Apparently few people have read any books on the new sciences of chaos, complexity, networks, systems, self-organization and emergence. The evidence of evolution is everywhere, but science is just now beginning to understand how it works. In that light, I'd like to take a shot at Agenda's 12 questions that no one has yet answered.

1. No, evolution does not rely entirely on randomness. Chemicals and systems can self-organize, new qualities can emerge from a whole that don't exist in any of the parts. DNA is not just a dumb storage molecule. Genes switch each other on and off like transistors in a computer, therefore DNA also functions as a parallel processing computer running genetic algorithms. As such, it explores its program space and tries new things. The cytoplasm in cells is probably a parallel processing chemical network computer that predates the DNA computer. Life is intelligence. Life is controlling it's own evolution. It is not random.

2. Evolution does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Ilya Prigogone studied dissipative systems of chemicals that self organize and go through regular cyclic behaviors. They organize locally by dissipating entropy to their environment. In other words, they decrease entropy within by increasing the entropy without. That's is what life does. Life uses matter and energy from the outside world to create order internally and in the process dumps heat and waste products into the world that increases the overall entropy of the universe.

3. Evolution says that life results from the laws of physics and chemistry such that atoms form molecules, molecules form macromolecules, macromolecules form organelles, organelles form cells, cells form organisms, organisms make ecosystems. Evolution says life is a very probable outcome of physics and chemistry given the right conditions.

4. Evolution at this point is about how life came about on this one planet. It says nothing about the origin of the universe (if it had one).

5. Evolution does not deny the existence of God. In fact, to me it implies a way smarter God than the Christian God who had to make each eyeball, each wing, each foot, etc individually. Instead, you have a super intelligent God that created the laws and constants of physics and chemistry with such exquisite precision so that all this would self-assemble and evolve.

6. No, evolution does not always lead to greater complexity. That is the general trend, but there is devolution to simpler forms. It's all about what works, what survives. Sometimes simpler is better.

7. Lower and higher life forms is a judgment. We're very brain chauvinist. All life forms are tremendously complex and amazing. We have big brains so we like to think we are higher life forms, but we wouldn't last long without the bacteria that have been around for 4 billion years.

8. Nope, no progress. Just change, novelty, diversity, survival. All plant and animal life is just two little twigs off one branch of the gigantic tree of life. We are not the pinnacle of evolution. Evolution continues and we may very well wipe ourselves out. Intelligence might prove to be maladaptive in the long run.

9. We have learned that nature is not primarily red in tooth and claw. Nature and evolution is 90% cooperation and symbiosis and 10% competition. Organisms help each other and coevolve. There is a lot of mutualism, i.e. you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. So I'd say the moral lesson from evolution is we're all in this together, so let's work together and help each other out. There is order in nature, even in a jungle. Predators follow rules that limit their predation. We ignore those rules at our peril.

10. If you have an understanding of how amazingly complex all this is and the vast stretches of time it took to happen, then I think your political attitude would change from rape and pillage to respect, conservation and stewardship towards all life and the entire planet.

11. Apparently evolution is incompatible with fundamentalist Christianity and bible inerrancy. I think it probably goes against fundamentalist Islam and Judaism as well. It's not a problem for the Gnostics of those religions. Not many problems with Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism either.

12. I've seen fossils that show the evolution of the horse from a small dog like creature and that contains many transitional forms. The human fossil record shows transitional forms from very apelike to more and more human. But evolution may not work like that. Complex non-linear adaptive systems can move from one basin of attraction to another without a long transition in between. It's more like a quantum jump. This is the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution. Things stay the same a long, long time, then there is a big jump. It has to do with metagenes that control other genes. A change in the metagenes makes big changes in the body structure of the organism.

I'm sure there's more to be said, but it's late and I am tired.