Why didn’t the tories get rid of their version of Blair back in the day when Brown took over?
All of the grassroots supporters and MPs I meet in local elections are actually proper conservatives:
how can they live with their liberal/progressive front bench and the Blair 2.0 puppet?

Two points:

1. I was talking about the evolution that should have occurred before Olivaw was even built – remember that even that event is supposed to have happened way in the future. So, tens of thousands of years in the future, maybe millions, I would not expect human beings to be just the way they are now. Evolution is already changing our species surprisingly quickly. Medical technology (which Asimov could not have forseen) may also have interesting effects here
2. Even if Olivaw was seeding planets with Earth life, it would have immediately starting evolving according to the local conditions. If each planet was terraformed first, then it would likely have still been only approximate, enough to sustain the implanted life. So each would have had slightly different conditions and in time they would have diverged.

I have to disagree with you though – there is nothing missing from the equation. Where all the building blocks came from is well known. Evolution has not been proven to have a “flawed precept” – the argument that because we do not yet have the knowledge or technology to reproduce what happened that it did not happen is obviously nonsensical. Also, do not confuse “evolution” with “the origin of life”. They are quite separate subjects. Evolution is a proven theory – it is still happening all around us if you care to look. The origin of life is certainly not yet an open book and yet there is no concrete evidence that it was created by a Designer, intelligent or not. In fact, there is a good argument against the idea which goes something like this:

So the universe and its contents are so complex and wondrous that they couldn’t possibly have arisen without some Intelligent Designer being involved. So this Intelligent Designer is all encompassing, capable of designing a universe and yet we can’t actually find any trace of it. Wow! What a complex and wondrous creature! Who designed it?

And so ad infinitum (or ad nauseam, if you prefer ) Although some may dismiss this as sophistry there is a large helping of Reason in that argument.

If you understand fibre optics then you presumably understand quantum physics and therefore the rest of the physics that leads inexorably back to the big bang. If you don’t then I suggest you read Steven Hawkings “A Brief History of Time“.

So I say that there is no underlying design of life – it really did just happen.

Please don’t confuse our little human projects (which last maybe 10 or 20 years) with the evolution of the universe (13 billion years) or even of the Earth (6.5 billion years). Although it may be difficult to get one’s head around, on such timescales the unlikely does happen because of the sheer number of opportunities. I have also worked on large projects – the International Space Station and the replacement for the UK’s military paper tape communication system with computers for example – but these are tiny and insignificant on the cosmic scale. It is also true that they (and your aeroplane would spring into existence unbidden, given sufficient time: that’s quantum physics for you! A lot of it is really counter-intuitive but the cellphone in your pocket is the proof that it works. By the way, did you know that amino acids have been found in interstellar clouds? See
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_shostak_020404.html
and
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/18059
for starters.

And for the record, no I don’t necessarily agree with Dawkin’s: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because I can’t see any evidence of an “intelligent designer” doesn’t mean to say there isn’t one. But let’s not confuse faith with evidence.

In the final analysis, no matter what man does, the powerful and mysterious engines that run our planet will most certainly continue to operate without our ‘input’. Respectfully nachase – HubPages.com