Are You a Theist, or a Scientist?

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i'm not an anthropologist, but i can well imagine there's a way of looking at science fiction in terms of no galactic empires and so forth. If they'reanything like the empires we've had by knoege re, probably best avoided,. mostly they tond not to go in a benign direction. The world has to be organized in a way. But my own sense is that free will is part of what is woven into the beginning. We always make the choice. And g k Chestron was extremely good on this with regard to fairy tales. You know, you can adopt your world and it's going to last as long as you don't ask too many awkward questions.

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.