Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, February 27, 2017, 12:23 (2826 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Since your own evolutionary theory, “tilted” by your conclusion, makes no sense to you...
DAVID: My theories about evolution make perfect sense to me. I don't know why you keep repeating the 'no sense' mantra like a campaign slogan. God controlled evolution as his chosen method of producing humans. What I don't know is how much pre-programming or dabbling occurred.

One of our problems is that I follow up your various statements (e.g God not having a smidgen of evil in him, or not caring what happens to individuals) and a few days later you forget that you made them. Now it is the ‘no sense’ mantra. This has nothing to do with the choice between preprogramming and dabbling. Here once more is the exchange between us on 17 February at 18.54 under “particles and connections”:
dhw: A complete plan for what? The problem with your hypothesis is the nature of your plan: you insist that your God, who is always in tight control, geared everything right from the beginning to the production of humans, which leads you to have him designing nests and flight paths and parasites and frogs' tongues and fishy camouflage etc. in order to keep life going before he can dabble with the brains of humans - and his ability to dabble makes even you wonder why he couldn't have produced us more directly. It just doesn't make sense.
DAVID: Guess what? It doesn't make sense to me either, but He did not directly create humans. He used an evolutionary process of living organisms, after using an evolutionary process to create the universe and a very special Earth. Go with the evidence that this was His plan from the beginning. Why not?

The “it” that doesn’t make sense is the hypothesis I have summarized (plus the pre-programming option). Ten days later it makes sense after all. (Your defence of the non-sense is that that is how God did it.)

dhw: Whereas you have admitted that mine fits in perfectly with the history of life as we know it (and even allows for a special dabble in the case of humans), I would suggest that my thought pattern is not half as skewed as yours!
DAVID: Your suppositions fit the history, but doesn't mean they are correct. I think evolution is guided and yours favors chance progression.

“Chance” is misleading. If organisms deliberately design innovations, chance is only involved through changes in the environmental conditions that enable them to do so. (Another example of your self-contradiction: sometimes God controls the environment and sometimes he doesn’t. See the post on asteroids.) As regards the emergence of humans, my theistic version allows for your God to dabble, or even to experiment. What it does not allow for is the hypothesis summarized above.

dhw: Would you please put me out of my suspense and give me a concrete example of original, inventive design (not minor adaptations) which you think might have been produced by the autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism you have now agreed is possible.
DAVID: Frankly, I don't know of any. We see epigenetic adaptations, many described on this site. All are relatively minor compared to speciation.

Nobody “knows” of any, because nobody “knows” how speciation came about. That is why we can only theorize.

dhw: I am suggesting that he has given the same mechanism – though far more limited in scope – to other organisms.
DAVID: More limited scope as in epigenetic adaptations to environmental stresses. Fine.

An interesting variation on your concession a month ago:
27 January 00.53 DAVID: Of course it is possible God is in everything, or that He could invent an inventive mechanism itself as His double ganger.
27 January at 15.29 dhw: But I’m pleased to see that although autonomous intelligent inventive mechanisms are “not in your considerations, ever!” unless we call them “God”, you agree that they are possible.
DAVID: Autonomous IM's with follow up dabbles, as you've agreed, are fine.

One day the possibility of an autonomous inventive mechanism is fine (I agreed that your God could dabble if he wanted to, but autonomy does not require dabbles!) and a month later you can’t see any instance in which an autonomous inventive mechanism might be possible.