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Evolution Vs. Intelligent Design


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#1 Live Forever

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Posted 04 June 2007 - 11:01 PM


Since there were some arguments about evolution and intelligent design in the Religion forum, I am creating this thread for the purpose of arguing evolution vs. intelligent design. (or even creationism if anyone would like to take the leap to that, although they are basically the same in my eyes)

I am intentionally putting this thread in the Bioscience forum so that the discussion has to be limited to scientific arguments (or logical abstractions at the very least). Philosophical arguments do fall into the scientific category, but not arguments based on religious doctrine of any sort. In other words, it would be ok to say something like "everything has to be created from something else, and therefore there has to be an eventual first mover who we will call God", while it would not be ok to say "everything has to come from God because the Bible says so".

Scientific evidence or arguments, or logical arguments or abstractions are all that is allowed.

#2 Live Forever

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Posted 04 June 2007 - 11:20 PM

Just to start, an overview of the ID argument can be found on the wikipedia page for it:
http://en.wikipedia....elligent_design

While more in depth arguments can be found places like the Intelligent Design Network:
http://www.intellige...ignnetwork.org/

The group who puts out most of the information on Intelligent design is the Discovery Institute.
http://www.discovery.org/
http://en.wikipedia....overy_Institute
...and they would probably be the best source for anyone that would advocate ID. If anyone that is making the ID argument is sufficiently aware of the positions and some of the data out there that places like the Discovery Institute (and others) use, it would make for a good debate, because some of it is indeed kind of interesting.

I am not going to lay out the arguments though, since it would only be me playing devil's advocate.

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#3 Aegist

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Posted 04 June 2007 - 11:32 PM

"And then a miracle occured.." is not science. ID relies on this one tenet. ID is therefore not science.

#4 Live Forever

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Posted 04 June 2007 - 11:43 PM

Aegist, while I agree with you that the arguments do not stack up, there are indeed scientific arguments that can be made in favor of ID. (for instance the "DNA and Origin of Life" abstract I saw on the Discovery website that they got "published" ("published" being used in the very loosest sense of the word)) and certain logical arguments that can also be made like the "fine-tuned universe" one or "irreducible complexity" or a lot of other ones that I have probably not ever heard.


(Note: I am not trying to make these arguments, just trying to get some on the side of ID perhaps thinking about things, because there isn't much of a debate to be had if no one argues for the other side, haha.)

#5 Aegist

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:20 AM

Aegist, while I agree with you that the arguments do not stack up, there are indeed scientific arguments that can be made in favor of ID. (for instance the "DNA and Origin of Life" abstract I saw on the Discovery website that they got "published" ("published" being used in the very loosest sense of the word))

Sigh. This is the sort of stuff which comes out of those schools which awards first prize in Science Fairs to kids who make Stalactites with epsom Salts and declares Creation the winner....

"Stephen C. Meyer contends that intelligent design provides a better explanation than competing chemical evolutionary models for the origin of the information present .."

That is such an unremarkable statement. Of course an Intelligent Design is a better explanation for anything... I mean, purposeful design can be literally anything. An intelligent design could design literally anything at all, thus anything we see could be explained perfectly by saying "it was intelligently designed". But that doesn't help anything, it doesn't even actually explain anything, and it is also certainly not the most simple explanation.

It amazes me that for all of the ID'ers pushing the ID bandwagon along, that still not one of them realises that the complex beauty they are trying to explain away with "And then an intelligent agent took control" doesn't explain where the intelligent agent came from.

An agent which can systematically design an entire universe? Now that is irreducibly complex.

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:30 AM

Well, at least with intelligent design the universe will be probably more stable :X
Universe scares me :/

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:33 AM

"And then a miracle occured.." is not science. ID relies on this one tenet. ID is therefore not science.


How is the bing bang not a "miracale"? I mean.. *poof* *BOOM* hi!

#8 Live Forever

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:34 AM

Sigh. This is the sort of stuff which comes out of those schools which awards first prize in Science Fairs to kids who make Stalactites with epsom Salts and declares Creation the winner....

"Stephen C. Meyer contends that intelligent design provides a better explanation than competing chemical evolutionary models for the origin of the information present .."

