Re: 'Abdu'l-Bahá and evolution


"Douglas McAdam" <douglasmcadam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:15c72ab0c08de9711bb21704f3124d63@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>>
> Is it possible we also share an ancestry with minerals, plants etc.?
>

I think the prevailing view amongst people working in the area is that we
certainly share common ancestry with plants but that the phrase 'common
ancestry' does not really have meaning applied to minerals.

Another way of looking at it is that we still are minerals (or at least
inanimate compounds as 'mineral' is often used to refer to inorganic
chemistry) in the sense that our bodies are collections of atoms just like
anything else. We still are plants in the sense that a great deal of our
basic chemistry is the same as that of plants. We certainly still are animals
even in common usage. In this sense evolution did not move us from one
kingdom to another but added the qualities (such as movement) which are
commonly taken to indicate the boundaries of kingdoms (though one would
caution that these 'kingdoms' do not have precise boundaries).
A humbling thought is that there is a lot of agreement that the dominant life
forms on Earth are and always have been the unicellular kingdoms. The entire
multicellular menagerie can be seen as a recent and small bulge on one branch
of the great unicellular bush.



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Relevant Pages

  • Common ancestry (Was: Abdul-Bahá and evolution)
    ... I'm not sure what you mean by a shared ancestry with minerals, ... earth, including plants. ... I'm not making any judgement about genetic engineering, ...
    (soc.religion.bahai)
  • Good, natural, organic soil? Testing?
    ... ward off parasitic organisms. ... plants were more subject to direct attack than the plants that were ... really laid the problems facing American nutrition on the line. ... contain enough of certain minerals are starving us - no matter how much ...
    (rec.gardens.edible)
  • Re: Good, natural, organic soil? Testing?
    ... > ward off parasitic organisms. ... > plants were more subject to direct attack than the plants that were ... > really laid the problems facing American nutrition on the line. ... > contain enough of certain minerals are starving us - no matter how much ...
    (rec.gardens.edible)
  • Re: drinking reverse osmosis water
    ... Plants don't create minerals. ... minerals are not in the soil, they won't be in the food plant. ... grow well in "mineral depleted soil," so it's not a big problem. ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)