Re: [asa] RE: (the answer) fun- an evolution riddle

Yes, McGrath makes some good points against Dawkins. The problem for
Dawkins is two-fold. First, as Dawkins extends the definition of
evolution into social behavior the analogy with biological evolution
becomes more and more tenuous and at some stage becomes useless. Second,
the influence of evolution on behavior is attenuated and becomes just
noise compared with the effects of other factors.
Don

David Opderbeck wrote:
> Hmmm, well, even many TE's reject the concept of memes (see Alister
> McGrath, "Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life"), as do
> many other ordinary scientists who find the concept unscientific.
>
> David W. Opderbeck
> Associate Professor of Law
> Seton Hall University Law School
> Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Dehler, Bernie
> <bernie.dehler@intel.com <mailto:bernie.dehler@intel.com>> wrote:
>
> Yup- David got the final piece of the puzzle- memes. This was my
> answer to the question posed to me in the dream:
>
> 1. Big bang made stars
> 2. Stars explode and make other chemicals
> 3. These new chemicals coagulate and form planets
> 4. Biological life emerges on planet Earth
> 5. Life biologically evolves- from very simple to pigs and humans,
> making
> pigs and human biologically related (cousins of some sort). This
> evolution happens in genes.
> 6. Humans invent things using evolution (memes)- resulting in a VW
> bug (or
> any other great human work, such as building a cathedral, computer,
> jewelry, etc.)
>
> To answer this, you have to know two things:
>
> 1. Evolution applies to more than just biology. something not
> commonly known. It is a grand, overarching, theory. There is
> also cosmological evolution, for example, explaining how complex
> planets evolved from stars. Many people think evolution is just
> limited to biology.
>
> 2. The concept of meme's, as thoughts of humans evolve, resulting
> in ever more complex systems (cars, computers, financial systems,
> etc.).
>
> Both of these points are something that YEC's would likely
> rebuke. They say the VW is evidence of "intelligent design" and
> the same should therefore apply to more complex systems such as
> microbiological machines. However, this test question I just gave
> may point out the opposite- just as biological systems arise
> through evolution, so do cars (or watches- maybe that would be a
> better picture since it would relate to Paley's argument). In
> this way, evolution just swallowed-up the intelligent design
> hypothesis.
>
> .Bernie
>
>

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Received on Sun Jan 11 16:45:18 2009