[extropy-chat] Re: intelligent design homework

[John K Clark]

Robbie Lindauer" <robgobblin at aol.com>

> What -actually- happens when we irradiate a female
> rat enough so that its eggs are a chromosome short?
> Usually they are unable to reproduce, when they are
> able to reproduce, they produce dead or deformed
>children that are unable to produce.

Yes.

> Now, if Evolution were correct, we should
> expect the opposite effect.

What on earth are you talking about? Nearly all mutations are detrimental
because there are more ways thing can go wrong than go right, only a tiny
percentage of mutations actually help the animal get his genes into the next
generation. That means that for every tiny improvement millions or billions
of animals had to suffer and die. That's why Holly Rollers are so
uncomfortable with evolution, if there is a God behind such a cruel
 process he is one rotten son of a bitch.


> a smart extropian would see that the best
> way to produce the super-intelligent being
> would be to use evolution and start randomly
> irradiating humans to produce > one.

You keep talking about random mutation but that's only half of what makes
Evolution work, the other half is Natural Selection. The above could work if
you only irradiate humans who scored low on IQ tests so that they were dead
or sterilized. Keep that up for a few thousand years and you would indeed
get an improvement in average IQ scores, but genetic engineering would be
much faster.

> wolves don't reproduce with chihuahua's,
> we also know that as a matter of genetics
> it's relatively easy for them to do if they wanted to.

That's true but then dogs are a very recent invention, wolves and dogs
started to diverge only about 5000 years ago and Chihuahuas diverged from
other dogs only about a century or two ago. Although they have similar
genetics and theoretically they could still interbreed I think you will
admit that a wolf and a Chihuahua look and act rather differently and the
difference happened in a instant of geological time. Imagine how different
they would be if you had thousands of times as much time to work with.

But for the sake of argument lets say I'm wrong and Evolution is untrue,
then the only logical thing to say is that the cause of life is unknown.
This God idea is just silly, you put all the mysteries of life in a box,
slap a label on it that says "God, do not open" kick the box upstairs and
declare the problem solved. If there is a God he must be asking himself "why
have I always existed, why haven't I always not existed"? Even God doesn't
know

    John K Clark