Hi Cliff,
I've been reading your posts with interest. Although we find ourselves on
opposite sides of the ID debate, we seem to wonder about the same things.
You say you are prejudiced toward naturalistic explanations. I am prejudiced
toward explanations I can understand, and while I seem unable to achieve any
understanding of god, I can think of the design itself as being what some
people might think of as god. (I recently read Fred Hoyle's "The Intelligent
Universe".)
Agnostics are rare. Most people are either theists or atheists. At the
moment I find atheists more dogmatic and intolerant than theists. Like the
people who had to start accepting an invisible force called gravity, and
those who had to try to come to grips with relativity and quantum mechanics,
I am convinced we have to achieve new ways of thinking about life. I
haven't succeeded yet, but I keep trying. Darwinists mount great resistance
to anyone trying, which is another reason I am comfortable with ID.
A naturalistic explanation of the origin of life would be nice, but I'm
skeptical one will ever be found. I gather you are more hopeful? When there
was nothing but one-celled organisms, symbiosis was obviously the rule.
Symbiosis also seems a reasonable explanation for one-celled organisms
associating into multi-celled organisms. But after the symbiosis became
various rigid, fixed body plans, I am unable to picture how symbiosis might
have played a roll in further development. I do believe evolution continues
in the brain, the only part of organisms still fluid. The mechanism for that
is obviously Lamarckian, just as the evolution of culture is Lamarckian.
Mainly, I just wanted to let you know I enjoy your posts.
Bertvan
http://members.aol.com/bertvan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 13 2000 - 12:59:01 EDT