Re: god makes hubey

H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
18 Nov 1995 12:53:51 -0500

pnich@globalone.net (Phil Nicholls) writes:

>Alex is not claiming that evolution goes nowhere or has no direction.

He is, but it doesn't matter. I can argue against both :-)

>However, evolution has no pre-set goal.

Explain neoteny.

Why do baby chimps look more like humans?

What is in our future? Is it more like those in sci-fi movies
with big heads and big eyes?

Evolution is not driven
>toward the production of "intelligent" beings. If it were then there
>would be a great deal more intelligent species.

Words are inadequate to explain some concepts. Evolution refers
to evolution of all species. Then the fact that eventually intelligent
beings like us who can tinker with their own evolution will be
produced means that it will happen. That makes it "deterministic".

For you to anthromorphize a concept, and call it "a goal" is
just silly word playing. Humans have goals. We have a brain and we
think ahead and plan ahead. Where could evolution's brain exist?

The whole thing is a straw-man argument. Deterministic things happen
all the time without a brain. Rocks fall down, and we don't ask
how rocks came to know which way "down" is or how they figured
out that they should go down, and not up. There's both determinism
and direction, and no brain and no goal.

YOu seem to keep thinking that somehow you still got creationists
on your tails.

>less than 30,000 years. Life has been on this planet for 3.5 billion
>years. Do the math, Mark.

I've done it. :-)

>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.

Look, this is all silly. If Newton had not lived, would the laws
of mechanics not have been "discovered" or "invented" ? If X didn't
go to the North pole first, would it have remained uncharted?

See, it doesn't make much difference in that way. It would have
happened anyway, but it would have been some other guy. Humans
are intersubstituable in that gross manner. We give credit to
specific humans because our society wants to encourage and reward
such behavior. It would have been done anway, sooner or later.

-- 





				Regards, Mark

				http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey