Designing intelligence- evolving the concept of life

Hooray, strap yourselves in for a highly philosophical musing on the nature of life. In particular, I want to explore evolution and intelligent design. Faith is often a very tricky topic to discuss, but I will do my best. I think I am a spiritual person, even though I don’t strongly adhere to any particular faith. I think everyone should have their own philosophy, so I’m not forcing opinions on anyone, just making some observations and discussion. Science seems to be the predominant faith among people these days, but there are some areas of the whole universe explanation that just don’t work.

What about evolution? Sure, it looks good as a grand theory on how arrogant humans are the best animals on the planet, but just why does it work? The classic debate is eyes; while this is certainly not the only interesting situation, it is one of the most compelling counter-arguments to evolution. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution revolves around the maxim “survival of the fittest”. Exactly what made the primitive eye “fittest”? Considering the primitive eye was just a splodge of photoreceptive chemicals, how would this help? These first eyes would only be able to tell the difference between “night” and “day” as they were too crude to recognise anything useful. These organisms don’t have any form of night/day cycle, and survived without knowing the time, why would they suddenly need to know? Since “eyes” offered no advantage to the survival of the organisms, the organisms that possessed eyes would surely die out due to their mutated genetics. Evolution appears to be wrong.

Perhaps the cause of the eye truly is God, ahem, playing god; aka “Intelligent Design” (ID). I don’t think this is the answer either. It was most likely just chance that made this happen. Sure, there is a slim chance, but it could happen, and obviously did happen. But arguing evolution in this instance is poor science. Obviously there is no advantage in having such a crude eye, and it is just luck that it survived. I don’t believe in Creationism, although there is nothing wrong with it. Evolution has a lot of appeal to scientific minds, but if one examines it closely, it does not satisfy the keen observer. Intelligent design seems to be a compromise between them, but is accepted by neither. The true “story of life” is impossible to tell, as anyone can make “evidence” support their own faith.

• Creationism is simple: everything was created by a higher power, and any evidence that suggests otherwise is just a test of faith. Which, in this day and age, lots of people have failed.
• Evolution is simple: everything is derived from simpler states, and all happens because of definable “rules” and “laws”. In a modern and chaotic world, people like the comfort that some things are always the same; the laws of nature. The evidence obviously proves this to be so?
• Classical mythology is simple: everything is built out of elements, which make all objects different. All objects have a patron deity, which watches over and guides them. It is just common sense that things work this way, there is no need for evidence.
• Nihilism: everything is nothing.
• Various other-ology, -ism: truncate, squeeze, squash, and generally shout loudly until the evidence is in a suitable state to support your grand theorem.

Anyway, that’s about all I have time for, but I hope this has been interesting. I want to hear you replies, comments, pingbacks, deblatogs, but don’t start any flame wars or I will be upset. Everyone can and does have their own philosophy in these situations, so respect that, all the while reflecting upon and considering your own. If anybody likes this, I will unleash some more of my philosophy upon you, but for now, let’s just see everybody deal with this.

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