David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, October 07, 2019, 08:49 (1872 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Chance evolution with chance mutations could not have achieved this result where diverse species all develop the same changes in the same genes; this is what Simon Conway -Morris calls convergence as a proof of God's control.

dhw: An excellent example of convergent evolution. I don’t know why it has to be “under God’s control”. It makes perfect sense for organisms to work out similar solutions to similar problems, and if God exists, then he would have set up the mechanisms that enable organisms to do this. What doesn’t make perfect sense, yet again, is to argue that God only wanted to design H. sapiens, decided not to do so for 3.X billion years, and therefore either did one dabble after another, or provided the first cells with programmes to be passed on for each of these examples of echolocation in order to cover the time he had decided to take before pursuing his one and only goal. This is the illogical “guess” which I keep complaining about.

DAVID: Same brief logical response. I assume God is in charge of what happened historically as He created our current reality. That humans are an extremely different result expected from a natural process of evolution makes them extremely strong evidence as to God's intent from the beginning. I know you have not read Adler and have rejected his religious philosophy, but he cannot be rejected out of hand.

Yet again: I do not reject your argument that design/complexity provides evidence for the existence of God, which embraces Adler’s example of the human mind. But you have repeatedly admitted that Adler does NOT argue that H. sapiens was your always-in-total-control God’s intent from the beginning, that for some unknown reason he decided not to fulfil that intent for 3.X billion years and therefore had to preprogramme or dabble every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in life’s history as interim goals in order to cover the time before starting on the fulfilment of his one and only goal. And I doubt very much that Adler would tell us this theory is perfectly logical provided we do not try to apply human logic, and that any alternative to this theory must be wrong because it entails “humanizing” God, although God “very well could think like us”.

DAVID: As for convergence, a similar result with similar genes is not like to be the result of a chance mutation method of evolution, and reeks of design.

You know perfectly well that I reject both chance mutations and your illogical belief as summarized above, and propose instead (theistic version) that your God may have invented a mechanism (cellular intelligence) that enabled organisms to do their own designing. I accept that this is as unproven as your own theory, but it too would have God as the creator of life and its history, and it avoids all the pitfalls that leave you with “no idea why he chose to evolve humans over time”.