Re: god makes hubey
Phil Nicholls (pnich@globalone.net)
Sat, 18 Nov 1995 16:08:49 GMT
hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey) raged:
>Alex Duncan <aduncan@mail.utexas.edu> writes:
>>>It is. It's driven towards production of intelligent beings who
>>>will be in a position to tinker with nature.
>>It sure would be interesting to know where you get your information.
>It would be just as imteresting to know where you get your
>information that evolution goes nowhere and that there's no
>direction. Is it in the books written by God or do you have
>mathematical proof of this?
Alex is not claiming that evolution goes nowhere or has no direction.
However, evolution has no pre-set goal. Evolution is not driven
toward the production of "intelligent" beings. If it were then there
would be a great deal more intelligent species.
>>Somehow you've out-thought all of the professional biologists in the
>>world, who are all pretty sure that "evolution is driven" to produce
>>organisms that are well adapted to their current environmental conditions.
>The two are not mutually incompatible, are they?
>Or is it just your imagination that is lacking?
>What better adaptation than that of intelligence. It makes the
>animals infinitely adaptible to every kind of life, including
>that of space travel and life on other planets.
Here is what you are doing. You are shooting an arrow at a blank
wall, painting a target around the place there arrow hits and then
proclaiming the arrow was driven to hit the target. Human
intelligence has been around for less than a million years, perhaps
less than 30,000 years. Life has been on this planet for 3.5 billion
years. Do the math, Mark.
One of Stephen Jay Gould's favorite metaphors is the film "It's a
Wonderful Life." Change one variable in the history of life and the
outcome is different. Re-wind evolution and let it run again and you
will get a very different result from this one. Look in on the world
in another five million years and the most intelligent form of life
might be the dung beetle.
Phil Nicholls pnich@globalone.net
"To ask a question you must first know most of the answer"
-Robert Sheckley
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