This was my question, which you ignored (because you don't have an answer, I suspect - but please, prove me wrong):
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Originally Posted by Carey
Yes, many other people suppose the same thing . . . you go on to say that you find the circularity of natural selection troubling. How do you find it troubling? How could the presence of adaptations be better explained, in your opinion?
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You certainly bark a whole lot about the insufficiency of natural selection, and yet you can offer not even a hint of something else to take its place.
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Originally Posted by Fred
shit happens, sometimes shit gets selected, and sometimes we’re just left with needless shit.
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The words of a true polymath. Bravo.
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Originally Posted by Fred
what the available science and the evidence actually tells us regarding the origin and evolution of life (and the universe too for that matter)
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If biologists are so delusional, then why don't you enlighten us about what "the evidence actually tells us regarding the origin and evolution of life"? If you address one part of this post, it should be this. Don't just rant again about the conceptual circularity of selection. Everyone acknowledges that natural selection is an algorithm, not a set of deterministic equations. The living world is too complicated to allow for prediction of future states with great precision. Get over it.
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Originally Posted by Fred
Mr. Selfish Gene Dawkins’s, “The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose [blah, blah, blah].â€
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Stop referencing Dawkins; he's not an unconditional spokesperson for the rest of evolutionary biology. His explication of the way in which selection operates was very important, but his views on religion, the universe, etc. are mainly media affairs, and don't relate to the science of evolution.