--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Richard M" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <richardhughes103@> 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?
Nobody knows, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. The earliest fossils are 3.5 billion years old and they are simple bacteria, which is all there was for a billion years. Nobody knows the exact climate and chemical composition of the early earth but they are working on it. I'm sure they'll let us know when they find it. It can't be that difficult as life started so soon after conditions were suitable. Is that a sign of a religious type of faith? No, I don't think so. If, say, trilobites had appeared fully formed 500 million years ago then you could say something suspicious was going on but as life had the good grace to start in the sea (where things are more likely to be buried and thus be undisturbed to mineralise properly) we have so many really good fossils and can trace the evolution of what is to be everything we know now incredibly accurately. (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 - No. sorry to disappoint you old chap ;-) > 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? No. The ability evolve has, erm, evolved. Because for a billion years or so life was simple bacteria it was only when two types of bacteria, archae and eubacteria fused with a few others later to form a more complex type of cell (eukaryote) with DNA in a nucleus and sexual reproduction rather than division by simple budding. That cell is the descendent of us and everything else, our cells *still* have evidence of both types of early bacteria, it's what they pass on when they replicate that's changed over the years. When I say "our" I mean life on earth, cellularly it's all the same. But nobody really knows how DNA got going, yet. That it evolved too seems obvious, to get all that way back in our understanding and then say "Ah well, maybe there is a God" to get us over this bit we don't understand seems sad to me. Some insist on that wiggle room at the beginning being evidence of a divine hand and I guess it's impossible to say for sure until all the facts are in but I doubt it. I hope it'll be known in my lifetime though. > 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! Great conflict? I think the debate Richard Dawkins started after 11/9 is essential for society, we have to question whether what we believe is truth, fantasy, useful or outdated. The only conflict is that some don't want to discuss it for some reason.
