But they pretend to greater lucidity, when, in fact, they are chock full of paradoxes, muddy concepts, and fudging. In my opinion, speculations about God make more sense. It makes more sense to speculate that there is a fully actualized Being, beyond time and space, capable of generating the universe, than to suppose that there was "sort of Nothing that somehow generated a wave that caused time, space, and matter, dispersing concentrated matter in a large explosion". It makes more sense to assume that the vast design of the universe comes from a Being that resembles Man, particularly in intellect, more than any other being in our experience, however radically unlike Man It may be, then to assume a "principle of complexity" or a "principle of elegance" that somehow generates systematic complexity and seems drawn to the most elegant solution in the design of the material universe.
See, you don't seem to understand how bad the fudging is. Take the Great Monkey Thesis: if you had a bunch of monkeys typing in infinite time, eventually they would recreate works of literature. It took me awhile to see the fallacy, but it is actually not so hard. The fallacy is that the random distribution of elements is merely accomplished through juxtaposition, and incidentally patterns that appear meaningful arise. But in the real world of complexity, random juxtaposition will not suffice. The systems have to be ordered in such a matter as to function together, and in succession, within given parameters. Or, to put it another way, there is no way that randomness creates a clock, which depends on a finely tuned mechanism. In the end, the argument from design works. Without a guiding intelligence, there could be no complex organisms.
Your little tale of the mitochondrian does not bring us from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction. In other words, there is a level of complexity that must be achieved to pass on complexity. How one accomplishes this in an incremental way without the changes being ordered to the particular end makes no sense. Similarly with the zoology. I know there are more primitive versions of nervous systems and so forth, particularly among insects. I just don't recall the terminology. But it doesn't matter. They all have to be put together Just So to have a living organism and not a bizarre, unviable mutation. Without a "clock maker", it, finally, makes no sense....... |
