Selection and non-random variation

[Anne Kilmer]

When it comes to natural selection, why are we eliminating our own
actions from consideration. Are we supposedly unnatural or something?
Man has been responsible for the extinction of quite a few mammals,
either because they were tasty or because they were scary. 
We are now rapidly removing everything tasty from the ocean, and will
end up with only the fish that are too ugly to eat. 
When God put us in charge, perhaps the instructions should have been
more clear? As we seem to be trashing the joint. 
For purposes of this argument, I have reread Genesis, as well as looking
up panspermia (mentioned on Entomo-L).
I am impressed by people who can take all of Genesis as literally true
... at least in the King James version. I believed a good deal of it, in
my youth, but fortunately went to a splendid school where many creation
myths were studied. There seems to be a consensus ... a central truth. 
I don't see that the notion of God the Creator contradicts our notion
that evolution describes the way creation looks, if you happen to be
temporarily among those created. All a matter of perspective. 
As for panspermia, if you read much science fiction, you recognize many
of the theories and can put names to the wise ones who originated them. 
I turn to the poets for theology, and to the science fiction writers for
social sciences. Their thought processes have greater clarity, and their
communications skills are so fine ... 
And perhaps I am only a butterfly dreaming that I am Anne Kilmer
Cheers


John Grehan wrote:
> 
> Kenelm Philip
> 
>  You can argue all you
> >like about whether other processes operate as well as natural selection--
> >but no one can maintain that natural selection won't work at all.
> 
> I agree with the latter part of this statement, but the implication of the
> first
> that other processes are somehow just a matter of argument would be
> inaccurate since patterns of concerted evolution (basically involving
> an orthogenetic process) have been demonstrated. Like selection, the
> arguement comes down to how much significance such procesess
> have in the long-term.
> 
> John Grehan