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mmoa_writes at 02:18pm on 04/03/2008 under creationism, evolution, fundamentalism, phsyics, religion, scienceSaturday I was listening to a radio programme on UCB (DO NOT ASK - I still live with my parents, 'nuff said), and was rather suprised to hear some insidious Creationist propaganda in the form of a radio show about an all American family who, well, I'm not sure what they do except for get themselves in really stupid situations where only prayer can help, and travel around town where they bump into people who ever-so conveniently are 'confused' about evolution (possibly because they haven't got round to reading any bog-standard Biology text book. Or maybe it's because of the textbook: this is the Midwest after all...).
Anyway, as I heard them twisting the law of 2nd Termodynamics upon which their entire argument was based, it occurred to me that the biggest problem in the debate is the use of language and the lacking ability for objectivity.
After all, 'better' is entirely relativistic. In the Natural world, outside the sphere of human observation, nothing is intrinsically better or worse. After all, a camel is as evolved as an emperor penguin, but it's obvious that when we say one is better than the other, we mean in terms of the environment in which it lives. Things becoming 'better' is not the same as things becoming more 'chaotic', and just because we are complex and quite like ourselves this way, does not mean that all more complex and thus chaotic things are 'better'. After all, if there's one thing we know for sure is that there is only one truly 'super-being' who can survive regardless of envrionment, and that is the bacterium.
And they're pretty damn simple (can't ennumerate on the meaning of Wittgenstinnian ethics for jack).
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did you know that bacillus anthracis (anthrax bacteria) form dominant spores which can wait for decades for a host?
and the whole plasmid thing amazes me too.. that single cell organisms can take foreign DNA and use it, and have up to thousands of copies at any one time. little protein factories... awesome!
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I was reading somewhere that there are 'new' species of bacteria being discovered as the ice cores melt, which are actually prety ancient, but are being reanimated thnks to the rise in global temperatures. On a les scientific note, I think there's a possible apocalyptic/zombie film in the making there.
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Propaganda? But that's what life in America is really like!
I was just in a secondhand store run by a Christian group (they have good prices on scifi paperbacks,) and they were playing an unintentionally hilarious religious childrens' show with obvious ripoffs of the Muppets singing absurdly bad songs about God and obedience and all that stuff. If I wasn't already an infidel I think the experience would have put me off Jeezus forever.
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I was always taught that if you have to keep on talking about God for something to seem, as in this case, Christian, then either you're doing something wrong or it isn't worth talking about. But then, the people who taught me that would have been considered infidels as well, so that probably explains it.
On propaganda-imitating-reality, I must confess, it's come to the point now where I am seriously looking forward to any opportunity I get to go to America (the Universities I'm applying to have an option of spending a year doing rsearch in America or Australia) just so that I could get my own roadshow or something.
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Certainly visit the States if you can! It's a very surreal place; I feel like a stranger here even though I've lived here all my life, and have spent at least a year in most regions at different times. You'll be very much amused, or frightened.