Proving common descent (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 12, 2012, 12:40 (4396 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm a God-mind reader in the sense that I look at what we see in evolution, and acknowledging that chance doesn't work, logically consider other possibilities. The Cambrian was the result of what? More oxygen? Dangerous to work with. Epigenetics? Doesn't fit. Epgenetics is a response to specific environmental changes. We are back to oxygen. Therefore,either pre-programmed or a push by God. Now we are at the preferrence level of human thought. Since evolution of the universe and of life runs smoothly 99% of the time, I still favor pre-programming.-Sorry, but I can't quite follow this. I would have thought an increase in the amount of oxygen was a very specific environmental change, so why wouldn't epigenetics "fit"? However, I'm not plugging oxygen as the change. Nobody knows what the change was, but that doesn't limit the choice to pre-programming or Creationism! What I am plugging is the hypothesis that the explosion of innovations came through the activities of my beloved "intelligent", inventive, experimenting cells/cell communities and not through Darwin's random mutations or a god separately creating new organs and organisms. That leaves the way open for pre-programming or higgledy-piggledy. Your preference for pre-programming is probably itself pre-programmed by your telepathic insight into God's mind and purpose. Regardless of how the cell first came into being, when "I look at what we see in evolution", the apparent randomness of environmental changes and the associated, apparently random comings and goings of species make me favour higgledy-piggledy.