Innovation, Speciation: strange DNA finding (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 04, 2018, 14:25 (2180 days ago) @ David Turell

Throughout the years I am delighted to say you have also presented ideas and especially information to me that I might never have thought about or known in the past. That is indeed the function of this forum. However, you don’t like me presenting you with ideas that you might never have thought about before. And so suddenly your God’s purpose and method for the whole of life and evolution don’t matter any more.

DAVID: I have never changed from my positions. I have been pleased to educate you, and in politeness (as previously noted) have tried to respond to your inquires into God's mind. But you have reached a point in trying to humanize God's thought process and I've never gone there.

Twice in the last few days, without my asking, you have stated that your God wants us to think about him and wants a relationship with us. But this is not humanization? You insist that he designed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder although his sole purpose was to create us; later you admit that you do not know “why God chose to evolve humans when religions, if correct, tell us he could do anything he wanted.” Your “don’t know” concerns the enormous logical gap between your hypotheses, but you would rather not think about that.

DAVID: I've concentrated on the science of reality as looking at 'how' God did what he did, without wondering about the 'why' He did it. I've spent most of my time exposing you to the design argument. I'm simply telling you I am in foreign territory, to which I object constantly, while criticizing your humanizing approach.

And yet you harp on about God’s purposefulness, and you tell us his one purpose was to create us and you spontaneously tell us why (see above). I have long since accepted the design argument, which along with psychic experiences is the reason for my agnosticism (as opposed to atheism). We are all in foreign territory, but although you don’t know why your God specially designed all life forms although his purpose was to produce us – two hypotheses that have nothing whatsoever to do with science – you refuse to consider any other hypotheses.

dhw: I do not see how your God’s special design of 50,000 spiders’ webs, whale fins and weaverbirds’ nests fits the hypothesis that every variety of life is/was a stepping stone to humans. Nor do you [… ]

DAVID: You are stressing the word 'steppingstone' too strongly. All stages of evolution and diversity are steps to reaching humans, nothing more.

There is no connection. All stages of evolution and diversity are steps towards every single life form that ever lived, including the current whale, baleen, weaverbird, spider, duckbilled platypus and human.

DAVID: The diversity of design of living forms is to set up delicate econiches to provide food, nothing more, for life to survive the lengthy process of evolving life with humans as the current and probably last endpoint. From what I have presented, do you doubt about the delicacy of econiche balances?

I have never doubted the delicacy of ever changing econiches. Case closed. Logical gap between your two hypotheses still wide open. You admit you can’t close it, but you won’t admit that this gap in your reasoning might mean that one or both of these hypotheses may be wrong.

Dhw: I offer you possible answers: he didn’t specially design all of them, or we were not his one and only purpose, or we (with our self-awareness) were his only purpose but he didn’t know how to make us, or we came late on in his thinking. All of these fit the history of life as we know it, and they bridge the enormous gap in your hypothesis.

DAVID: I don't know why God chose to evolve humans, when religions, if correct, tell us He could do anything He wanted. The Bible tries to tell us He made Adam from dirt. Maybe the evolutionary process was the only way He could do it. I've said this before.

You don’t know why, but you refuse to consider any of the logical answers above.
xxxxxx
Under "Marine snow")

DAVID: Surprise! Mammals in the ocean add to the bottom food supply as they die and decompose. Another example of how delicate econiches are set up to provide food supply. The niches are part of God's design for life to survive and evolve over long stretches of time. I'm sorry dhw can't see the logic.

Apart from the bit about “God’s design”, it is not logic but a simple and obvious fact. All forms of life provide energy, and without energy, life would die out. This would be true if there were no humans, and it would be true if your God did not specially design every form of life. You are latching onto this as if it somehow provided evidence for your two hypotheses (God designed every life form, and his purpose was to produce humans who would think about him). You don’t know why he chose to specially design every life form for 3+ billion years in order to specially design the brain and body of H. sapiens, but God's logic is different from ours (another of your get-out mantras). Maybe God's logic is different from yours, and one or both of your hypotheses are wrong.