More about how evolution works: look at the video (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, October 17, 2015, 12:15 (3104 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But there must be a first cause. What is it? You decline to propose an answer.
dhw: I have never declined to propose an answer, but have repeated over and over again the hypothesis we both subscribe to: namely, eternal energy. In your hypothesis it has always inexplicably been intelligent. In my alternative hypothesis it has ceaselessly transmuted itself into matter and vice versa, in the course of which intelligence has inexplicably evolved through matter.-DAVID: Your view is that intelligence can evolve from matter which was formed from energy, all by itself. I view intelligence as the ability to gain knowledge, understand facts and then collate that material into reasonable conclusions. I agree your view is inexplicable. I cannot see how intelligence can evolve all by itself from some form of undescribed matter. Your own sharp intelligence requires 100 billion neurons and invented an inexplicable escape hatch.-Firstly, it is not my view. I put it forward as an alternative to your view. I am an agnostic. I accept your concept of intelligence, and one of the reasons why I am an agnostic is that according to you intelligence doesn't need any neurons at all, let alone 100 billion of them. It just exists and has always been there, and you call it God, and that doesn't require any explanation. It is simply inexplicable. -As far as my alternative is concerned, though, I will point out that, if we accept the concept of common descent, my 100 billion neurons took thousands of millions of years to assemble themselves, and in the beginning their ancestors were single cells (later combining and cooperating) that used their inexplicable “ability to gain knowledge, understand facts and then collate the material into reasonable conclusions.” An accumulation of knowledge gleaned from thousands of millions of years' experience of changing material conditions, with corresponding advances, does not seem to me any less likely than a total grasp of all knowledge even before the materials exist. (Some forms of your God do not have a total knowledge, but he would still have needed enough to create a universe and material life, which is just as inexplicable.)
 
However, it's 50/50 for me: two inexplicable hypotheses do not allow for a decision.