Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 24, 2016, 18:17 (2891 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I've not abandoned the link at all. It is you who is not willing to make the link from you agnostic position. You can't see purpose and I can. At least you have finally recognize balance for what it is, necessary food supply, supported by eco-niches requiring top predators. that makes the bush of life.

dhw: Nothing to do with my agnostic position, and nothing to do with not seeing purpose. The balance of nature, i.e. the supply of food for whatever creatures happen to exist at any time, does not require your God’s special design of whales, the monarch butterfly’s migratory lifestyle, or the natural wonder of the weaverbird’s nest.

You are looking at the balance of nature from the outside. Just as 'logic' removed wolves from Yellowstone and upset the balance of nature, returning them, after research showed they were needed, rebalanced it illustrates the futility of your position. Research may well show why whales, monarch migration, and weaverbird nests are necessary. The need for top predators is a recent discovery. The discovery of the efficiency of the backward human retina is a recent finding. That God is not a logical designer is atheistic thinking, nothing more. Get back on your fence.

dhw: Life would have gone on just the same if your God had given them the means of designing their own evolution, lifestyle and home. This would explain the higgledy-piggledy bush of life, and it would remove the great gulf in your hypothesis between his desire to produce humans and his special design of organisms that have nothing to do with the production of humans.

Again you are making an atheistic assumption. I've admitted they may have an inventive mechanism, but you won't let me have my God watch it for tight control.

dhw: His purpose may have been to create the fascinating spectacle of life in all its diversity – and it may be that humans are a culmination of the process, perhaps as a result of his experimenting, or as an afterthought after he had lost interest in 99% of the species resulting from the process he had set in motion.

Most of the 99% weren't advanced enough to continue living as more complex life forms arrived. And how much room is there on Earth? Got to make room for new species, especially over 7 billion humans.

dhw: Even as an agnostic, I have as much right as you to try and fit life’s history and a possible God’s purpose together in order to find a coherent pattern. I wish that, unlike W.C. Fields, you’d give a sucker an even break!

Showing your age with W.C Fields. He was funny. Above I've shown you are not coherent in guessing at logical design. Research keeps finding atheistic doubts wrong about designs in nature.