That is such an unremarkable statement. Of course an Intelligent Design is a better explanation for anything... I mean, purposeful design can be literally anything. An intelligent design could design literally anything at all, thus anything we see could be explained perfectly by saying "it was intelligently designed". But that doesn't help anything, it doesn't even actually explain anything, and it is also certainly not the most simple explanation.

It amazes me that for all of the ID'ers pushing the ID bandwagon along, that still not one of them realises that the complex beauty they are trying to explain away with "And then an intelligent agent took control" doesn't explain where the intelligent agent came from.

An agent which can systematically design an entire universe? Now that is irreducibly complex.


I of course agree. Whenever I hear someone pulling out the whole, "everything has to come from something" argument, it amazes me, because they never want to explain where the intelligent designer (aka God) came from.

Of course, the standard response is "well, God is outside of space and time as we know it", which explains nothing. If you are going to contend that everything has to come from something else, then you can't turn around and say that you meant that for everything except God. You can't make a rule and then say there is an exception to the rule at the first, because that is a contradiction in your reasoning. To say that God always existed is much less likely than saying the universe always existed.

#9 Aegist

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:40 AM

"And then a miracle occured.." is not science. ID relies on this one tenet. ID is therefore not science.


How is the bing bang not a "miracale"? I mean.. *poof* *BOOM* hi!

1. I am not a physicist, so I don't know how the Big Bang occured.
2. Judging by your understanding of it, you are not a physicist either.
3. ignorance of a subject is not a valid indiction that that subject is poorly constructed.

In otherwords, just because you do not understand the explanation for the big bang does not mean that it isn't understood.

Secondly, even if scientists don't know where the universe came from (I don't thiink they really do), those scientists do not then say 'Well, A miracle caused it! lets call it a day!'. They draw extrapolations out from the data and report those extrapolations no matter how difficult they are to explain. The data indicates the universe is roughly X billion years old, they report that. How did it start? I don't know, but I'm not going to make up lies to make myself feel better about my ignorance. All science can say for certain is that the Data indicates that it started, and now we are theorising about how that could have happened. Miracles need not apply.

#10 Live Forever

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:42 AM

Well, at least with intelligent design the universe will be probably more stable

And, the basis for this assertion is, what?


"And then a miracle occured.." is not science. ID relies on this one tenet. ID is therefore not science.

How is the bing bang not a "miracale"? I mean.. *poof* *BOOM* hi!

Just because our current laws of physics break down at the moment of the Big Bang does not mean that it was a "miracle" in the classic sense of the word. We can track back the expansion of the universe to a specific point in time using observations in astronomy. In other words there is verifiable evidence pointing towards a singularity which we call the "Big Bang". Show me the verifiable scientific evidence for intelligent design, or that a God created the universe (or the logical arguments at least) ,and then we will have something to work with.

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:48 AM

Well, at least with intelligent design the universe will be probably more stable

And, the basis for this assertion is, what?



Well I think it's naturnal for a designed thing to be mostly better than random progress.

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:49 AM

"And then a miracle occured.." is not science. ID relies on this one tenet. ID is therefore not science.

How is the bing bang not a "miracale"? I mean.. *poof* *BOOM* hi!

Just because our current laws of physics break down at the moment of the Big Bang does not mean that it was a "miracle" in the classic sense of the word. We can track back the expansion of the universe to a specific point in time using observations in astronomy. In other words there is verifiable evidence pointing towards a singularity which we call the "Big Bang". Show me the verifiable scientific evidence for intelligent design, or that a God created the universe (or the logical arguments at least) ,and then we will have something to work with.


I can't, and I'm not sure that's the case.

#13 Aegist

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:53 AM

Well, at least with intelligent design the universe will be probably more stable

And, the basis for this assertion is, what?


Well I think it's naturnal for a designed thing to be mostly better than random progress.

While that statement stand alone makes sense, I think the universe deomnstrates very non-random constraints on what happens. Those non-random constraints cause design-like features to arise (like solar systems, atoms, molecules and life).

Intuitions about this subject are probably not going to be very helpful.

#14

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 12:55 AM

Heh.. ofc. but unfourtunally we can only "assume" what happend.
Makes me feel weak not knowing what's going to happen or what did happen.

#15 Live Forever

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 01:01 AM

Well, at least with intelligent design the universe will be probably more stable

And, the basis for this assertion is, what?


Well I think it's naturnal for a designed thing to be mostly better than random progress.

