Eternity

[Stranger]

Natural Selection is a metaphor because there is no actual selection going on.

There is no intelligence doing a deliberate selection, nevertheless, some traits do spread through populations and some die out, so there is a filtration process. Selection isn't a bad word for it, except for the implication of intelligence.

Darwin thought of  Natural Selection as similar to artificial selection, the way a farmer selects for traits in his crops while cross breeding them.

It is similar in many ways.

He (being an agnostic) probably had the idea of some superior intelligence doing the selection.

Never seen anything that suggests that and it seems highly unlikely given what he did say in On the Origin of Species.

Talking of 'filtering' is nonsense because this automatically implies a set requirement (a sieve of sorts) based on which the Natural Selection takes place.

Drivel. There is a filter, it's called 'the environment'.

There is actually no set process at all that can be called Natural Selection.

Absurd nonsense.

A species could survive very well in one corner of the forest and get eliminated at the other corner depending on the conditions.

It could indeed. Differing conditions mean different selection pressures and that is a very important part of the process of evolution that often drives speciation.

It is pure chance and talking about it as though it is a well understood process is incorrect and dishonest. Seen along with random variations...the entire process of evolution is just chance.

Ignorant drivel.

Evolution is fact happens through active adaptations of organisms to environments through an internal communication within them, that causes phenotypes to change suitably. Now....you guys obviously don't like that idea because it implies some sort of an inner response and intelligence that is anathema to you.

Fantasy.

Look Sriram, natural selection is not rocket science, it's simple and obvious. It works like this:

Take the most significant example of a new mutation. Most mutations do nothing much at all (every human has many) but sometimes they will produce a new trait and that may either be deleterious or advantageous, by which we mean they either aid survival and reproduction in the current environment of the population or hinder it. Unsurprisingly those individuals with an advantageous trait will probably produce more offspring and those offspring with the trait will similarly produce more offspring and so on through the generations. An advantageous trait will spread through the population. Conversely, a deleterious trait will reproduce less (if at all) and tend to die out.

To take your point above, if part of a population is cut off from the rest in a somewhat different environment, then the traits that are selected for will be different, hence, over time the two populations become increasingly different, and this is one of the scenarios that can lead to speciation. A similar thing happens if the environment changes in some way, again different selection pressures and different traits being selected.

The classic peppered moth example illustrates this nicely and in an obvious way. We also now know the associated mutation.

How anybody can fail to understand this is totally beyond me. It is really, really simple. I guess clinging desperately on to cherished ideas is the only way to ignored it. Blind faith at its most absurd.   

Worth adding that the process (that you don't think exists) has been observed in nature and experiments as well as simulated on computer and actually used as a design process.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

No, any “faith” here is just a reasonable degree of confidence based on overwhelming evidence. 

There is overwhelming, demonstrable evidence that truly random forces are inherently destructive - not creative.  It takes a great deal of faith to believe that random forces alone could have driven the evolution process over the many mountains of improbability involved in bringing life as we know it into existence.

Yes, and that’s called “blind” faith because there’s no evidence at all to justify it.

There is plenty of evidence, but you choose to use your God given freedom to seek reasons to dismiss it, ridicule it, ignore it or claim that it does not exist ( - as in human free will).

[Stranger]

There is overwhelming, demonstrable evidence that truly random forces are inherently destructive - not creative.  It takes a great deal of faith to believe that random forces alone could have driven the evolution process over the many mountains of improbability involved in bringing life as we know it into existence.

The process of evolution is not random, only the raw mutations are (effectively) random and they supply the required novelty for natural selection to work on.

There is plenty of evidence, but you choose to use your God given freedom to seek reasons to dismiss it, ridicule it, ignore it or claim that it does not exist ( - as in human free will).

You have presented no evidence whatsoever (neither has anybody else) for your absurd claims. Your 'argument' about 'free will' is riddled with logical contradiction, impossibilities, endless obvious fallacies, and meaningless gibberish.

