Well, I have to admit, there are quite a few words and concepts brought up here that I’ve never before heard. The biggest of which is abiogensis. If I’m understanding this concept correctly and in context, as Darwin’s Finch put it, it means “the building blocks of life arose from non-living matter.” However, at some point, a unicellular organism would have had to arise out of essentially nothing. Obviously, the building blocks are there. But this organism did not arise by any means curreently known to man. How is this different from spontaneous generation? I realize that we’re not talking about flies coming out of rotten meat, or maggots coming out of a corpse. Still, this sounds to me like “fully functional organisms” arising “from non-living matter.” As someone who is definately not a scientist, I request that the more science literate of the teeming millions explain.
To clarify (and possibly correct) my previous defintions:
Spontaneous generation refers to organisms arising from previously living material (as in the “maggots from meat” example). Abiogenesis refers to life (but not necessarily complete organisms) arising from non-living matter.
Special Creation, then, would qualify as an abiogenetic explanation (such as it is).
**
What you must realize is that, just as there is a continuum between living things, that continuum extends into what we would consider non-living as well. Life is a series of complex chemical reactions; therefore, it should not be surprising that at the simplest levels, the line between “living” and “non-living” becomes blurred. Take viruses, for example. Relatively simple, bioloigcally speaking, but still complex on a molecular level. Yet it is difficult to make a judgment as to whether they can be considered “alive” or not. DNA itself is non-living, yet composed of readily available chemical elements.
If we accept that this continuum exists (and I’m pretty sure that most bioloigsts / biochemists do), then the jump from “non-living” to “cell” is not nearly so great as it is imagined by creationists. While the details of each step, as it actually happened, may not be well known at this time, experiments have confirmed that they are, in fact, possible. As such, it is not necessary to posit “fully functional organisms” – even single-celled organisms – arising from non-living matter. Each point in the continuum, building upon the last, lies just slightly closer to “life” than the previous.
Here’s the first half of my rough draft of my abiogenesis mini-FAQ, which I think will answer your questions. Unfortunately I didn’t get to finish the really cool stuff yet (I have to dig up a nice paper on the early evolution of the genetic code and review it first.) Suffice it to say that there are patterns in the genetic code that give us clues as to how the modern code was built up from the earliest, most primitive code.
Let me also say that you’re envisioning abiogenesis incorrectly. No scientist argues that there was a pool of glop, and then blam it suddenly formed a complex, modern organism- no scientist claims that “a unicellular organism would have had to arise from essentially nothing.” As you’ll see below, abiogenesis was a complex, multi-step process from simple molecules through more and more complex systems until we reached what we would consider complete one-celled organisms.
BTW, if I might ask a few questions, Lord Ashtar:
-
Are you aware that you’re making a God of the Gaps argument?
-
Why, IYO, did God leave the earth sterile for so long before He seeded it with life?
-
Why do you reject common descent?
ABIOGENESIS MINI-FAQ
Creationists are fond of attacking the idea of abiogenesis. No matter how many times you tell them that abiogenesis is a separate issue from evolution, they throw it in the face of evolutionists, usually with some sneers about “if you can explain that, there’s a Nobel Prize waiting for you.” Frequently you hear them say that the question of the origin of life (and in particular the origin of the genetic code) is so difficult that mainstream scientific journals contain a “thundering silence” on the issue. Of course, this is all nonsense. Aside from the fact that the creationists are using a classic God-of-the-Gaps argument, there’s plenty of fascinating work being done on a variety of issues relating to abiogenesis, and I’ve written this FAQ to present some of this work to laymen.
This FAQ is not meant to be comprehensive. There are a large number of issues relating to abiogenesis, and I’m simply not familiar with them all. For example, many scientists are working on the question of what chemical conditions are necessary to produce the basic building blocks of life. In this FAQ I’m not going to answer the chemical questions, and instead I will try to address some of the informational questions. Moreover, I am only going to address the informational questions in broad outline, without detailing some of the debates over the precise details (if you’re curious, you can read the papers in the bibliography.) The real questions that creationists are demanding answers to are these: how did those building blocks organize themselves into the first living organism? If the genetic code is irreducibly complex, how could it evolve? I don’t expect my presentation of the answers to these questions to convince any creationists, but that’s not the point. All I want to do is to show that the questions aren’t so impossible as creationists would have us believe, and I hope to teach you some interesting stuff along the way.