While that statement stand alone makes sense, I think the universe deomnstrates very non-random constraints on what happens. Those non-random constraints cause design-like features to arise (like solar systems, atoms, molecules and life).

Intuitions about this subject are probably not going to be very helpful.


This is true. To go on intuition as opposed to scientific inquiry, it would seem as though the earth was flat, or that the earth was the center of the universe, or that the way things work on a quantum level is counterintuitive, or that diseases are caused by something (sin, or something else) rather than little bitty viruses or bacteria, or any of a number of things that aren't intuitive, but people used to believe. Scientific inquiry is the only way to be sure, as intuition can be misleading.

#16

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 01:04 AM

"And then a miracle occured.." is not science. ID relies on this one tenet. ID is therefore not science.


How is the bing bang not a "miracale"? I mean.. *poof* *BOOM* hi!

1. I am not a physicist, so I don't know how the Big Bang occured.
2. Judging by your understanding of it, you are not a physicist either.
3. ignorance of a subject is not a valid indiction that that subject is poorly constructed.

In otherwords, just because you do not understand the explanation for the big bang does not mean that it isn't understood.

Secondly, even if scientists don't know where the universe came from (I don't thiink they really do), those scientists do not then say 'Well, A miracle caused it! lets call it a day!'. They draw extrapolations out from the data and report those extrapolations no matter how difficult they are to explain. The data indicates the universe is roughly X billion years old, they report that. How did it start? I don't know, but I'm not going to make up lies to make myself feel better about my ignorance. All science can say for certain is that the Data indicates that it started, and now we are theorising about how that could have happened. Miracles need not apply.


Indeed, I'm not a physicist.
And I might be worng but if I remember correctly from reading about it, they said all the atoms were in one spot, exploded and that's the start.
But then it's still makes you ask, how did all the atoms get to that one spot?

#17 Live Forever

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 01:15 AM

"And then a miracle occured.." is not science. ID relies on this one tenet. ID is therefore not science.


How is the bing bang not a "miracale"? I mean.. *poof* *BOOM* hi!

1. I am not a physicist, so I don't know how the Big Bang occured.
2. Judging by your understanding of it, you are not a physicist either.
3. ignorance of a subject is not a valid indiction that that subject is poorly constructed.

In otherwords, just because you do not understand the explanation for the big bang does not mean that it isn't understood.

Secondly, even if scientists don't know where the universe came from (I don't thiink they really do), those scientists do not then say 'Well, A miracle caused it! lets call it a day!'. They draw extrapolations out from the data and report those extrapolations no matter how difficult they are to explain. The data indicates the universe is roughly X billion years old, they report that. How did it start? I don't know, but I'm not going to make up lies to make myself feel better about my ignorance. All science can say for certain is that the Data indicates that it started, and now we are theorising about how that could have happened. Miracles need not apply.


Indeed, I'm not a physicist.
And I might be worng but if I remember correctly from reading about it, they said all the atoms were in one spot, exploded and that's the start.
But then it's still makes you ask, how did all the atoms get to that one spot?

Perhaps it is a continual process of expansion and contraction; Perhaps it was a one time thing where the universe will continue to expand; Perhaps (as some theories now suggest), our universe is only one of many universes that expand out of each other and appear as bubbles floating on each other; Or, perhaps it is none of these things. The point is, scientists try to use available evidence to make the theory of the universe as complete as possible. We know that there was a Big Bang, but before that, anything is just conjecture because our models of physics break down at that point, so we can "see" no further back than that. To hypothesize that some sort of a God is the reason for it, though, would require some sort of evidence, as it is only one of many possibilities.

#18 Aegist

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 01:22 AM

Ken Miller on Intelligent Design:

Worth watching the whole film, it came out shortly after the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial.

If you don't want to watch the whole thing (slacker) then at least watch these short clips from it:
Ken Miller on Human Ape relationship
http://www.youtube.c...related&search=

Ken Miller on Fossil Record
http://www.youtube.c...related&search=

Miller on Behe (very good)
http://www.youtube.c...related&search=

Why evolution is under attack
http://www.youtube.c...related&search=

#19 struct

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 01:43 AM

Indeed, I'm not a physicist.
And I might be worng but if I remember correctly from reading about it, they said all the atoms were in one spot, exploded and that's the start.
But then it's still makes you ask, how did all the atoms get to that one spot?


