Re: Evolution Elswhere?

From: Chris Cogan (ccogan@telepath.com)
Date: Wed Oct 18 2000 - 14:53:32 EDT

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    >Chris Cogan wrote: (10/11/00)
    >
    > > Since no ID-theorist has answered my question about what changes would have
    > > had to have been made to early Earth to enable life to thereafter arise and
    > > evolve without further intervention, I've come up with an alternative
    > question:
    > >
    > > Is it possible that life has arisen and evolved naturalistically
    > > someplace else in the "known" Universe? If so, how would
    > > this location have to differ from Earth? If no, why not? If no,
    > > how can we know that conditions are *nowhere* suited to the
    > > naturalistic origination of life from non-life replicators and to
    > > the evolution of life to a human-level of complexity?
    > >
    > > --Chris
    >
    >Reply by DABradbury 10/17/00:
    >
    > I here simply present the (unwelcome) modifying condition set forth
    > by the
    >invited mathematicians Dr. Murray Eden and Marcel Schutzenberger at the Wistar
    >Symposium No. 5, "MATHEMATICAL CHALLENGES TO THE NEO-DARWINIAN
    >INTERPRETATION OF
    >EVOLUTION", April 1966, Pg. 109. Namely:
    >
    > "It is our contention that if 'random' is given a serious and crucial
    >interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is
    >highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution
    >must await
    >the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws -- physical,
    >physico-chemical and
    >biological."

    Chris
    I won't bother to answer this point (again) except to point out that it has
    long since been disproved by counterexamples (and it may even have been
    disproved *before* the conference in 66). No "new natural laws" are needed.



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