Sublime

The first bottom-up attempt to untangle the riddle of design was to search for a profound mathematical truth at the kernel of existence. The second line of attack, multiverse cosmology, also relied on timeless metalaws, but augmented with the anthropic selection of a habitable island universe.

Evolution resolves the infinite regression, not by being super-clever and super-efficient, but by being stupid and inefficient and working anyway. This is the marvel.

what processes animate cells and set them apart from inanimate matter?

Life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.

a supposed designer of our biosphere will seem not only morally deficient, but intellectually unremarkable.

En tant que scientifique, je suis ne parfait accord avec Darwin, Gould, Pinker et Dawkins. Je n’ai aucune patience envers ceux qui défendent l’idée d’un dessein intelligent, du moins dans le sens où la plupart utilisent cette expression.

“In some respects,” Gruber concluded, “Charles Darwin’s greatest works represent interpretative compilations of facts first gathered by others.” He was a lateral-thinking integrator.

Although they’re necessary, general laws are woefully insufficient to account for very specific, purposeful arrangements of parts.

So what would refute the Darwinian theory of evolution?