Linux Reconstructing Tree of Life?

vaderhelmet writes "Wired has a cool story about how the American Museum of Natural History, funded by the National Science Foundation is using Linux to "construct a pattern of relationships that biologists believe links all of Earth's present and past species -- from the smallest microbe to the largest vertebrate that existed during Earth's 4 billion-year history." They're using their very own homemade supercomputer which ranks in at 107 on the Top 500 supercomputers list. Quote from article: "Linux makes it so easy to create a supercomputer.""

Comments

Re:Religion

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Sure it will. All religions believe and have explained that God created everything, they don't explain how He did it. And if He did create everything, then you would expect everything to be related in some kind of an organized hierarchy. All they are doing is using the computers to determine that hierarchy.

Um, actually, lots of religions do claim to explain how God created everything -- ever heard of something called Genesis? Which is the problem, and why Gould's "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" idea, as nice a solution as it should be to the creationism issue, will never work. Religion and science could be completely separate, but religion insists on making assertions about the nature of reality which contradict scientific observations.

I used to believe that the best way to deal with creationists was to try to understand their point of view, to make compromises, to explain things in a way that wouldn't cause controversy. Now I've come to realize that it's not worth it. Creationists should be mocked at every opportunity. Anyone who believes literally in any creation myth is a fool; anyone who believes in fake compromises like "Intelligent Design" is an empty-headed sophist. Their beliefs are no more worthy of respect than those of flat-Earthers, Holocaust deniers, and alleged alien abductees.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

That doesn't make sense, sorry. You confine God to our physical realm, presuming He must fit within the mathematical laws He created. That is a faulty assumption.

Not to mention that God is infinite while everything created is finite. Another problem.

God is the first cause, the creator, the origin. Atheistic evolution has no answer for first cause, while there must be one.

Btw, I'd be curious to see the maths you used to show it impossible that God existed.

In 2000 years, I fully expect evolution to be recorded in history as a time when people beleived that absurd idea that all life evolved over billions of years. They'll laugh at us as much as we laugh at those who believed in a flat earth.