[Outrider]

Natural Selection is a metaphor because there is no actual selection going on.

To the extent that 'selection' implies a consciousness making a choice, that's exactly correct, that isn't happening. It's a metaphor because you're anthropomorphising natural phenomena.

Darwin thought of  Natural Selection as similar to artificial selection, the way a farmer selects for traits in his crops while cross breeding them. He (being an agnostic) probably had the idea of some superior intelligence doing the selection.

The evidence suggests that he distinctly didn't think it was guided by a superior intelligence, and he had great qualms about what it would mean for organised religion. It's reported that he deferred publishing for some considerable time whilst he wrestled with that.

Talking of 'filtering' is nonsense because this automatically implies a set requirement (a sieve of sorts) based on which the Natural Selection takes place.

It doesn't require a set requirement, it merely requires an environment at any given time which gives an advantage to one or more variations over others.

There is actually no set process at all that can be called Natural Selection.

Which is why we have the variety of life that we do, because different pressures at different points favoured different variations (and crabs).

It is just chance which depends on local environmental conditions.

Yep.

A species could survive very well in one corner of the forest and get eliminated at the other corner depending on the conditions.

Not just could, it has to. If that wasn't the case you wouldn't get the differential selection, you wouldn't get the range, you'd just have one species everywhere because you wouldn't have selection, you'd just have continual adaptation.

It is pure chance and talking about it as though it is a well understood process is incorrect and dishonest.

Probability is a well-established field of mathematics, there is no inherent reason to think that we can't handle chance in science. The process of natural selection is well understood, the process of the initial variation upon which Natural Selection works is, I'd suggest, less well-understood but well documented. That we understand the process does not mean that we necessarily can rebuild the entire history of a species, but we have had some success in identified common elements and using that understanding to develop a reasonably complete tree of life.

Seen along with random variations...the entire process of evolution is just chance.

No, it involves chance elements, but it's a strongly selective process working on variation that comes about by chance. It's like if I shuffle a pack of cards, but then ask you to pick out the red ones - they're in a random order, and if you couldn't look and select then you'd have a 50-50 chance, but with selection you should get to 100%.
 

Evolution is fact happens through active adaptations of organisms to environments through an internal communication within them, that causes phenotypes to change suitably.

If that's fact how do you explain extinctions? If populations can adapt in advance of environmental pressures, how come so many fail? If that's 'fact' where's your demonstration of the mechanism, and your prediction? How do you explain future information somehow flowing backwards in time to inform variation before it's required?

Now....you guys obviously don't like that idea because it implies some sort of an inner response and intelligence that is anathema to you.

No, we don't like it because it contradicts the evidence we do have, doesn't have evidence to support it, and then begs the question 'where did the guiding intelligence come from'?

O.

[Outrider]

There is overwhelming, demonstrable evidence that truly random forces are inherently destructive - not creative.

Can you name a truly 'random' force? When variation is described as 'random' in the sense of evolution it's in terms of the environment that will then select on that variation, it is not suggesting that there isn't some sort of biological mechanism driving variation in the first place.

It takes a great deal of faith to believe that random forces alone could have driven the evolution process over the many mountains of improbability involved in bringing life as we know it into existence.

It doesn't take any faith at all, because we have evidence. It takes trust in the scientific works of those who've gone before us, it takes trust in the rigour of the review process and replication studies (which aren't universally perfect, unfortunately), but it's a fundamentally different way of approaching conclusions about the world and how it works.

There is plenty of evidence, but you choose to use your God given freedom to seek reasons to dismiss it, ridicule it, ignore it or claim that it does not exist ( - as in human free will).

If you have evidence, present it, but don't then claim 'faith'. You have evidence, or you have faith, you don't have both. As it is, typically, you don't have evidence: you have a phenomenon, you have personal incredulity, and you have the Big Boy's Book of Bedtime Stories.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

There is overwhelming, demonstrable evidence that truly random forces are inherently destructive - not creative.  It takes a great deal of faith to believe that random forces alone could have driven the evolution process over the many mountains of improbability involved in bringing life as we know it into existence.

