Innovation and Speciation: pre-planning (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, May 31, 2014, 12:33 (3617 days ago) @ GateKeeper


GATEKEEPER: God did it through evolution? But why would god even have to do it? Did you create your teeth?-I'm not quite sure what you're responding to here. It's always helpful if you reproduce the point you're commenting on.-I need to clarify my own position to you. I am an agnostic, but in this particular discussion I'm challenging David's (to me) very rigid interpretation of the evolutionary process as having been preplanned with humans in mind. Even if I believed in his God (I must stress that I neither believe nor disbelieve), I would still find this inconsistent with the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. I have proposed that evolution is brought about by an inventive mechanism within the cell communities of existing organisms, responding to the needs or opportunities created by changing environments. This mechanism might have been designed by a god (theistic view), or it might have come about by chance (atheistic view), but there is a third, panpsychist option which I will return to eventually. So my answer to your second question is: no ... there may not be a god, but even if there is a god, evolution may have had its own impetus without an end purpose. As for my teeth, I did not create them, but I am deeply grateful to my dentist for helping me to preserve them! Perhaps you would explain the reason for your question.