The RNA world
In modern organisms, DNA stores genetic information which directs the synthesis of protein machines, which carry out the work of the cell by catalyzing chemical reactions (for example, digesting food, copying DNA, and so forth.) As first blush, this system is irreducibly complex: the DNA can’t do anything without proteins, and the cell doesn’t know how to make proteins without the information in DNA. How could such a system evolve?
In 1986 Walter Gilbert suggested that the answer might lie with RNA. RNA is a DNA-like molecule that is heavily involved in the steps by which the information in DNA is used to make proteins. Gilbert suggested that at an early stage in the history of life, the machinery of life was entirely made of RNA, which served both to store information (like DNA) and to do work (like proteins.) Later, the RNA lifeforms evolved the ability to use DNA for information storage and proteins for catalysis. This idea was vindicated when Thomas Cech and Sidney Altman discovered that RNA molecules can, in fact, catalyze reactions just like proteins can. For this work, they won the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (See? The creationists were right- there really are Nobel prizes available for scientists who work on abiogenesis!)
RNA is, as I said, used heavily in protein synthesis. First, the information in the DNA is copied to RNA. This “messenger RNA” is then sent to the RNA-rich ribosome, which assembles amino acids into the protein whose sequence is encoded in the messenger RNA. The ribosome grabs onto the amino acids by RNA handles called “transfer RNA.” (For a fuller explanation, see my molecular genetics FAQ xxx.) The parts of the ribosome that are directly involved in the chemical reactions that link the amino acids together are made of RNA, and the RNA forms a “catalytic triad” that mimics the triad found in digestive enzymes that catalyze similar reactions. The proteins in the ribosome have been compared to “mortar” that holds the RNA “bricks” together: the RNA does the real work, and the proteins just make the RNA more stable. In fact, the ribosome retains much of its ability to synthesise proteins even if you strip away all the ribosomal proteins, leaving behind pure RNA. The fact that the protein-synthesizing machinery is so heavily built of RNA lends support to the idea that RNA-based lifeforms gradually gained the ability to manipulate amino acids and link them together to make proteins. Moreover, other “molecular fossils” of the RNA world can be found in our biochemistry. For example, our cells store energy in the form of ATP, which is one of the components of RNA. Other biomolecules have a “handle” of ribose, another component of RNA, which they use to interact with proteins.
How did these first, RNA-based lifeforms come to be? Ultimately, all one needs for life to begin is a molecule of RNA that can replicate itself, or a small number of RNAs (say, three or four) that form a self-replicating system. Once that RNA starts replicating, it can mutate, which means that it can evolve into more complicated RNA-replicating systems which contain more and more different RNAs with specialized functions. There’s nothing particularly inconceivable about the idea that the initial, self-replicating RNA could come to be. For example, suppose that if you made an RNA at random, there’s a one in a billion chance that the RNA will be able to self-replicate. If the primordial ocean contains (just for the sake of argument) a trillion random RNA molecules, then a thousand of them will be able to self-replicate! Of course, in reality less than one in a billion RNA molecules will have that ability. On the other hand, the number of random RNA molecules available might be quite large: if you hold up a pin against the background of the night sky, the head of that pin blots out thousands of galaxies, each containing trillions of stars. (Mind you, my estimate of “thousands” is probably far too conservative.) How many planets are there on which the conditions are right for forming random RNA molecules? Scientists are currently trying to put more specific numbers on this argument. First, they are trying to find an RNA molecule that can replicate itself (RNA molecules have already been found which can replicate other RNA’s.) Once they do this, they will be able to determine which parts of the RNA are critical to its function, and thus they can calculate what percentage of random RNA molecules will have the same function. Secondly, scientists are trying to find out roughly how many planets have the right conditions for these processes to take place.
Amino acids enter the scene
How did this RNA world gain the ability to synthesise proteins? It is thought that the first interactions between RNA and amino acids came about when RNA enzymes (or “ribozymes”) evolved the ability to use amino acids as cofactors. Cofactors are molecules that proteins use to enhance their chemical abilities. For example, hemoglobin uses a heme cofactor to bind oxygen more efficiently than amino acids alone could. In an RNA world, the diverse chemical functionalities of amino acids would make amino acids attractive cofactors. Ribozymes thus evolved which had the ability to bind to amino acids and use them in chemical reactions. (Even today, some ribozymes still use amino acids as cofactors.)
