Evolution (Evolution)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Saturday, March 22, 2008, 16:52 (6088 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Because I'm struggling to understand how people can have a belief, an inner conviction that unconscious matter by means of random change can create totally new, immensely complex machines out of but also within itself. - Two points here. First I personally don't have an "inner conviction" about evolution. I have a fully conscious "outer conviction". I am convinced by Darwin's "one long argument", and by the enhancements made to it (principally genetics) over the last 150 years. It also satisfies me for aesthetic reasons in that it explains so much from so little, which is what good explanations do. - Second, possibly the incredulity you have arises because you have difficulty in divesting yourself of the athropomorphic or 'elan vital' way of thinking. You speak of "unconscious matter" that "can create" new things "within itself", as if it had a "self", was "conscious" and had a creative will or life force of it's own, urging it on to evolve. None of this is the case.