The real alternative to design (Evolution)

by whitecraw, Sunday, March 09, 2008, 20:36 (5891 days ago) @ David Turell

Elsewhere in this website I have given a reference to a future planned meeting of Darwin scientists, many leading lights in the Neo-Darwin movement, who are questioning the role of natural selection as a prime mover. - I'd question that too. The theory of evolution by natural selection is just that: a theory of evolution, not of origins; it seeks to explain how life evolves, not how it originated. Speculation as to how organic matter arose from inorganic matter simply irrelevant to the worth of that theory. - I recently read an interesting interview with the palaeontologist Andrew Knoll, a professor of biology at Harvard, which you will find here. Two points are of particular note. - First: the definition of life as 'a system that's capable of Darwinian evolution'. This is interesting because, if one assumes this definition, it clearly makes the question of how life originated logically distinct from the Darwinian theory of evolution. - Second: the authoritative admission that we don't really know how life originated; which is as good a reason as any to remain agnostic in relation to that question.