David's theory of evolution: James A. Shapiro's view (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, February 07, 2020, 13:18 (1749 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I asked you whether you thought your God controlled all the environmental changes which are inseparable from evolutionary changes in organisms. You clearly haven’t thought this through.

DAVID: I have thought it through, and even quoted Schroeder who thinks God might have hurled Chixculub. As above I'm not sure.

Then let me invite you to think it through again. How could your God have preprogrammed all the undabbled innovations, lifestyles, strategies, bacterial responses 3.8 billion years ago if he did not know what conditions all these future organisms would be living in? Either he organized every change, or he had a crystal ball telling him what changes would take place. Can you think of any alternative other than that he did NOT preprogramme the undabbled changes? If Chixculub was not preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, then it was dabbled, which means your God was acting on the hoof. Very understandable, and goodbye to your notion that he knew right from the start what he wanted and how he could get it.

DAVID: But He did get all He wanted by using evolution to achieve all His goals, with humans the final.

What are “all his goals”? The only goals you have told us about are: 1) humans, who were the goal from the very beginning; 2) 3.X billion years’ worth of life forms etc, as “interim goals” to keep life going until he started on his only goal. Please tell us what other goals you now think your God may have had. Perhaps at last we shall find some common ground.

DAVID: As for complexity I don't understand your answer. I view primates as much more complex than the less complex examples you gave.

You wrote that “Evolution is a progressively complexifing process which loses less complex forms along the way. 99% are gone." Why do you think dinosaurs, which are gone, were less complex than mice etc., which are here?

DAVID: Bacteria, as living-on-their-own organisms, have only a few responses they need and God would easily know them […]

dhw: Bacteria, as you well know, have found ways of coping with a colossal variety of different environments, […] Apparently all preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago by a God who, “as is quite clear” may not even have known what changes bacteria would have been confronted by.

DAVID: Yes bacteria are adapted to each environment, as God fully planned: They are still here.

I know. And according to you, your God provided them with all the answers to all the problems I originally listed above. Not just “a few responses” but millions of responses. Stop trying to minimize the absolutely unbelievable quantity of programmes for bacterial solutions, evolutionary innovations, life forms, lifestyles, econiches, natural wonders etc. that you think your God packed into the first cells to pass on to every organism that has ever lived.

dhw: […] why do you think all these different stages of whale were necessary?

DAVID: I don't know God's reasoning, remember. Hippo to humpback is quite a switch.

I remember that you cannot find any reason why your God should have acted in the way you say he acted. That is why your theory concerning his goal and his method of achieving that goal is illogical. But you refuse to consider any other theory.

DAVID: Adaptations make little step by step changes. The speciation we trace in the fossil history is only large gaps, only explained by design understanding the future needs.

Yet again: we KNOW that minor adaptations entail cell communities responding to requirements by making changes to themselves. The theory is that the same process may also have applied to the major adaptations and innovations which led to speciation, of which nobody knows the cause. NEITHER minor NOR major are “only explained by…understanding the future needs”. Both are explained by organisms responding intelligently to new present needs. MY THEORY DOES NOT ENTAIL FUTURE PLANNING!

This post contains answers to points raised in other threads, including the one on Darwin, which is now superfluous, as are all references to Darwin in the context of cellular intelligence!.