The real alternative to design (Evolution)

by whitecraw, Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 22:59 (6098 days ago) @ David Turell

'Evolution is defined "as a process of change in a certain direction." using my Webster's.' - On the definition of 'evolution', and the inexecrable shortcomings of popular 'dictionary' definitions (including Webster's), see this short article by Laurence Moran. - 'What we are debating is not whether evolution exists, because we can see that it happened, but the process it uses. whitecraw has made a declarative statement that the process is purposeless.' - That's right. I'm trying to clarify the theory of evolution by natural seletion, to clear up misconceptions of that theory resulting from careless language use and the dumbing down of that theory by popular media (including dictionaries). The whole point of that theory is to explain non-teleologically how life evolves; that is, to explain this without reference to 'ends' or 'purposes' or any such 'final cause', in accordance with the constitutive principle of methodological naturalism (one of the principles that constitutes modern scientific practice). Which is why I made the declarative statement that (at least, according to the theory of evolution by natural selection) the process is purposeless. - 'My philosophic point remains the same. Evolution proceeded in one direction to the very complex. It could have stopped in that direction at any point, but kept on going until it got to us sentient beings.' - Evolution does not proceed in any one direction. As change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual, evolution is operative everywhere and in all directions. The theory does not preclude the appearance of mutations that result in the simplification of a physical complexity which do not disadvantage ... or positively advantage ... the bearers of those mutations in the competition to survive and reproduce. And evolutionary directions do stop: dramatically, in the case of dinosaurs, where whole species of complex creatures disappeared from the population due to their inability to thrive following some catastrophic environmental change, unlike much simpler life-forms which survived; more subtly in the case of creatures like sharks, where increasing complexity has been naturally selected against for millions of years. There is nothing in the theory that would preclude the evolutionary possibility of, as a consequence of catastrophic environmental change, all complex life-forms being naturally deselected and only the simplest organisms being naturally selected. - Evolution doesn't stop, and it certainly doesn't stop with us. And it isn't necessarily progressive.