BIOL 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Irreducible Complexity, Intelligent Design, Al-Jahiz
21 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Intelligent design is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe & of living things exhibit the characterists of a product resulting from an intelligen cause or agent, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Intelligent design is not iterative & self-correcting: no changed have been mmade based on any evicend to the controversy. Id supporters cite: irreducible complexity; probability; & lack of transitional fossils. An object cannot become simpler without being nonfuncional; complex structures. What is now a complex, necessary function or structure did not start off that way. Can reconstruct evolution of complex traits by looking for living intermediate forms within a group of closely related structures. Closely related species show gradient from simple to complex eyes. Evolution does not mean that oganisms are striving to become perfect or more complex. Ancient greeks independent of judeo- christian0 muslim lineages. Suggested that earth was once covered with water. Plants and animals arose from that manner.
