Scientific creationism is a dogma (counter to the prevailing evolution/big-bang driven dogma) that there is verifiable evidence of the Bible's version of "how it all began".
To an evolutionist like myself, it sounds like flaccid attempt to make creationism "all scientific". They reinterpret data to their liking and ignore much geological, biological, and physical evidence. Now indeed, there may be some conspiracy afoot to hide the "real" evidence, but I don't think highly of elaborate conspiracies either.
Some of your more conservative Christian learning institutions have faculty devoted to this. And there's ample material to read about:
Creation scientists are amassing evidence that life was much different before Noah's flood. Fossils of 12-foot-tall men, pig-sized beavers, 50-foot crocodiles and foot-long cockroaches have been found. Fossilized rain forests lush with 90-foot fruit trees have been unearthed in African and Australian deserts, Colorado and Antarctica.
Religiously, it's misguided. Proving that God exists would topple faith. But that's never stopped anybody before. It reminds me of a quote that most disciplines with the word "science" in them, aren't.
The creationists aren't going to buy evolution just because humans have fewer genes than scientists theorize. While the information does strengthen the arguments and proposed mechanisms behind evolution, it doesn't put a dent in creationism. But then again, I don't think any of the concrete evidence ever did. Scientific creationism generates a religious problem anyways. How can you have real faith if there is physical proof of God's existance?
It does help knock down the self-centered image our species has, that we're somehow special or the acme of evolution. We're an animal like any other. That we can learn and create is important, but we need to use it wisely.
It's an interesting solution, but the failings will be human. After all, I don't think Powell is packet-sniffing at all. He's logging in as a user and looking for content, he's using informants, he's pressuring ISPs.
Clearly what he seeks to do is make it hard to trade audio software or music, to take it out of the realm of the armchair pirate. Powell is targetting the public sources that anybody can get to, like Napster and websites. Once he nails the public forums, he's done and won.
He won't care that you've built a secure trading network because by definition that sort of network will be hard to get into and limited to a small group of people. Sure you can have distributed trust structures and so forth, but it'll be too technical for most people. And that's all he cares about, putting the fear into most people. And even if you made it easy to use a secure trading network, how would you make sure that the Powells stay out?
All I have to say is that this man and his company have a lot of power. As the article mentions, he clearly relishes the hunt and the chase. It is almost ironic how much he achieves through social engineering, rather than brute force tech.
If various other groups take this tactic up as a full time endeavour, I shudder to think what the online world will become. With a private group bringing lawsuits against individuals, those who are wrongly accused (standing in the whorehouse as the article says) would be financially hard pressed to put up a fight. When faced with "pay the fine $10k now" versus "$100k over four years to be proven innocent", I wonder which path most people will take. In a sense, this methodology can be a lawsuit-to-settlement engine, with fresh meat just an e-mail list away. This could be a lucrative tactic indeed.
So if David Powell is successful and drives music pirates deep underground or away, will he hang up his sword or switch to a new field? In other words, what would be next?
It's going to need some wireless networking. Anything short of Richocet is going to be pretty damn slow (at least in a non-wireless Ethernet environment). Heard that Richocet's parent company was in trouble. Any substantiation?
I'll grant you that. Perhaps things on earth have been laid out in such a subtle manner that we may never be able to tell that it was intelligently designed. Or are you arguing that we'll be able to tell sometime soon?
But if we can't ever tell, then what is the impact on us? For all practical purposes, there is no intelligent design. Yes there may be a great and subtle Designer somewhere, but if we cannot grasp or prove it, then it remains an article of faith, rather than concrete fact.
So if you ask me, based on what I know and what I can show: Is there intelligent design at work? Then I will say, no, it doesn't seem so.
Do you think the human intelligence could decipher the ideas of the Designer?
Ironic that your pronouncement contains nothing to back it up.
I point to my appendix, the duckbilled platypus, my inability to breathe underwater, professional wrestling, trash DNA in the genome, fossil evidence, and the human retina as counters to your argument for intelligent design. There is enough evidence of completely random and dumb shit going on that intelligent design seems unlikely. We have all kinds of strange and useless stuff which appears as a result of the weird and wooly path our ancestors took to get us here.
Now I do agree that there is plenty of stuff on Earth that remains unexplored, but I do not believe that it is the only place to look for answers.
It is difficult to fully imagine what other non-carbon-based forms of life are like. We're somewhat aware of what makes up our life and what signals and indications to look for. We understand that complex organic molecules can be chained together in a water-borne environment to form simple chemically active proto-cells and so forth. This provides us with a proven set of search parameters. It works here, so it could work elsewhere.
