I've Got to Write a Quick Essay for a Colleague

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i think there's a sort of adimicum for any terrestrial like planet. The total number of theoretical combinations is so stupidly large that the likelihood of ending up in anything like a terrestrial biosphere on the earth is vanishingly small. But, as you say, i mean, oif youre oin to go round stabbing things, why not have a sabre? It's a very good idea. And because those things are so recurrent, my sense is that they provide a sort of, so to speak, of adimaclity and design from the top down.

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.