I was embarassed but not surprised at the
way the Christian community in general (and homeschoolers in
particular) overreacted to Y2K. I'm trying to strike the right
balance on bird flu. I don't think it will be the end of civilization as we know it. I do think it will be a disruption that could be on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. Here's the latest from Canada.com:
U.S. and Canadian governments are scrambling to bolster their bird flu
response plans, as the United Nation's chief Avian flu coordinator
issued a dire warning Wednesday: The deadly H5N1 virus could spread to
North America in the form of an outbreak in as little as six months,
potentially causing an epidemic.
With all the talk about millions of monkeys on this blog, this might be
a good time for me to reframe the way we think about mutations and
microevolution. Daryl has explained that the "million monkeys"
only work if they are aided by natural selection. Instead of
truly blind chance at work, the monkeys could be viewed as a kind of
"biological computer" that "finds" genes that can increase the rate of
survival. This "biological computer" is now hard at work "looking
for" a variation of HN51 (the bird flu virus) that can spread from one
human to another. When the "computer" finds that "solution,"
there will be a human outbreak.
Unfortunately for humans, the biological computer is quite
effective. Most of the people who study this stuff agree that
HN51 will make the jump to humans:
"Frankly, there will be a pandemic, sooner or later," said Dr. Nabarro,
who noted that bird flu experts have been "very challenged" by the
sudden spread of H5N1 over the past three months, which has moved
quickly from Asia to Eastern Europe, through Western Europe, and now
into the Middle East and Africa.
The Darwinists who run the public schools believe in "natural
selection" and "survival of the fittest." I'd suggest those
tax-funded dinosaurs start doing a little "intelligent design."
Hi! Thanks for the dropping by my page. You will be glad to hear that I am almost 80% into considering TOG. I've really love it the first time I read about it, but I want to be explore and see what others have to offer as well. But we'd like to get a hold of it first and browse through it before we take the plunge. My husband promise me to take us to a Homeschool Convention of some sort as soon as we get in MO. God Bless you too & your family. Tell your wife she did a GREAT job! You must be very proud of her.
Can I take your next to last sentence to mean that you don't believe in either survival of the fittest or in natural selection (which are really just two names for the same thing)? Even Behe would disagree with you there.
Edited by Somerschool on Mar. 10, 2006 at 11:15 AM
Daryl, I've typed and then deleted four snarky responses to that comment. Let me skip the snarky part and say what I really think.
I think life is a form of information. In my opinion, random variation, reproduction, and natural selection turn the biosphere into a "biological computer." This biological computer could not have produced the first self-replicator, of course. Whatever produced THAT original molecule is mind-bogglingly "smarter" than a million monkeys. But the computer we call the biosphere is better at what it does than all the medical labs the human race has produced to date.
