Interesting discussion, with agreements on several points expressed by both of you so far. I agree that research to date shows fairly conclusively that evolution is based mostly on natural selection survival rates. The animal kingdom is not a clone factory. While bird and animal species may look the same to most humans, they are no more alike than humans. The differences may be minor, but there are differences. And if that bird that's born with a beak that allows more food to be aquired, and subsequently, a stronger bird, which mates more, then those traits will be passed on.

 

However, there in humans, there are many cases where traits are passed on to the children. And of course it's documented and so common place that to say you've never seen it is questionable. Musical talent, Artistic talents, physical traits, are all commonly passed on through generations. Even such wierd traits as the likelyhood of military service is usually something that can be traced back for generations. Could this be encoded in DNA? It's certainly probable. DNA is not just physical traits, that is just the area that is reasearched more and documented more. On the other hand, I have never seen Junk DNA refered to as something that is useless or as a unknown. In most cases, junk dna is improperly formed dna sequences that have been rejected and rewritten. There are components that are responsible for error checking sequences. Differences get through, but large sequences are rewritten in most cases. There are also dna sequences documenting evolutionary changes. All the history of a species is encoded in a dna strand. It may only be historical data now and no longer active but it's a known. this too falls into the junk classification. It's very important to understand that many words used in scientific research are not defined in the generic sense that the average person uses. Junk is one of these words.

 

I think it's important to understand that indeed, our reality is changing constantly. And today or tomorrow there will be more information discovered or realized in a great many areas. One should never take a hard stance and think that no more can be discovered about any subject. But even Occam's Razor has exceptions. Everything has exceptions. There is simply too much to be learned to ever think that we've got anything really figured out. That's not to say I agree with just giving it up as useless. Science builds on the discoveries that come before. No-one really starts at square 1. All research is valuable.

 

The key to this discussion though is Is Will a Force of Evolution. It certainly seems probable that as far back as the primordal soup, the will to live has been a key tenet of evolution. All things seem to evolve and not just physically. So why wouldn't it be at least a minimal probability that Will as a mental trait can evolve. Many mental traits have evolved. The trait described as Willpower has just as much a chance of evolving also. If so, it is unknown at this time how it could evolve, but the probability that it could evolve in such a way as to influence physical traits, or cause such trait to written to a DNA strand is still valid. And it has been shown before that by considering new ideas, new discoveries can be made. Is this not the basis for how we create our reality?