since our Universe seems to be fine tuned for life, seemingly "Anthropic" in nature, what is the simplest explanation?


Here's one: there are many, many, MANY such new universes, and most of them are inhospitable to life. In the few that are, creatures arise that look around and say "I wonder why this universe is so perfect for life." I don't know if this is the simplest possible explanation, but it's much simpler than "in addition to the new universe, described by a few mathematical equations, there was also a PERSON, that's right, a PERSON, who came out of nowhere."
23 posted on 12/08/2006 10:09:55 AM PST by xenophiles
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To: xenophiles
I appreciate your thoughtful post. My own opinion is that the information/data for life comes from outside the perceived dimensions we are all familiar with.

Current theories postulate up to 11 dimensions. Plenty of room for an Intelligent Designer, but I am using the "Gut feeling" discussed earlier
24 posted on 12/08/2006 10:14:12 AM PST by WhatsItAllAbout
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To: mc6809e

Where did the simple structures come from? How did they achieve their specifc atomic weights in order to form the carbon molecules that are the basis of human life?

You might find Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" interesting. It seems quite possible that ID and species evolution are not diametrically opposed ideas, although the proponents tend to be.


25 posted on 12/08/2006 10:16:17 AM PST by neocon1984 (end the idiocy of post-modernism)
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To: cryptical

My problem with Darwinian evolution: it's a theory with a lot of holes in it. IMO, it's fairly valid, but not something we should worship as sacrosanct (pun intended).


26 posted on 12/08/2006 10:18:46 AM PST by neocon1984 (end the idiocy of post-modernism)
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To: WhatsItAllAbout
"Chance Evolution"

That is a common fallacy. Chance does not enter into biological evolution.

27 posted on 12/08/2006 10:20:31 AM PST by RightWhale (RTRA DLQS GSCW)
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To: jas3
I am not just *implying* that "gut feelings" are irrelevant, but I am *stating* that "gut feelings" are not a rational means to arrive at scientific conclusions. If more people actually studied microbiology, these threads would be far shorter.

For the record, I am trained in Microbiology/Bacteriology. I am also trained to broaden my view and not to focus narrowly on what are perceived to be "knowns." If you are trained in science, then you should know that a great many discoveries started out as "gut feelings" or a hypothesis based upon an analysis of factual data.

And if cells were "intelligently designed" then the designer needs some remedial training for they are models of inefficiency, duplicity of function, are wholly insecure, and are enormously information intensive.

Talk about a narrow focus - whew!

Humans will be designing our own cells in a few years, and they will borrow from nature, but will also VASTLY improve upon so called "intelligent" design

It is certainly conceivable, and just possibly as in the case of breast milk, humans may find out at a later date that there was more than they originally thought. This is precisely why one should maintain a broad view and not focus narrowly on what are perceived to be "knowns."

28 posted on 12/08/2006 10:24:26 AM PST by ghostrider
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To: xenophiles
"Person"? Maybe the right term should be "Logos", "The Word" or the information/data for this Universes' existence transcended all the dimensional barriers that exist today?

It's kind of a Chicken or the Egg coming first thing. But the information/data will be the key to finding the answer in my opinion.
29 posted on 12/08/2006 10:25:59 AM PST by WhatsItAllAbout
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To: Frapster

"What 'force' drove the simple structure to evolve to more complex structures? Why?"

________________________________________________________

Google "Ganesh particle"

http://www.think-aboutit.com/conspiracy/DanBurischTheGaneshParticle.htm

Supposedly this dude hit the mother lode. Ther are many other less flakey web sites that document his findings.


30 posted on 12/08/2006 10:27:58 AM PST by taxed2death (A few billion here, a few trillion there...we're all friends right?)
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To: RightWhale
"Chance Evolution" That is a common fallacy. Chance does not enter into biological evolution.

Tell it to the Saber Tooth who ate the first Caveman, 8>)
31 posted on 12/08/2006 10:28:53 AM PST by WhatsItAllAbout
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To: WhatsItAllAbout

The Principle of Evolution is not a theory. It is, however, organic rather than stochastic.


32 posted on 12/08/2006 10:32:20 AM PST by RightWhale (RTRA DLQS GSCW)
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To: WhatsItAllAbout
Since our Universe seems to be fine tuned for life, seemingly "Anthropic" in nature, what is the simplest explanation?

The simplest explanation is that if it weren't we wouldn't be here to ask the question. There are many potential universes with many different values of those things, but because they're the wrong values, there aren't people asking questions in them.

33 posted on 12/08/2006 10:33:16 AM PST by NonZeroSum
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To: ghostrider
I would be interested in your comments about the video if you have watched it.
34 posted on 12/08/2006 10:33:46 AM PST by WhatsItAllAbout
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To: NonZeroSum

Pretty good explanation. The anthropic principle is most often explained completely wrongly, even by experts.


35 posted on 12/08/2006 10:37:26 AM PST by RightWhale (RTRA DLQS GSCW)
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To: anyone

Could someone please explain to me why it is that ID and Evolution are mutually exclusive? Does no one think that maybe this universe was set into motion by a "creator", with the laws we've discovered, and processes like evolution, as tools for its development?


36 posted on 12/08/2006 10:39:09 AM PST by New Templar
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To: NonZeroSum
What's simpler an Intelligent Designer, or untold countless Universes?
37 posted on 12/08/2006 10:44:55 AM PST by WhatsItAllAbout
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To: New Templar

They are hung up on the nature of life itself. And that without considering the nature of life.


38 posted on 12/08/2006 10:45:06 AM PST by RightWhale (RTRA DLQS GSCW)
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To: New Templar
ID and Evolution are not mutually exclusive.

But many people would rather put their faith in "materialist" Science than in a revealed Intelligent Designer as described in a Christian worldview or in any other spiritually divined knowledge.
39 posted on 12/08/2006 10:51:35 AM PST by WhatsItAllAbout
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To: WhatsItAllAbout
Complex, ordered, logical, factual, goal oriented, bustling, teamwork. We clearly watched a random accident of nature, which is nothing more than the net sum of physical forces - /sarcasm
40 posted on 12/08/2006 10:54:30 AM PST by ghostrider
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