Is Herobsei a Cipher or a Cleshee?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Each one of these people has sort of a deep resonance of meaning that they feel that they are not ciphers, but in one way or another, they are part of the larger picture. And on course, this can go seriously wrong. If you decide that your larger picture is totally correct and everybody else is totally incorrect, and that that leads to unhappiness on on a global scale. I'm no claiming i can prove it. Is that that what you're saying? In a sense, yes, it's, i would suggest. And i can equally imagine people without herobsei. Thank you very much.

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.