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| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Shibby
We probably are the result of an "intelligent" blueprint, but to think that it is a creature or a God-thing is just myopic. |
And you are basing that on what exactly?
| quote: | | There are definitely problems I have with modern evolution, such as its lack of appreciation of the current individual adapatation |
I'm not sure what this means. If you're complaining that evolutionary theory doesn't take into account the potential for individual organisms to adapt to their environment during the course of their lifetimes, then in one sense you are correct: developmental processes are only tangentially relevent to discussions about speciate evolution. In another more actual sense, however, you are wrong: these sorts of processes are already well acounted-for in biology. Neural plasticity and epigenetics are just two important examples of environmental adaption on the level of the individual.
If your complaint is that evolutionary theory focuses more on the level of species, groups or genes rather than on the level of the individual organism, then again you are correct in a sense, but you've also missed the point: evolution does not occur on the level of the individual organism in any appreciable sense, so there is limited value in discussing individual organisms in an evolutionary context.
| quote: | | as well as the fact that survival of the fittest is so relative that it becomes basically "survival of those who survive" after its fractioned down enough times through enough of the infinite possibilities this world can toss at us. |
Not really. Natural Selection can be demonstrated in an empirical sense by measuring the frequency of given genes in a given gene-pool against competing alleles. There is nothing "relative" or tautological about that.
| quote: | Our current financial crisis and the situation with CEOs making a buck and bailing is one example of this.
Just like in business, we rise to our level of incompetence, constantly being promoted while we are too good for our position, until finally we end up in a place where we are not good enough to be promoted, and thus are less suitable for the company, bringing the whole system into a state of inefficieny. |
This is a rather peculiar analogy, but if I'm reading you right then this is actually the exact opposite of what happens in nature. Animals that are good at what they do (that is to say, well adapted to their environmental niche) are not "promoted" at all: in fact, they tend to stay pretty much the same over a long period of time (sharks are a good example of this). Biological inefficiencies tend to be weeded out by natural selection rather quickly.
| quote: | | I'd like to help pioneer the idea that viruses are the cause of evolution and are naturally arising "intelligent" "life"forms that the universe creates in order to "upgrade" the hardware of all lifeforms. |
I'd be inclined to agree with you on (some of) this. Viruses undoubtedly shape the content of genomes over a long period of time (in the most obvious example, the genes that give rise to immune systems would not be selected for if not for the presense of viruses) and they can occasionally contribute directly to the content of these genomes (in the form of retroviruses). There's also reason to think that life itself is derived from virus-like, self-replicating strands of RNA (which explains the redundant way in which DNA is converted into RNA for the creation of proteins in nearly all living cells).
None of this, however, implies any sort of "intelligence" or teleological direction.
| quote: | | I'd also like to point out that by adding elements and compounds to eggs during conception, the lifeform can take on the properties of that element; glow in the dark pigs, for example, have been bred as we all have seen. |
I'm not familiar with the example you've used, but the plasticity of embryological development (through aforementioned epigenetic processes) is already accounted for in evolutionary theory. See, for example, the field of "Evolutionary Development".
| quote: | | So its almost as if life itself is constantly taking queues from the environment |
Of course the nature of life on this planet is largely determined by environmental pressures. That's the very basis for the natural selection, which is itself the foundation of biological evolution.
| quote: | | in this obvious grand symbiosis, but whether you choose to believe in either theory, intelligent design or evolution or even both, you still are left with the same end questions. |
Intelligent Design stops asking questions that second it becomes intellectually uncomfortable. Conflating it with the intellectually rigorous discipline of evolutionary theory just betrays your ignorance of the nature of both.
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