jeeprs wrote:
once it exists. The question is, how the DNA emerges from the 'sunlight pond' - how did DNA come about in the first place? How did it evolve? Did it evolve? How did all the pre-cursor chemicals 'adapt'? How can anything 'adapt' if it is not alive in the first place, and if it does not adapt, how does it evolve?

As regards form: I don't think 'form' implies a cookie-cutter type of morphology. I think it is much more subtle than that. The example of lions was given. Of course all lions are individuals, but not only are the recognisable as lions, they are also recognisable as felines. In fact if you wanted a better example of a Platonic form than a cat, you would be pretty hard-pressed to find it.

Incidentally, I am not a 'God-botherer' or a confirmed Christian (I will own up to being a cultural Christian). My problems with the neo-darwinist account of creation - I use that word intentionally - is that it is not philosophically coherent. There is no real account of the nature of cause. I will give an example. The current depiction of 'purpose' or 'intention' are such that these are really only understandable as characteristics of the human intelligence. Yet the human intelligence itself is purported to have evolved in the absence of any such thing as 'purpose' or 'intention'. Scientists such as Dawkins seem at great pains to argue that 'purpose' is an artefact of human consciousness, nothing else. But if that is the case, then the purpose actually has no purpose.

It has only evolved by chance, presumably as an adaption, and not reflecting anything in reality, which is basically chaotic and dead.

I don't think Dawkins or many of his ilk are actually mindful of the philosophical implications of this attitude. It basically puts the ego in the very centre of a meaningless existence and challenges it to make meaning where there is none. This was all of course perfectly well anticipated by the likes of Neitszche, Camus and Kafka. It is just that many of these glib modernists have not thought through the consequences of their outlook. Furthermore, if adaption is the sole driver of evolutionary development, then we have no reason to hope that our cognitive facilities will provides us with anything other than the wherewithal for survival. So how then did beings like Neitszche, Camus and Kafka, who could actually posit that there is no purpose, come to be? How fast could Mozart run away from a lion?

So I am actually favouring a position which is neither creationism nor neo-darwinism. I think life itself is an inherent property of the universe and will tend to develop wherever the circumstances favour it. In the same way that plants seek light, life seeks awareness, and in this sense evolution is perfectly purposeful. It is always attempting to give rise to the likes of us, and the likes of us were potentially present in the ratios and calibrations of energy and matter from the very instant of creation. It is much closer, I suppose, to a religious interpretation than a scientific one, but I honeslty feel science has over-reached in this question and is engaged in a great deal of speculation which has a strongly historically determined basis. In the philosophical tradition, the antecedents are mainly Pythagorism, Platonism and Plotinism, all of which have been heaved overboard by the very scientific tradition which they helped create, which is why the outcome is basically irrational.

That is my reading of it, anyway.