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The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for GodThere is a kind of taxonomic evolutionary tree that has been painstakingly developed over a century or more. But in recent times it is possible to look for chemical fossils-to examine the biochemistry of organisms that are alive today-and we are even just beginning to know something about the biochemistry of organisms that are extinct, because some of their organic matter can nevertheless be recovered. And here there is a remarkable correlation between what the anatomists say and the molecular biologists say. So the bone structure of chimpanzees and humans is startlingly similar. And then you look at their hemoglobin molecules, and they are startlingly similar. There's only one amino acid difference out of hundreds between the hemoglobins of chimps and humans. In fact when you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. There are not many different kinds; there's only one kind. It uses about fifty fundamental biological building blocks, organic molecules. (By the way, when I use the word "organic," there is no necessary implication of biological origin ...» |
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