True, the didn’t create life as we know it. But, they demonstrated that RNA enzymes could self-replicate in conditions that were hypothesized by scientists. This is a major hurdle in the race to create life in a lab.

According to evolution (i.e. scientific theory), life evolved over billions of years. So, basically it is quite difficult to create life artificially in a short time span especially when we are trying to do it without step-by-step instructions. But, the race is on and scientists think that they can do it this decade.

Journal citation:
Lincoln et al. Self-Sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme. Science, Jan 8, 2009; DOI: 10.1126/science.1167856

They irrigated the solution (which may or may not be fair game) and as far as I can tell they still didn’t create life.

“Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/#ixzz0hgdXDQYE

Actually, scientists have been able to demonstrate how life was created:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/

Whether God was behind it or not is a question of faith. There is no evidence pointing for or against the involvement of God. That’s a question we all have to answer on a personal level.

I got rid of the “somehow” but kept something because I don’t know how else to describe the small matter from the beginning.

It is true that you could have different variations of that but I thought these would be the two basic ideologies that most would fall into.

The Big Bang could actually be the way it happened but I am advocating that God created it and I don’t believe it would be possible without God.

Has science ever been able to create life without first using life? If they can’t even do it intentionally then how could it happen by chance.

As we’ve discussed before, evolution is a theory just like physics. Physics is only called a law, because that’s the word they used at the time. They wouldn’t be called the “laws of physics” if they were discovered today or at the same time as evolution.

My belief is #1 (if I have to choose between the two), and I don’t think your explanation of it does it justice. Using words like “somehow” and “something” is rather disingenuous. The theory of evolution is actually very well documented and we know how tiny lifeforms have evolved in to the variety of life we have today. I don’t think that believing in #1 necessarily means that you think God doesn’t exist… he could be behind the scenes watching over and making decisions.

Again, my favorite site to link to on here :
http://notjustatheory.com/

(by the way, I’ve been traveling for work, so I have some more commenting to do on other threads, but I’ll get to it.)

Science indicates mankind is causing some climate change, and therefore we need government action to force a stop to it.

Andrew, this is the exact type of logic that brings us all big government initiatives.

In the healthcare debate, how many times to we hear a story of someone who didn’t receive free healthcare and died… with the natural conclusion being, we need a big government program to prevent that from ever happening again, to anyone.

Or, a child finds a handgun in his home and accidentally shoots his friend with it. Well, obviously, that means we need strict gun control legislation.

What I was trying to get you to think about is the nature of mankind, and the total impact we make on our environment. If the other factors that affect climate, and we agree there are many, are trending cooler short-term (from 2003 through today) and graphs indicate we’re between ice ages, so we’ll be trending cooler long-term as well, then if we impact the climate ever so slightly in the direction of warming, isn’t that impact in a positive direction?

Obviously we can’t prevent the next ice age. I would argue that our impact on doing that would be about as much as throwing a ping pong ball at the windshield of a semi moving at 60 miles per hour. The law of physics indicates that ping pong ball must’ve slowed the truck some, but for all intents and purposes the impact was negligible.

Anyway, what I’m asking you about now is the coupling of believing human impact on climate is in the direction of warming rather than cooling, and your conclusion that this is bad and must be stopped.

Again, why is the climate, as we know it today, considered ideal?

And when natural forces again cause the climate to change, towards warming or cooling, as natural forces have been continually doing since forever, why will this natural evolution from now on be seen as bad?

It’s as though you want creatures 100 million years from now to look at the earth’s climate graph and see all the ups and downs, all the ice ages and so on, right up until 2010, and then see a steady flat line, with zero deviation, not even a degree, for the next 100 million years.

Anyway, you’re obviously a very intelligent guy, that’s why I enjoy our conversation, and I’d really like to explore this angle of the subject with you. I want to better understand how the logic of the man-made global warming advocates holds together, in context of the big picture.

Thanks,
Mark

At the time (note that these policies were created by the Nixon administration), it probably seemed logical (regulate the amount of hospitals per capita so that there aren’t empty hospital beds and hospitals don’t have to pay more in property taxes, etc.), but obviously the policies have failed because they’re restricting competition and encouraging monopolies in healthcare. CON policies encourage lobbyists from the current hospitals in the area to prevent new hospitals. They also encourage a first-to-market approach, which is exactly what is happening in Holly Springs, NC. Hospitals are trying desperately to get into the town.

Holly Springs is in the suburbs of my city (Raleigh, NC). I’ve been there it is a very expansive town and very rural. They just got a Walmart and that’s probably the most exciting thing to happen to them in a decade. CON laws are preventing a hospital, probably because of the low population. However, the population have to drive a long way to get to the closest hospital in Apex or Cary, so it’s really not fair. They deserve something and they’ll get it eventually as Raleigh develops more and forces people to move to more affordable homes in the suburbs.

CON laws are particularly very unfair to the suburbs. And those are the people who need affordable healthcare the most since they were, in a lot of cases, prevented from living in the city because of high housing costs.

Good, I was hoping it was a metaphor.