Hi Brad,
I found your posting very interesting. I would like to understand it better, so I have some questions and some comments:
Your introduction is fairly clear, and it seems to me that the next paragraph is a declaration of your intention to support your claim that there are no sides to the c/e debate, and an acknowledgment that you may be in err. (A refreshing thing to see on a bbs.) The sentence where you mention your statement may be false feels to me like a positive nod to the Skeptic doctrine of probalism, which you indeed reference towards the end of your post.
I must confess that my knowledge concerning RNA, DNA and cell death is restricted to what I learned in college biology and what I have read since in popular vehicles, like the news or Scientific American, so I have been able to garner, for the most part, only a vague intuition of what you are trying to convey in your discussion of RNA, DNA and cell death.
However, I believe I have been able to glean some meaning from your thoughts around RNA, DNA, and cell death. While I have some understanding of your statement that: "There are no sides. There is a clock.", it seems to me that you place this statement in the context of cell death and genetical mutation, not in a context that explains its relationship to the perceived sides of the c/e debate. Note that I do not say that your statement does not have a relationship to the existence of perceived sides of the c/e debate, just that the context the statement is in does not illuminate its relationship to the existence of sides.
When viewed in the context of your discussion of celluar biology, my understanding of your statement that "There are no sides. There is a clock." is that you believe that evolution proceeds according to a timetable embedded in or in some way determined by DNA/RNA. Is that the case?
I cannot address your next paragraph, because I have an educated layman's ability in physics, and that is certainly not enough to construct opinions about the EPR paradox or Bohr's ideas concerning it. I do, however, have two questions:
1. What is baraminology?
2. What is the psychology of 5-D space?
Now, does your statement, "There is a failure to heed transcendentalism for probalism", mean:
"There is a failure to heed transcendentalism *because of* probalism"
or does it mean:
"There is a failure to heed transcendentalism *because the non-heeders replace transcendentalism with* probalism"?
or does it mean something else entirely?
It is clear that you feel that the perception that there are sides to c/e is a misperception on the part of those who perceive the existence of sides. I understand your clever reference to smoothing the Galton polyhedron, for, of course, if one smoothes the sides of a polyhedron, it becomes a sphere and has only one side. I am afraid I do not understand the reference to Stephen Gould, but I will find it and read it.
I think you conclude by saying there are only sides to the c/e debate because of a failure of understanding on the part of the participants on both sides of the debate. The only worm ring I know of is a worm ring gear, and I have to agree that this is not the same as a ringworm, but I'm having some difficulty with this comparison. Assuming that the worm ring you are referring to is a worm ring gear, are you using this comparison to point out the difference between the organic and the inorganic, or are you using it to point out the difference between a human artifact and a natural organism? Or something else that I am missing?
In the end, it seems to me that you believe that, while there are no actual sides, that there are perceived sides in the c/e debate. For the purposes of my question, I would say that you are saying no one, including yourself, can actually change sides, because there are no actual sides to change. On the other hand, it seems to me that you are kindly and politely conceding the existence of perceived sides, which leaves room for those who perceive them to continue to respond to my question.
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