While we can conjecture about life-forms made from silicon or whatever, it remains purely theoretical. There isn't too much concrete evidence about what we should look for from a silicon-based life-form.
1) I think this was addressed before. The products will be something immobile and not water-soluble. This stops the spread of contamination and makes clean-up easier.
2) If it is a well designed bug, it will die out after it runs out of radioactive goo. You can engineer the metabolic pathways so it requires the waste (or some part of the waste) to live. No more food, no more life.
3) See 2. The bugs are limited by the amount of waste present.
4) Again, see 2. The bacteria itself doesn't need to be "picked up" again. You just keep a sample in the lab.
I think you answered your own question here. Deinococcus radiodurans has enzymes which protect the fidelity of its genetic material. That is to say, it is not easily mutated by ionizing radiation and its DNA is not susceptible.
As for organisms feeding on radiodurans. That's a hard call. It depends strongly on how much radioactive material is retained in this bug at any one time. You could get magnification through the food chain this way, but hopefully it will be engineered to avoid this.
What is being described is not a super-bug. It has vulnerabilities like any other bacteria (you can kill it with antibiotics or Clorox). You could even engineer into it a kill-switch, allowing you to introduce some compound which would cause this bug to die.
In any case, the idea here is to make the nuclear waste immobile and insoluble, keeping it out of our water supplies and from spreading. I don't think any bacteria can actually render radioactive waste non-radioactive. This stuff just makes it easier to handle and contain.
Deinococcus radiodurans two unique qualities are its resistance to dessication and radiation. These properties result from D. radioduran's ability to quickly and faithfully repair its own DNA after severe damage. It is thought that this allows it to survive out in the open with very little water to shield its genetic material. UV, like the ionizing radiation from nuclear waste, tends to chop up an organism's DNA and make life difficult. And in this case, its useful if we want to have a bug that can operate in high-radiation environments.
But complexity is a nebulous term (as you said, subject to much debate) and perhaps without much value. The key to biological life is successful propogation, not complexity. Complexity can be useful, but it is not the only evolutionary maxima in town. 'Lower' organisms like cockroaches and fungi lack our complexity and have managed to stake a firm claim on this planet.
Bottom line is that more or less genetic material doesn't win the race. It's not that important. Whether or not we successfully propagate is the key.
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Scientific creationism is a dogma (counter to the prevailing evolution/big-bang driven dogma) that there is verifiable evidence of the Bible's version of "how it all began".
To an evolutionist like myself, it sounds like flaccid attempt to make creationism "all scientific". They reinterpret data to their liking and ignore much geological, biological, and physical evidence. Now indeed, there may be some conspiracy afoot to hide the "real" evidence, but I don't think highly of elaborate conspiracies either.
Some of your more conservative Christian learning institutions have faculty devoted to this. And there's ample material to read about:
Religiously, it's misguided. Proving that God exists would topple faith. But that's never stopped anybody before. It reminds me of a quote that most disciplines with the word "science" in them, aren't.
The creationists aren't going to buy evolution just because humans have fewer genes than scientists theorize. While the information does strengthen the arguments and proposed mechanisms behind evolution, it doesn't put a dent in creationism. But then again, I don't think any of the concrete evidence ever did. Scientific creationism generates a religious problem anyways. How can you have real faith if there is physical proof of God's existance?
It does help knock down the self-centered image our species has, that we're somehow special or the acme of evolution. We're an animal like any other. That we can learn and create is important, but we need to use it wisely.
It's an interesting solution, but the failings will be human. After all, I don't think Powell is packet-sniffing at all. He's logging in as a user and looking for content, he's using informants, he's pressuring ISPs.
Clearly what he seeks to do is make it hard to trade audio software or music, to take it out of the realm of the armchair pirate. Powell is targetting the public sources that anybody can get to, like Napster and websites. Once he nails the public forums, he's done and won.
He won't care that you've built a secure trading network because by definition that sort of network will be hard to get into and limited to a small group of people. Sure you can have distributed trust structures and so forth, but it'll be too technical for most people. And that's all he cares about, putting the fear into most people. And even if you made it easy to use a secure trading network, how would you make sure that the Powells stay out?
All I have to say is that this man and his company have a lot of power. As the article mentions, he clearly relishes the hunt and the chase. It is almost ironic how much he achieves through social engineering, rather than brute force tech.
