Richard
>Brian, you didn't reply to my last post in this thread, which I feel was
>left unresolved. I'd like just to sum up my position following our
>discussion.
>
>I initially posted that, according to the theory of evolution, "the process
>of evolution is random, and is without purpose, plan or design." I meant
>that the process is not *guided* in accordance with any purpose, plan or
>design. However, as a result of your reply, I realised that my statement was
>ambiguous. It could also be taken to mean that the process was not set up
>with any purpose plan or design in mind. This latter meaning is not implied
>by the theory of evolution, and I regret that I gave that impression. I'll
>be more careful in future to avoid this ambiguity.
Chris
Though I think it's *true* that the process by which life arose is
naturalistic, not guided by purposes, plans, goals, ideas, desires, etc., I
agree that ordinary Darwinian evolutionary theory does not require that
this be the case. It is therefore compatible with a Deistic (and even other
kinds of) theism.
However, it is natural for scientists to seek to extend basic Darwinism
into the realm of the origin (at least on Earth) of life. Personally, the
suggestions that I've mostly heard are not very plausible to me, though I
guess one of them might be true.
(However, I suspect that the first forms of evolving things occurred long
before *living* things, and that it's even possible that some form of
pre-RNA/DNA life evolved and served as the initial basis for the
development of RNA/DNA life, like a kind of "bootstrap" mechanism. Though
I'm not "up" on the lit., I get the impression that way too much of the
research is aimed at trying to find ways that stuff like RNA and DNA could
occur in *non-*evolutionary ways, or at trying to find ways it could evolve
directly. Evolution *can* occur much more simply (and probably so can life)
than any that we normally see today. Whether it *did* occur at a
pre-biotic, pre-RNA level is a different question, of course, but I think
it deserves more research.)
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