The Origin of Life

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The origin of life is generally agreed to be a natural process, but not at all well understood. We now know a very large number of extra solar planets and it's becoming fairly clear that probably most do not evolve in the way the earth has evolved. And linked to that is the possibility - which i think i can argue my way round - of so called evolutionary bottle necks. In other words, there are constrictions whereby everything's got to come together at about the rent right time. N if that doesn't happen, then, by by, you carry oftic cells, that is, the cells we're composed of, along with plants and mushrooms. E er. There is conver

If extraterrestrial intelligences exist, will look anything like us? Are we alone in the cosmos? If we reran the tape of life, would humans appear again? Is there purpose in the cosmos?

Shermer speaks with Cambridge evolutionary palaeobiologist Simon Conway Morris whose latest book challenges six assumptions that too often pass as unquestioned truths amongst the evolutionary orthodox. These include the idea that evolution is boundless in the kinds of biological systems it can produce. Not true, he says. The process is highly circumscribed and delimited. Nor is it random. This popular notion holds that evolution proceeds blindly, with no endgame. But Conway Morris suggests otherwise, pointing to evidence that the processes of evolution are “seeded with inevitabilities.”

Shermer and Morris also discuss: convergent evolution and directionality in evolution; chance, contingency, and law in evolution; theistic evolution and teleology in nature; why Morris is a Christian but rejects Intelligent Design creationism; free will and determinism; and whether there good arguments for God’s existence.