Your ignorance of the subject you presume to criticise is letting you down again here, as is your fondness for bad reasoning.

For practical purpose the mutation part is random (whether “true” randomness actually exists is a different matter) but the effect of environment on those mutations is anything but.

I’ve explained to you your reasoning error may times without reply (circular reasoning, begging the question etc) so unless you’re prepared finally to address the error I see little point in doing it again. Suffice it to say that you cannot assume humankind was a god’s plan all along, and then be incredulous at the unlikeliness of it happening without a god to guide it.
 

There is plenty of evidence, but you choose to use your God given freedom to seek reasons to dismiss it, ridicule it, ignore it or claim that it does not exist ( - as in human free will).

If you seriously think there’s “plenty of evidence” isn’t it about time you finally produced some of it?

[jeremyp]

Yes, but the point is that postulating a god simply does not answer the question as to why there is something rather than nothing. The question remains just the same whether the 'something' refers to the universe or to some god.

Well I know that and you know that. But, for some reason, religionists seem to think "God just is" is an adequate answer to the question.

[Alan Burns]

The process of evolution is not random, only the raw mutations are (effectively) random and they supply the required novelty for natural selection to work on.

Just looking at the start of the evolution process - before natural selection can even get going.
We have amino acids which need to combine in some way to produce self contained entities capable of reproducing themselves.  Then we have the monumental leap from cell reproduction to sexual reproduction.

Just because you can't detect God's guidance directly with our limited senses does not lead to the conclusion that it does not exist.  Similarly, the fact that you can't conceive of any means for us to have conscious freedom to control our own thought processes does not lead to a conclusion that such control cannot take place.  The evidence lies in the results - not in our limited capacity to understand how it is accomplished.

[Stranger]

Just looking at the start of the evolution process - before natural selection can even get going.
We have amino acids which need to combine in some way to produce self contained entities capable of reproducing themselves. 

So, having made the absurd statement about "random forces alone" driving the evolution process, now you've been corrected, you've backed off and are now talking about abiogenesis. This is how you keep trashing your own reputation. You don't pay attention and think things through.

Abiogenesis is an ongoing area of research and there are many credible hypotheses with reasonable indicative evidence.

Then we have the monumental leap from cell reproduction to sexual reproduction.

Origin of sexual reproduction.

Just because you can't detect God's guidance directly with our limited senses does not lead to the conclusion that it does not exist.

Argument from ignorance fallacy (silly logical blunder).

Similarly, the fact that you can't conceive of any means for us to have conscious freedom to control our own thought processes does not lead to a conclusion that such control cannot take place.

"Conscious freedom to control our own thought processes" is an example of one of you daft gibberish phrases I spoke of before. What's it supposed to mean? How can we consciously control our own thought process? By consciously thinking about each conscious thought before we consciously think it? See? Total gibberish.

The evidence lies in the results - not in our limited capacity to understand how it is accomplished.

You can't have evidence for meaningless claim. Further, it has been pointed out to you multiple times that evidence for your nonsense version of 'freedom', in the sense of being able to have done differently in exactly the same situation without randomness, is totally impossible to obtain, because we'd literally have to rewind time in order to test that somebody could do differently and then, somehow show that said difference wasn't random.

You have presented exactly zero evidence that human minds are not deterministic (or mostly so, with some randomness). Absolutely nothing.

This sort of repetition of the same old crap is exactly what justified my comments in #26.

[Outrider]

Just looking at the start of the evolution process - before natural selection can even get going.

You mean abiogenesis, which is BY DEFINITION, not part of evolution or evolutionary theory.

We have amino acids which need to combine in some way to produce self contained entities capable of reproducing themselves.  Then we have the monumental leap from cell reproduction to sexual reproduction.

