Innovation; Just for dhw (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 24, 2015, 12:53 (3258 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: My focus in this discussion is on how evolution works. I repeated your own question (why so many phyla?) and also asked what was the point of all those that died out. I have offered two possible answers allowing for your theistic, anthropocentric version of evolution. Can you see any flaw in these two explanations for what you have agreed is the helter-skelter bush of animal evolution?
DAVID: Actually, no. But you used a mechanism of imagining God's thoughts to make your point, which is why I answered the way I did.-I am offering a different “imagining of God's thoughts” from yours in interpreting how evolution works. The two theistic, anthropocentric alternatives were: 1) the explosion of phyla was not in aid of humans at all: they worked out their own evolution. Humans were an afterthought. 2) He wanted to create humans, didn't have a clue how to do it, and blundered through all those species which he then had to discard. 1) obliges us to accept the autonomous intelligence of organisms, while still allowing for dabbling; 2) allows for your pre-preprogramming, but shows God to be extremely incompetent. You agree that both offer a rational explanation of the higgledy-piggledy bush of animal evolution, as opposed to your following statement under ”The biochemistry of cell adhesion...”:-“I have previously said I have no idea how/why God did this in the way He did. I firmly think He directed and managed the process and progress of evolution.”-But you can find no flaw in the two theistic hypotheses I have offered. So maybe now we do have an idea how/why God did this in the way He did it. -dhw: And one needs faith to fill in the huge gaps in both arguments, since neither science nor reason can do so. I should add, however, that science and reason may not be the best guides to “truth”, whatever that may be.
DAVID: What other approach can we use? I don't trust religions' opinions.-There are experiences that take us beyond the current reach of science and reason: psychic, emotional, aesthetic, mystic...These have not led me personally to God, but they are strong enough to have led others in that direction, and I do not have faith that eventually they will be explained by atheistic materialism.