Proving common descent (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 12, 2012, 14:35 (4395 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Dhw (to David): Acceptance of 2) aligns you with the Creationists in so far as you think God created all these new organs and organisms separately. That makes me wonder why, if humans were what he really wanted, he didn't create them at the time, instead of poncing about with all those other species.-TONY: Could humans have survived without food to eat, water to drink, or air to breathe? You have to view creation as a whole, every piece of it was necessary to some extent or another. We need plants to eat and breathe, plants need animals to spread their seeds and continue on their lineage. Was God just 'poncing about' when he created, or allowed for the evolution of, the lowly honey bee, without which life as we know it would run face first into a brick wall? Or perhaps he was 'poncing about' with the earth worm, that aerates the soil so that plants can grow. Perhaps he was 'poncing about' with fish and the plant life in the oceans which purify our air so that we do not become toxic to ourselves. Of all of the questions I have seen you ask, to me this has the most obvious of answers. Why? Because it had to be done. What good is making a light bulb if you do not first have electricity? What would be the point of creating humans if there was not a means for their survival in place?-There is a slight misunderstanding here. The context of the discussion is the Cambrian Explosion, which you get onto in your next paragraph, and the question David and I are fighting over is how to explain the sudden surge in new organs and organisms. David appeared to be aligning himself with the Creationists in accepting the idea of what I called God's "hands-on creation", and the focus of my final remark ... which I should have made clear ... was on the fact that vast numbers of the species "created" then and also afterwards went extinct. It's therefore hard to see how they could have been essential to what David and you see as God's purpose (to create humans). I accept the rest of your argument.-TONY: As for the Cambrian explosion, I am not so certain why it is so difficult to grasp. Humans use bacteria to clean and purify toxins as in this article This isn't new technology, this is rediscovering original purpose. Similarly, in order to make the earth ready for habitation, other changes had to be made. While it may seem that it would have been easier to *snap his fingers* and make it happen, that would have amplified the amount of work that needed to be done. Earth's early inhabitants needed to be hardier, heavier, and stronger in order to survive the rough climatic conditions. After that point, the need changed to a different order of creatures.-And this is where the whole idea of purposeful Creation becomes too involved for me to find credible. If God was capable of building and fine-tuning a whole universe to sustain life, and if his purpose was to create humans, then was he NOT capable of controlling the climate? Why did billions of species have to come AND GO before he finally got to what he wanted? It's the same question I asked on the dodo thread long ago. If I did believe (but please remember that I don't disbelieve) in a creator, I would still suggest that the higgledy-piggledy comings and goings of evolution fit in more easily with a god who is experimenting than with one who is planning. You have focused on what has survived, as evidence of planning. I am focusing on what has not survived, as evidence of randomness. -TONY: It is like a craftsman creating a fine piece of furniture. After the framework is built, he doesn't skip straight to the finest grain sand paper. Doing that would ruin the wood. Instead, you start with a low, course, heavy grit paper and gradually move to higher and higher grits until your wood has a polished glow. -A nice image. But if your furniture-maker wants to make a sideboard, does he have to make a perfect chair and a perfect table and a perfect cupboard first, and then chuck them out?