No, you have a series of small steps which will likely include some sort of hybrid stage where you can have sexual or asexual reproduction, like we see in aphids, slime molds, starfish...

Just because you can't detect God's guidance directly with our limited senses does not lead to the conclusion that it does not exist.

No, but the fact that you apparently can't detect God's guidance either, you merely assume it, means that I don't have to take your claim of it seriously.

Similarly, the fact that you can't conceive of any means for us to have conscious freedom to control our own thought processes does not lead to a conclusion that such control cannot take place.

It's not about an inability to conceive it, it's an easy thing to conceive of, it's that you have no evidence for it, not gap in the current explanation that requires it, and no answer to the subsequent inevitable questions that adding in the unnecessary element adds - in both situations.

The evidence lies in the results - not in our limited capacity to understand how it is accomplished.

Yes. And you have no evidence for your claims. Even if you consider your personal incredulity sufficient to discount evolution by natural selection, you've merely brought us back to a point of 'nobody knows', the conclusion of which is not 'therefore Yahweh' but rather 'therefore more investigation'.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Just looking at the start of the evolution process - before natural selection can even get going.

Which is called abiogenesis, an active area of research and a precursor to evolution rather that its start but ok…

We have amino acids which need to combine in some way to produce self contained entities capable of reproducing themselves.  Then we have the monumental leap from cell reproduction to sexual reproduction.

Except that you’re making the reasoning error here of ignoring the size of the sample set. Given trillions and trillions of opportunities for an event (one cell being absorbed by another rather than being rejected by it for example), there’s nothing particularly remarkable about it happening one (or likely multiple) times.

Just because you can't detect God's guidance directly with our limited senses does not lead to the conclusion that it does not exist.

Nice example of omni-fallacious reasoning there – straw man, Russell’s teapot etc. The actual conclusion by the way is just that there’s no good reason to think it does exist, which is a very different claim to your straw man version. 

Similarly, the fact that you can't conceive of any means for us to have conscious freedom to control our own thought processes does not lead to a conclusion that such control cannot take place.

See above re a straw man. Anyone can conceive of such a thing, only that conception would entail so many additional assumptions, logical contradictions etc that it’s readily dismissed.

The evidence lies in the results - not in our limited capacity to understand how it is accomplished.

What results, and why do you think they’re evidence for a god?

[torridon]

There is overwhelming, demonstrable evidence that truly random forces are inherently destructive - not creative....

Lazy generalisation. 

Within the specific context of germlíne genetic mutations, a random change in a particular gene does not necessarily translate to 'inherently always destructive'.  It just means that some or other characteristic of the progeny will be slightly different to the parental trait.  That this would result destruction of the progeny is very improbable.  Most adult humans have accumulated a few dozen germline mutations by the time they have kids.  Ask youself, have nearly all your friends' children died as a result of genetic defects ? If the answer to this is 'No', then realise that your lazy and ignorant misrepresentation of this key biological process is way off the mark.

[Sriram]

There is no intelligence doing a deliberate selection, nevertheless, some traits do spread through populations and some die out, so there is a filtration process. Selection isn't a bad word for it, except for the implication of intelligence.

It is similar in many ways.

Never seen anything that suggests that and it seems highly unlikely given what he did say in On the Origin of Species.

Drivel. There is a filter, it's called 'the environment'.

Absurd nonsense.

It could indeed. Differing conditions mean different selection pressures and that is a very important part of the process of evolution that often drives speciation.

Ignorant drivel.

Fantasy.

Look Sriram, natural selection is not rocket science, it's simple and obvious. It works like this:

Take the most significant example of a new mutation. Most mutations do nothing much at all (every human has many) but sometimes they will produce a new trait and that may either be deleterious or advantageous, by which we mean they either aid survival and reproduction in the current environment of the population or hinder it. Unsurprisingly those individuals with an advantageous trait will probably produce more offspring and those offspring with the trait will similarly produce more offspring and so on through the generations. An advantageous trait will spread through the population. Conversely, a deleterious trait will reproduce less (if at all) and tend to die out.

