More Evolution Stuff

One of the sites that I am working on (along with some other most excellent people) is Facts, not Fantasy. Each day, I go there to enter a blog about evolution, vaccines, and autism (or at least that's the format I am using now). So today I had a praticularly good entry on evolution, and thought I would repost it here.

While abiogenesis has nothing itself to do with evolution, it is considered one of those "defining gaps" that are used to bludgeon evolution with. That's why it's exciting to see this article about how RNA could be the starting point for life itself. Once you have any polymer capable of self-replication, you'll end up with more of those (and more of the ones that do it better). Since these are more abundant, they're more likely to be trapped inside vesicles that spontaneously form and divide by mechanical forces. That's basically a cell. Pretty much everything else is gravy that can be explained by natural selection. (There is also this article on the RNA chemistry.)

I guess what this really means is that yet another gap for that god fellow just shrunk. Don't you just wish that people would stop resorting to the supernatural when they aren't intelectually capable of saying that they don't know? *sigh*

There is also news of a new primate fossil that was found. This one goes back to about 47 million years ago, so is an even further precursor to the primate line. What is fascinating about this one is that basically evolution predicts that this type of fossil would exist, while ID or creationism says nothing about it. Not that I would expect IDiots and people with their brains stuck in the bronze age to actualy have the neural capacity for predictions and the scientific method.

By the way, Abiogenesis is NOT Evolution

I don't know how many times I have to repeat that evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis, yet the strawman of "how did life start" always creeps up in every evolution debate... Abiogenesis is a very new and exciting field of study though. That's why I was quite thrilled to find this article:

First Life and Next Life
Synthetic biology is a new field, but it's targeting an old question: How did life begin?

After reading that article, I just gotta say that is so frikkin' cool! Of course, as Carl Sagan once said, every scientific endeavour has some moral ambiguity to it. I can see this having some serious ramifications if we aren't diligent in the controls and methodology of all this.

As I said, the discussion on abiogenesis generally starts out in a discussion of evolution, and sometimes I just can't understand the rigid denial of actual concrete evidence, combined with horribly flawed logic that some of these nutters employ (not to mention the out and out lies). You can point to the mountain of evidence for evolution all you want. It’s just that the creationists and IDiots will proclaim, “Hah! It’s not a mountain, it’s half an inch under being a mountain. Nice try. Now, see, my mountain is tall enough to be a mountain.”
“But, that’s just a tent. Look at the gauze-like fabric and the plastic structure holding it up. You have a tent, and a flimsy one at that.”
“At least it’s as tall as mountain.”

Which, if you think about it, is pretty much the way the conversation always turns out.

Creationist dimwits should also invest in mirrors. The knucklewalkers they’d see staring back at them would be proof enough of human devolution.

What continues to be most fascinating, however is how consistently repetitive and predictable all these crank arguments are and will be, regardless of whether they are presented to support a belief in gods, or flying saucers, or ghosts, or…whatever.

To summarize:
•Science is false, my belief is true.
•Your evidence means nothing. I can say this despite the fact I have no idea what it even means.
•I have no evidence but it doesn’t matter because…(I have faith, the government is hiding it, it’s beyond the powers of science to reveal, etc.).
•I only came here to see if anyone had an open mind.
•My own closed mind doesn’t count.
•People who don’t believe as I do are arrogant jerks.
•I guess no one here wants to know the truth.
•Good bye.

Now if only they’d reach that last step a little more quickly (and even permanently?).