Evolution: a different view (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 29, 2015, 18:51 (3495 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Thank you for this, which is yet another example of your willingness to share information, regardless of its impact on your own beliefs. I can only commend you for your fair-mindedness!-Thank you, but as usual my interpretation is slightly different. I interpret him as asking whether we should reinterpret our entire approach to evolution, and conceptualize it differently. As DNA studies in various species suggest, evolution may not be strictly a tree of common descent, and morphology alone is not a good classification method. Simon-Morris looks to convergences, Tattersall to exaptation. All reasonable views. There is something that drives living organisms to produce such a strange bush, and we really don't have answers, but lots of just-so stories to support Darwin. Ma, and makes no sense to me and if folks were truly intellectually honest, there is no one with an explanation.
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>dhw: Once again, this shows that evolution proceeds on its own merry way, with organisms branching off in different directions according to their needs under whatever conditions exist at the time. Innovations, extinctions, sponges, ctenophores, whales, weaverbirds...and all for the sake of humans? The conclusion is a devastating counter to the theory that everything has been planned with one aim in mind. -I still maintain there is no evolutionary pressure/reason for us to be here. Our cousins the great apes, did just fine until Africa over-populated. They would still be fine in their un-advanced state, if we'd leave them to their own devices.-> dhw The absence of any “orderly, stepwise progression” is a clear indication that no matter whether God started it all off or not, living organisms make their own history as they cope (or fail to cope) with an ever changing world.-Still doesn't explain why the whales took off to be aquatic mammals, a very complex and complicated tangent to evolution. Following your lead in suppositions, perhaps God is like an orchestra conductor/ composer and waves His baton over a cacophony of evolutionary tangential thrusts, laughing all the time.