Science News ...
Or, How to Piss Off Religious Folk.
Scientists are on the quest for LUCA. No, not Luca Brazzi - he's sleeping with the fishes. The LUCA stands for Last Universal Common Ancestor, and it's theorized that it is the lifeform from which everything living on this planet - me, you, Pat Robertson, monkeys, fish, plants and demonically fluffy kittens are all descended (although I'm not certain about Pat Robertson).
(And I'm not too sure about the kittens, either. Sometimes you have to beware of The Cute Things.)
Anyway, LUCA was presumably an archeocyte, part of that vast and weird group of single-celled, extremely simple organisms that lived three to four Billion years ago. Perhaps I should slur that, like Carl Sagan did: "Three to four ... Billlllllllyun years ago." That makes LUCA older than bacteria, and way older than nucleated cells like an amoeba.
Now, this is the sort of science that grabs my interest and fills me with awe at how we managed, through billions of years of evolution, to reach the point we're at right now. And it fills me with glee as well, because this is just the sort of thing that's guaranteed to Completely Piss Off the 'Christian' Fundamentalists and Intelligent Design Yahoos in this country.
Anyone who points to The Flintstones as "evidence of intelligent design" is just aching to display his or her total ignorance. And I have my own answer to the ID nuts - or, rather, I borrowed it from David Hume.
Hume says, "Look around. This Universe of ours is largely a patch-up job, wholly irrational in spots and seemingly governed by chaos math. Now, if there were a Designer, he's either a very young one just starting to play with the Ron Popeil Home Cosmos Kit, or he's an old and senile deity who shouldn't have started the project in the first place."
And no matter WHAT an ID freak tells you, the "designer" in "intelligent design" is God - they just leave the name out, hoping that they can get it to the kids before anyone catches the omission.
Scientists are on the quest for LUCA. No, not Luca Brazzi - he's sleeping with the fishes. The LUCA stands for Last Universal Common Ancestor, and it's theorized that it is the lifeform from which everything living on this planet - me, you, Pat Robertson, monkeys, fish, plants and demonically fluffy kittens are all descended (although I'm not certain about Pat Robertson).
(And I'm not too sure about the kittens, either. Sometimes you have to beware of The Cute Things.)
Anyway, LUCA was presumably an archeocyte, part of that vast and weird group of single-celled, extremely simple organisms that lived three to four Billion years ago. Perhaps I should slur that, like Carl Sagan did: "Three to four ... Billlllllllyun years ago." That makes LUCA older than bacteria, and way older than nucleated cells like an amoeba.
Now, this is the sort of science that grabs my interest and fills me with awe at how we managed, through billions of years of evolution, to reach the point we're at right now. And it fills me with glee as well, because this is just the sort of thing that's guaranteed to Completely Piss Off the 'Christian' Fundamentalists and Intelligent Design Yahoos in this country.
Anyone who points to The Flintstones as "evidence of intelligent design" is just aching to display his or her total ignorance. And I have my own answer to the ID nuts - or, rather, I borrowed it from David Hume.
Hume says, "Look around. This Universe of ours is largely a patch-up job, wholly irrational in spots and seemingly governed by chaos math. Now, if there were a Designer, he's either a very young one just starting to play with the Ron Popeil Home Cosmos Kit, or he's an old and senile deity who shouldn't have started the project in the first place."
And no matter WHAT an ID freak tells you, the "designer" in "intelligent design" is God - they just leave the name out, hoping that they can get it to the kids before anyone catches the omission.
posted by Walt at 10:41 AM
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