Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, August 03, 2020, 12:45 (1571 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I don't dodge. I find your complaint about 99% gone as simply not recognizing history as God produced it. It implies I should favor Genesis and six days of creation. I don't.

dhw: Who said anything about Genesis and six days of creation? You know perfectly well that all my alternative theistic explanations of evolution have nothing to do with Genesis. Stop dodging. My complaint is not about 99% gone but about the utter illogicality of an all-powerful God with one purpose devoting himself to directly designing anything but the life form which was his one purpose. Stop dodging.

DAVID: I have always considered your objection as totally irrational under the consideration God is in change of creating reality for us and therefore history tells us what He did. We are discussing MY God, not some version of what you think is on God's mind. God chose to evolve us, and I don't know why He chose that course of action, and it doesn't matter to me.

Yes, we are discussing your interpretation of God’s nature, purpose and method of achieving that purpose. You don’t know why he would have fulfilled the purpose you impose on him by the method you impose on him, but (a) although you can’t understand it, you regard any objection as irrational, and (b) you are not prepared to consider any theory that offers an explanation which even you can see is logical.

DAVID: It is your series of illogical thoughts that lead you to complain about my well thought out theories.

dhw: I wonder how many believers believe that your God could but couldn’t control the errors in his system....[followed by several other examples of blatant contradictions!]

DAVID: The bold is your problem. Let's concentrate on it. God knew those errors could happen because the system runs on molecules reacting, folding, etc. in order to provide proper functions at just the right time in a split-second production system. The molecules ARE FREE TO MAKE MISTAKES. [dhw: Your own emphasis in capitals.]

This subject is dealt with on the errors thread, but I have repeated your last remark here because it is crucial to our discussion on evolution. You wrote under “Human evolution” on July 25: “A mutational error favoured by natural selection or by God may have arranged for our human evolution.” If mutational errors can be beneficial, and your God left them free to make such “errors”, you are clearly allowing an alternative to your concept of direct design of species: namely, that your God left evolutionary changes to the molecules themselves. In your own words: “God may allow beneficial ones”. Not “design” but “allow”. I can then offer you a choice: either these changes were random (Darwin) and your God allowed them to happen, or the cells themselves deliberately organized them with their (perhaps God-given) intelligence (Shapiro). Which would you regard as more likely?
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Under “Nature’s Wonders”:
DAVID: Loggerhead turtles travel the world and spread species of life that cannot move on their own:
http://oceans.nautil.us/feature/592/theres-a-world-living-on-every-loggerhead?mc_cid=4f...

QUOTE: "...hitchhikers, known as epibionts, show up on hosts from crabs to crocodiles. But according to a May 2020 paper by Ingels, Valdes, dos Santos and others, loggerheads in particular carry many, many more of them than previously thought—often tens of thousands of individuals each. These represent a diversity of species and life stages, and turn a well-populated turtle into “a little metropolis floating in the ocean,” says Ingels.

DAVID: this shows how interconnected the whole vast bush of life actually is and how necessary it all is to each and every branch. dhw doesn't seem to understand it had to be built over time as part of the goal of creating humans.

Thank you for another wonderful wonder. What a shame you’ve spoilt this post with your comment. The “whole vast bush of life” reaches back 3.8 billion years, 99% of it being extinct. Of course creatures within any econiche are connected, but it is patently absurd to claim that turtles carrying epibionts show that every single econiche in the history of life “had to be built as part of the goal of creating humans”. Like all past and present life forms, loggerheads show that econiches are full of interconnections. That's all they show.

DAVID (under “Parasites and the bush”: Parasites are a necessary part of the bush of life:
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-parasites-important.html

QUOTE: "But only 4% of known parasites can infect humans, and the majority actually serve critical ecological roles, like regulating wildlife that might otherwise balloon in population size and become pests.”

DAVID:: same old story. All parts of the bush count as very important and required at all phases of evolution. dhw should take notice.

I have never disputed the fact that all parts of an econiche are important for the organisms that live in that econiche. But there were millions of econiches long, long, long before sapiens came on the scene! The undisputed fact that econiches contain interconnected organisms does not explain why your God would have directly designed millions of non-human and extinct econiches if his only purpose was to directly design sapiens and his econiches. Your capacity for dodging the question I keep asking you seems to be endless.