(March 13, 2014 at 12:35 pm)professor Wrote: I now understand.
I should have promoted natural selection to the status of a god, making it's decisions on what it wants to keep and what it wants to throw out. Very good.
You have gotten rid of that pesky god you didn't like, and gotten a new one instead.
Well done.
Well I don't think using words like "I now understand" is really a safe thing for you to do.
The good news is that you are getting closer to the truth. Natural Selection isn't a God - it merely replaces the need for one to explain the diversity of life on this planet.
Its not perfect. 98% of all the species that have ever lived have gone extinct. In response to environment change a given species does one of 2 things - it adapts or it goes extinct.
Those that adapt are merely lucky enough to have a variation within their ranks that allows survival.
Consider the following silly experiment:
Imagine you gather as many mice as you can find. You then take them all to the 20th floor of a building and open the windows.
One by one you throw the mice out of the windows yelling - "Evolve wings you bastards." None do.
One of the mice, however, happens to have an extra fold of skin between its front and rear legs. When you throw that one out it glides to the floor. That mouse might otherwise have been unable to compete for a mate but now, with you throwing mice out of windows it has the choice of any mice that you missed. The probability of its offspring being born with the same genetic abnormality as it had are relatively high.
If you continue your process of throwing mice out of the window over time the proportion of mice that have the genetic trait of this extra fold of skin and that survive the fall will grow.
Eventually all mice with have the fold.
Note - there was no planning here. Natural Selection simply allowed a natural variation in the population to become dominant as anything without the variation died.
There's no omniscience, no omnipotence, no morality and no planning.
In the above example if no mouse happens to have that particular genetic variation then eventually you will run out of mice as they will have gone extinct.
Help any?
Kuusi palaa, ja on viimeinen kerta kun annan vaimoni laittaa jouluvalot!
