NASA finds proof that amino acid components in meteorites originate in space.
This is exciting news. NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a “kit” of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life. We may all be immigrants on Earth.
By Bill Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a “kit” of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life.
“People have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960’s, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life,” said Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space.” Callahan is lead author of a paper on the discovery appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
The discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that the chemistry inside asteroids and comets is capable of making building blocks of essential biological molecules.
For example, previously, these scientists at the Goddard Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory have found amino acids in samples of comet Wild 2 from NASA’s Stardust mission, and in various carbon-rich meteorites. Amino acids are used to make proteins, the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions.
In the new work, the Goddard team ground up samples of twelve carbon-rich meteorites, nine of which were recovered from Antarctica. They extracted each sample with a solution of formic acid and ran them through a liquid chromatograph, an instrument that separates a mixture of compounds. They further analyzed the samples with a mass spectrometer, which helps determine the chemical structure of compounds.
The team found adenine and guanine, which are components of DNA called nucleobases, as well as hypoxanthine and xanthine. DNA resembles a spiral ladder; adenine and guanine connect with two other nucleobases to form the rungs of the ladder. They are part of the code that tells the cellular machinery which proteins to make. Hypoxanthine and xanthine are not found in DNA, but are used in other biological processes.
Also, in two of the meteorites, the team discovered for the first time trace amounts of three molecules related to nucleobases: purine, 2,6-diaminopurine, and 6,8-diaminopurine; the latter two almost never used in biology. These compounds have the same core molecule as nucleobases but with a structure added or removed.
It’s these nucleobase-related molecules, called nucleobase analogs, which provide the first piece of evidence that the compounds in the meteorites came from space and not terrestrial contamination. “You would not expect to see these nucleobase analogs if contamination from terrestrial life was the source, because they’re not used in biology, aside from one report of 2,6-diaminopurine occurring in a virus (cyanophage S-2L),” said Callahan. “However, if asteroids are behaving like chemical ‘factories’ cranking out prebiotic material, you would expect them to produce many variants of nucleobases, not just the biological ones, due to the wide variety of ingredients and conditions in each asteroid.”
The second piece of evidence involved research to further rule out the possibility of terrestrial contamination as a source of these molecules. The team also analyzed an eight-kilogram (17.64-pound) sample of ice from Antarctica, where most of the meteorites in the study were found, with the same methods used on the meteorites. The amounts of the two nucleobases, plus hypoxanthine and xanthine, found in the ice were much lower — parts per trillion — than in the meteorites, where they were generally present at several parts per billion. More significantly, none of the nucleobase analogs were detected in the ice sample. One of the meteorites with nucleobase analog molecules fell in Australia, and the team also analyzed a soil sample collected near the fall site. As with the ice sample, the soil sample had none of the nucleobase analog molecules present in the meteorite.
Thirdly, the team found these nucleobases — both the biological and non-biological ones — were produced in a completely non-biological reaction. “In the lab, an identical suite of nucleobases and nucleobase analogs were generated in non-biological chemical reactions containing hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and water. This provides a plausible mechanism for their synthesis in the asteroid parent bodies, and supports the notion that they are extraterrestrial,” says Callahan.
“In fact, there seems to be a ‘goldilocks’ class of meteorite, the so-called CM2 meteorites, where conditions are just right to make more of these molecules,” adds Callahan.
The team includes Callahan and Drs. Jennifer C. Stern, Daniel P. Glavin, and Jason P. Dworkin of NASA Goddard’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory; Ms. Karen E. Smith and Dr. Christopher H. House of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa.; Dr. H. James Cleaves II of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC; and Dr. Josef Ruzicka of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Somerset, N.J. The research was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, the NASA Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program, and the NASA Postdoctoral Program.
Related Link
› Related videos from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Vince Causey says:
August 10, 2011 at 1:59 pm
###
Did you even read my post or are you just stupid. You obviously missed what I was asserting. To recap:
1) calculating the probability is futile, because of the number of unknowables, and two
2) The number will be really really really small, e.g. LESS THEN 10 to the negative 20. Do you have any idea how small that number is? Do you know what less then means? BTW the number was a SWAG, but based on a very forgiving approximation of the largest possible number. I seam to remember that are some 10^24 stars in the universe. Multiply my ridiculously huge number and the result is still less then 10000 stars in the entire universe with life.
