Is There a Historical Narrative There?

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If we think about, ah, your knowledge has justified true belief. What is your justification for being a christian? So if you're a christian, you believe that jesus died was resurrected. Why do you accept that one? In not th the jewish story, the islam story, the buddhist story, the whatever,. what makes that story more compelling? I'm not even making the argument. I just believe based on faith. And it's a different category than science or or wat probably one would call it a different category, if that's helpful.

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.