On gut bacteria and stupid people

[zephyrus4096]

So a few weeks ago, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a paper by Richard Lenski, documenting his past twenty years of work with E. coli. Lenski has twelve strains of E. coli which he has been passively maintaining and documenting, feeding them on a bare minimum of food, and tracking how the bug evolves over time under

Comments

[hitokori]

I apologize on behalf of my religion. Not all of us are that thick-skulled, as hard as that can be to believe sometimes.

[silverfyre]

Interesting. I think, on that extreme end, there's just no convincing some people, they just don't listen. And they probably feel the same way about people who aren't like them, so it's kind of like a discussion that never goes anywhere. Although, it may be some consolation that in my anthro class, we talked about how over time, religion became less popular and science and atheism became more popular. And I took that to mean that over time, we were becoming a more science and reason-inclined society. But I think it might actually lead to us becoming a more divisive society as people in the middle-ground stop being religious at all, and eventually people will end up with only the choices of atheism and nutheads.

[zephyrus4096]

Yeah, I agree. More and more scientists (me included) are starting to feel, not simply ambivalent about, but actively disliking and speaking out against religion, mainly as a result of church groups like Schlafly's raging and rallying about persecution and America's increasingly atheistic society.
It's true that religion is becoming less popular, but that's causing a lot of religious ones to go up in arms, in school boards and state senates across the country, which makes scientists more angry and religiously intolerant, which only feeds the fire of the religious nutjobs.

It's a nasty cycle

[silverfyre]

Totally. That's why I've been making sure to stay out of it- I'm not religious but I'm not anti-religious, either. Still, I'm not too much a fan of a solution that's basically apathy. Siiiigh. We need better ideas. >_

[firefly_galaxy]

So, you're saying E coli is a creature?!?! *terror*