3) the Drakes equations does not demonstrate that extra terrestrial intelligent life probably exist, but that it probably does not exist,
Wow talk about jumping to conclusions, it’s like someone found a brick and said wow cities can evolve out of dust. What a joke
DesertYote says:
August 11, 2011 at 11:03 am
Vince Causey says:
August 10, 2011 at 1:59 pm
###
Did you even read my post or are you just stupid. You obviously missed what I was asserting. To recap:
1) calculating the probability is futile, because of the number of unknowables, and two
2) The number will be really really really small …
———————————-
Seems to me you can’t have it both ways, DY
John B @ur momisugly 10:56 a.m.
You are right that we should distinguish between abiogenesis and spontaneous generation (a la Pasteur). There is a strong parallel, however, between the two ideas, and what keeps the hopes alive for proponents of abiogenesis is the thought that life, oh so long ago, would have been some kind of simple organism, different from life “as we know it.” There is no evidence that this is the case, but it does keep the hopes alive.
However, as time goes by we have started to more clearly recognize that even the simplest form of life must nevertheless have contained a number of functional, integrated systems and a relatively sophisticated control mechanism. As a result, we creep ever closer to bumping up against the law against spontaneous generation . . .
Tucci78,
I seem to have struck a nerve. I’m sorry for that but I must stand by what I have written. You have asked for citations for my statement that Intelligent Design is grounded in science. I have already provided you with the first book I think you should read on the subject – “God and the Astronomers” by Robert Jastrow. Jastrow was an astrophysicist with NASA and the founder of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. (BTW, I think the work of Jim Hansen would cause Jastrow to roll over in his grave.) His short book describes a very interesting episode in the history of science – the confirmation of the Big Bang theory – and Jastrow’s discussion of what this means.
I have also provided you with a number of quotes from famous scientists and Nobel Prize winners who have spoken about the scientific evidence for the supernatural at work. Many of these scientists are agnostic or atheist, but they are honest. If you missed them and the link I provided to other quotes, please scroll up.
In addition I provided a link to a peer-reviewed paper by Granville Sewell titled “A Second Look at the Second Law.” His argument appears to defeat the argument put forward by Isaac Asimov that the Second Law does not apply to evolution. After complaints by Darwinists, the paper by Sewell was withdrawn by the journal – but the journal’s publisher and editor made it clear the paper was not withdrawn because of any error or misconduct. Rather, it was decided the paper was more philosophical than mathematical and was withdrawn for that reason. But the argument put forward by Sewell is compelling. The paper is here – http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/AML_3497.pdf
John B,
You write:
As an aside, this whole “non-life cannot beget life” / “life can only come from life” argument is being contorted dreadfully. It comes originally from Pasteur, who did a neat experiment to show that flies on rotting meat came from flies laying eggs, and that if the meat were kept sealed from the atmosphere, no flies would appear. He was showing that life *as we know it* could only come from reproduction, not just appear “by magic”. It did not have anything to say about how life got started millions or billions of years ago. What he showed is that complex life (like flies) was not “spontaneously generated”. Which, of course, modern evolutionary scientists would toally agree with.
Yes, it was the meat experiment we were discussing in biology class many years ago. I could not remember the man but could only remember he was French. You are correct that he was not trying to learn anything about origins with his experiment, but that does not mean his experiment did not change the way in which people thought. And this change in thinking is equally applicable to origins. For example, you say that “complex life” cannot be spontaneously generated. But I say all life is “complex.”
Even if, by some miracle of nature, all of the chemical compounds and biological structures (cell membrane, cytoplasm, etc) needed to form the simplest form of life (my biology prof thought this would be blue-green algae), there is no way nature could bring it to life. Life does not spontaneously begin. Researchers have claimed to “create” artificial life by transplanting manmade DNA into a living cell, but this experiment only reinforces the importance of an intelligent designer. When one letter out of a million was wrong, it did not work. And the DNA had to be transplanted into a living cell. It would no work if transplanted into a dead cell. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/20/scientists-announce-produce-living-cell-using-manmade-dna/
For all the fans of the Big Bang hypothesis here, it should be remembered that, despite its appeal to religionists who like to think that it validates the principle of Creation (that there was a Beginning), it hangs on the tenuous thread of Hubble’s explanation of the shift to the red in the spectra of celestial objects as evidence that they are receding from us, and each other, at increasing speeds, hence an ‘expanding universe’. But there are other explanations; cf. Halton Arp’s hypothesis, based on observation, that redshift can be an intrinsic property of some objects (namely quasars, which he thinks may be young galaxies). Despite his eminent qualifications, Professor Arp has been ostracized by mainstream astronomical societies for his views, much as climate Realists have been by ‘consensus’ climatologists. See: Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science, (1998).
