DILEMMAS: my position clarified (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 08, 2014, 13:00 (3666 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: My point is that if you accept common descent, each new step (regardless of its initiator) would have taken place in existing, functioning organisms, so there won't be fossils of any non functional creatures. Since many species became extinct in a relatively short time, perhaps they were experiments that didn't work out, though the organisms were also full-blown and fully functional.-DAVID: Your thinking is not complete. Non-functional as you imply means the organism never existed. Common descent is the passage of life from one existing form to another. Only functional forms pass life from a lesser level to a higher level. If non-func. forms existed even for a short while (which might be what you are thinking) then there should be fossils.-I did not think for one moment that non-functional forms existed! My point was that there are no fossils of non-functional organisms because there cannot have been any non-functional organisms.
 
dhw: It depends how you define balance. The planet has survived all the catastrophes and transformations that Nature has thrown at it, but it has not remained the same. Different forms of life have dominated at different periods, and the balance has constantly changed.
DAVID: You have just made my point: at each period of history the Earth and life have maintained a careful successful balance. It must be one of the required pattern rules. We humans are screwing with it now, as we both note. -It still depends on how you define balance. Until the Earth explodes, is burnt up, is smashed to pieces or whatever, it will have some sort of balance. Even if/when we wipe ourselves out, along with as many species as we can take with us, no doubt there will still be a balance of plants and bacteria. There just won't be anyone around to say: “Oh look, isn't it all beautifully balanced!”
 
dhw: You are teasing me. One day it's “certainly possible” that the IM can do more than merely adapt, the next day it can't because God is in “total control”, the next day the universe may “run partially on its own”...In the context of theistic evolution, it's the part outside God's control that makes for the dilemma.-DAVID: You are the one teasing. I see no way of solving the dilemma with the evidence we have.-Nor do I, and so I am prepared to consider different options. No teasing. Whereas certainly possible on Monday, impossible on Tuesday, maybe on Wednesday....that's teasing.-dhw: ...we can hypothesize that God may have designed an unpredictable game that would run itself for his entertainment, or may have had a vague idea of what he wanted but had to keep messing about to achieve it, or may have set the wheels in motion and then got bored with the whole spiel and left it to its own devices. Each of these hypotheses can be squared with the world and the bush we know and with God thinking as we think. Why confine yourself, then, to the hypotheses that God set out to create humans, and has always been “in total control” (or maybe not), and deliberately preprogrammed the monarch butterfly's life cycle in order to maintain the balance of the Earth?-DAVID: For the simple reason that you and I exist and debate. Paul Davies observation that the arrival of sentient beings who can understand the workings of the universe, but who originated from rock and water is an extremely significant series of events, appearing to be against all odds. Why us? I still think there are only chance and design alternatives, or the picket fence!-Of course we have these three options, and of course consciousness is a significant event (especially for us), but that is still no reason to believe that God started out with the intention of creating us, was always in total control, and preprogrammed the monarch butterfly's life cycle! He may have started out with no particular intentions, may not have been in total control, and the Earth might not be unbalanced even by the extinction of the monarch butterfly, which might have figured out its migratory pattern all by itself!