If various other groups take this tactic up as a full time endeavour, I shudder to think what the online world will become. With a private group bringing lawsuits against individuals, those who are wrongly accused (standing in the whorehouse as the article says) would be financially hard pressed to put up a fight. When faced with "pay the fine $10k now" versus "$100k over four years to be proven innocent", I wonder which path most people will take. In a sense, this methodology can be a lawsuit-to-settlement engine, with fresh meat just an e-mail list away. This could be a lucrative tactic indeed.
So if David Powell is successful and drives music pirates deep underground or away, will he hang up his sword or switch to a new field? In other words, what would be next?
It's going to need some wireless networking. Anything short of Richocet is going to be pretty damn slow (at least in a non-wireless Ethernet environment). Heard that Richocet's parent company was in trouble. Any substantiation?
Well, if there are enough slicing, frying and bagging machines around, perhaps...
I'll grant you that. Perhaps things on earth have been laid out in such a subtle manner that we may never be able to tell that it was intelligently designed. Or are you arguing that we'll be able to tell sometime soon?
But if we can't ever tell, then what is the impact on us? For all practical purposes, there is no intelligent design. Yes there may be a great and subtle Designer somewhere, but if we cannot grasp or prove it, then it remains an article of faith, rather than concrete fact.
So if you ask me, based on what I know and what I can show: Is there intelligent design at work? Then I will say, no, it doesn't seem so.
Do you think the human intelligence could decipher the ideas of the Designer?
Ironic that your pronouncement contains nothing to back it up.
I point to my appendix, the duckbilled platypus, my inability to breathe underwater, professional wrestling, trash DNA in the genome, fossil evidence, and the human retina as counters to your argument for intelligent design. There is enough evidence of completely random and dumb shit going on that intelligent design seems unlikely. We have all kinds of strange and useless stuff which appears as a result of the weird and wooly path our ancestors took to get us here.
Now I do agree that there is plenty of stuff on Earth that remains unexplored, but I do not believe that it is the only place to look for answers.
It is difficult to fully imagine what other non-carbon-based forms of life are like. We're somewhat aware of what makes up our life and what signals and indications to look for. We understand that complex organic molecules can be chained together in a water-borne environment to form simple chemically active proto-cells and so forth. This provides us with a proven set of search parameters. It works here, so it could work elsewhere.
While we can conjecture about life-forms made from silicon or whatever, it remains purely theoretical. There isn't too much concrete evidence about what we should look for from a silicon-based life-form.
Think of it as a go-with-what-you-know strategy.
1) I think this was addressed before. The products will be something immobile and not water-soluble. This stops the spread of contamination and makes clean-up easier.
2) If it is a well designed bug, it will die out after it runs out of radioactive goo. You can engineer the metabolic pathways so it requires the waste (or some part of the waste) to live. No more food, no more life.
3) See 2. The bugs are limited by the amount of waste present.
4) Again, see 2. The bacteria itself doesn't need to be "picked up" again. You just keep a sample in the lab.
Sounds good don't it? Gimme two! Not more than two.
I think you answered your own question here. Deinococcus radiodurans has enzymes which protect the fidelity of its genetic material. That is to say, it is not easily mutated by ionizing radiation and its DNA is not susceptible.
As for organisms feeding on radiodurans. That's a hard call. It depends strongly on how much radioactive material is retained in this bug at any one time. You could get magnification through the food chain this way, but hopefully it will be engineered to avoid this.
The bug is not invincible.
What is being described is not a super-bug. It has vulnerabilities like any other bacteria (you can kill it with antibiotics or Clorox). You could even engineer into it a kill-switch, allowing you to introduce some compound which would cause this bug to die.
In any case, the idea here is to make the nuclear waste immobile and insoluble, keeping it out of our water supplies and from spreading. I don't think any bacteria can actually render radioactive waste non-radioactive. This stuff just makes it easier to handle and contain.
Deinococcus radiodurans two unique qualities are its resistance to dessication and radiation. These properties result from D. radioduran's ability to quickly and faithfully repair its own DNA after severe damage. It is thought that this allows it to survive out in the open with very little water to shield its genetic material. UV, like the ionizing radiation from nuclear waste, tends to chop up an organism's DNA and make life difficult. And in this case, its useful if we want to have a bug that can operate in high-radiation environments.
But complexity is a nebulous term (as you said, subject to much debate) and perhaps without much value. The key to biological life is successful propogation, not complexity. Complexity can be useful, but it is not the only evolutionary maxima in town. 'Lower' organisms like cockroaches and fungi lack our complexity and have managed to stake a firm claim on this planet. Bottom line is that more or less genetic material doesn't win the race. It's not that important. Whether or not we successfully propagate is the key.