beausoleil

I think abiogenesis was more than likely given the huge number of possible environments (suitable terrestrial planets in the universe over its lifetime i.e. opportunities) and selection by our existence of one of the opportunities in which it happened.

I think evolution is a completely adequate explanation for our development from primitive lifeforms, given that there may be many instances and our existence requires us to observe an instance that led to us.

I think that a large number of the evolutionary accounts put forward in the popular scientific press that explain why species x has property y because it conveyed an advantage have the same status as fables.

I think evolution explains the diversity of solutions, but not necessarily any particular solution. I don't think particular solutions require explanations. And I think any particular solution can have an explanation constructed for it post hoc. (solution in the sense that a species is the solution to 'how can a life form survive somewhere on the Earth?')

That probably sounds more controversial than it should. The problem I have with the individual explanations is that they convey a sense of inevitability. It seems to me that if the clock were rolled back to the first living organism on Earth and the whole thing run again, I would expect an equally diverse ecosystem (at any particular time) since evolution is a general principle but that the individual species would be quite different.

On the other hand, were the Earth experiment repeated a huge number of times and only those experiments in which an intelligent species evolved were examined, how would that restrict the range and sorts of species existing at the same time as the intelligent ones and the evolutionary record they observed? Perhaps we can only exist in an unusually diverse ecosystem.

scigirl

beausoleil,

Excellent post, I agree with your assessment.

scigirl

mibby529

Not much about evolution seems bunk to me. At least not anything considered serious today. Of course, eugenics is bunk. (Evolution is aided by genetic DIVERSITY. It doesn't have a "point," the way eugenicists claim it does.)

As for those who think bacteria can't produce complex life, a single bacterium on its own can't, but that's what symbiosis is for. (You can see symbiosis today. The classic example is lichen: Fungi and algae, but everyone thinks it's one organism.)

Godless Dave

GTX, I didn't think pz was being condescending or insulting to you at all. He seemd to be responding to your points in a reasoned way. Since you don't see it that way I'll give it a shot.

Can you expand on why you think this is bunk?

Do you expect every living thing that ever existed to have been fossilized, and that all those fossils would have been found by now? There are lots of transitional forms in the fossil record.

No theory of evolution has ever said that humans evolved from alligators. This is indeed bunk. Where did you hear it?

I don't understand what you mean by this.

How come?