Evolution v Creationism: guided evolution? dhw? (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 23, 2015, 18:39 (3500 days ago) @ dhw

David One must take into account all evidence, not just the confusing parts that have no rational explanation that we can reach at this time, as to why God allowed life to develop all the weird branches of the bush, such as whales, which make no sense as to why they are here.[/i]
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> dhw: One must take into account all the evidence for the theory, but one must ignore all the evidence that makes no sense in the light of the theory! -You are still looking for rational explanations for everything. I don't. I look at conscious humans which are an extremely unexplained result of an evolutionary process. I see this as purposeful. That the process produced a weird bush doesn't disturb me as it does you. Do you really want explanations for everything. Darwin folks make up just-so stories to do that, protecting their theory. I don't. 
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> DAVID: Life started at sea, advanced to land, and then some mammals went back again. What kind of advancement planning is that? And you want as IM unguided to set all this up. Talk about a theory that clearly doesn't fit its parts.
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> dhw: The usual misunderstanding: I do not “want” anything. The wanting is done by you, because you want the evidence to fit in with your belief that God planned life for the sake of humans.-You do 'want' an IM. You developed it to help you explain what none of us fully understand, innovation, so you don't have to accept a planning mind, the only thing that makes sense to me. Remember, we cannot ever prove that 'mind'.-> dhw: I put the IM forward as a hypothesis, not a belief, and instead of the fulfilment of a pre-existing plan, it proposes continuous improvisation, experimentation, innovation, improvement, always at the level of individual organisms or groups of organisms responding to environmental change (or in many cases, failing to respond adequately). It's a scenario that explains the haphazardness of evolution but still allows for the possible existence of your God, who might be the designer of the IM and might also have intervened when he felt like it. What it doesn't explain is why your God would specifically plan the amazing complexities of the whale in order to produce humans.-Your hypothesis helps you remain non-committed, something I understand you cannot do. I don't know that whales play a role in achieving humans. I use them as an example of evolutionary complexities that defy explanation or of the possibility of the role of a totally independent IM.