Saturday, April 02, 2005
Darwin!
You know the big intelligent design vs. evolution debate that's going on on campus these days? You can hardly take two steps without running into a shouting match between opposing experts. Or... uh... well, anyway, The Daily Cal thinks it appropriate to publish a "Yay Intelligent Design" piece, or, more accurately, a "Boo Darwinian Biologists" piece.
The unfathomable complexity of living systems, Darwin's theory affirms, is the result of random variation and natural selection. Is it indeed? Of these concepts, the second is hopelessly confused and the first is of no intellectual interest.
Uh... Random variation is of no intellectual interest, eh? Be sure to tell that to the statistics department, the math department, the economics department, and my department. The second is not hopelessly confused. In fact, the second could not possibly be false. The argument of natural selection is very simple: Those creatures that live longer and produce more offspring will stick around, those that do not will go away. It's not very confused at all. What I want to hear is an argument that says that such a thing could possibly not be true.
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