/Mr Lynn
At 9:03 AM on 11 August, Eric Anders snarks:
As I had specified when I first made mention of Mr. Bailey’s “Attack of the Super-Intelligent Purple Space Squid Creators,” the article published in Reason magazine (15 July 2008) was the content of his remarks in a debate at FreedomFest 2008 titled “Is There Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design in Nature?” That it was a “hatchet job” I merrily concur. The creationists – pardon; the “intelligent design” advocates – deserve getting the proverbial hatchet, whenever and wherever they present themselves.
When Mr. Bailey quoted the Discovery Institute’s website statement (“Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text“), it was obvious that Mr. Bailey was making the point that the participants in the Discovery Institute were hypocritically – hell, duplicitously – flying a completely false flag by claiming to be “agnostic with regard to their intention to advance the Judeochristian creation myth.
We see, after all, something precisely similar in the claims of organizations like FactCheck and Snopes and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which function as extremely supportive of “Liberal” fascist political machinations and profoundly adverse to government under the rule of law while explicitly claiming to be “nonpartisan.”
People taking a position and defending it is one thing. People doing so while lying about being “agnostic” or “nonpartisan” is not to be countenanced.
The purpose of enterprises like the Discovery Institute – and the co-religionists of those pushing such crap – is to attack the reasoned scientific approach to the development of life and to biological evolution because as such examinations of observable aspects of objective and verifiable reality proceed, these fellahin conceive such advancements to impair their ability to “bask at the warm fire of faith.”
In his remarks, Mr. Bailey was arguing that if one were credulous enough to accept the utterly unscientific proposition that some kind of supernatural “Big Banger” were to have intelligently designed “life, the universe, and everything,” then it’s just as appropriate to ask the credulous to accept the equally unscientific notion that “Super-Intelligent Space Squid” (or some other such putative sapient physical entities of extraterrestrial origin) had done the engineering.
For Mr. Anders to argue that Mr. Bailey was committing a “strawman” fallacy in his explicit discernment of the real purpose of this “intelligent design” religionist attack upon the scientific method is an error at best and a duplicity – not to be countenanced – most likely.
I consider Mr. Bailey’s point to have been made, and to stand firm despite Mr. Anders‘ inadequate effort to evade it.
Ron Cram says:
August 11, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Tucci78,
“I seem to have struck a nerve. I’m sorry for that but I must stand by what I have written. You have asked for citations for my statement that Intelligent Design is grounded in science. I have already provided you with the first book I think you should read on the subject – “God and the Astronomers” by Robert Jastrow. Jastrow was an astrophysicist with NASA and the founder of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. (BTW, I think the work of Jim Hansen would cause Jastrow to roll over in his grave.) His short book describes a very interesting episode in the history of science – the confirmation of the Big Bang theory – and Jastrow’s discussion of what this means.”
Depends upon what you mean by “the confirmation of the big bang theory”. Have not read your citation but if we are referring to the big bang coming from an infinitesimally small point as in a singularity or from nothing at all then I do not believe there is confirmation. The possibility still exists that the universe has been here all along and simply rebounds after a big crunch causing the microwave background that we can see then expands only to crash again. I have never seen any proof either way, only theory. Kind of like dark energy and dark matter are not fact but often stated as such. This does not cancel out intelligent design for the reasons I have posted above. However, we should not start taking theory as fact to fit our beliefs, no matter what they are.
Ron Cram says:
August 11, 2011 at 3:17 am
. . . I have quoted agnostic scientists like Robert Jastrow and many others who admit we know enough about the physics and natural processes to know they are not up to the task. This is the basis of the Intelligent Design argument. To continue to assert some other unseen force of nature must be at work is a statement of faith in atheism.