However, the loops of RNA which are needed for a ribozyme to recognize and bind a particular amino acid are complicated, and it’s inefficient for each ribozyme to have to independently evolve such structures. On the other hand, it’s easy for one RNA loop to recognize another. The ribozyme lifeforms thus evolved a system by which some ribozymes would recognize particular amino acids and attach themselves as “handles” to individual amino acid molecules. Other ribozymes could then simply evolve a short stretch of sequence that would bind to the handle, and they would thereby be able to snag an amino acid molecule for use as a cofactor. These ribozyme handles ultimately evolved into the transfer RNAs which serve as handles for amino acids during protein synthesis.
(I should mention that there are a number of differing opinions on the details of this step. Some scientists follow the model I describe above, whereas others argue that instead of binding individual amino acids, the ribozyme handles bound chains composed of one type of amino acid repeated over and over. Some scientists also believe that the association of particular amino acids with particular handles- and therefore with particular codons in the modern genetic code- is entirely arbitrary, whereas others believe that the codon assignments are the result of a physical affinity between the particular amino acid and an RNA handle containing its anticodon. Currently, experiments are underway to determine which of these views is correct. Again, if you want more details, see the papers in the bibliography.)
Over time, ribozymes evolved which could use two or more amino acid cofactors for the same reaction. As time went on, the RNA parts of the ribozymes started to shrink as they waned in importance, while more and more cofactors were added. Meanwhile, ribozymes evolved which could link these amino acids into short chains, perhaps to enhance the stability of the enzyme. Ultimately, most ribozymes became nothing more than recognition sequences that could grab onto the appropriate RNA handles and bring together the right combination of amino acids for a job; these ribozymes became our modern messenger RNA. The handles became transfer RNA, while the ribozymes that linked the amino acids together became ribosomes.
As others have said, the dividing line is hazy. All that is needed is for a group of “building blocks” to undergo a mutation that resulted in the ability to make copies of the group. From that and the evolutionary process, all else would follow. I believe that “unicellular organisms” are though to be a relatively late development in the course of the existence of life.
And there are all sorts of things, like gravity, that arise by means that are currently unknown to man.
'Life" is actually another one of those helplessly essentialist terms I’ve been going on about. Up till recently, “life” was a sort of “know it when I see it” quality: and it was simply assumed that there was a clear essential bright line… somewhere in there. But it just isn’t good enough anymore.
Ben, I have to commend you on your FAQ. That was more complete than what was in my college text. Now…
1.) I’m may be making this argument, but I’m not sure because I’ve never heard of it before. Can you explain to me what this is?
2.) Well, I always assumed that He was working in his own time. While Genesis may say that it was only a day or two before He started creating life, even when I was little I never put much stock in that. I’ve always heard that time is a creation of man, and therefore does not apply to God. I guess He just took His sweet time.
3.) I don’t reject common descent, at least as far as everything except humans go. While I don’t put a lot of stock in the whole Genesis story (believing it to be more of a myth about morals than anything else), there are a few things that I take from it and believe. For example, all the animals were simply said to be created. Man’s creation was handled a little differently. It specifically says that man was created from the dust of the ground in God’s image. To me, this says that man did not descend from the same ancestor that apes or chimpanzees did (nitpick if you wish, I don’t know which primates are said to have the same ancestors as humans).
**
Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
**
GotG is the argument that since science can’t explain a phenomenon, then that phenomenon must be miraculous. For example, “Science can’t explain abiogenesis, so creationism must be true,” or, in the days before electricity was discovered, “science can’t explain lightning, so it must be thunderbolts thrown by God.”
**
But according to what you’ve said, time is a creation of man, but it was passing before humans were created.
In any event, you seem to be basically believing whatever you please, without regard to evidence. A young earth doesn’t strike you right- so you believe the earth is old. Abiogenesis doesn’t strike you right- so you believe it. While I generally don’t like the term “salad bar Christianity,” I’m not sure I understand your grounds for making these choices, beyond just some sort of gut instinct or sense of comfort.
