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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (27117)	6/14/2012 12:16:36 AM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69300

In a landmark discovery just recently they have made two of the building blocks for RNA the presursor to DNA in the lab in England , just as importantly have shown how these chemical joinings would have assembled naturally . Not only plausible but probable & the 2nd component was made by taking the first & just adding light . In the video from PBS one see's no hidden or determined agendas, his French research partner Dr Beatrice Gerland is a living de"light "! PBS Video: Revealing the Origins of Life How did molecules first make the leap from non-living to living? pbs.org Chemist Shows How RNA Can Be the Starting Point for Life (New York Times) nytimes.com An English chemist has found the hidden gateway to the RNA world, the chemical milieu from which the first forms of life are thought to have emerged on earth some 3.8 billion years ago. He has solved a problem that for 20 years has thwarted researchers trying to understand the origin of life — how the building blocks of RNA, called nucleotides, could have spontaneously assembled themselves in the conditions of the primitive earth. The discovery, if correct, should set researchers on the right track to solving many other mysteries about the origin of life. It will also mean that for the first time a plausible explanation exists for how an information-carrying biological molecule could have emerged through natural processes from chemicals on the primitive earth. The author, John D. Sutherland, a chemist at the University of Manchester, likened his work to a crossword puzzle in which doing the first clues makes the others easier. “Whether we’ve done one across is an open question,” he said. “Our worry is that it may not be right.” Other researchers say they believe he has made a major advance in prebiotic chemistry, the study of the natural chemical reactions that preceded the first living cells. “It is precisely because this work opens up so many new directions for research that it will stand for years as one of the great advances in prebiotic chemistry,” Jack Szostak of the Massachusetts General Hospital wrote in a commentary in Nature, where the work is being published on Thursday cont'd meme evol

To: Solon who wrote (27117)	6/14/2012 12:35:51 AM
From: one_less	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Do you know many atheists who do not adhere to those tennets? I don't but my exposier to atheists is probably more limited than yours. There is no law which says an atheist must Didn't say there was. An atheist does not even require to be rational. Didn't say that either. The term used was "expected to accept" and with regards to that list, it seems to hold true in general, which makes the items on the list qualify as dogma. You were stating beliefs. Dogma is not a set of laws or requirements, it is a fixed belief or set of beliefs people are expected to accept without any doubts, not necessarily even written. If it were written it would be considered doctrine. Atheists are people, not a definitions...people who are diverse of course but who also identify with certain general ideas and belief sets. The fact that many of them are accepted scientific ideas does not have anything to do with atheism. Science is a tool involving methods. It is impressed by phylosophical ideas and beliefs but those ideas and beliefs are not scientific since they are not observable. Science is a tool requiring the replicable observation and collection of data, formation of hypothesis, testing the hypothesis under controlled conditions, interpreting results and drawing conclusions. Atheists are not being scientific when they declare adherence to those tennets on the list. They are simply, as you correctly labeled them "belief statements;" a set of belief statements atheists are expected to accept without any doubts. "The universe is self-existing and self created, the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, life began as a result of spontaneous generation, Mankind is a result of organic evolution, Morality is an artificial construct of humans-there is no transcendent moral standard, religion and religious belief/dogma is harmful to human development, religion is antithetical to reason, etc"