To take your point above, if part of a population is cut off from the rest in a somewhat different environment, then the traits that are selected for will be different, hence, over time the two populations become increasingly different, and this is one of the scenarios that can lead to speciation. A similar thing happens if the environment changes in some way, again different selection pressures and different traits being selected.

The classic peppered moth example illustrates this nicely and in an obvious way. We also now know the associated mutation.

How anybody can fail to understand this is totally beyond me. It is really, really simple. I guess clinging desperately on to cherished ideas is the only way to ignored it. Blind faith at its most absurd.   

Worth adding that the process (that you don't think exists) has been observed in nature and experiments as well as simulated on computer and actually used as a design process.

You really must be a school teacher. Do you bring your cane along when you write....?!

Let me repeat.  IMO Natural Selection is entirely chance because environmental changes are purely chance.  Anything from elephants and frogs and worms manage to survive in the very same environment.  What filtration?!

Either there is some sort of an intelligence (collective consciousness) at work here or it is all entirely chance. Trying to see Natural Selection as some sort of a systematic process is clearly incorrect and dishonest. 

It is like kicking some balls down a hill. Either there are people at various points kicking the balls in desirable directions  or it is all chance where  the different balls land up. It cannot be neither. It cannot be seen as some 'natural selection process' that determines where the balls land up.

[Sriram]

To the extent that 'selection' implies a consciousness making a choice, that's exactly correct, that isn't happening. It's a metaphor because you're anthropomorphising natural phenomena.

The evidence suggests that he distinctly didn't think it was guided by a superior intelligence, and he had great qualms about what it would mean for organised religion. It's reported that he deferred publishing for some considerable time whilst he wrestled with that.

It doesn't require a set requirement, it merely requires an environment at any given time which gives an advantage to one or more variations over others.

Which is why we have the variety of life that we do, because different pressures at different points favoured different variations (and crabs).

Yep.

Not just could, it has to. If that wasn't the case you wouldn't get the differential selection, you wouldn't get the range, you'd just have one species everywhere because you wouldn't have selection, you'd just have continual adaptation.

Probability is a well-established field of mathematics, there is no inherent reason to think that we can't handle chance in science. The process of natural selection is well understood, the process of the initial variation upon which Natural Selection works is, I'd suggest, less well-understood but well documented. That we understand the process does not mean that we necessarily can rebuild the entire history of a species, but we have had some success in identified common elements and using that understanding to develop a reasonably complete tree of life.

No, it involves chance elements, but it's a strongly selective process working on variation that comes about by chance. It's like if I shuffle a pack of cards, but then ask you to pick out the red ones - they're in a random order, and if you couldn't look and select then you'd have a 50-50 chance, but with selection you should get to 100%.
 
If that's fact how do you explain extinctions? If populations can adapt in advance of environmental pressures, how come so many fail? If that's 'fact' where's your demonstration of the mechanism, and your prediction? How do you explain future information somehow flowing backwards in time to inform variation before it's required?

No, we don't like it because it contradicts the evidence we do have, doesn't have evidence to support it, and then begs the question 'where did the guiding intelligence come from'?

O.

A guiding Intelligence (consciousness) is not the same as religious ideas.....let us be clear about that. 

Natural Selection is a metaphor not just because of the words used.  As a concept....it is either driven by intelligence (of whatever kind) or it is purely chance all the way. You cannot have it both ways....suggesting something that is a systematic process but not involving intelligence of some kind.   

Phenotypic plasticity (Phenotypic plasticity can be defined as 'the ability of individual genotypes to produce different phenotypes when exposed to different environmental conditions') is the mechanism that determines how an organism adapts to its environment. 

