Re: Mammalian eyes...

Steve Clark (ssclark@facstaff.wisc.edu)
Mon, 11 Nov 1996 10:20:29 -0600

Brian Harper quotes Steve Gould:
> Our textbooks like to illustrate evolution with examples of
> optimal design - nearly perfect mimicry of a dead leaf by a
> butterfly or of a poisonous species by a palatable relative.
> But ideal design is a lousy argument for evolution, for it
> mimics the postulated action of an omnipotent creator. Odd
> arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution
> - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a
> natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.
> No one understood this better than Darwin. Ernst Mayr has
> shown how Darwin, in defending evolution, consistently turned
> to organic parts and geographic distributions that make the
> least sense. Which brings me to the giant panda and its "thumb."
> -- Stephen J. Gould, 1980, _The Panda's Thumb_, W.W. Norton,
> New York, p.20.
>
>This is a statement against theistic evolution every bit as much
>as it is against special creation. How would you answer Gould?
>

Why is this a statement against TE? It seems perfectly compatible with the
kind of evolutionary creation espoused by TEs.

Steve
____________________________________________________________
Steven S. Clark, Ph.D . Phone: 608/263-9137
Associate Professor FAX: 608/263-4226
Dept. of Human Oncology and Email: ssclark@facstaff.wisc.edu
UW Comprehensive Cancer Center
CSC K4-432
600 Highland Ave.
Madison, WI 53792

"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to
search out a matter." Proverbs
____________________________________________________________