reply to post by mandroids
Reductionist’s hostile replies, aside for one moment
I read the thread over fully (luckily it’s still short).
One post makes a passing reference to creationist ‘bigotry’. Aside from that –
and the very last sentence of my own reply to l_e_cox, if you’re really picky – there is no hostility in any ‘reductionists’’ replies. Most
of them are actually very helpful, presenting you with links to information you need to have if you really want to understand how evolution works.
I think evolution is a very peculiar force.
It isn’t so peculiar. Suspend you disbelief for a paragraph, and I’ll explain.
Everything evolves; it isn’t just plants and animals. Evolution is simply change over time in response to environmental forces. What we call
‘natural selection’ is a kind of wearing-down process. Hard rocks withstand erosion longer than soft rocks*. This gives the landscape a form that
changes – evolves – over time. Languages evolve. They develop words and syntactical forms and lose them again, changing over time as people in
different eras and localities adapt them to their needs. The cosmos itself has evolved into its present shape because of the changing balance of
forces within it.
It’s always a mistake to imagine that things are evolving
toward something. Are whales more perfect or less because they gave up their limbs
for flippers? Does the question really have any meaning? If mammals are so much more ‘advanced’ than insects, how come there are so many insects
and so few mammals? Does it mean they are more ‘advanced’ than we? No, they have simply evolved to adapt to a great many, often very difficult,
environmental conditions. We’re pretty good too, but no other mammal, except the dogs we more or less created, are nearly as good. And even dogs
would be nowhere without us.
Evolution is never active, you see. It is only reactive. It can only respond to the forces that shape it. You can certainly argue that those forces
are under the control of God, but they don’t need to be. They could be perfectly random, and yet the effect would still be the same. That’s pretty
much the whole point.
As for extinct animal, well, we can clone…now what does THAT suggest…
That we’re getting good at cloning things? No, I think you’ll have to tell me what
you think it suggests. I’m afraid I can’t make the
connexion.
*Compare, for example, the relative long-term success of Led Zeppelin and Bread.
edit on 23/9/11 by Astyanax because: of levity.
