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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Taro who wrote (247224)	8/24/2005 8:14:35 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571808

"If anything this to me seems to be great evidence for the idea of "Intelligent Design"." Maybe, although the intent of that part was to point out how, just by taking advantage of individual variation, morphological differences can be magnified. You don't have to depend on the red herring of beneficial mutations. While you you hypothesis an Intelligent Designer guiding the process of evolution, it is an unnecessary assumption, as is assuming a random generator. Because Darwin never asserted that the process is random, the driver is natural selection. If certain characteristics confer some reproductive advantage, however small, that isn't counterbalanced by some greater disadvantage, then that characteristic gets magnified over the generations. The classic example is Darwin's finches. When he arrived at the Galapagos islands, he saw an almost familiar sight. Finches. However, there was something different about these birds. While they resemble finches from other places, they have different beaks. They have different beaks because they are exploiting different food sources than finches from other areas in the world. Islands, especially remote islands, obviously only get populated by what ever animals who manage to get there. Often, there isn't a whole lot of variety in types that make it there. So, for the ones that do, there are often food sources available that in other areas already has well adapted animals exploiting them. So once their initial population grows large enough to fully exploit their original food sources, individuals who are able to exploit additional food sources gain an advantage in not having much competition. So over time, whatever characteristics they have that enables this to happen gets magnified. Now true, an Intelligent Designer would make the process go faster and more efficiently. But there isn't any evidence what so ever that the process is fast and efficient. And everything that an Intelligent Designer can do, natural selection can do also, at least in principle. Admittedly, there are some things that are tough to explain with natural selection. But there was a time(20-25 years ago) where the evolution of birds from dinosaurs was impossible to explain with natural selection. Now it is very easy, complete with transitional fossils. So an Intelligent Designer doesn't add anything to the discussion. Such may very well exist, and I like to think that one does, but it is a needless complication. For one, you can't prove that you would get different results if you assume an Intelligent Designer over natural selection. The only reason to assume an Intelligent Designer is to satisfy some believe in the supernatural, and that is not what science is about. For another, it invites a discussion over the nature of said Intelligent Designer and that is a theological one, not a scientific one. Science shouldn't make statements about matters of faith, it is beyond it's scope.