Re: virus: Level Three-Belief and Utility.

Wade T. Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Fri, 1 Nov 1996 09:02:09 -0500


>>That is why, for instance, our eyes have nerves coming out
>> the front instead of the back.
>
>0) Can't resist this: You must have some strange looking eyes Richard.

Well, what he/they meant was that in the retina the nerves are indeed in
front of the receptors, and that what you perceive actually has to deal
with this obstruction.

>1) If evolution got stuck, it wouldn't be evolution. I challange you
>to find _any_ evolutionist of repute who says evolution gets stuck.
>David Leeper

It's not that evolution, the process, gets stuck, but that the biological
components of the process (since there _is_ no god doing design...) get
'stuck' in prototype/working model form, since what works does not get
'fixed'.

Creationists and theist apologists have used the 'design' of the human eye
as a proof of a designing god for some time- it is quite the opposite. It
is a striking proof of the random, complex, and non-directional process we
call evolution.

Cognition itself is of course such a process, with memes and memetic
processes, providing some mapping, if you will.

*****************************************************
Wade T. Smith | 'There ain't nuthin' you
wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god.'
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