William Paley Standing on His Head?
Posted by: Robert Sandberg in Science, philosophy, tags: evolution, William PaleyIn his essay, “Consciousness: The Achilles Heel of Darwinism? Thank God, Not Quite,” Nicolas Humphrey writes:
Indeed, Paley’s argument may soon have to be turned on its head. For there will likely come a time in the not too distant future when a complex artifact found lying on the heath will not have had a maker but rather have been “grown” via a genetic algorithm.
Well, of course a watch lying in the grass found tomorrow will not have been so algorithmically grown, but, his point stands. What could be more irreducibly complex than, say, the smallest of mites crawling across a rose; yet, the algorithm of natural selection explains its growth through geological ages.
Humphrey goes on to some remarkable, theory-based speculations on why the existence of God is ironically proven by the logic of human evolution — what makes us human is the belief in a maker. More on this later.
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