dhw: Evolution and humans: Neanderthal lungs larger (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 06, 2018, 19:27 (2177 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I've always agreed with you that God might have given organisms the method of evolving new more advanced forms, but you object to my contention that God won't give up control but will offer that mechanism with guidelines. That makes perfect sense to me as God is the one and only Creator. Your God might allow latitude, mine won't.

dhw: I query your insistence that your God controls (or “guides”) every innovation, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, and that all of them are geared to the production of H. sapiens, although with his total control you don’t know why he chose to faff around with all of them. He can be the one and only Creator and still allow latitude because he WANTS to allow latitude.

You can theorize about His wants and motives all you want. It doesn't tell us anything of substance. What tells us anything is studying His works. He couldn't feed life without making a huge diversity to form the econiches. It is so obvious.

DAVID: You are still very influenced by your early readings from Darwin. Simple adaptations, which is all he knew about, will not lead to speciation. I don't accept Darwin's thinking at all except for the concept of common descent in the way I view it as step-by-step by God.

DAVID: Thank you for recognizing the obvious influence. Darwin, using the example of breeding, assumed simple adaptations would lead to covering the gaps in speciation and we would find the fossils to fit that concept. All wrong! Gould had to invent weird concepts like punctuated equilibrium to paper over the problem.

dhw: Of course I am influenced by Darwin, but he proposed random mutations as the prime cause of innovations, and you still haven’t told me where he proposes cellular intelligence in their place. There is nothing weird about punctuated equilibrium (which contradicts Darwin’s gradualism – another aspect of his theory which I do not accept).... Once more, the discussion is not about Darwin and me but about your ideas and mine concerning how evolution proceeds.

Cellular intelligence is your mantra, not Darwin's. I don't understand your question. 'Punc-inc' is Gould's excuse to cover gaps.

dhw: I don’t ask you to believe my hypothesis, but I’m surprised at your total disbelief.[/i]

DAVID: Total disbelief. The major changes require design and a designer. Only capable minds can design for the future, as in whales. You are starting at the minor adaptation level, no more, and leaping major gaps, like Superman leaping tall buildings.

dhw: I keep agreeing that we do not have proof that the mechanism for minor change can extend to major change. That is why my hypothesis is a hypothesis. Now let's look at your hypothesis again: your God created autonomously intelligent cells/cell communities capable of changing their own structures in response to new conditions (minor adaptations), but you insist that 3.8 billion years ago he provided the first cells with programmes to replace legs with fins before they were needed (or he dabbled with each individual pre-whale), and he also preprogrammed pre-baleen loss of teeth, or popped in to do the extractions, and a few million years later popped in again to provide them with baleens. Because otherwise life would not have continued so that he could fulfil his sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens, which he could have done directly anyway. I accept your reason for doubting my hypothesis. You don’t know why your God used the method you think he used, but you can't see any reason to doubt your hypotheses.

Because I analyze from what I see history and it tells us about what happened. I build on what I think God intended from those facts. We are here. We can think about Him but I am not inside His mind. I see the results of evolution as His intentions in direct relationship. I really don't care about His motives. For my conversion from agnosticism, all I have ever needed is the logical recognition, it can't be done without a designing mind.