Happy Darwin Day 2011!

[Lord J]

Looking forward to a colloquium tomorrow involving Richard Dawkins and many others regarding the origins of life on this planet. Should be pretty awesome!

[SandChigger]

Cool.

Dawkins of course needs no comment. McKay's familiar from various Discovery Channel shows, Venter from the news about what he's up to.

Let us know how it was! :)

[athanasios]

If you are attending such an event you are a lucky ***, I envy you! LOL

Please don't forget us.

[Lord J]

Sorry for my delay in replying, we visited my parents while we were in the area, and then drove back up, so I haven't had a ton of time to check this out. Although the general theme of the discussion was on the origins of life on this planet, most of the scientists viewed that as a question to be answered in terms of contrast. In other words, how can we best describe life without different forms than those that are known to exist on this planet?

So, Dawkins was Dawkins, generally speaking. I think he was basically the celebrity guest who was invited primarily to boost ticket sales. In terms of interesting/novel povs, he had relatively few. It was nice to see him and hear him talk, but he was primarily a discussant, not necessarily a presenter, if that makes sense. One interesting point he made followed on a comparison of the metabolic and reproductive properties of fire in relation to life. Dawkins differentiated between fire and life by describing how reproduced life exhibits aspects of its origin (i.e., genetic features) whereas the expression of fire depends completely on its immediately surrounding environment.

The same can generally be said for Paul Davies, who was, granted, more verbal than Dawkins, but I don't feel that he really spoke on cutting-edge R & D. What he brought that was interesting was his hypothesis that very different types of life forms could easily exist on the planet. He brought up research that has discovered life in highly hostile environments, suggesting that there may be some fundamentally different about that type of life. He also noted that all life is basically made of microorganisms which may be very alien in terms of their relationships with one another.

The Nobel laureates, Hartwell and Altman, brought up some interesting points from their respective fields, but generally I feel they were somewhat out of place. Granted, cancer research and defining the RNA world are critical to understanding what makes us lifeforms on the cellular level, but I felt that the rest of the discussants were interested in more... molar issues. I think that an actual talk by any individual members of the discussion would have been extremely interesting, whereas the potpourri nature of the colloquium was a little less focused.

Chris McKay was an interesting speaker, particularly in terms of his description of some recent scenarios and meetings involving NASA and DARPA. McKay realizes that one of the most potentially successful ways to discover new life is off of the planet, and is therefore working to explore Mars, Europa, and Titan, as well as possibly planets outside of the solar system. One of the concepts he has been working on with NASA and DARPA is the concept of launching a form of life that will survive a 100-year journey to another earthlike planet (which, he says, are pretty plentiful) to unload and (essentially) colonize.

Finally, J. Craig Venter, famous for creating the synthetic lifeform, was probably one of the most vocal of the discussants. He essentially presented his own research in terms of where the science is progressing. He conceptualizes life as information, or software, that creates new hardware on which to support itself. This perspective is what allowed him to create the synthetic virus and informs his current research.

Laurence Krauss introduced the discussants and presented his own perspectives on the matter. Overall, I really enjoyed his presentation as a host, slightly better than Roger Bingham, primarily because I had some trouble understanding Bingham's English accent. Also Krauss asked some interesting questions and kept the discussion moving along. Overall, I was very pleased by the panel.

Finally, one throw-out to our dearest poster ErasOmnius; believe it or not, the Gaia concept was mentioned, and none of the scientists present endorsed it. The way they addressed it was by saying essentially, that life ultimately alters planets in very specific ways, ways that can be viewed and measured very clearly. But to say that the planet has feelings, a point of view, and behaves in ways to select life on it is ridiculous and in no way supported by any sort of science or logical progression from Darwinian thought.

[athanasios]

Thanks. Well the planet is just the environment and the environment counts a lot. But nothing more.

[SandChigger]

Thanks, Lord J! :)

[ErasOmnius]

Dawkins is another 'scientist' who has put his 'faith' in evolution, with very little science to back it up. He gets to fly around the world, make speeches, and try to look good. He puts up very little evidence for any topic on which he's been challenged. His sarcastic humor and witty tongue are great for the lecture circuit, but not very rational.

He believes, like most every other evolutionist, that simply adding a few more millions of years here or there, will 'get the job done'. Blah, blah...that the Universe is a Blind Watchmaker...blah, blah, blah...to explain how complex organs can evolve in the human body...blah, blah, blah.

You know, he's the type of person who instead of having a real job where he would have to work, is sort of like a Pastor for Atheism.

[Dante]

You really don't understand anything in the entire field of biology, do you? Seriously. Nothing at all.

Thanks for sharing, Lord J. I'm somewhat envious. Maybe a lot envious. I checked youtube though, Roger Bingham's accent isn't something awful like Geordie, I'm surprised there was a problem.

[Lord J]

Mostly he just mumbled, I think. He tended to keep his head down, and read from notes a lot, too, which is disruptive for me because I prefer to look at peoples' lips when they are speaking.

There was captioning, so I got the gist of most of the talk, although there were problems with that too; they spelled Francis Crick's name "Krik."

[SandChigger]

Dawkins is another 'scientist' who has put his 'faith' in evolution, with very little science to back it up. He gets to fly around the world, make speeches, and try to look good. He puts up very little evidence for any topic on which he's been challenged. His sarcastic humor and witty tongue are great for the lecture circuit, but not very rational.

He believes, like most every other evolutionist, that simply adding a few more millions of years here or there, will 'get the job done'. Blah, blah...that the Universe is a Blind Watchmaker...blah, blah, blah...to explain how complex organs can evolve in the human body...blah, blah, blah.

Oh dear... it's like walking out of the house with your trousers unzipped. Only here it's your ignorance showing, not your john-thomas.

You know, he's the type of person who instead of having a real job where he would have to work, is sort of like a Pastor for Atheism.

So you're saying being a "pastor" isn't a real job? :)

(Hey, is wHeeeeeeeeee the Joyride in Heaven now?)

[ErasOmnius]

Oh dear... it's like walking out of the house with your trousers unzipped. Only here it's your ignorance showing, not your john-thomas.

Wake me up when John Lennox is speaking in the MidWest, USA; or Ontario, Canada, area.

[SandChigger]

Who?