Atoms formed later on, after some preceding stages of the expansion of our 'baby' universe. The universe was already gigantic when the atoms formed.

#20 luv2increase

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 03:38 AM

Are not the atoms a resultant from subatomic matter? Is not subatomic matter a resultant of ????? ? There is something missing in this step. Atoms are the building blocks of everything. If anything, atoms formed second to subatomic matter. Can subatomic matter form anything relevant other than atoms? This whole thing is mind-boggling, this is for sure. I don't care if someone has an IQ of 300, we will not know. Even if people of IQ's is the area of 160+ form machines, computers, algorithms, etc.. this will never be known...

Dead end.

#21 Live Forever

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 03:55 AM

Are not the atoms a resultant from subatomic matter?  Is not subatomic matter a resultant of ?????  ?  There is something missing in this step.  Atoms are the building blocks of everything.  If anything, atoms formed second to subatomic matter.  Can subatomic matter form anything relevant other than atoms?  This whole thing is mind-boggling, this is for sure.  I don't care if someone has an IQ of 300, we will not know.  Even if people of IQ's is the area of 160+ form machines, computers, algorithms, etc.. this will never be known...

Dead end.

So your answer is to believe that God did it because you can't explain it using current means? That is a cop out, and you still don't explain where God came from in the "where did subatomic matter" come from example you give.

Also to say that we "will never know" something is, historically, not a wise statement to make.

#22 Aegist

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 04:03 AM

Are not the atoms a resultant from subatomic matter?  Is not subatomic matter a resultant of ?????  ?  There is something missing in this step.  Atoms are the building blocks of everything.  If anything, atoms formed second to subatomic matter.  Can subatomic matter form anything relevant other than atoms?  This whole thing is mind-boggling, this is for sure.  I don't care if someone has an IQ of 300, we will not know.  Even if people of IQ's is the area of 160+ form machines, computers, algorithms, etc.. this will never be known...

Dead end.

This is such a faulty assumption that I'm not sure I am going to be able to convince you of just how faulty it is....

Intelligence has very little to do with it. More importantly, YOUR ignorance in the matter is irrelevent! It matters not at all that you don't understand how it works, and it matters not at all that you cannot imagine how it works. Your understanding is inconsequential: so do not presume for one second that your ignorance is a premise for how much humanity can know.
...Live Forever just posted his reply saying much the same thing.


So in order to add to his post rather than only repeating it: The ongoing collection of Data is what progresses science, combined with the seemingly random creation of theories. With time enough data will be collected, and enough crazy theories will be created that eventually a theory will be designed which matches all of the data.

Intelligence is irrelevent. Natural attrition of ideas under a selective pressure of 'reality' is a much more effective method of finding truth than iontlligently designing it.

Fact is, for all of the 'Intelligence' of humans, everything we have ever invented has been a process of evolution of ideas, not a single step of creation.

#23 spaceistheplace

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 04:10 AM

Evolution and Intelligent Design are, in my opinion, perfectly compatible. Could not God just as easily create through the suspension of scientific law as through the use of it?

#24 Live Forever

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 04:15 AM

Evolution and Intelligent Design are, in my opinion, perfectly compatible. Could not God just as easily create through the suspension of scientific law as through the use of it?

That is fine, but you have to understand if you are explicitly saying it isn't scientific then it is religion, and not science,. It most certainly doesn't belong in a scientific debate, unless it can be demonstrated in a measurable way, or documented in a way that will prove it happened. If you are invoking magic, it is no longer science, but religion.

However, the vast majority of people who advocate intelligent design say that it can be proven scientifically, and even want it taught in science classrooms. (in fact the whole reason they changed the terminology from "creationism" to "intelligent design" is to give it more of a scientific sound, and they have loads of so called "documentation" supporting their case--much of which I tried to link to at the first of this thread to give IDers a chance to research it) To include it in a scientific debate, or teach it in a science classroom, you have to come with something more than "it just happened".

#25 Aegist

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 04:41 AM

Evolution and Intelligent Design are, in my opinion, perfectly compatible. Could not God just as easily create through the suspension of scientific law as through the use of it?

In fact, many people now claim that ID is all about 'supplementing' evolution. That is, the evolution is basically true, but occasionally an intelligent agent just steps in and changes a gene here and there.

Now while this is feasibly possible, there is no reason to assume it. Evolution does in fact explain everything without the need to invoke an intelligent agent, and parsimony therefore dictates that we do not invoke such an agent.

