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Enforcer of the Republic
Originally posted by Grand-Moff-Gav
Hmm OK...As I understand it evolution is the reaction of species to the environment combined with random mutation...what if God shaped the environment to provide the species he wanted? He isn't actually interfering with natural selection itself but rather the outside environment...
Species don't really react to the environment. While genetic changes happen on the individual level, what changes is an individuals ability to survive. If you can survive (treating this simply: eat, fight, mate etc) you probably will have more offspring, increasing the likelihood that your genes are passed on. The idea goes that since you survived well, you're offspring are going to have a lot of those same characteristics. This goes on and on and eventually certain genes/characteristics become more prevalent in the POPULATION of organisms. This is the basic level of evolution.
On to the point. God influencing the environment is a more tenable position, but it is still a bad one. Starting recently, weather patterns are fairly static. They repeat themselves in annual cycles. Granted there is variation, but that variation is minimal. Even broader, perhaps non-cyclical changes (take rising CO2 levels) have determined causes (climate change, human involvement). I'm not a climatologist, but I dont know of many climate phenomenon that we currently can't explain.
Things get harder (naturally) as we go to other environmental factors (geologic activity, solar activity, etc...things we know less about) and as we go farther back into the historical record. We can use the geologic record to measure CO2 content and other mineral concentrations and measure how they changed and we can come up with logical reasons why such changes happened, but they can never really be tested. Nonetheless, some are very good explanations. Example: CO2 in the atmosphere disappeared into Calcium carbonate shells of invertebrates in ancient oceans and O2 was introduced into the atmosphere as a byproduct of algae etc. (Forgive me this is not my strong suit). Things like meteor impacts also drastically alter environments and create species bottlenecks, which many scientists think might leat to periods of rapid evolution. There are some great hypothesis on how primordial cells and etc developed from naturally occurring amino acids (of many which are naturally derived).
Philosophical wrap up: Things like our observation of current and geologic records indicate that changes in climate are more cyclical and logical rather than supernatural/random. Electricity still works the same way today and tomorrow. So, such interference isn't with natural selection, but its still interfering with other natural processes. This is also going outside of my league lol. I guess its more of a debate you have to have with yourself.
As a bonus: I'd caution against telelogy: a Final design. Humans have superfluous and redundant organs. Birds see in more colors and have sharper vision. Other animals have better night vision and hearing. We need to eat certain vitamins and minerals we can't make ourselves. Humans are not perfect, not the watchmaker's watches. We were not designed (well). We are not the linear end of a process. If there is a direction to the process, its not really natural selection and slips into Intelligent Design.
You're altering the environment question is not really natural selection, but its not mainstream Design either mainly because its indirect design, which really gives you no benefits but just an extra step. I dont know what that means and I've never really studied this particular direction. My ace is that this is divine intervention thus unscientific and unproven, but even being flexible I think you'd still have a hard time passing it off as anything other than intelligent design.
lol. So my stream of consciousness has brought me here. This is still intelligent design and contrary to natural selection. While the mechanism of natural selection is still intact, since the environment is directed, natural selection is still artificially directed, thus Intelligent design.
I think that ended up being a cleaner answer than I thought. No. lol