Trilobite eyes (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, March 27, 2013, 15:44 (4050 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: I accept all this. David is far better equipped than I am to defend the theory of common descent, and I will only say that unlike you I believe it because I'm satisfied with the evidence and with the logic of the argument. The above objection to the "intelligent genome" seems valid to me. I have offered it as an alternative hypothesis to chance and your God, but I'm going to defend it all the same. First, though, I'd like to thank you for the now very clear statement concerning what you do and don't believe about evolution and separate creation. It gives a far sharper focus to our discussion.-Your welcome, and I reserve the right to change at a later date :P
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> It appears from your various posts that if we define "kinds" as organisms that cannot interbreed, you believe God created cats, dogs, mice, tigers etc. separately, i.e. they have no common ancestor. -Errr... if you were to lump cat's and tigers together, you would be correct. I.E.. they are both feline and composed of the same basic set of instructions. Aside from size and other parameters, it wouldn't require new genetic material to change between a cat and a different breed of cat. They are of the same "kind".-
>DHW: You have "never seen a single observation that demonstrates one species becoming another." Have you ever "seen a single observation" that demonstrates a species appearing from nothing? Have you ever "seen a single observation" demonstrating God creating a cat? The criterion of observation applies to both hypotheses, in which case we must discount both evolution and separate creation! -I absolutely agree. I have said that they both require faith. ->DHW: However, your understanding of evolution is not the same as mine. Common descent entails a process of branching (the higgledy-piggledy bush), with some individual organisms acquiring new characteristics. Dogs never became cats. In different environments, one of their common ancestors may have innovated a doggy characteristic, and another a catty characteristic. Interbreeding might well continue for a time, but if the innovation was beneficial, it would flourish and eventually take over. (A quick google reveals that the common ancestor of dogs and cats may have been "a shrew-like mammal called Maelestes gobiensis" that lived 70 million years ago.) As organisms spread, and conditions changed (far more drastically than in our own times), the genome responded accordingly, adapting and innovating. This process has gone on for hundreds of millions of years, i.e. through billions of generations, of innovations, and of new forms taking over from old forms. In my view, random mutations aren't enough to explain the complexities, whereas an intelligent and innovative mechanism is, whether it was invented by God, or itself evolved as I've described elsewhere. We can certainly observe this mechanism adapting ... as you have acknowledged ... but you are right, we have not seen it actually produce something new, resulting in a separate "kind". But we haven't seen God do that either. Perhaps ours is a period of evolutionary "equilibrium". -
Yeah, however you want to put it, at some point there had to be a separation between species. We have never observed that happening in a fashion that produces a breeding pair, even when we intervene in the breeding process. Since we have agreed that new functions are generally useless unless complete, then that would mean that a breeding pair is an absolute necessity. -
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> Finally, back to: "There simply is no evidence of that beyond speculation based on observations that could mean something else entirely." You have applied this argument to the "intelligent genome" hypothesis, and I understand your point of view. But when I apply it to your God hypothesis, you seem to find it difficult to grasp (even labelling it "willful disbelief"). I wonder why.-I wasn't applying it to the intelligent genome, I was applying it to evolution, if I recall correctly. The intelligent genome is far more plausible than evolution, but less plausible than God IMHO because the framework that must exist for there to even BE an intelligent genome is entirely too complex. That was the entire reason I took 'life' out of the equation. Even without 'life' the universe is too complex to be random chance, and without life, your intelligent genome is useless in terms of explanatory power.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.