My apologies for assuming that you rejected common descent. But it seems to me like you want to have your cake and eat it too. On the one hand, you have chosen to believe certain things regardless of the evidence. To make your beliefs seem respectable, you’ve tried to provide a scientific veneer whenever possible. So you say on the one hand that it’s scientifically impossible for life to come from nonlife, but on the other hand a mountain of evidence won’t sway you on the issue of human ancestry.
It’s like the old lawyer joke:
If the facts are against you, argue the law.
If the law is against you, argue the facts.
If the facts and the law are against you, baffle them with bullshit.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it sounds like you have a set of beliefs you’re comfortable with, and if you think science backs you up, you argue science (even though on the two occasions you’ve done that thus far, it’s turned out that you seriously misunderstood the issues involved.) If science doesn’t back you up, you believe on the basis of faith.
From an earlier post:
**
If you think the generalization is unfair, then I’d like to repeat my earlier challenge. Can you point to an honest creationist website, or (for that matter) to an honest creationist pundit?
It’s probably worth pointing out that your problems with abiogenesis have nothing to do with the common descent of humans. Everyone concedes that how life arose from non-life is very murky. But there is no question that human beings are hominids (that is, we share a common ancestor with extinct related forms, from Neandertals to Homo erectus to Australopithecines); that human beings are hominoids (that is, we share an earlier common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos and gorillas); that we are primates (that is, we have a still-earlier common ancestor with all the other apes, with monkeys, and with lemurs and so forth); that we are mammals (we are related to tigers and elephants and whales); all the way to at the very least eukaryotes–we are relatives of butterflies and jellyfish and redwoods and amoebas–and really very likely we are relatives of all living things on Earth, including bacteria and those weird critters which live in thermal vents. All of that’s about as well-established as the periodic table of the elements; denying it on purely religious grounds–“faith”–is not going to get you any reaction but amused politeness in educated circles; claiming there is some scientific basis for your denial is going to cause reactions from irritation to indignation.
If there is no question about this at all, then why is there a creationist camp at all?
I suggest that taxonomy is simply man attempting to put things in some kind of order so that he can better understand it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we are related to other animals which seem similar to us.
Suppose I take two objects, both are black cubes, with similar dimensions, and both are smooth in texture. From a taxonomist’s point of view, they must be made of the same material, or at least related materials, no? They are both the same color, shape, and texture. Now, suppose I tell you that one of them is made of black obsidian, and the other is made of wood which has been singed on the outside so as to be black. Obviously, they are not made of similar, or even remotely related materials. But at first glance they would appear to be so similar that they must be related.
On a totally unrelated topic, let me offer another argument that has wandered through my mind when pondering this issue. Science, in my mind anyway, has always seemed to have the attitude that we currently know everything there is to know on a certain subject. For example, I saw in another thread where two people were discussing fluctuations on the subatomic level. One poster was claiming that according to some randomness theory (don’t remember the name of the post, so I can’t find it to link to it here, and I also don’t remember the name of the theory being discussed, but I believe that point to be moot) these fluctuations happen for NO REASON. Another poster suggested that maybe we just didn’t yet know or understand the reasons for these fluctuations. The first poster said, nonsense. The theory says that they have no cause, therefore they have no cause. Period.
This has been my experience with a lot of science (not all, obviously). “We know now all that we need to know.” Going back to spontaneous generation, wasn’t it commonly accepted fact until Louis Pasteur proved it wrong that life sprang up from rotten meat and corpses? At that point, we knew everything there was to know. It was so obvious. I mean, you can see the maggots appear in the rotten meat. This theory has since been proven to be wrong.
Now, evolution has seemingly replaced spontaneous generation as the new theory on where life comes from. Isn’t it possible that it could also be proven wrong, despite all the evidence we now have?
Good question. Ignorance would be my first guess. An irrational clinging to faith out of fear for one’s soul would be another. Whatever the reason, it isn’t based in any scientific understanding.
I would suggest that you know misunderstand the methods of systematics as much as you do evolution.
**
No.
**
Taxonomy may have initially been based solely on physical similarities (the so-called “gradistic” taxonomies of Linnaeus, for example). Such is not the case now.
