An Alternative to Evolution: Expounded Upon (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, July 15, 2018, 13:16 (2321 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Again I've selected what I consider to be the salient points of your different posts.

DHW: Facts and predictions without a conclusion do not in my book constitute a hypothesis, which I would define as a not yet proven explanation for a group of facts. I don’t equate explanations with stories.
TONY: Conclusion: DNA is a DESIGNED LANGUAGE. This is antithetical to Naturalistic Evolution which emphasizes RANDOM CHANCE over DESIGN.

And later you say: “The Theory of Evolution, the formal theory, is based on random mutation.” You keep hammering home the case against chance and for design, and all theistic evolutionists agree with you! Why do you keep ignoring them? An alternative to evolution governed by chance is evolution governed by design.

TONY: […] is it possible for you to talk about the science without talking about the religion?

I have long since accepted the science without the religion. I am an agnostic largely because I recognize the scientific case for design but cannot accept the religion. Forgive me, but I think you are kidding yourself if you believe you can confine yourself to the science of design without anybody realizing that design requires a designer.

DHW: You predict that innovation leading to speciation will prove to be impossible by natural means.

TONY: To test this, breed a bird with a cat and let me know how it goes, or a rat with a dog, or any other two diffinitively different species.

You keep talking of faulty cladistics. I would accept this definition of species: a group of organisms capable of interbreeding. And like everyone else, I don’t know how speciation took place. But I find it believable that over millions of years, so many changes took place in so many organisms in so many parts of the world that despite many common features, they could not interbreed. Our quest is to find out why species are definitively different now. So let’s look at your own theory:

In response to David, you wrote that the alternative to common descent was that “he designed prototypes, with built in variability parameters, and that life has stayed within those types and those variability parameters.” (You can’t avoid “he”, can you?) I don’t think you mean these prototypes sprang from thin air, so why is the unobservable process of speciation by divine prototype manufacture more scientific than the unobservable process of divine programming of speciation, or divine provision of autonomous intelligences to conduct their own evolution? All of them fit the design theory.

DHW: I might predict that science will discover natural means of innovation (e.g. cellular intelligence).
TONY: How can this be tested? As long as there is no evidence, you can just keep saying "We haven't found it yet" and there would be no way to disprove the negative.

How can you test that thousands of millions of years ago, a bunch of prototypes appeared out of nowhere?

DHW... you are not willing to contemplate the possibility that an organism can ACQUIRE new information and then pass it on.
Tony: I didn't say I was unwilling to contemplate it, I said the evidence is actually AGAINST it. There are too many processes whose sole function is to prevent and repair changes to the genome.

We are not talking about known processes. Nobody knows what process led to the different species! There is no known process whereby prototypes suddenly sprang into existence. (Back we go to design, a designer, and different design theories.)

TONY: I've noticed that there has been some difficulty in even thinking about biology without evolution. [...] the language is so fluid and murky as to be meaningless. Are you including Abiogeneis (which violates the Law of Biogenesis) as part of what you mean when you say 'Evolution'? Do you mean common descent and random mutations acted upon by Natural selection? Do you simply mean 'to change'?

I’m sorry, but I think it is you who are trapped by language. Of course evolution does not include abiogenesis. Darwin specified that his Origin of Species did NOT cover origin of life (although in later editions he attributed it to a Creator). I keep repeating that I do mean common descent but NOT random mutations. It is you who insist that evolution means random mutations, but I myself reject randomness, as do theistic evolutionists such as our David.

TONY: Every definition of species fails to match all the data, yet you think speciation is real, without evidence. Any time I press for hard definitions there is a lot of harumphing and paper shuffling.

I have no idea what you are referring to. You have given us as good a definition of species as we can get (see above). The theory of evolution proposes that what you call the "prototypes" sprang from earlier forms of life, going all the way back to the first living cells. No harrumphing.

TONY: You *think* in terms of Macroevolution, huge leaps of fully complete genetic information, even with all the missing evidence.

You think of huge leaps of fully complete genetic information in the form of prototypes, which could only have been designed, and theistic evolutionists think of common descent via a process which could only have been designed. Your alternative to evolution is not design – it is separate creation.