I don't mean to be a downer, but since this is definetely an area of intense interest to me, I feel the need to say something...hopefully I can say something useful without just being a naysayer...

 

>> In ourselves we see a sense of this in what we observe as traits inherited from an

>> ancestor who died before he could teach his traits or charms, yet never-the-less

>> they are miraculously observable to a differing degree in one or more of his

>> offspring or offspring’s offspring.

 

Again, I have to ask, who has seen this happen?  If it does happen, why isn't it documented?  I have never heard of evidence of someone's children acquiring traits that had been previously learned by its parents without first learning the trait themselves.

 

The Baldwin Effect can cause learned traits to become innate, but only if that learned trait is passed down long enough through cultural transmission.  If something unique is learned, but is not shared, there is no known mechanism (and none that I can imagine) for moving that knowledge into the genome.

 

>> One exciting idea I thought about after watching a nature episode about the birds

>> of paradise and how many unexplainable forms of beauty the starling has mutated

>> into on these isolated islands containing no predators was the idea that conscious

>> will may also play a role in evolution. The birds there rapidly mutated not out of

>> necessity but seemingly to some sort of a divine plan and conscious pleasure of

>> the spectacular and beauty.

 

Why must there be a "divine plan" at work here?  While not wanting to say that's impossible (of course, that would be silly), I do feel the need to point out that it is far from the most parsmonious explanation available.  Runaway sexual selection (two papers: a quite mathy one http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/95/9/5106, and a [possibly] more accessible one http://www.utm.edu/stafflinks/rirwin/391SexSel.htm) does create natural pressure for traits to evolove, and the mutations of these tropical birds that result in such a beautiful range of colours and patterns, as well as things like the giant peacock tail, are quite readily explained by it.

 

>> Say a certain seed eater learns a taste for flower necter but is frustrated by the

>> clumsiness of his bill at attaining it. He wishes his bill was a little longer and

>> narrower to better obtain it....

 

Again, I am very skeptical of any theory that claims that an individual's desire for something to happen somehow propagates back into the genome...while not wanting to say it's impossible, it postulates a very complicated system of transmission from neuronal state to DNA that just doesn't seem possible, given how the process of DNA translation from RNA to protein works.  There is definitely no direct "reverse translation" going on, and I very much doubt that anyone will ever find evidence of some kind of hormonal system that sends messages from brain to gamete and says "change this gene, we need a longer, narrower bill"...this is especially evident because there is no reason to believe that the phenotypes resulting from genetic encoding have any "knowledge", if you will, of how the genes code for them.  I'm afraid Occam's Razor slices that theory neatly into ribbons.

 

If, on the other hand, having a longer, slimmer bill bestows a fitness advantage on the bird...where birds with longer, slimmer bills are better able to survive and reproduce than others, then natural selection will drive the evolution of the species in such a way that they will, on average, have longer, slimmer bills.

 

I have no problem with the idea of Will, in the sense of god or our spritual being having a hand in evolution, but I must maintain that that force acts through the physical realities of this universe, and this theory doesn't seem to fit the physical facts.

 

-- sæskwač