Regardless, you should realize that your analogy is flawed for a number reasons, not the least of which is the fact that you cannot determine relationships with only two objects. You need a third one to compare them to. If you have two cubes and a sphere, you can certainly claim that the two cubes, regardless of material, can be grouped together (or, you could claim that the sphere and one of the cubes, if composed of the same material, should be grouped together instead). However, no one would reasonably make any claims regarding relationships of these objects since they exist in isolation. Organisms do not. Without a historical framework, supposed relationships are meaningless.
**
Nonsense. No scientist would claim that what we know is all there is to know about anything.
**
No, biogenesis has replaced spontaneous generation. Evolution deals with how organisms change through time. How they came into being in the first place is largely irrelevant to the mechanisms which drive subsequent change.
Lord Ashtar, do you believe that DNA tests are a valid method of determining paternity? If so, then why do you reject them when they are applied to questions of the ancestry of the human race?
And I’m still waiting for you to name even a single prominent creationist website which is honest… I mean, the real reason for this thread is that you said that we’re “blacklisting” creationists just because of a few people like Jack Chick. We’d be happy to prove to you that all the leaders of modern creationism are dishonest, but it would be a lot easier if you named one or two whom you consider to be honest. It saves us from exhaustively going down the whole list and showing you their dishonesty one by one, you see.
Your argument indicates that you think that taxonomy has merely been a classification based on gross, outward appearances with no further investigation. I’m not a biologist, or taxonomist or anything like it, but I know better than this.
Before you pass judgement on a field you should study up on it. Taxonomists have long looked carefully at the details of the biology and morphology, including internal morphology, to build their classification system. And the classifications of relatedness that come to us from the past don’t really need all that much rearrangement when similar relationship trees are constructed using DNA and detailed biochemical processes among the various forms of life.
For example, cytochrome c is an enzyme that is involved with the transport of electrons for various biochemical reactions. An evolutionary family tree can be constructed using the variations in cytochrome c among various differe life forms that agrees well wil the evolutionary family tree that was constructed from the fossil record. See Science and Earth History by Aurthur N. Strahler for details.
Your method is to state, as you did in this post, that a particular scientific finding is based on something that you define to suit your purposes, as you did with taxonomy. You then propound a simple analogy that sounds right to laymen but is flawed, as was pointed out to you by Darwin’s Finch. Unfortunately, the correction is based on a large background in science that most people don’t possess. So when a scientist who really knows the field tries to correct the simple statement, it takes a long time and a lot of words to bring the audience to a level where any of the answer will make sense. To a lay audience this looks like evasion and gobbldygook.
Even my answer is quite long and involved, and I am far from a specialist in this field, being more of a diletante in biology.
Two questions:
What’s a “panspermist”?
Aren’t virii both alive and not alive, or something like that?
Panspermia is the theory that beginnings of life on this planet actually came from another planet. Sort of like an interplanetary extension of island colonization. You can read about some of the various theories here.
A “panspermist”, then, is one who accepts panspermia as an explanation for the beginnings of life on earth.
**
There’s a bit of a debate there. Which, really, underscores the whole point about the continuum between life and non-life. When you get close to the boundary, as viruses are, it becomes difficult to decide where they lie.
**
Bear in mind that Lord Ashtar believes in common descent for everything but humans. I must admit, though, that it seems like he’s using a double standard.
Lord Ashtar, could you explain to us why you don’t reject common descent for non-human organisms using the black cube argument?
-Ben
So, although the “animals were simply said to be created,” at the same time you think they could have a common descent?
So the “dust of the ground” gave humans DNA that is closer to the DNA of independently created chimpanzees than the chimps’ DNA it is to that of many other apes that look a lot more like them than we do.
At first blush you have a point. Superficial observation does account for scientific errors. What you are missing in your example is the next step scientifically. Scientists tear those blocks apart and see what they are made of. Extending your example into the real world, sometimes this takes years or generations. Science does not stop trying to peel back each succeeding layer of the onion.
Nobody is claiming science has the “right” answers. Rather, people are claiming science has the “better” answers. This is a subtle but important difference. The better answers science provide improve over time. This contrasts with the steady state philosophy of creationism which efforts to cram each succeeding round peg into the existing square hole.
I hope that made some sense. I am just a simple caveman lawyer.
I can buy that you prove ancestry when you are only one generation removed. However, I have difficulty believing that you can go back as far as 1,000 or more generations. Perhaps it is because I am not scientifically minded (as has been proven more than once in this thread). There are a lot of things I don’t understand about science. Sure, I have a basic understanding of some of it, probably stemming from the Biology 101 class I just took a few weeks ago.
