kitoba wrote:
If you want to bring this back to an "Intelligent Designer" argument, then you argue that God designed the grid. But you don't have to take that approach in order to yield consequential differences with Dawkins' account. For instance, you could describe the "punctuated equilibrium" theory --that waffle likes, but Dawkins loathes --as a conceptualization under which the grid itself evolves over time, with different areas of terrain opening and closing in response to events such as mass extinctions.
I've been absent for a while, since I didn't have much to add to Leochopper's arguments, but I felt a bit of clarity on a slightly tangential point was needed here.
Dawkins doesn't 'loathe' punctuated equilibrium - you may have been misled by hyperbole a bit. Dawkins fully accepts that species can go through periods of relative status and periods of rapid change. His disagreement with Gould was more one of emphasis. Gould, especially in his later writings, seemd to lean more towards the point of view that almost all significant evolutionary change happened in rapid, punctuated fashion. Dawkins argued that the rate of evolutionary change is highly variable depending on local conditions - sometimes change happens gradually, sometimes it happens much quicker due to stong selective pressures; and that there's nothing too special about the punctuated equilibrium model.
When you get right down to it, I don't think Gould and Dawkins actually disagreed much on the substance of what they were saying. It was more a disagreement over how to say it.