Evolution: gaps are very real (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, June 25, 2017, 14:20 (2709 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I agree with most of these comments, but as usual I would like to balance them against your own theories. Do you, then, believe that 3.8 billion years ago your God provided the first cells with programmes for Lethiscus’s transition from water to land and for the wasp’s venomous lifestyle (along with programmes for the few billion other species, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct)? And all these programmes were passed down through countless generations of cells and cell communities (organisms) and all the different environments until the right time and place arrived – also preprogrammed, or left to chance? - for pre-Lethy and pre-Waspy to switch on their own particular programme? And do you believe that your God specially designed all these individual programmes (or personally dabbled the changes) in order to keep life going (= balance of nature) until he could fulfil his one and only purpose of producing Homo sapiens? Or is it just possible that he gave them and the rest the means of working out their own ways of life and of adjusting their bodies accordingly?

DAVID: I seems you agree that design is required, based on the beginning sentence of your comment. then you skirt the main issue by asking me again about my theories. My theories say design is required. […] All of this requires planning by a mind at work. You deny this, but admit it might be. This is where we are in our discussion and where we will remain, unless you realize my view is logical.

I have, from the very beginning of our discussions, accepted the logicality of your theory that “design is required”. It is one of two main reasons why I cannot embrace atheism. However, your theories do not stop there, and there is no “skirting” of that main issue when I question the credibility of your guesses concerning your God’s motives for and methods of designing life. (I assume, from the lack of any objection, that you accept the accuracy of the above summary.) I ended with a straightforward question which summarizes an alternative theory, but which you have repeatedly rejected although you have admitted that it fits in perfectly with the history of life as we know it, and does not in any way exclude your theory of design or the existence of your God. I think this is important in order to bring out some of the the implications and indeed the problems arising from your understandable emphasis on design.