To a first approximation, every species that ever was is extinct. It is within a rounding error to say that every ancestral lineage that ever began eventually petered out.
Imagine Nature as a machine-gunner firing into a crowd. The fact that you and I exist means that for four billion years, our personal ancestors have managed to dodge the bullets. This is so exceedingly unlikely that there must be something about us, something in our nature, that made this possible.
You can despise this nature, and wish to alter it — but at the very least you must give it some respect. You certainly shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t exist. And you should pay some attention when it tries to tell you something.
4 Comments
Mr. Pollack, I struggle to imagine “Nature” as a ‘machine gunner firing into a crowd. Your metaphor is meant to imply that “random selection” was not imposed upon those living things which led to homo sapiens, I assume. It must be noted that the theory of evolution does not include “random selection” as part of it’s current tenets. Although the “Scientism” Cathedral promotes the theory of evolution as current dogma in it’s efforts to explain their “clockwork universe”, there are many logical and rational reasons to doubt the materialists explanations.
This particular thought experiment, however, would not “make sense” when reviewing the current state of (what passes for) current evolutionary theories. You might be interested to know that some at the edges of this arena are reconsidering Lamarkian ideas (behavior-inherited traits).
With all due respect, coyote, I believe you have misread me. At no point did I mention randmoness, nor is anything I said inconsistent even with a Lamarckian model of evolution. (Nor is it inconsistent, if you like, even with a belief in some sort of metaphysical telos.)
My point is only that those organisms alive today are the end-points of an unbroken line of successful parentage that goes back almost to the beginning of the Earth’s history, while uncounted multitudes of other germ-lines — pretty much all of them — were sooner or later snuffed out by natural processes. We are astonishingly, inestimably, vanishingly unlikely — and that is, I believe, worth keeping in mind.
I vaguely recall a Bloom County or Outland toon that made a similar point. I think it showed Bill the Cat with underwear on his head and a moony expression on his face, making a sound like, “Ooooooooooooh.” It’s explained that he entered this state once he realized the cosmic unlikelihood of each one of us.
Ah–found it.
When nature calls, I always respond immediately!
Jeffery Hodges
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