My point is very simple.  There are only two things here. The organism and its environment. There is nothing here called 'natural selection'.  How the environment acts on the organism determines how the phenotype changes. That is it.

This internal communication within organisms which allows it to respond suitably and increase its survival chances, is what I call intelligence.   
 

[Stranger]

You really must be a school teacher.

Nobody could pay me enough to be a school teacher    However you do seem to know less that a school child and are incredibly slow. Go to the bottom of the class.

Let me repeat.

Repeating foolish fantasy is not going to make it any more believable.

IMO Natural Selection is entirely chance because environmental changes are purely chance.

So what? Populations evolve to fit with their environments in a non-random way. What the environment is and why it is that way is not directly relevant.

Anything from elephants and frogs and worms manage to survive in the very same environment.  What filtration?!

Your ignorance of the subject really does know no bounds. The environment of a population includes the other species that are in it, so they are not in the same environment at all. In fact interactions are often important, for example in hunter/prey relationships, you can get evolutionary 'arms races'.

Either there is some sort of an intelligence (collective consciousness) at work here or it is all entirely chance. Trying to see Natural Selection as some sort of a systematic process is clearly incorrect and dishonest. 

Utter drivel. I notice you didn't even try to address my description of the process and how and why natural selection works. Rather like Alan, you seem to have a script on this subject that you just keep repeating regardless of people pointing out why it's wrong. That would at least explain why you dare not tackle a detailed description of a process you want to deny exists.

You also ignored the fact that this has actually been directly observed. I linked to the peppered moth example, where we know the mutation and about when it happened, know how and why the darker variants were selected for, and even observed the reversal when the environment changed again. That is by no means the only example both in the wild and in experiments. The process is also been simulated and there are systems that basically use the same process for design.

It is like kicking some balls down a hill.

No, it isn't.

[Stranger]

A guiding Intelligence (consciousness) is not the same as religious ideas.....let us be clear about that. 

You have a different fantasy intelligence but there's still exactly the same evidence for it: none.

Natural Selection is a metaphor not just because of the words used.  As a concept....it is either driven by intelligence (of whatever kind) or it is purely chance all the way. You cannot have it both ways....suggesting something that is a systematic process but not involving intelligence of some kind.   

What an utterly daft assertion. The world is full of systematic processes that don't involve intelligence.

Phenotypic plasticity (Phenotypic plasticity can be defined as 'the ability of individual genotypes to produce different phenotypes when exposed to different environmental conditions') is the mechanism that determines how an organism adapts to its environment. 

There are other processes going on but they cannot possibly replace genetic mutation and natural selection. The evidence for that can be seen in pretty much any genome of any species you look at. Humans have the remains of a gene for making egg yoke, and also a great number of mutated (non-functional) olfactory receptor genes (sense of smell), many of which are shared with our closest relatives like chimpanzees and gorillas. The history of mutations is writ large in the genetic evidence.

You can also analyse the statistical pattern of mutations amongst humans (some types of mutations are more probable than others, for various reasons) and then do the same between humans and chimpanzees and see that they follow exactly the same pattern (obviously with a larger scale). Hence we can conclude that mutation was the main driver for the difference between humans and chimps.

My point is very simple.  There are only two things here. The organism and its environment. There is nothing here called 'natural selection'.  How the environment acts on the organism determines how the phenotype changes. That is it.

This internal communication within organisms which allows it to respond suitably and increase its survival chances, is what I call intelligence.   

Back in Sriram's ignorant fantasy land. 

[Outrider]

A guiding Intelligence (consciousness) is not the same as religious ideas.....let us be clear about that.

In the Venn Diagram, though, there is a HUGE intersection. Either way, my points are not predicated on the suggestion needing to be religious, they're predicated on the suggestions lacking evidence. 

Natural Selection is a metaphor not just because of the words used.

All metaphors are metaphors because of the words used, that's what a metaphor is. Even suggesting that metaphors are literally something else is literally a metaphor because you are claiming one thing is something else that it cannot be...

