I'm not into intelligent design either, I think the mechanism behind life is not an issue for science. When Freud published his theories on the human mind, many people believed a new science had been born: psychology. Now, two centuries later, psychology is not taken seriously by most people, and is often the subject of jokes by stand-up comedians. Psychiatry fares a bit better, because it doesn't depend on the truth of its models to gain acceptance.

The problem with psychology is that, besides being extremely complex, the subject is too close to people's ordinary experience. After all, we all have a mind and we know a lot about it, even if we can't understand it. The term psychobabble has come to represent the huge gap between fictitious models and the truth about a subject as people experience it.

The nitty-gritty of cells and organic chemistry is of course beyond our ordinary experience, but the mechanisms of reproduction and survival are well known by anyone. Biologists will always have a hard time talking about their theories to ordinary folks, because ordinary folks see all this talk of genes and DNA for what it really is: bio-babble. Stuff that is neither true nor false as much as it is completely irrelevant.

• Guess I wasted all that time in Med School - yanniru - November 4, 2003 - 00:39 UTC
  • I thought you went to physics school - aurino_ - November 4, 2003 - 14:19 UTC
    • I agree - yanniru - November 4, 2003 - 19:00 UTC
    • Regarding the physics school - yanniru - November 4, 2003 - 19:40 UTC
      • My turn now - aurino_ - November 5, 2003 - 18:33 UTC
        • I agree with how you put it this time - yanniru - November 5, 2003 - 19:48 UTC
          • Good to hear that - aurino_ - November 6, 2003 - 14:07 UTC
            • Aurino claims DNA is "raw material" - carefuluniverse - November 6, 2003 - 16:41 UTC
        • Aurino needs to take courses in DNA biology - carefuluniverse - November 6, 2003 - 04:07 UTC
          • sounds like teen spirit - carefuluniverse - November 6, 2003 - 04:09 UTC