Evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 12, 2010, 15:27 (4952 days ago) @ dhw

When we talk of evolution, we tend to talk about separate categories: bacteria, plants, animals, us. Under "The Mind of God" Tony has raised the immensely important point of the great chain that binds them all together. Without bacteria no plants, without plants no food for animals, without animals no us. But, to put it simply, the evolution of food doesn't produce animals. Similarly, conditions just right for life will not, so far as we know, produce life. And so when we talk of the complexity of the genome, or the fine tuning of the universe, as being too great to attribute to chance, perhaps we should also add the complexity of the ecosystem, in which different elements appear to have come to life separately in such a manner that they are all indispensable to one another. -My thanks to Tony for raising this point. Thanks also to David for the splendid poem, the last line of which unfortunately got cut off: 
"And so that's the Word from here!"