Mr Lynn says:
August 11, 2011 at 5:42 am
Maybe today’s physics is not up to the task, just as the physics of 1711 could not have described electromagnetism (do we fully understand that yet?), but how about tomorrow’s physics? The phrase “not up to the task” is just another variant on the old Argument from Ignorance. As I asked earlier, what is it about “We don’t know” that discomfits so many?
I don’t think confidence in, or hope for, scientific progress is the same thing as “faith in atheism.” The Scientific Method is the best tool we have for investigating the natural world. Are there other kinds of reality, and other sources of knowledge about them? Who knows? But the question of the origin of life is, at bottom, a question about the natural world. To introduce a Designer is just to throw a deus ex machina into the story, short-circuiting the inquiry. It’s cheating.`
One of you might like this:
This, according to the tradition I was told, came to India about 10,000 years ago.
I think belief in God the creator is pretty much essential to get through life – can always be pulled out when needing someone to blame..
As it is, the argument here between ‘God and Atheist’, is very much an outcome from Western Christian dogma and antis – not all christians and not all other people who think in terms of a ‘creator’ have such restrictions in concepts of the relationship between ‘god’ and ‘created’ which came out of the Augustinian misreading of Genesis and Paul – Augustine’s ‘death as punishment for original sin’ restricts the ‘created in image and likeness’, by putting God outside of creation, separate from us.
Some Christians have never had that teaching, for them we are God in creation as God is Us in the uncreated (a synergistic relationship between the two in free will, God as uncreated energy), and others such as majority Hindus have each of us a manifestation of God in the play of creation. ‘Atheist’ is pretty much meaningless for both these latter groups.
Tucci78,
I’m afraid your latest comment is an ad hominem attack on certain men on the basis of their religious faith. This is considered rather foul play among polite society. Unfortunately, it does not advance your position at all because it does not address the facts supporting the argument for Intelligent Design in the least.
I happen to be a believer in the Christian faith, a follower of Jesus Christ. An imperfect follower, to be sure, but I am a follower. Does this fact preclude me from being involved in a scientific discussion? Is an atheist precluding from discussing science because of his faith? I think it is far better for people to publicly state their own backgrounds and biases so others can take that into consideration, but no one is precluded from discussing science.
I have never once appealed to the Bible as the authority during this discussion. My perception is that my personal beliefs will not matter to you and I would not expect them to be persuasive. But I had hoped you would be willing to look at scientific facts. Was I wrong?
I have pointed to the science and to scientists who are agnostics and atheists who have come to the realization that the supernatural was at work in the Big Bang. I have pointed you to scholarly works to explain some of the science underlying Intelligent Design hypothesis. From my perspective, it does not appear you have even attempted to engage these materials or seek a better understanding of why so many Nobel Prize winners would speak in a way Intelligent Design scientists would applaud.
Jim G,
You write:
Depends upon what you mean by “the confirmation of the big bang theory”. Have not read your citation but if we are referring to the big bang coming from an infinitesimally small point as in a singularity or from nothing at all then I do not believe there is confirmation. The possibility still exists that the universe has been here all along and simply rebounds after a big crunch causing the microwave background that we can see then expands only to crash again.
The confirmation is found in the book “God and the Astronomers” by Robert Jastrow. He describes how they discovered the location of the Big Bang. It has been a while since I read the book, but I believe Jastrow considered confirmation at the time. I suppose the theory of a rebounding universe is possible, a theory which arose after the events described by Jastrow. In my view, the rebounding theory is a grasping at straws by men who desperately want to NOT believe in an Intelligent Designer. This was the only method the atheists could come up with to get back to the view the universe was eternally existent.
Theo & Khwarizmi:
Thanks for your replies.
Khwarizmi,
Because of your interest in mathematics, you might find the work of Robert Rosen, immensely clairified by Athel Cornish-Bowden, of interest. Just use Google Scholar and their names to get the papers. (warning: industrial strength topology and set theory mixed with biochemisty)
For those interested in reading more on the origin of life, I have not come across (nor have I searched) popular accounts of the subject. Over the years, I’ve followed the works of:
Harold Morowitz
George Cody
Eric Smith
Tom Cech
William Martin
Michael Russel
just to name a few.
