Hi John -- I would hope they don't :) When I made that statement, I was not thinking so much of the serious researcher. However I do think it is important to communicate that genes are not alive, in any real sense, nor are they motivated by some survival instinct, not for the researchers sake -- they are not confused -- but in order to prevent this kind of confusion arising in the non-technical public, where there is a lot of confusion and poor understanding at play. When someone such as Dawkins makes statements like the one I quoted below -- he is so good at coming up with publicity generating sound bites -- he is skating quite close to the line of anthropomorphizing the gene and imputing it with motives. I don't think he believes that personally, but the meme of the selfish gene to use another one of his popularized terms has gotten a lot of people very confused. "We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment." -- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene -Chris D
________________________________ From: John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 10:27 AM Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong I agree that it is useful to try to see things from the genes point of view Yes > without of course falling into the mental trap of anthropomorphizing the gene and assigning to it qualia that are associated with self-aware consciousness. > I am unaware of any thinker on evolution worthy of the name who has fallen into such a silly trap. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
