Innovation and Speciation:baleen whale feeding (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 21, 2017, 12:26 (2711 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: None of your illusions to cell intelligence dissuade me from the point. You cannot avoid the need for design to plan for the large changes in each new species form.
dhw: I have not avoided the need for design. That is the whole point of the cellular intelligence hypothesis: that the cell communities that comprise all organisms do their own designing. I dispute the need for advance planning, since I see innovation as a response to opportunity, not an anticipation of it. Environmental change first, speciation second, as you have acknowledged is the case with the Cambrian explosion.
DAVID: Advanced planning as in the whale series is ALWAYS required. The changes are too complex for any other method. In the Cambrian new complex species appeared. God planned them also.

I presume that by “advanced” you mean very complex, which I accept, but why “planning”, which means working out in advance? This must obviously be the case with your God’s amazing 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for all non-dabbled innovations (not to mention lifestyles and natural wonders), but why do you think it is impossible for his dabbles to take place in response to a change in the environment, as opposed to his planning them in advance? You seem to have accepted that Cambrian speciation took place AFTER the increase in oxygen, so why does he have to plan hominins and whales (and you also insist that he actually implements his plans) BEFORE the forests have given way to plains, or water replaces dry land? Can’t he do his dabbles when the changes occur, without looking into his crystal ball and planning them beforehand?

DAVID: God is in control, no matter what method we think might be used.

If God exists, of course he will be in control if he wants to be. But according to you, he gives us free will, which means he deliberately cedes control. He could just as easily have ceded control of evolution to organisms by giving them the intelligence to do their own designing – though always with the option of doing a dabble.

DAVID: I'll stick to my decision to have faith in God.

This discussion is not about your faith in God, but about your faith in your personal interpretation of God’s motives and methods.