عنوان

Colloquium paper:

شماره

LA4m26m9z3

عنوان اصلي

Colloquium paper:

نام عام مواد

[Article]

نام نخستين پديدآور

Avise, John C

عنوان اصلي به قلم نويسنده ديگر

footprints of nonsentient design inside the human genome.

متن يادداشت

Intelligent design (ID)-the latest incarnation of religious creationism-posits that complex biological features did not accrue gradually via natural evolutionary forces but, instead, were crafted ex nihilo by a cognitive agent. Yet, many complex biological traits are gratuitously complicated, function poorly, and debilitate their bearers. Furthermore, such dysfunctional traits abound not only in the phenotypes but inside the genomes of eukaryotic species. Here, I highlight several outlandish features of the human genome that defy notions of ID by a caring cognitive agent. These range from de novo mutational glitches that collectively kill or maim countless individuals (including embryos and fetuses) to pervasive architectural flaws (including pseudogenes, parasitic mobile elements, and needlessly baroque regulatory pathways) that are endogenous in every human genome. Gross imperfection at the molecular level presents a conundrum for the traditional paradigms of natural theology as well as for recent assertions of ID, but it is consistent with the notion of nonsentient contrivance by evolutionary forces. In this important philosophical sense, the science of evolutionary genetics should rightly be viewed as an ally (not an adversary) of mainstream religions because it helps the latter to escape the profound theological enigmas posed by notions of ID.

تاريخ نشر

2010

عنوان

UC Irvine

نام الکترونيکي

نوع ماده

[Article]

کد کاربرگه

276877

سطح دسترسي

a

تكميل شده

Y