More Denton: Last essay of a 3 part series (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, July 19, 2015, 13:33 (3415 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: DHW, unfortunately for you, your inventive argument suffers from the same pitfalls as Darwins, just on a different scale. You bypass the gradualism by allowing things to leap into being, but there is still no evidence of these types of gradual changes within any given species regardless fo time scale. All humans are human, and have been human since there were humans. All deviations within the species are well within the tolerance for deviation within a species. There is no evidence of gradual change from a common ancestor to us. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Without evidence, the theory is little more than fan fiction.-I can't follow your logic. I am arguing in favour of leaps and against gradualism. If evolution progressed by leaps, then of course there will be no evidence of gradual changes either within species or from one species to another. However, enough fossils have been found to indicate that there were different types of humans, just as there were and are different types of ape, but noone knows where to draw the earliest borderline between the one and the other. So when you say “all humans are humans”, you are glossing over the whole range of hominins. And as a matter of interest, but in all seriousness, if you believe God created humans separately, do you think Adam was a Neanderthal, a Denisovan, a Heidelbergiensis, or a sapiens? -DAVID (in reply to Tony's post above): I doubt Darwin theory because of the gaps in the fossil record which get more obvious as time passes and the fossil record becomes more complete. Only a God guided evolution makes sense.-If the fossil record is becoming more complete, doesn't that suggest that the gaps are becoming less obvious? Tony is questioning common descent. You indiscriminately attack Darwin's theory as if it was all one piece, but you then go on to accept common descent provided God organized it. Either you accept it or you don't. Even Darwin granted the possibility of God's participation, or have you forgotten that? -DAVID: In Nature's Destiny, 1998, he [Denton]takes the position that the universe is designed for humans, again with lots of chemical evidence.
 
TONY: Believe it or not, I actually disagree with this statement, to an extent. The universe was designed to support life, not just humans. I really don't like setting ourselves up as the center stage like that. I think that humans are an integral part of life in general, but not that we are the sole reason for all of creation.
DAVID: I think Denton would actually agree with you, but humans seem to be the pinnacle of creation.-What a wonderful piece of intellectual contortionism. Instead of humans being God's purpose, they now “seem to be the pinnacle”. And to whom do they seem to be the pinnacle? Ah, humans, of course.