The real alternative to design (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, March 13, 2008, 02:10 (6098 days ago) @ whitecraw

I appreciate the reference to the article by Laurence Moran. Apparently it was written before it was demonstrated that the peppered moth color change studies were fraudulent, but he gives good definitions. The act of giving a reference also makes an example of how I wish this website should operate. I've given a reference to Simon Conway Morris, perhaps the leading paleobiologist in the world. His book gives a different point of view about the process of evolution as conducted through or by DNA/RNA coding. As Moran points out evolution is conducted by DNA/RNA. The reason I emphasize RNA so much is, that it is not 'junk DNA', as just ten years ago that term was used to describe it. 
 "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". The point I have tried to make clear is that some of the mechanisms of change and evolution do not occur entirely passively which is the way the theory of natural selection reads. There are active processes within DNA/RNA that speed up the changes and then natural selection can act in its passive fashion to weed out inadequate organisms.
 
'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.'[/i] 
 
" 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". My point is that it generally has been progressive, and it need not have been as you have just pointed out in the previous paragraph.