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Re: Grand Revelations

Hi,

> Just to cross threads a bit here wanted to point out that Moby's song "We 
> are Made of Stars" is (according to him) based on the idea that we (that is 
> humanoids) are all an end products of stellar explosions, thus we are 
> essentially constituted of star material.  Pretty amazing concept, eh, and 
> if true would certainly disprove there being any sharp dichotomy between 
> stellar and biological evolution?

It's not just humans!  It's *anything* made of elements heavier than Lithium.
The reason I'm trying to keep the topics separate is that some people get
bogged down in issues about the initial construction of self-replicating
molecules, speciation, beneficial mutation... stuff like that.  The fact that
stars burn Hydrogen into Helium, Helium into Carbon, Carbon into...  etc.,
etc. up to iron, is all based on basic nuclear physics: no complicated
probability arguments, no molecular chemistry, no messy biology.  (Says the
physicist.  ;-) Now the biologists can rag on me.  :-)) So I just wanted to
keep the topic simple.  I'm just talking about atoms.  The reason I'm doing
that is that there really is no doubt left about this.  We see the sun burning
elements, we see stars shedding their material either through planetary nebulae
or supernovae, and we see new stars and planets coalescing out of gas clouds.
Older star systems tend to have fewer of the heavy elements (to an astronomer,
anything heavier than helium is a heavy element), since they haven't had time
to form yet.  Atoms heavier than iron get formed in the massive pressures of
supernova explosions and we see that, too.

None of which demands a "cosmic accident", which is why I was challenging what
I perceived as a suggestion that people of faith can't accept the conclusions
to which scientific inquiry leads us.  By talking of "sides" and a "debate", it
also implies that scientific inquiry leads to a rejection of spiritual faith.
As a scientist *and* a person of faith, I find that viewpoint saddening,
because either way it seems like a willful self-amputation of a huge part of
what makes us human.

And I don't think Zayne has posted again on this thread, so I will stop here,
as well.  Back to music (the music of the Spheres?  Okay, that's really
stretching it.  :-)).

See ya,
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                 http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"Poppa... The more you talk, the more I don't hit the ball!" - Maddy Hordinski

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