Sharks Aren't Changing, but They're Not Changing

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There is a suggestion that because mars was more benign, while the earth has been pounded to pieces early in history of the solar system, that it was a lump of martian rock with microbesa landed in that warm little pond. But most organisms on earth survive just fine without any of that. I mean, there's plenty of reptiles the deephot biosphere all the bacteria. You know, sharks, they're not becoming anything. And it's better to have just a tiny little brain, cause you don't need much energy to run it. In point of fact, i would suggest it in terms of logical organizeng we're pretty close to the limits now of what can be done

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.