Impression of links on Darwinism

The readings brought a few things up for me. First, the article by Pearcy took me back to my college days when I was an atheist and obsessed with postmodern theories/ideals. Believing that religion and moral standards are arbitrary got me into a lot of trouble and led to severe feelings of isolation and a lack of trust in anything other than myself. Addiction then became my substitute for God and I almost died. My life was empty and meaningless. Now that I've reclaimed my spirituality and trust in a Divine Spirit that guides me, my life overflows with peace, health, connection, and hope. Based on my experience, living entirely from an intellectual understanding of the world is a very serious illness in our society and needs to be addressed in the scientific community.

I enjoyed the Origin of Life Q and A website, especially the articles on ET life. Of course I've heard claims about life on Mars, but it was interesting reading the actual research on why scientists made that claim. And the never-ending attempt to reconcile science and religion fascinates me. The debate was present in every article that I read from this website. I really liked this passage: "Nowadays most scientists and teachers take a somewhat 'schizophrenic' approach. They deny spontaneous generation, recognizing Pasteur's proofs against it. At the same time they say life arose spontaneously in the past, when we weren't around to observe or measure the process. " I was so amused by the term, 'schizophrenic approach.' It definitely captured my experience of all of my science teachers.

Lastly, I thought the Mirsky article did the best job of explaining Evo-Devo and the supporting research. I was fascinated by the studies they've done with flies. As I said on a previous blog, I can't wait to whip this information out during a dinner table discussion. The ending of the article ties everything together nicely, saying that evolution is simpler than we thought. Although the article was convincing, I'm still not entirely sure of which theory I support. Maybe that will come over the course of the semester.