If I come across ignorant, please do not think ill of me. I am here to hear new information that has not yet been given to me. Also, I request that you forgive my difficulty in accurately articulating my ideas. I may have been on this website for a while, but I’m still a newbie in participating in the arguments.
I swear I’m not ignoring you, Ben. Life has been rather hectic for me lately. I do not have a website, but I have a book you might find interesting. It is called “Darwin’s Black Box: A Biochemical Challenge to Evolution” by Michael J. Behe. He is not a creationist, nor does he believe in evolution. If I remember correctly (been a while since I read the book) he believes that the hand of God guided evolution. While I didn’t understand much of the book, as some of it got very in depth scientifically, it gave me some new ideas and suggested to me that perhaps both sides have something to offer to the argument.
A gross comparison might be to compare each camp to the Republicans and the Democrats (doesn’t matter which is which, just follow me here). I believe that both political parties have a few things right, and each has more than a few things wrong. But there are other parties out there that have some good ideas, too. They are just so small that they don’t get federal funding so their ideas don’t get out there as much as they should. So you could say that I’m in one of those small parties as far as the origin of life goes (just not the communists, those guys are nuts 
). Since I do believe that God had something to do with it, I call myself a creationist, just to keep it simple, the same way I call myself a Republican, even though most of those people give me the creeps.
Behe and his book have been the subject of numerous posts on SDMB. The gist of his position is “If I, Michael J. Behe, can’t think of a way to reduce the complexity of a biological trait then it must be irreducibly complex and requires a supernatural explanation.” This site has several reviews of his book.
The logical flaw of irreducible complexity is the imposition of intent on the process of evolution. Species do not intend to evolve. Individuals in a species may intend to survive, and may intend to procreate, or they may lack intent in any possible aspect. Evolution is the consequence of the dying of the many, and the survival of the few.
An ear may seem to be irreducibly complex, if you look at the development of species as an attempt to develop hearing. But it is not true that it had to work as an ear before it could have influenced the rate of survival for an earlier species. All it had to do was to cause some more primitive species to have a slightly better chance of finding food, or danger. It might well not have the necessary structure to resolve sounds into frequencies, or been binaural for directionality.
A wing is not irreducibly complex if you consider that it might have benefited its earlier species by some other means than imparting the ability to fly. Perhaps flaps beneath the armpits in some species were cooling mechanisms. As they varied in size and extent among different species, they also became useful in displays of fitness during courting. Among fast running species they could have become useful in non flying agility, allowing the individual to use air braking for more rapid turning and stopping.
Creationism falls prey to this general class of philosophical error very often. Because their own philosophy includes intelligent, and willful planning for a predetermined outcome, they judge the facts they observe with an assumption of the nature of evolution as “progress” toward a “goal” of developing into a superior being, particularly man. Man is not the pinnacle of evolution. Man is simply the currently most intelligent species. Intelligence is an astoundingly facile survival tool. Because of it Man can survive in environments more varied than any other creature as complex as he is. But there was no progenitor species that intended to evolve into Man.
Intelligence was an accident. It may be that there was some other benefit in the increase in tissue mass in the brain of an earlier hominid. What that benefit was may no longer exist. The environment in which it proved beneficial may no longer exist. But the crowding and consequent folding of the cortex of the brain ended up developing into an additional benefit. The brain became able to process stimuli, and store, and retrieve patterns much more reliably than less complex brains. That changed behavior, and those changes, in turn, affected the survival of the species.
Interestingly, it turns out that the brain/language conundrum often brought up as a chicken and egg argument is not the barrier that some think to the development of language among early humans. The complexity of brains is directly affected by language during early development of individuals. It is true for dogs, birds, and humans. If you expose them to systematized sound patterns, related to environmental variations, their brains become more complex. If you talk to you baby, the baby learns to talk, and becomes more intelligent as a result.
Now consider that none of this is incompatible with belief in God, including the fact that God created all things. Of course it is incompatible with the religious view that Church Authority is the sole and paramount source of understanding. If this were an on topic post, I might examine that more fully. Since you have hijacked your own thread far more fully than I have, I will simply leave it there.
Tris
“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.” ~ Hypatia of Alexandria ~