--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip] > As I said yesterday Darwin's genuis was explaining the > amazing complexity of life using simple, observable chemical > processes. Up til then everyone had assumed that something > as amazing as us must have been created by something even > more amazing. It seems to me that you are mixing up two quite separate questions here (Just as Dawkins did in his recent TV series in the UK): Q1) How does the diversity of life come about? ie. How do complex, sophisticated attributes develop from simpler organisms. This is your first sentence. Darwinism seems to be an excellent explanation for that. And it stands opposed to those religious beliefs that hold that all the species we find on Earth were plonked there some time ago 'of a piece' by God. Q2) How does the animate evolve from the inanimate? (This is implicit in your second sentence I would say). This is by far the more interesting question to most folks who are religious. Call me stupid - and I'm sure you will - but as Darwinism is a theory about how 'good' heritable traits are encouraged by natural selection, how could it EVER explain 'heritability' itself? Don't you need to presuppose 'life' to get Darwinian evolution going in the first place? If so, the latter can never provide an explanation for the former. That's not meant to be an argument for a 'God Of The Gaps' necessarily. But only to say that the supposed great conflict between Darwinism and religion is just so much hot air. Especially in the hands of Dawkins!
