The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[Belacqua]

I find the pulling out of the Dawrin quote to be weirldy out of context. 

Well, you questioned whether evolution by natural selection could be relevant to "systems within an organism." And John quoted Darwin, who knew a thing or two about evolution, to say that it is relevant. 

I don't think anyone has shown Darwin to be wrong about that. 

It's true that the theory is "over-arching." Most people here want to say it's also responsible for every detail and system within an organism, since the alternative is that something other than evolution made us what we are. 

If you have a suggestion as to what, other than evolution, made human beings what they are, I think that would of interest on this thread.

By the way, I think it's great that you acknowledge a "layman's level" of understanding. Most of us are the same, if we were being honest, but few people want to admit that.

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@John 6IX Breezy

By the way, I know this isn't your particular field of study, but you might enjoy the book The Great Chain of Being if you haven't seen it already. It's about the Neoplatonic idea of a hierarchy in the universe going from dead matter at the bottom to God at the top, with people being about half way.

The reason I bring it up here is because it describes how Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandpa, got extremely close to discovering evolution on his own. He combined the Neoplatonic hierarchy, which was sometime said to be changeable, with creatures going up or down on the chain, with recent archeological discoveries, to suggest nearly all of Charles' theory. It only remained for the younger Darwin to figure out the capstone of the arch, so to speak, which was natural selection. Unfortunately Erasmus wrote his book in not very good verse, so nobody reads it now.

Easily available here, if you don't mind a little piracy:

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