As a concept....it is either driven by intelligence (of whatever kind) or it is purely chance all the way.

You've just had three pages of people explaining that it's expressly not 'pure chance all the way', I don't know how I can make it any simpler for you.

1 - there is variation in reproduction. Although the mechanisms for that variation are overwhelmingly likely to be mechanistic (and, certainly, the ones that we've identified are so), they are not often directly related to the environment and therefore are, for the purposes of natural selection acting upon them, random.
2 - Natural selection is the exact opposite of random chance, it's the result of practical effects.
3 - Natural selection acting upon natural variation of multiple iterations results in evolution.

You cannot have it both ways....suggesting something that is a systematic process but not involving intelligence of some kind.

The water cycle. The food cycle. Conservation of momentum. Conservation of energy. All systematic process, none of them requiring an intelligence. Nature is replete with systematic processes that don't appear to involve an intelligence of any sort, it's the natural result of consistent physical laws.   

Phenotypic plasticity (Phenotypic plasticity can be defined as 'the ability of individual genotypes to produce different phenotypes when exposed to different environmental conditions') is the mechanism that determines how an organism adapts to its environment.

And phenotypic plasticity is one variation in some organisms that has proven to have an evolutionary advantage in certain environments, and therefore has been selected for, but it's not a trait that's seen throughout organic life.

My point is very simple.  There are only two things here. The organism and its environment. There is nothing here called 'natural selection'.  How the environment acts on the organism determines how the phenotype changes. That is it.

Except that nature is full of examples of nature selecting for traits which already existed before the environmental scenarios that select for them exist.

This internal communication within organisms which allows it to respond suitably and increase its survival chances, is what I call intelligence.

Before you can name it you have to demonstrate that it exists.

O.

[Sriram]

You cannot compare repetitive natural phenomena such as the water cycle with complex and developing phenomena such as evolution.  Unicellular organisms haven't evolved into complex humans through repetitive cyclical processes.

There are several emergent properties that have arisen at different stages which call for intelligent intervention. There is clearly some feed back and change mechanism that exists within organisms that you are reluctant to accept as the driver of evolution.

Phenotypic plasticity makes such intervention and feedback possible.  It cannot be dismissed as some one off phenomenon.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

There are several emergent properties that have arisen at different stages which call for intelligent intervention.

Why on earth would you think that unqualified assertion to be true?

[Sriram]

Why do you assert that it is false?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

Why do you assert that it is false?

I didn't. Now why not try at least to answer the question you were asked instead of straw manning the person who asked it? 

[Stranger]

You cannot compare repetitive natural phenomena such as the water cycle with complex and developing phenomena such as evolution.  Unicellular organisms haven't evolved into complex humans through repetitive cyclical processes.

Totally irrelevant.

There are several emergent properties that have arisen at different stages which call for intelligent intervention.

Yet another unargued, unevidenced, bare assertion.   

I note that you are still studiously ignoring the explanation of exactly how natural selection works and the evidence that genetic mutation and natural selection is the major driver of evolution.

[Sriram]

I note that you are still studiously ignoring the explanation of exactly how natural selection works and the evidence that genetic mutation and natural selection is the major driver of evolution.

You should have noted that long ago....!  I don't accept chance factors driving evolution...

[Sriram]

Sriram,

I didn't. Now why not try at least to answer the question you were asked instead of straw manning the person who asked it?

You are a school teacher too?!  I don't need to answer anything. 

I believe that intelligent intervention is necessary for emergent properties to arise. You are free to believe that chance factors are enough.

[Stranger]

You should have noted that long ago....!  I don't accept chance factors driving evolution...

It wasn't about chance factors.   

You've gone straight to a baseless, unevidenced, blind faith conclusion you prefer without considering or even bothering to try to understand the scientific, evidenced based explanation and the supporting evidence. That's just dimwitted.