Word: life
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Gaia's critics have by no means been silenced. Some dispute the degree to which life-forms stabilize the atmosphere and temper the climate. Others contend that the emergence of oxygen in earth's atmosphere contradicts Gaia because it made the air poisonous for anaerobic creatures of primordial times. Evolutionary scholar Richard Dawkins argues that earth cannot be considered an organism because it does not reproduce. Gaian proponents respond that the increase of oxygen in the atmosphere was slow enough to allow the mix of life- forms to adjust, and physician-author Lewis Thomas answers Dawkins by coyly suggesting that...
...theologians. To some, Gaia's appeal is that it promises to end the long estrangement of Western science and religion. Even if the biosphere regulates the planet by feedback, Gaia still integrates living things and inanimate forces into a unified system, allowing both science and religion to look at life as something more than a mere accident. Says James Parks Morton, dean of New York City's St. John the Divine Episcopal Cathedral and a leading religious advocate of Gaia's: "The very nature of this hypothesis shows that we are now at a new moment when scientific and religious...
...many as 30% of them have attempted suicide (compared with 11% of straight adolescents), according to director Joyce Hunter. Some students have suffered humiliating sexual contacts in gay bars and on the sordid streets of Times Square. They know that although society has grown more tolerant of divergent life-styles, homosexuals still endure widespread hostility and a marked threat of AIDS and violence. Some young homosexuals go to enormous lengths to deny their sexuality. Teenage lesbians have been known to become pregnant in order to prove they are "normal...
...long ago, Christians who were homosexual devoted much of their energy to cloaking that fact. Today not only have many of them come out of the closet, but they are also staging rallies, disrupting worship services and aggressively demanding church endorsement of their life-styles. For gay liberationists, nothing would better epitomize moral acceptance than for the churches to ordain open, practicing homosexuals as clergy. The result is a bitterly fought battle over the acceptance of gay ministers now being waged in both the Roman Catholic Church and mainline Protestant groups...
...concluded that 20% of the nation's Catholic clergy are gay, half of those sexually active. Sipe also estimates that 4% of priests are sexually attracted to adolescents and an additional 2% to children under 13. Responding last month, David Brinkmoeller, director of the U.S. bishops' secretariat on priestly life, questioned the validity of the figures...