Re: Neo Darwinism
Susan B (susan-brassfield@ou.edu)
Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:02:25 -0500 (CDT)At 05:58 PM 10/11/99 +0000, you wrote:
>At 09:46 AM 10/11/1999 -0600, Susan Brassfield wrote:
>>Purpose is a religious issue. Johnson's rhetoric to one side, science does
>>not and cannot address religious issues. Evolution does not *seem* to have
>>a purpose. It appears to be completely opportunistic. If there is a purpose
>>of some kind, science cannot detect or measure it and to demand that
>>evolutionary biologists attempt to do the impossible is a waste of your and
>>their time.
>
>Susan, I am going to chide you on having your cake and eating it too. If
>science is unable to measure purpose, how is it that you are able to
>measure it and announce that evolution does not seem to have a purpose. By
>making that statment you seem to imply that you have found a way to measure
>purpose and its quantity is very low! Wouldn't you be better off to say, "I
>don't think it has a purpose"?
>>
>glenn
I thought I wrote "Evolution does not *seem* to have a purpose." Personally,
I don't think it has a purpose. I think life, like beauty, is its own excuse
for being. Science can't make a comment like that. For science purpose is
invisible. Saying "I can't tell if it's there or not" is not quite the same
thing as saying "its quantity is very low."
Susan
--------
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--Martin Luther King, Jr.
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