Self-organising systems are certainly a good way to solve some complex design problems, but when such evolution involves the protracted and painful deaths of countless billions of lifeforms (many of them sentient or nearly so), one might reasonably question the morality of a designer who chose that method in spite of being capable of simply doing it right the first time. (This seems, if anything, a slightly stronger form of the Argument From Evil, given that, whatever its effects might be upon humans, it's hard to imagine that all that suffering taught any of the lizards, lions or rabbits involved very much by way of important moral lessons. ;)
Evolution by natural selection is very elegant in the abstract, but it's certainly not nice. And, indeed, due to its inherent constraints, it doesn't lead to anything approaching what one might consider optimal design. I'm sure lots of animals would find life much easier if they had wheels, but if there's no monotonically-improving path to get them, they're SOL.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-11-25 01:34 pm (UTC)Evolution by natural selection is very elegant in the abstract, but it's certainly not nice. And, indeed, due to its inherent constraints, it doesn't lead to anything approaching what one might consider optimal design. I'm sure lots of animals would find life much easier if they had wheels, but if there's no monotonically-improving path to get them, they're SOL.