On 7/17/2010 11:54 AM, Warp wrote:
>    Why do creationists (with which I'm referring to certain specific dogmas
> rather than "christians" or "believers" in general) continuously confuse
> two completely different and separate fields of science, namely astronomy
> and biology?
>
>    You constantly hear claims like "evolutionists claim that the universe
> began with a 'big bang' from nothing" and such.
>
>    The so-called Big Bang Theory is part of the field of science called
> astronomy. The Theory of Evolution is part of the field called biology.
> Astronomy and biology are both natural sciences, but that's approximately
> where their commonalities end. Otherwise they don't have about anything
> in common. They are completely different fields of science.
>
>    It seems that there's a misconception among creationists that "the theory
> of evolution" is a catch-all term which encompasses, among many other things,
> the Big Bang theory, stellar evolution, abiogenesis and biological evolution.
> All kinds of claims are made about the "theory of evolution" which have
> nothing to do with it and belong to completely unrelated fields of science
> such as astronomy and astrophysics.
>
>    Of course "evolution" is a relatively narrow field of science (compared
> to the whole) which encompasses a lot less than creationists seem to think.
>
>    Another (perhaps "lesser", but definitely more common) misconception seems
> to be that the theory of evolution claims that life formed from non-organic
> elements. Of course the theory of evolution says no such thing. They are
> confusing it with abiogenesis, which is the theory of how and why life could
> have formed from non-life. The theory of evolution only encompasses *already
> living* groups of organisms, not how they became into existence in the first
> place.
>
>    But that confusion can be forgiven, as the subject matters are quite
> related (namely, how modern life came into existence). What is less
> forgivable is confusing two completely different branches of science
> which have nothing in common (ie. biology and astronomy).
>
>    Do they do that on purpose or something?
>
First, for the wackos actually making this argument, Evolution was seen 
as the "weak link" in science. The point wasn't to just overturn 
evolution, but every science *including* astronomy, where it conflicted 
with a literal interpretation of the Bible. This can be seen pretty 
clearly in the recent gibberish out of the Disco Institute:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/physicists_brace_yourselves_fo.php

The whole point is that **all of science**, from astronomy, to physics, 
to chemistry, and especially evolution, is **universally** wrong, if it 
contradicts their crazy assed idea that everything in the Bible is 
absolutely 100% true, and actually all happened 6,000-10,000 years ago.

Second, Abiogenesis is only not part of the concept because its a) not 
well understood, and b) not fully replicable, never mind observable. 
However, as I pointed out at least once, we have things like Prions, 
which, if malformed, quite happily turn damn near anything they touch 
into more prions, so its hardly impossible for simpler-than-life 
chemicals to propogate, on a massive scale, and be damn close to the 
base amino acids and other chemicals that *do* happen without biology, 
have been created, in incomplete, but numerous forms, in lab conditions, 
without existing biological organisms involved, etc. The only question 
is, when, how, and what?

Finally, its also fairly clear from some recent experiments that not 
even the DNA we have is *necessary*, it just happens to be the DNA we 
ended up with. There are dozens of other chemical forms that could have 
done the same job, and some early experiments with those have shown that 
a) they can be replicated by cellular mechanisms, b) they can code for 
the same processes, and c) something could end up having the same double 
helix, yet share not one *single* protein that we have to code for 
features *in* that helix. And, that is presuming that something other 
than a helix isn't possible too.

In short, the gaps they whine about keep closing, but the strategy goes 
forward. For them, distance galaxies "must" have all formed at the same 
time, they "must" only appear to be billions of years old, the dinosaurs 
"must" have all drowned in a giant flood, people "must have" lived side 
beside with them, all the evidence for an ancient earth "must" be a 
misinterpretation of the facts, and it doesn't matter if the science 
contradicting these things it the science behind biology, or astronomy, 
or even fracking origami. If it says something that contradicts their 
religion, its *wrong*, and must therefor be part of the vast Darwinian 
conspiracy, because "evolution" is the "weak point" in the whole mess, 
according to them.

Mind, this is a bit like trying to defeat a porcupine, or a skunk, by 
attacking its ass, instead of its underbelly, but no one said these 
people have a damn clue what they are doing. To them, since evolution, 
or their badly stupid understanding of it, undermines the most 
*important* idea of their faith, i.e., special creation of man, separate 
from all other creatures, the idea that it may not be the weak point at 
all probably offends them 100 times more than the theory itself. Thus, 
there is no other possible conclusion for them, other than, "Either 
Darwinism falls, and with it all the other lies of science, that we 
imagine are based on it, or we do, and we can't since God is real and 
everything in the Bible is true."

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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