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

by David Turell , Saturday, February 08, 2020, 19:23 (1748 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I doubt He controlled every universe's body in motion. That is why I have the option of dabbles. Yes I do doubt minor aspects of omniscient ability are all present. He fully knew His purposes and methods, and He is not your struggling, confused humanized God. He evolved the universe with a clear overall plan.

dhw: This question specifically concerned evolution. Nothing to do with the universe’s bodies, your God’s purposes and methods, or your silly view of an experimenting God as struggling and confused. If he had a clear overall plan for evolution and programmed all the above, he must have known about future environmental changes. Did he create them, or did he forecast them? Dabbling means intervention. Why would he have to intervene if he knew everything in advance? Please answer both questions. If you can’t, then we have yet another logical gap in your theory of evolution.

I have already said I don't know if God fully knows every little step or minor event in total omniscience. For example, does He know the exact track of every tornado in advance, or does He set general weather patterns in motion and allow them to do what they will. I am not a fundamentalist who believes God's work is involved in every uprooted tree from the storm. It is in evolution where I am convinced human were the evolutionary goal starting with bacteria as below:

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

dhw: What are “all his goals”?

DAVID: In evolution there are always interim stages and goals, as you admit in quotes above.

dhw: Of course there are interim stages if you believe in common descent! And if God exists, of course there are goals. Now please answer the question: What other goals do you think your God may have had apart from creating H. sapiens, and (one interim goal) to keep life going until he had covered the time he inexplicably decided to take before creating H. sapiens?

Your usual strange mantra. Humans are the prime goal, others were stages in evolution as your bolded words above indicates. What are you questioning just for the sake of questioning?

dhw: 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: You've forgotten, dinosaurs lay eggs!!!

dhw: How does that make them less complex than mice, ants and butterflies - not to mention chickens?

Weird! Only mice give live birth. Butterflies go through a very complex metamorphosis. I agree ants and chickens are not much more complex, but even ants are different in having complex social organization and you love to tout their mental abilities. Vast complex differences as evolution left the dinosaur stage! I'll stick with my quote bolded above.

DAVID: Each bacterial species adapted to a different environment needs only a few programmed responses.

dhw: Really? I’d have thought each new environment and each new opportunity and each new threat would demand a different response. How come new medicines kill millions of bacteria until they find a solution? But in my theory, you only need ONE mechanism from the beginning, not countless programmes to deal with countless new conditions.

Bacterial responses requirements are few. Environment has one requirement that is special, finding the right energy source in each different one.

dhw: 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. […] MY THEORY DOES NOT ENTAIL FUTURE PLANNING!

DAVID: I know that, and it is a gap in your reasoning I fail to understand. It fails to explain the fossil gaps, which so troubled Gould, but not you, as you stick with a weird invention of cells simply speciating.

dhw: It is a theory to explain the gaps. Instead of your God’s intelligence preprogramming all the apparent jumps, we have intelligent cells designing the jumps in response to new requirements. The fact that you don’t believe it does not invalidate the fact that it is an attempt to explain the gaps – no weirder than your theory of the 3.8-billion-year programme devised by your God.

I know it is your attempt, which ignores the need for a designer to make new species.