12.05.06
Silliness of Evo Wars
In today’s magazine “The Scientist” , Professor Jack Woodall argues that a blue butterfly destroys the idea of “intelligent design”, because the ecology needed to sustain the butterfly’s existance is so fragile that only an idiot would design it. Ergo, no “intelligence” behind evolution, ergo no God.
But if you take a look at his argument, it is actually against Darwinian evolution, that insists on the survival of the fittest. The butterfly who precarious existance is cited shouldn’t exist, since it is unfit.
Robert Webb said,
December 5, 2006 at 8:49 pm
An intelligent design should go beyond the current environment, and take into consideration possible changes in the future and anything that might go wrong. That is, don’t design something so fragile that a small change to its environment would destroy it.
On the other hand, what we expect to see from evolution is that life-forms are tailored specifically for their environment. Presumably the butterfly’s environment has not change significantly since before it evolved to its present form. Evolution knows nothing about how fragile an environment is. If the environment doesn’t change regularly on a small enough time-scale for natural selection to take it into account, then why would natural selection favour a butterfly that could cope with a changed environment?
You are using the word “unfit” in an intelligent design sense! The butterfly is perfectly fit from a natural selection point of view, which can not foresee environmental changes and plan for an unknown future.
Bradford said,
December 6, 2006 at 5:23 am
“An intelligent design should go beyond the current environment, and take into consideration possible changes in the future and anything that might go wrong. That is, don’t design something so fragile that a small change to its environment would destroy it.”
That all depends on how important a particular butterfly is in the overall scheme of things.
“On the other hand, what we expect to see from evolution is that life-forms are tailored specifically for their environment.”
So organisms exist because they are tailored to their environment and they go extinct when they are not tailored to the environment. This is tautological. It reveals nothing of an organism’s history.