Innovation, Speciation: strange DNA finding (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 12:10 (2186 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Until now you have said that common descent is all that remains of Darwin’s theory, and have suggested that your God either preprogrammed all the innovations from the beginning (which would mean they had to be passed on – not newly created) or personally dabbled them (e.g. fiddling with existing pre-whales, as opposed to creating whales from scratch). Now apparently you are with Tony, who believes that each species (broad sense – see below) was created separately.

DAVID: I've never said species were never created separately. You read my words thru Darwin's eyes. All along I have discussed a pre-programmed or dabbled control by God of evolution's total progress.

You can’t pass a programme along to something that doesn’t exist, and you can’t dabble with something that doesn’t exist. Either you believe in common descent or you believe in separate creation.

DAVID: The latest DNA findings tip me to being more insistent. My version of common descent is each step is related to a past step as more and more complex organisms appear.

That is also Darwin’s version of common descent. What you do not accept (and nor do I) is Darwin’s theory concerning the mechanisms which make this happen.

DAVID: Remember my 'drive to complexity' built in to the process. Just God in action. There has never been any evidence that an earlier species can evolve itself into the next stage.

Nobody knows how speciation (broad sense) happens. There has never been any evidence for any of the hypotheses, including yours, Darwin’s and mine.

DAVID: I'll stick with the evidence we have from the gaps, which become more permanent as time and searching for fossils continues.

A gap is not evidence of anything, but it is a perfectly reasonable argument for questioning Darwin’s theory – as he acknowledged himself. That doesn’t get us any nearer to solving the mystery.

DAVID: I view Darwin as totally dead: survival is aided by species adaptation while they exist, but nothing more. 99% disappear without creating the next step. They did not survive to make the new species. They existed as an advance in complexity or especially in diversity since life must eat to live.

dhw: If an organism disappears, then of course it has nothing to do with the next step. It is only those that survive that can produce the next step! In other words, if 100% of species were wiped out, there would be no more life and no more evolution. How does this prove that life forms did not descend from earlier life forms?

DAVID: They did descend stepwise under God's guidance.

So Darwin is not totally dead, since you accept his theory of common descent as opposed to separate creation. But you believe your God guided the process.

dhw: Since you are “with Tony”, are you now arguing for separate creation of species and jettisoning the 3.X-billion-year-old computer programme and/or dabble theory?

DAVID: I've always really been with Tony. Pre-pregramming steps or dabbling is really the same concept.

They are not the same at all. But we shall have to leave Tony to tell us whether he agrees with your version of separate creation as common descent.

dhw: I’m afraid the idea that your God planned every evolutionary change and used bacteria in the process (plus the fact that evolution has gone on for 3.X billion years) does not provide a logical reason for him constantly changing the environment, and designing and killing off 99% of species, lifestyles and natural wonders if his purpose was to produce H. sapiens.

DAVID: When did you think that 99% survival would leave any room on Earth for the new arrivals?

So your God specially designed 1000 life forms (just a number), then killed 990 of them off because there was no room for the one he really wanted, and although the ten he left alive still weren’t what he really wanted, they somehow eventually led to the one he really wanted, H. sapiens, whose brain and body he then specially designed. And that’s also why he specially designed the whale, 50,000 different spider webs, and the weaverbird’s nest. The story becomes curiouser and curiouser.

dhw: You did once suggest that he was experimenting. Yes, that would be a logical link – but you quickly withdrew it when I pointed out that it could only mean he didn’t know what he wanted, or he didn’t know how to get what he wanted, i.e. wasn’t in full control. That doesn't fit in with your fixed image of your God.

DAVID: It is possible God experimented on the way. Religions claim God is totally omniscient but I have no proof of that, so experimentation is a consideration.

Now we’re talking. We must allow for the very human possibility that either your God doesn’t know what he wants, or knows what he wants but doesn’t know how to get it. (He is not omniscient.) There is no proof either that your God is in total control, or WANTS to be in total control, or created all the varieties of life as steppingstones to humans, or has no characteristics in common with the creature he created in his own image. It is all conjecture. But if experimentation is a possible consideration, so too is the unproven hypothesis that he created life because as first cause he was all alone and wanted something to occupy his sourceless, eternal, immaterial mind. If he can be ignorant, he can also be in need of something to do in the course of eternity.