From: bivalve (bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com)
Date: Sat Sep 20 2003 - 18:00:15 EDT
>>"Evolution is nothing like this. There is no specific "end result."" How do you know that?<<
In addition to the apparent impossibility of mutations having the ability to seek a desired goal, there is the lack of apparent direction towards a goal in the course of evolution. Scrutiny of claimed directionality has often revealed mathematical randomness. For example, an apparent evolutionary increase in size over time in forams turned out to be an increase in size variation, starting from a relatively small ancestor, coupled with limited study of small forms if there were any bigger ones to look at. Random change in such a case looks like a gradually flattening bell curve with an absolute limit at one end.
>>it seems like it would take fine tuning to an entirely new level where the intial conditions would need to be specified to such an extent that the whole mechanistic/deterministic cascade of causes and effects that led to the apparently *random* result of the appearance of man in the evolutionary chain would in fact be inevitable.<<
How difficult such a position seems is likely to correlate with your inclination towards greater predestination versus greater free will.
Dr. David Campbell
Old Seashells
University of Alabama
Biodiversity & Systematics
Dept. Biological Sciences
Box 870345
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0345 USA
bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com
That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droitgate Spa
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