I had no idea

[james_davis_nicoll]

As pointed out in email, JEP on evolution.

Comments

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Yup.

Also, one of the things refuted with great thoroughness by Darwin in Origin and the refutation is one of the parts of Origin that's held up.

You're not talking about assembling a watch out of random parts; you're talking about an existing, ongoing, assemblage of parts gradually accumulating the characteristics of a watch. (Which has been simulated, and which happens in surprisingly few generations, if we postulate reproducing springs...)

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

The argument from design, when used seriously these days, tends to be closely related to the Anthropic Principle and focusses on things like the fine-tuning of basic physical constants.

In biology, there's been so much work done both conceptually on local advantages accruing to minor improvements and in finding concrete evidence of intermediate forms that examples like the eye (having emerged several times in different contexts) are now better arguments for the operation of natural selection than for the presence of design.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Nick Bostrom's book on anthropic bias is available for free online:

http://www.anthropic-principle.com/?q=book/table_of_contents

I very much like Bostrom's research agenda. It involves many issues science fiction authors try to address (usually much more hamfistedly.)