Theo,
We probably agree more than we disagree. The paragraph you quoted was my poor attempt to say what you said, “The only story that DNA can tell is a story of evolution.” I also mixed some metaphors, specifically the “Royal We”. There is the “We” of the scientific community, and the “We” as in “our history”, by which I was referring to all known living organisms: Bacteria, Archaea and Eucharya. The genes to which I refer are the protein coding sequences, sometimes called structural genes. Specifically, the most useful genes in deciphering the evolutionary history are the mundane “housekeeping” genes whose function is necessary for cell survival, e.g., the genes encoding the large and small subunits of RNA polymerase, RecA, pyruvate kinase, aspartate aminotransferase. The number of changes in their DNA/protein sequence reflect the evolutionary time to the last common ancestor.
With regard to Dawkins, years ago, several of my friends encouraged me to read “The Selfish Gene”. For me, I had trouble figuring out what he meant by the word “gene”. He was rarely talking about a single genetic locus, rather he seemed to be talking about inheritance and selection of phenotypic traits. Since many of the traits he talked about likely involved multiple genetic loci whose expression is influenced by gene products of other genetic loci which in turn are influenced by the internal and external environments, I found many of his examples interesting but none really rising above the level of Just-So stories. In short, I learned very little. I have never read any of his scholarly papers and have never come across a reference to them.
Let me clarify what I mean by gene, since its meaning is very context specific. Let’s start with insertion (IS) elements of bacteria. These are genes that can catalyze their own movement from one place in a genome to another or to another autonomously replicating genome in the same cell, a process called transposition. The insertion element encodes a promoter sequence that directs the transcription of the structural gene called transposase, tnp, for short. The protein product binds specifically to sequences upstream and downstream of the promoter-tnp DNA. It is then able cut the DNA out of the genome remaining attached to its ends. It is then able to bind to a different segment of DNA, cut it, and join its ends to the target DNA. With a little help from the cell’s DNA repair machinery, the element becomes fully integrated. This is a simple cut and paste operation, but there are other elements that move by other means.
Now consider what happens when two IS elements (of the same kind) insert upstream and downstream of a gene. Here, I will use as an example the gene for tetracycline resistance, tetA, and the insertion element IS10. Given the structure, IS10-tetA-IS10, transposase can bind to the ends of the backeting IS10 element and catalyze the movement of the IS10-tetA-IS10 to another location within the genome or to another genome, such as a plasmid. There are some plasmids that can catalyze their transfer from one cell to another, often crossing “genus” and “species” boundaries. Once in the recipient cell, the IS10-tetA-IS10 cassette can then transpose itself into the recipient genome or remain on the plasmid. In either case, the cell is now resistant to tetracycline.
There is a whole plethora of such mechanisms of cell to cell movement of genetic material: integrons (mobile multi-cassette players), viruses that replicate by transposition, viruses that are plasmids but occassionally package chromosomal DNA, just to name a few. I am rarely surprised but often amazed by the sheer variety and dynamics of DNA/gene movement in bacteria.
So, for me, genes are not an abstraction conferring vague traits but are real, biochemical entities that interact with the cellular environment, conferring subtle and not so subtle phenotypic traits on their hosts.
This is a meaningless study. They are very simple compounds and would be created and destroyed by processes on the early earth. It is also meaningless because DNA was logically not present in the earliest life. It is present in the most primitive known existing life on earth today but before life was based on DNA it was logically based on RNA and that probably took countless generations before it started using RNA. Finding those molecules is no big deal. It was getting them to form specific orientations with sugar and phosphate as a backbone that makes DNA. That could only happen by natural selection that started in chemical systems that were vastly more primitive than any life today.
There is no evidence at all of any DNA seeding the earth. DNA by itself isn’t life. Someone needs to explain that to those people. It is just a way to store templates to make proteins and RNA. It is completely useless without the translation apparatus. That can only logically form from countless generations of natural selection. If they are saying that constituents that made life possible on earth came from meteors, then they should be laughed at for stating the obvious. It certainly doesn’t follow that those chemicals primarily came from meteors. If they implying that DNA came from meteors then they are making wild unjustified assumptions.
Tucci78: “For Mr. Anders to argue that Mr. Bailey was committing a “strawman” fallacy in his explicit discernment of the real purpose of this “intelligent design” religionist attack upon the scientific method is an error at best and a duplicity – not to be countenanced – most likely.”
