Bertvan:
I don't regard ID as meaning everything was planned beforehand. I believe
the biosphere was designed to interact with the environment. Darwinists also
believe life interacts with the environment, but they insist it is all a
process of chance and accidents - no design. I doubt "chance" played any
part in the appearance of "beneficial" mutations, -- intelligent, rational,
interacting pieces of complex biological systems. Every piece of an organism
is alive, including mutations, and so far "chance" has not proved capable of
producing either life or intelligence. (Remember, abiogenesis is still a
Darwinist hope, not a fact.) Selection could only choose between
functioning, complex mutations that already include life and intelligence.
Intelligence is an attribute of life.
Below is a quotation from Margulis , (The Times Higher Education Supplement,
October 27, 2000.) While she attempts to suggest the concept might have been
sanctioned by Darwin, I suspect she is merely trying to remain a member of
the "establishment". She has in the past made disparaging remarks about
"Darwinism".
Bertvan
http://members.aol.com/bertvan
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If our actions and thoughts are
determined by genes, as Laplace imagined all motion was determined by
Newtonian physics, then why can we not simply end this particular sentence
anywhere we like - if our genes wish? This is no idle arcane fantasy from
the fringe of biological science. Darwin invented the term sexual selection
to indicate choice of real female animals contemplating their potential
mates and fathers of their potential offspring. He recognised, at least in
this limited sense, the power of choice to influence evolutionary outcome.
That choice has a cumulative causative effect on the genes, and their
transmission might give us pause, perhaps even spiritual pause.
Darwin, the highest priest of biology, inspires us to follow his line
of thought in recognition of the importance of decision and choice in the
continuing evolution of organisms capable of behaviour. This line of
thought is extendable, and was extended even by Darwin, far beyond mate
selection. One species with whom another associates and the nature of that
association - nutritional, nurturing, predatory, exploitative - set up
potentially evolution-changing conditions. Relations between co-evolving
members of different species may begin as conscious decisions but end up as
unconscious habit.
Lynn Margulis is professor in the department of geosciences,
University of Massachussetts, Amherst, United States.
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