I’ve been a biologist for almost 40 years, and never heard those two words used together like that.
In what circles is it a usual term?
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My point is that the phrase is general enough to avoid objections like the one above. Replication of genetic material is a universal property of all life forms… and perhaps to a few things that some people don’t really consider is alive!
I won’t take a stand on this particular example, but some have argued that a virus is not a “living” thing.
I accept that you have not heard the term; I assert that it is an acceptable general term.
Let us not forget that not too long ago, the very same tag team of correspondents fell on their swords regarding the fictional nature of the phrase: “Ring Speciation.”
I was pilloried. I was denounced. I was scorned. All in all, a pretty big day or two for me.
And then I produced citations to peer reviewed articles where the phrase “Ring Speciation” was not only used in the narrative - - it was used in the article titles as well.
We all survived it.
Domestic dogs are genetically wolves not foxes. Domestication is not the same as selective breeding to obtain chihuahuas out of wolves. Many dogs bred for certain aesthetic characteristics have less desirable health and survival characteristics like chronic back problems. An adaptation is selected for naturally by environmental and reproductive advantages, it isn’t imposed by a human breeder. Of course breeding leads to desirable traits, that is the whole point of animal husbandry, but it isn’t natural selection at work, so it shouldn’t be used as an example of microevolution.
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Nice!
@bill_wald, think of it this way: Evolutionists talk about
“Natural Selection”.
Animal breeders routinely use
“Man-made Selection”,
or some other such clever phrase.
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That debate is actually a very fun one to have. One of the first things to recognize is our tendency as humans to see things as black and white, or require reality to fit into neat little categories. The problem is that sometimes reality is a spectrum that doesn’t fit neatly into human made boxes.
On one side of the spectrum you have humans, fish, trees, and bacteria. These are all things that are accepted as living by nearly everyone. On the other end of the spectrum you have transposons, which are little pieces of DNA that can get duplicated and inserted into the host genome. The human genome has millions of transposon insertions. In between the two extremes you varying degrees of host dependence and life histories.
For example, viruses may have once been living organisms similar to bacteria. Even now there are species called “obligate intracellular parasites” that have to live inside of another cell in order to live and replicate (e.g. Chlamydia). It could be that viruses were once obligate intracellular parasites that lost their own genes for replicating their own genome, allowing the host genes to take over those roles. Are obligate intracellular parasites not alive because they can’t live out in the environment all on their own? Most scientists still say that these parasites are alive, even though they could be seen as failing one of the requirements for life.
In the end, the argument over what is living and what is not is nothing more than a semantic argument. It is more interesting to study how these things work and interact.
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What you asserted is there in black and white: “The usual term used is “Genetic Replication””. That’s wrong, and it’s unhelpful since the phrase has no clear meaning and is different from terms used millions of times in the scientific (and lay) literature. In other words: the phrase is not the “usual term” for anything at all, and moreover it is confusing. If you are keen to help people understand science, then you should avoid concocting new and unclear phrases and labeling them “usual terms.” Actually reading science is a good antidote to this, in my experience.
Agreed! Let’s look at a virus. A protein shell surrounding a string of DNA. No mitochondria. No cell membrane. No respiration.
This thing is about as non-alive as anything the YECs would say is not alive. And I don’t see how anyone could argue differently.
Dead dead dead … but armed with genetic weaponry that would send chills down the spine of any human target zone… as if they were a screaming phalanx of sword bearing hoplites!!!
In case a YEC asks… the DNA that goes into the realm of viruses are almost certainly “captive” DNA strands that fell off of living DNA carriers …
Nobody should think that Viruses came first … then cellular life. Without cellular life coming first, there wouldn’t be any way for viruses to replicate their “captive” weaponry.
I have already amended my original posting. I agree that the phrase “the usual term” is incorrect. It’s quite cllear that it is not the “usual term”.
I have revised it to say: “the preferred term”.
But I probably should make that “a phrase preferred by some”. That will be done within 60 or 90 seconds.
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IMO, that’s an uninteresting semantic “debate.” And regardless, it’s unrelated to evolution.
That last one is the right one. Since I’ve heard it exactly once in my life, “some” is probably an exaggeration, but hey, there are 7 billionish people on the planet, and millions of them are underinformed Americans, so there must be a few who use that “term.”
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But try to imagine the situation from the YEC viewpoint…
They already get all twisted around on the transition from “dead matter” to “living cells”.
I can just imagine the lecture now … a YEC telling his audience that Viruses must have come first … or insisting the evolutionists think a virus is a living organism, or just about any idea at all…
Are you insinuating that you can’t prove me wrong with scripture and sound reasoning?
This comes back to my original challenge. If you can show me from scripture where I am wrong in thinking of Genesis 1-11 literally, then, and only then, can we begin talking about these other things. For, if you cannot prove me wrong with the scriptures, then, from a theological standpoint, I am right.[quote=“Jay313, post:218, topic:36407”]
Your interpretation is fallible, just like mine and everyone else’s.
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I completely agree with you. That is why I do not interpret the text; I believe it as it says.[quote=“Jay313, post:16, topic:36573”]
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever. Is. 40:8
[/quote]
Indeed. This is why I put my faith in the scriptures instead of your fallible interpretation of them.
(@BradKramer, you can split this post to the other topic if you desire. Thanks!)
There aren’t viruses with membranous shells? There aren’t viruses with RNA, not DNA genomes?
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But the very existence of such arguments tells us that a lot of bright, white lines people draw (such as “abiogenesis”) are very wide and gray.
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No, I’m not insinuating anything of that nature. I’m insinuating something else, and stating flat out that I cannot help you. Good luck on your journey.
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And yet lots of people do think this. More accurately, they propose that precellular life could have involved large viruses:
Could Giant Viruses Be the Origin of Life on Earth?
Except that there are giant viruses, visible under a standard light microscope, with genomes bigger than those of some bacteria or other “living” things:
Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology
Biology. It’s just not that simple, George.
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Why must it come from scripture? Why can’t it come from the creation itself?
You’re reading a translation, remember? Not the very words God gave to us…
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