At 02:03 AM 10/04/2000, you wrote:
> >>FMAJ: Why not? If natural selection is an intelligent designer for
>instance, why are there limits to evolution.
>
>DNAunion: That sounds like an oxymoron to me. If you have any kind of
>intelligence and design involved in the selection process, then it is not
>NATURAL selection, be definition. What am I missing?
Chris
No intelligence is necessary; selection can be random. However, even
systematic selection is no more "intelligent" than the fact that
naturally-appearing factors systematically exclude some organisms and yet
allow others to survive (drop 500 polar bears and 500 camels into arctic
waters near normal polar bear habitats, and see which survive and reproduce
without further human intervention). As I've already pointed out, in order
to do *anything* in a computer (even to generate "random" numbers), there
must be a kind of algorithmic process. If selection simply depends on, say,
"phenotypic" effects of the "genotypes" being evolved, and does so simply
on the basis of an arbitrarily -- perhaps even randomly -- defined set of
"laws of physics," this is hardly intelligence -- *unless* you are claiming
that the laws of physics in the real world are themselves intelligent. An
example: To simulate a rock in a computer, *we* have to be or use
intelligence (or evolve it) into the program. Does this make the simulated
rock *itself* intelligent? I would be surprised if even you thought so.
> >>FMAJ: But even more relevant why are we confusing evolution with the
>ability to create life from non-life? Is that not a strawman?
>
>
>DNAunion: No, it is not. How do you propose that life arose (according to
>naturalistic position)?
Chris
We don't know. I personally think life *did* arise by evolution. *But*: the
requirement for a living thing seem to be simply that it use energy or
information from the environment to sustain its own existence, or to
sustain the existence of the information in whatever it may have as a
genotype. This would seem to be possible to a single molecule, very likely.
But the point was that ordinary naturalistic evolutionary theory does not
actually deal with that question, but rather the question of by what means
life has developed.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 04 2000 - 02:32:00 EDT