The whole case of ID is that evolution cannot explain everything. The Denver county school board trial irrevocably demonstrated that this claim was false.

#26 DJS

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 04:45 AM

Ageist: Fact is, for all of the 'Intelligence' of humans, everything we have ever invented has been a process of evolution of ideas, not a single step of creation.


I'm not in total agreement with this statement. One could define "creation" in many ways, such as the combining of actualized possibilities with intuitive "trial and error" leaps into design space. "Creation" doesn't need to be mystical and magical, it can have a substantive meaning within a logical framework. "Creativity: the unique convergence of logical possibilities."

#27 Aegist

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 04:53 AM

I'm not in total agreement with this statement.  One could define "creation" in many ways, such as the combining of actualized possibilities with intuitive "trial and error" leaps into design space.  "Creation" doesn't need to be mystical and magical, it can have a substantive meaning within a logical framework.  "Creativity: the unique convergence of logical possibilities."

I actually had a lot of difficulty following you meaning.

I think I agree with the"intuitive trial and error" concept, and that is in effect what I am talking about to some extent. most idea aren't created instantly, they are a process of trial and error in thinking, patched together based on the components that worked and the components that didn't work. In the end of the design process a primitive tool/device/toy whatever is created, and then the ongoing design process forever 'evolves' it into a remarkably highly refined piece of human ingenuity. Look at a computer. Maybe the original idea was brilliant, but that original idea was certainly not done with a single though, it was a process of trial and error combined with "Keep what works". Once the original idea was out there, many thousands of people added to the idea, and the stuff that works stayed, while the badly designed stuff and the less popular stuff (natural selection and sexual selection?) were lost. We now have a highly evolved (designed) product which appears to suit a range of specific purposes.

Computers are 'designed' by humans, but no as a stroke of intelligence, and as a matter of fact, not at all by an intelligence, but moreso on account of tiny changes selected by a selection process.

#28 DJS

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 04:57 PM

Hhmm, essentially my point was that it is important how we define our terms.

Computers are 'designed' by humans, but no as a stroke of intelligence, and as a matter of fact, not at all by an intelligence, but moreso on account of tiny changes selected by a selection process.


So then what counts as "intelligence"? I am making the same point again, only with a different term.

There are terms which we use continuously, and it is obvious that they have some sort of meaning. When we "get under the hood" and evaluate them critically our conceptualizations might be a let down for some, but this doesn't imply that we should suddenly become eliminativist.

To state the obvious, the terms *creation* and *intelligence* exist. Am I to understand that you are suggesting that the information content of these terms is effectively zero. Should we "eliminate" them from our formal vocabulary and chalk their continued presence in our lexicon of terms up to the unavoidability of folk psychology?

#29 DJS

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 05:21 PM

In particular, the concept of "intelligence" is crucial to the debate taking place in this thread because "evolution vs intelligent design" really amounts to "unintelligent* design vs intelligent design".

Clearly there is a fundamental difference in the design process of humans and the design process of evolution.

(*and, although "unintelligent" is a convenient way of labeling the process of evolution, a more accurate term might be "minimally intelligent")

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#30 Lazarus Long

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 06:40 PM

Perhaps even a better way of defining this debate is environmental determinism (natural selection) versus divine determinism (god selection) for evolution.

*Technically* (although many creationists have a difificult time understanding this) creationism does not equal intelligent design.

The problem with all the "it's too complex to be random" arguments is that it is only too complex for them to understand how it is random not that random mutation and natural selection are too simple to produce the result.

Most of the arguments offered are specious because the *result* is not a *proof of the process.* Saying any particular result is too complex for the process to have created it is an arbitrary judgement, not a proof. Addition is very simple but if you add 1 with 1 billions of times and then divide by 11 you can still end up with incredibly large complex numbers. It doesn't require divine math to create a complex result, just a lot of redundant addition combined with simple (cellular) division. ;))

Anyway the burden of proof is on the ID'ers not Darwinists. Darwinists have produced a vast quantity of generally consistent evidence across a wide array of fields that possess a critically high degree of predicability as a result of the propositions set forth.

The burden on ID'ers is to match that degree of precision along with tangible evidience of divine intervention not a disproof of any elements of Darwinism.

Without such cooraborable evidence this debate is over IMHO.




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