Natures wonders: plant and fungus in symbiosis (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 24, 2017, 15:01 (2768 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I would suggest that generations are a far more significant factor than time, and this brings us up to a million generations, as opposed to my 500,000! I'm not sure what the authors mean by “two specific co-ordinated mutations”. If mutations (by which I mean changes, not necessarily random) are beneficial, I'd have thought they were bound to be coordinated or they wouldn't survive. And if it is not beyond the bounds of credibility for God to do the engineering within a million generations, why is it beyond the bounds of credibility that a possibly God-given intelligent inventive mechanism could do the same?

DAVID: You are stepping into the arcane field of population genetics and its convoluted math that I am not trained to understand. But I know the opinions it offers. It starts with Haldane in 1957 and his 'dilemma', and again voiced in the Wister 1967 institute conclusion that Darwin's approach does not have enough time to accomplish evolution by random mutation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_dilemma

I think it is best to accept the opinions of these genetic mathematicians that whalegenetic changes at each step don't fit the time limits we find. If chance mutations can't work, the implications for design become overwhelming. Your alternative?

How often do I have to repeat that I do not accept Darwin’s theory of random mutations? Why do you ask for my alternative, when I keep telling you that it is an autonomous inventive intelligence, possibly God-given? Not proven of course, any more than your God’s dabbling or his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for pre-whales turning into whales all for the sake of humans has been proven.