What a hoot! Thanks for the good laugh, though.
Let’s see. Mr. Bailey ignores the explicit and repeated explanations by leading ID proponents as to what ID is about, because he is able to “discern” the real purpose of this “religionist attack upon the scientific method.” Yeah, that’s it.
Look, we need to distinguish between the *limited and perfectly valid scientific question* about whether design is detectable in natural systems, and the broader implications of the answer to that question. I realize that some people, for their own philosophical reasons, have a strong and occasionally knee-jerk aversion to the potential implications of the answer, but that is simply an unfortunate deficit on their part, not a problem with the question itself.
John B
August 11, 2011 at 11:18 am
DesertYote says:
August 11, 2011 at 11:03 am
Vince Causey says:
August 10, 2011 at 1:59 pm
###
Did you even read my post or are you just stupid. You obviously missed what I was asserting. To recap:
1) calculating the probability is futile, because of the number of unknowables, and two
2) The number will be really really really small …
———————————-
Seems to me you can’t have it both ways, DY
###
Seems to me your not very bright.
“I don’t know how big that polly bear is charging me, but I do know he is really really big.” Just because a quantity is unknowable is not the same as saying that it is completely uncharacteristically.
@Desert Yote:
you’re
Desert Yote,
You’ve left him speechless!☺
Myrrh,
I am not entirely clear on what you were trying to say. Let me see if I can clarify the way I see the situation. On one side, you have the Intelligent Design people. Here in the US, many of these are Christian, but some are Hindu or belong to other faiths. And some of these are agnostic. They are not sure if God (or a god) exists, but they see the work of some Intelligent Designer.
On the evolutionary side, you have a mixture of atheists, Christians and members of other world religions.
Based on my experience, people of faith are able to look at the Big Bang and see the evidence for what it is – just as Robert Jastrow and others at NASA did when the location of the Big Bang was found. However, atheists have a much more difficult time with this. Some have changed from atheist to agnostic based on the evidence but many more tend to reject the plain interpretation of the facts and postulate some unseen natural force at work or make tangential statements of faith supporting atheism. These people are generally not willing to take a look at the scientific evidence – taking a “Don’t confuse me with facts” approach to the discussion.
Not sure of your point, since the thrust of my response to Ron Cram was that the distinction between ‘atheist’ and ‘theist’ is pretty much irrelevant to science, which is the pursuit of knowledge about the natural world by means of the Scientific Method. However, apropos of your quotation from the Vedas, a friend once said (speaking of Quakerism) that “The hypothesis that there is a little bit of divinity in every human being is not a bad thing.” It is not a scientific (falsifiable) hypothesis, but it may be one that helps to ameliorate ennui, suffering, and discord in society. And maybe that is enough.
/Mr Lynn
Ron – as I see it, the ID has come out of the Western Christian tradition via the arguments within that tradition which resulted in the creation of Atheists. That this, ID, has now become an umbrella into which other faiths have come, it is still an argument between Atheists and God as Western Christians had him out of which were born “Atheists” – that is, that God is separate from mankind ontologically.
Taking a step back, to original doctrines, I’m saying that some Christians never had the God of the Western Augustinians which separated God from his creation, there wasn’t any ‘need’ to become an ‘atheist’ when the teaching is that you are God.. Traditional Hindu teaching has a variation, that everyone of us is a manifestation of God. That’s hardly going to rile anyone to declaring themselves atheist either.
I’ll stick with the at least 10,000 year old Hymn of Creation for my God..
… maybe he doesn’t know how all this happened either..
Mr Lynn – I thought you might like the last sentence of the Hymn.
mattweezer says:
August 11, 2011 at 8:14 am
I can’t determine what your point may have been in that rambling mess. Sorry.
RE: Thread
I always wondered what happened when you mixed religion, politics, and AGW. 😉
Tucci78,
You need to explain to us why the FACTS on Intelligent Design should be different because they are promoted by a Religious Person or an Agnostic/Atheist. By your intimations the fact that a Catholic started Big Bang theory, which still requires an act of Supernatural Creation from our point of view, would mean it should be ignored or ridiculed or simply thrown out.
Is the issue that the FACTS are not ones you can easily deal with??