[asa] SC Morris piece "Darwin was right. Up to a point."

The BioLogos blog (Science and the Sacred) on BeliefNet recently highlighted
this article by Simon Conway Morris from last February that I had missed:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/feb/12/simon-conway-morris-darwin

The comments posted below the article were overwhelmingly negative.

Seems to me that Simon Conway Morris was simply stating that there are
unsolved mysteries (such as evolutionary convergence, and human minds) that
random mutation plus natural selection alone cannot explain. He also
implies that such things as minds and direction in evolution are consistent
(expected) with theism but perhaps not with atheism.

It might seem that Morris concludes the article (with the bit about the
coffin marked Atheism) by saying that the existence of minds and of
convergence in evolution prove the existence of God. But the image of
Darwinian evolution as God's "search engine" does not seem to match up with
standard apologetic intelligent design-based proposals.

From this short piece I can't tell if Morris thinks the search engine is
guided, or the "possibility space" being searched is designed, or neither.

Perhaps Morris is mostly just trying to refute simplistic (New?) Atheist
arguments such as "No Gaps, so No God" and "Random, so No God".

Anyway, I like his emphasis on unsolved questions and mysteries.

Cheers!

Chuck Austerberry
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Received on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:42:47 -0500