Posted on 01/26/2006 1:47:10 PM PST by jennyp
Perhaps market is the wrong word then.
I was assuming the market is a system that emerges as a result of many people wanting to buy and sell with each other. Throw in a few thousand people and the system becomes very complex and chaotic. Order forms - there appears to be an overall direction and purpose, and the assumption might be that a super intelligence would be necessary to control something that complex. But there is noone guiding the direction of the overall system, and it has no purpose. It wanders of its own accord. What appears intelligently design is simply a consequence of lots of "dummies" trading with each other.
But it is an Intellligently driven process, isn't it? It is not random. It is PURPOSE DRIVEN®.
Did the keyboard that you are typing on just appear out of thin air? Or did someone design it? Did someone manufacture it? Did someone find a buyer for it? Did someone ship it to a distribution center where it was distributed to a retail store where you found it?
I was just looking at the instant oatmeal box on my desk. It probably took the efforts of 150 people to get that oatmeal on the store shelve. It is not a random process. It is an intelligently driven process with dozens of independent intelligent decisions bringing it about.
To compare the market to evolution is to admit that "evolution" (such as it is) is an intelligently driven process. Are you willing to admit that FACT?
"they forever surrendered their scientific "high ground" and put themselves in the position of ardent religionists defending a dogma."
Perfect example.
So is Spam, but I'm not sure it's meat.
The "designers" controlling evolution are the rules of chemistry. Untold billions of particles, all acting according to a set of rules. When each human in Hayek's system act according to their needs, an efficient economy evolves. When each atom in evolution's system acts according to it's rules, life evolves.
Prove that it did. Don't demand that I take the "scientific" theory of evolution on faith.
Prove a designer did it. Don't demand that I put my children in a public school and teach them one particular ancient faith with no greater reliability than hundreds of other ancient faiths.
A cute way to bias the argument. "Oooh, those eeeeeevil, stoooooopid fundamentalists."
And I suppose you've never thrown around the term "Darwinist".
But there are also plenty of Creationists who are willing to grant a 15 billion year old universe
Then you admit that Genesis is not literal. So what *other* parts of Genesis are not literal? The development of man perhaps?
And that's why I don't bother to debate this issue the way I used to; it became obvious long ago that I was not engaged in a scientific discussion, but a religious discussion with someone who isn't honest enough to admit it.
You're funny.
Figure 1.4.4. Fossil hominid skulls. Some of the figures have been modified for ease of comparison (only left-right mirroring or removal of a jawbone). (Images © 2000 Smithsonian Institution.)
- (A) Pan troglodytes, chimpanzee, modern
- (B) Australopithecus africanus, STS 5, 2.6 My
- (C) Australopithecus africanus, STS 71, 2.5 My
- (D) Homo habilis, KNM-ER 1813, 1.9 My
- (E) Homo habilis, OH24, 1.8 My
- (F) Homo rudolfensis, KNM-ER 1470, 1.8 My
- (G) Homo erectus, Dmanisi cranium D2700, 1.75 My
- (H) Homo ergaster (early H. erectus), KNM-ER 3733, 1.75 My
- (I) Homo heidelbergensis, "Rhodesia man," 300,000 - 125,000 y
- (J) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Ferrassie 1, 70,000 y
- (K) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Chappelle-aux-Saints, 60,000 y
- (L) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Le Moustier, 45,000 y
- (M) Homo sapiens sapiens, Cro-Magnon I, 30,000 y
- (N) Homo sapiens sapiens, modern
Everything is still evolving; look at "drug-resistent" bacteria. Evolution is how they got that way.
Evolving into what depends on selection pressure and environment. If humans begin to live and breed to space for some generations expect to see significant changes. Not sure what they would be.
As far as different sub-species of humans--no. Some anthropologists (such as Montague) question whether there are even human races. There are a lot of difference between and among groups, both in classical racial traits (skin color, hair color and form, etc.) as well as genetic traits (fingerprint patterns, blood types, etc.), but there are huge overlaps. Dark skin, for example, is a trait of hot climates and says little about descent.
All of these are fascinating studies!
Obviously no analogy is perfect, and will break down on various points. But you're clearly missing and breezing right by the point on which the analogy here (between evolution and economic markets) is held to be most relevant.
Yes, individual (and corporate) agents in the market place have purposes, but those purposes are particular to the agents. There is no explicit design or intent on the part of the agents involved to build capability and complexity and new functions in the market. The latter happens "by itself," although because of the diverse and eclectic activities of the agents, but without their design.
IOW you're confusing two levels of analysis when you say it's "purpose driven". The agents have actual purposes, but their interactions create markets wich have different, higher level purposes (or apparent purposes).
The agents in evolution also have purposes. An individual organism has the purpose to survive and reproduce. An individual gene has the (effective) purpose to reproduce itself. If a single gene "could" get itself copied over and over again, taking up the entire genome, it readily would do so. Likewise if a single economic agent could monopolize the market place, it would so too. But neither can do that. They can only do what "works". What "works" is determined by the system, not the agents, but the agents create the system which both enables and limits them, even though they don't design to do so.
I haven't seen China either but have enough evidence to believe it is a real place. As I also believe in God.
Can't same the same about the fossil record for evolution.
I just don't find it or the so called evidence for it believable.
So let's continue to rub it in. Evolution and free enterprise! The conservative combo.
I lump all liars into the same basket. There is no difference between a monkey/soup worshipper here telling me bold face lies like... "Evolution doesn't teach that man evolved from monkeys and life originated from chemical soup. That's not evolution" than a Marxist telling me..."No Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot weren't Communists. Communism has never been tried yet.". And Objectivists are in the same class as moonbat Marxists just different lies. All ideologues are slope-headed God-hating Satan worshippers.
Further research is dependent upon future big bucks from my pending research grant applications.
Muleteam1
Europeans proved this beginning about 1492, in a large-scale experiment.
Still, I'm fascinated with the Aborigines and Neanderthals. I really think the Neanderthals have been shortchanged. I wish I knew more about them.
I am too. I have read a bit about both groups but still would love to know more. I think the DNA testing is our best source of data. Bones told us a lot, but the things now being done with DNA are making old bones obsolete (was that a redundancy?).
That is as clear a statement of faith as the Apostles Creed ever hoped to be.
From whence did it derive it's "purpose"? If an individual organism is nothing but a rock in motion, then the existence of purpose is evidence of a supernatural design which is not present in the rock itself. The chemicals themselves obviously have no emotional attachment to each other that keeps them organized and driven to a purpose to stay in that particular state of organization.
To state that an organism has any inherent "purpose" is ludicrous from a purely naturalistic standpoint. Any purpose that an organism has is the result of that purpose being programmed into it. Now, where do you find the programmer?
Too insane, even for my list.
I hear ya.
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