Piotr wrote: ". . .the ghost of Eve goes marching
on"
It seems like things we throw out in the garbage
can as myths sometimes quickly come back through the front door as
science.
We declare that we have grown out of
children's stories like Adam & Eve, but soon after that we discover
Mitochondrial Eve and seem grateful for her existence.
Another example. Scientists used to declare that
there is no creator in heaven, but recently some of them say that Earth may have
been seeded with life from someone or something "up there'' in space. One of
these believers is Francis Crick, Nobel Prize laureate, co-discoverer of the DNA
helix. He believes that Earth was deliberately seeded with life from some other
civilisation in space. He calls this hypothesis "directed panspermia". Wasn't it
Lamarck (19th century biologist) who said, when he was asked why he didn't
mention god in his books: "I have no need for that hypothesis." Crick apparently
needs this hypothesis. Note that Crick's hypothesis doesn't
explain the origin of life: it just moves the problem of the origin of life to
another, unknown planet. His theory does something else: it gives us some kind
of "parents" up there, in space. Who knows, perhaps they're still looking down
on us now and then, with affection in their eyes...
Hakan