"Essay question: What defines "existing in nature" - - what does it take for something to be synthetic? If you use two rocks to chip out an arrowhead, is that synthetic? What about polyethylene? (Isn't it sort of made through products that do (pre-)exist in nature?)" (taken from found_drama )
What a great point. I mean, there are so many people into organic, natural foods these days, especially in the Pacific NW. But why do people think that natural means better? I find myself scratching my head a lot at ads and things for sale in the grocery store. Why pay so much more for natural vitamin C than the synthetic stuff? Do you know the difference? NADA! Ascorbic acid is ascorbic acid.
And this whole "raw foods" thing: how do you think vegetation is able to stay around with hungry animals on the prowl? Natural toxins! Many legumes (kidney beans, fava beans, soy beans) contain natural stuff that could kill you if you didn't cook them first! In the lab, we use soybean trypsin inhibitors to keep the proteins we are working with from being broken down by proteases (laymen: trypsin breaks bonds between certain amino acids in proteins; proteases: proteins that are made to break other proteins down when a cell dies). If you ate soybeans without cooking them, these inhibitors would keep your body from digesting protein that you ate. Or fruits such as cherries, apricots, peaches, apples...The reason you aren't to eat the pits/seeds is because you will get a dose of cyanide, which can be lethal after eating a surprisingly few number of pits.
Many synthetic drugs are actually better than the natural version, because it is chemically modified to be specific to what your body needs with fewer side effects. Or it might give you a longer effect so you don't have to take it so often.
Let's stop jumping on the overcrowded bandwagon, and start thinking.
About Me
- RunningWheel
- Love the outdoors, and trying new things. Working my way through my PhD in a scientific field. Can be very opinionated when it comes to science, but of course that is my baby! RunningWheel is from my interest in racing cyclocross on a unicycle...because of the mud, racers end up running parts of it.
3 comments:
nice response - - didn't touch on the arrowhead though ;-P
it's a good though question, i thought - - esp. when you start weighing in evolution and stuff like that... extrapolating from the original question: "is natural selection at work in GMOs?" - - questions along those lines
Reminder: the idea behind evolution is that it occurs without outside help. With GMOs (genetically modified organisms), scientists are engineering them to have certain traits. GMOs can affect natural selection (via microevolution, not to be confused with evolution of the species), but natural selection is not at work in GMOs. Scientists are picking which traits they want, but those aren't perpetuated because of "survival."
Oh, and another point (which may some day turn into a blog): people who knock the oil trade, think about this: Without oil, more than gas and plastics go out the window. A lot of prescription drugs, food ingredients, soaps, household products, and beauty supplies are made from chemicals pulled from crude oil. Methane, ethane, propane, butane are chemicals that are oxidized and manipulated into creating the complex carbon compounds found in everyday life.
"I wonder, though, if he believed that his own homosexual desires were sinful or not."
That was germane to the whole discourse...if it isn't sinful, why wouldn't he just try to marry a gay man? I don't have the transcript to quote from, but why would he consider remaining celibate or not marrying so important if he didn't believe it was a sin?
"So if the priest agreed with the Bible and felt that homosexuality was a sin, then I sure hope that he didn't think God set him up"
I don't believe God "sets us up", but we are born with a sinful nature. People I know who are gay report they have been that way since they can remember, age 7 or 8. He never reported feeling "set up" by God, though we are born flawed from the fall. And that is why...we all have a different sin or multitude of sins that we struggle with. The bible mentions many odious sins, and homosexuality is just one of them, up there with false witness, adultery, misusing God's name etc... and everyone is guilty of those in one way or another so, who will cast the first stone? Amazing so many are willing to do that.
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