|
To:
Comment at the Guardian |
|||
|
|
|||
| In response to a Guardian article by Barbara Toner: "Evolution forgot the democratic process". | |||
|
I think there is a lot of
confusion and misunderstanding relating to the dispute
between Darwin's theory of evolution and the notion of
"intelligent design". I do not see why - if understood
properly, i.e. as I do - they should be mutually exclusive.
There is a massive amount of
evidence for Earth's multitudinous life forms (including
ourselves) having evolved gradually over time into what we
find today, and no evidence at all for them deriving from an
act or acts of divine creation.
However, for evolution to get
started and proceed at all, not only did the conditions have
to be right, but also the properties of matter had to be
very much what they are. How do we explain that, if not by
"intelligent design"?
I like to compare evolution to a
1000-piece jigsaw puzzle being thrown up into the air and
allowed to fall to the ground again and again. If you do it
often enough, purely by chance pieces that fit and belong
together will fall together, and if these are then allowed
to remain on the ground while the remaining pieces continue
to be thrown, eventually the whole puzzle will come
together.
The puzzle and the picture it
shows, of course, are completely predetermined (by the
person who designed and made it), which is not the case for
life on Earth, where the pieces can come together in a
multitude (but limited number) of very specific ways and
form different pictures; but these pieces (the atoms,
subatomic particles, strings or whatever) have to have the
properties they do. Cosmologist offer explanations for this,
including the suggestion that there are an infinite number
of universes (as if the size of our own isn't mind-boggling
enough!) and that ours just happens to have the right
properties of matter for life - otherwise we wouldn't be
here to wonder about it.
Personally, I like the idea and
mystery of "intelligent design", which fits in with the
sense of purpose and meaning I feel that life in general and
my life in particular have. Perhaps I'm wrong and there is
no purpose or meaning to anything, but I prefer to think,
believe and hope otherwise.
I do not believe in the God of
Abraham, Moses or Jesus, who I think is a concept, created,
for better and worse, in the image of man. In this sense I'm
an atheist. For more on my "religious" views, if
anyone happens to be interested, go to
http://www.spaceship-earth.org/Sunturn/Index.htm
|
|||
