David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 20, 2020, 20:29 (1736 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your reasoning makes no sense based on your initial agreement with me (bolded). You are questioning His obvious decision to wait, while questioning why isn't He impatient, like human are. Pure humanizing as usual.

dhw: It is NOT an obvious decision to wait! We agree that he could do whatever he wished in any way that he wished. The only obvious conclusion to draw from the bush of life is that he wanted a bush of life! Not that he only wanted one species and therefore wanted to spend 3.X billion years designing non-humans before designing the only thing he wanted to design!

We totally disagree because you use a narrowed view of the issue. Adler and I take into account the 'difference of man' and you ignore it in your analysis. God's creation of humans is a result that cannot be expected by looking at the totality of evolution prior to man, and is so surprising it indicates God wanted to purposefully create us. Read Adler and effectively refute his arguments. I can't. Can you?

dhw: Your guess that we are God’s ultimate purpose is not in itself illogical. It is the COMBINATION of your guesses that is illogical. Why are you asking about my logic when you have already agreed that all my alternatives are logical, and your only objection is that they “humanize” God, even though you agree that God probably has similar thought patterns to ours. And you still don’t seem to realize that your “conclusion” is a guess (you can’t “know” it for a fact), as is the rest of your theory, so why should your guesses be taken more seriously than mine?

Your humanized possible versions are humanly logical but persistently ignore the 'difference of man' as a starting point of logical considerations.

DAVID: Starting with God's choice to evolve humans, econiches are the only way to supply energy over time. An absolute requirement in order to evolve humans.

dhw: Econiches are an absolute requirement to evolve every form of life. They do not explain why your God designed 3.X billion years’ worth of econiches, life forms etc. when you insist that his starting point was to evolve humans!

You can't ignore that a decision to evolve us required econiches. A starting logical decision that God wished to create humans with a consciousness far beyond any other species is fully evidenced by our differentiation from all other living creations. You persist in downgrading that point and sneer "large organism chauvinism" while quoting your seer Shapiro who simply extrapolated a possible theory about speciation from his great contribution studies of bacteria, who adapted their DNA while he studied them, but he never noted a new species appearing. What is logically the case with bacteria is they are single-celled free-living forms who need that degree of adaptability. Since God needed bacteria to persist and help multicellular large forms with life's activities all through evolution, God made sure they survived with the tools He gave them. There is my obvious theistic theory to fit the facts.

DAVID: Your view assumes there is a drive to improve and complexify. But evolution is filled with examples of long periods of stasis.

dhw: My view assumes a drive to survive. New conditions may allow for new modes of survival, and these lead to complexification. The long periods of stasis are due to stable conditions with the balanced econiches that are essential to all life forms at all times. Only when conditions change (locally or globally) do organisms either adapt or innovate (and econiches change accordingly).

DAVID: Pure unadulterated Darwinism. Extinctions are pure luck (Raup) and the species drive to survive is day by day while alive. Advances come after fossil gaps, and require design.

dhw: I don’t know why you think the word “Darwinism” disproves the above theory. I agree that it’s bad luck if organisms can't cope with new conditions, and I’m surprised that you accept the enormous role played by luck in a process which you keep telling us is under your God’s total control. The fact that survival is a day-to-day struggle explains why organisms must adapt when conditions change, and may find new ways of improving their chances of survival. Must I repeat that design by possibly God-given cellular intelligence would solve the problem of the gaps?

Try and be a full theist. Your God-lite cell committees are a dilute form of God in sort-of control. Your so-called theist hat doesn't fit real theism. And you are back to pure Darwinism that survival must provide the fittest. Same old tautology. What survives is pure luck but those survivors do stay around to somehow speciate to the next stage of evolutionary complexity.