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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!

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To: Brumar89 who wrote (97637)	3/11/2005 12:26:52 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) of 108807

Emergent phenomena vs. ID in evolution... It is actually more mysterious and grand to NOT have intelligence in the design but for the intelligence to rise out of the chaos by itself. Theoreticians who study chaos, emergence, genetic algorithms and complexity can show for a fact that simple systems can give rise to very complex behavior. Life is different from these emergent phenomena in its details, but not in kind. The "unambiguous example" asked for by Margolis is a red herring: It is like saying that someone can't prove that the rate of the Earth's spin can be slowed while not acknowledging the validity of the tools that make the measurement. The development of species occurs over millennia and unambiguous needs definition: "unambiguous to whom"? It is likely that bacterial evolution driven by the use of antibiotics meets the requirement of "probable" speciation but I doubt it would satisfy those looking for "unambiguous". Similarly, the Abert/Kaibab Squirrels meet the requirement of speciations from common ancenstry yet can still interbreed. Science is characterized by doubt and probability. Faith is characterized by unambiguous certainty. Margolis is abandoning science in this requirement. People that are predisposed to put Intelligent Design into the shake and rattle of a complex universe are failing to grasp the simplest of scientific principles: that of Occam's Razor. There is no need to add ID to Darwin when other tools that are more rigorous (and independently observable in a variety of systems) can serve to explain an accelerated development process by the introduction of an observable property: emergence. IF, emergence is simply a property of dynamic systems (as we can see from simulations and desktop experiments), THEN complexity (such as life) is simply a by-product of emergence. Wait long enough and self-sustaining systems will appear in a suitably stable environment that is far from equilibrium. This is especially true if we add the billions of years possible with a panspermia model.

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