On Wednesday, January 17, 2001 12:10 AM Samantha Atkins
samantha@objectent.com wrote:
> > > However, "directed evolution" at least sounds plausible, and
merrits
> > >some attention.
> >
> > Religious people have not pushed directed evolution much and that is
wise.
>
> A very large reason they don't push it is that "directed evolution" or
> "intelligent design" leaves open who/what did the directing/designing.
> Any supra-human intelligence will do. The Almighty of their beliefs is
> just one of many possibilities once such things are assumed.
You are equating "directed evolution" with "intelligent design." In fact,
all directed evolution -- AKA orthogenesis -- means is that evolution has a
direction, at least, in some limited fashion. This means that absent any
severe changes, one can look at an evolutionary system, say, a species, and
to some extent see where it's going. If this is so, then there is directed
evolution -- evolutionary trends.
With it, there's no need to posit a mind doing the directing. In fact,
different evolutionary theorist have come up with different explanations of
such lawlike behavior, from Bonner's strict neoDarwinian approach to
Kauffman's self-organizing systems.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
See also my "Testing Evolutionary Explanations" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Testing.html
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