[extropy-chat] Re: intelligent design homework

[ben]

 >Evolution is what
 >> makes all of biology hold together.

Robert Lindauer:
"Not really."

Er, yes, really.

Without Evolution, biology is an unstructured mass of facts. Evolution 
gives all these facts a framework to hang on, and has enormous 
explanatory power for all sorts of seemingly mysterious things. I would 
go so far as to say that anyone who doesn't understand this, doesn't 
understand biology at all, and if they want to talk about biology, i 
strongly suggest they go away and actually study it. There is a REASON 
why biologists make such a big deal of evolution. If you want to discuss 
biology sensibly, you need to understand this reason.
Seriously, it's no good standing apart from it and chucking stones at 
it. You've got to get inside it, see how it really works. Until you do 
this, you're in the position of someone trying to understand the flight 
path of Voyager without knowing anything about orbital mechanics.


Poodles and Wolves?
Ha, i'd like to see a Chihuahua and a Great Dane get it on.

Be careful when generalising from dogs to other creatures, though. 
Apparently, dogs have an unusually large range of variability within 
their existing genome. This can easily be confused with genetic 
mutation. (i forget who wrote it, but see "why dogs can't be as big as 
elephants" or similar. Google should help. It usually does)

(Just to make it clear, actually i WOULDN'T like to see a Chihuahua and 
a Great Dane get it on. It's just a figure of speech)

ben