Evolution, survival and adaptation (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, September 14, 2017, 13:19 (2625 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You sense of logic doesn't explain polar bears who swim about eating seafood and never change. And if God can offer cell communities the biochemical knowledge to make major phenotypic and physiologic changes, why does your logic require a two step mechanism? He can do it directly Himself, can't He?

dhw: Polar bears don’t live in the water. They can get ample food without changing. Pre-whales presumably couldn’t. I don’t know what you’re referring to with your ‘two-step mechanism’.

DAVID: Two steps are: step one, God gives the organisms the info to make their own changes, and step two, the organisms make the changes.

Thank you. I am never happy with your use of “info” as you sometimes turn it into instructions. My hypothesis is that he has given them the autonomous means (subsumed under “intelligence”) of gathering their own info, of processing it, and of then making the changes.

dhw: Cell communities would take as many steps as are needed to reach optimum efficiency. Hence all the different finch beaks and all the different stages of whale. But your God could have created the final whale directly, without any steps, so why didn’t he?

DAVID: God obviously prefers to evolve organisms. Why all the steps to H. sapiens I might point out to you. It is his pattern of action.

What I keep pointing out to you is the illogicality of your know-it-all God having the prime purpose of producing Homo sapiens and his brain, and yet going all round the mulberry bush to do it – not just with all the other hominins and homos but also with all the lifestyles and natural wonders you insist can only be produced by him. Why could his pattern of action not be to set the wheels of evolution in motion and see where they lead (though granting himself the odd dabble when he feels like it)? THAT hypothesis fits the history of life and accounts for every twig extant and extinct of life’s great bush.