Angryminer
18-04-2007, 00:02
I think you are using 'active' and 'passive' differently than we do.
When I speak about an active process I mean something you actively do. You can actively go to the fridge and get a cold beer, because you desired to do so. But you can't actively start growing wings, just the same as brown bears can't actively start growing white fur to become polar bears.
Similarly you can die of the bite of a very mean tiger, which is passive because you propably didn't actively try to cause that event. Similarly the black dogs in my kennel-example didn't actively cause themselves to be shot and neither did any other animal that died try to become extinct.
In that sense evolution is a passive process, because never a prehistoric lizard tried to concentrate very hard to grow feathers and wings to become a bird. More accuratly the change from lizards to birds is a sum of 'random' mutations, which went in a certain direction, what we call bird today, because all other mutations died since they were less capable of successfully reproducing than the more bird-like creatures.
* I think none of us are trying to convince anybody. We're exchanging and explaining our views to improve the scope of our knowledge. Perhaps you have a point as an answer I didn't yet consider, so I can get a more objective view on the matter.
Angryminer
When I speak about an active process I mean something you actively do. You can actively go to the fridge and get a cold beer, because you desired to do so. But you can't actively start growing wings, just the same as brown bears can't actively start growing white fur to become polar bears.
Similarly you can die of the bite of a very mean tiger, which is passive because you propably didn't actively try to cause that event. Similarly the black dogs in my kennel-example didn't actively cause themselves to be shot and neither did any other animal that died try to become extinct.
In that sense evolution is a passive process, because never a prehistoric lizard tried to concentrate very hard to grow feathers and wings to become a bird. More accuratly the change from lizards to birds is a sum of 'random' mutations, which went in a certain direction, what we call bird today, because all other mutations died since they were less capable of successfully reproducing than the more bird-like creatures.
* I think none of us are trying to convince anybody. We're exchanging and explaining our views to improve the scope of our knowledge. Perhaps you have a point as an answer I didn't yet consider, so I can get a more objective view on the matter.
Angryminer