Evolution: fish to land animals transition (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, November 30, 2020, 23:18 (1452 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Under my belief system I find your objections as totally illogical. As God is in charge He does whatever He wishes for whatever His reasons happen to be.

dhw: I totally agree that if God exists, he does or did whatever he wishes or wished. But that does not mean he did what YOU say he did! How can you find my objections to your theory “totally illogical” when you cannot explain how the direct design of millions of extinct life forms and food supplies that had no connection with humans and their food supplies could have been “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans”?

The illogical complaint that you offer about God's using evolution has nothing to do with the fact and I do not and cannot know his reasoning.

dhw: I did not say it was probable, and yes indeed, we should entertain all possibilities to have a fair and open discussion. You propose the possibility of limitations, I explain how this could lead to experimentation, and I ask for flaws in my proposal, and what other limitations you can envisage. So now you don’t want a fair and open discussion.

No. I want a fair discussion without distortions of comments

DAVID: It still is either preplanned coding or constant dabbling. I do favor the latter. You can't explain the source of the intelligent actions of cells, but when forced you drag God in to stay balanced on your picket fence. But even then it is hedged with God giving second-hand inventive mechanisms, so cells sort of do it own their own, God in the background, in a secondary position for all new designs. I always see God as in primary control, but you never can accept that.

dhw: You ridiculed the idea of cells needing a universe-sized instruction book, but then it turned out this was your own idea, so you’re happy to go back to it. I’m an agnostic, and I cannot leave God out of any theory. I have proposed a God who did not want direct control, but who allowed free rein because he wanted the ever changing bush which we know from history. But it is also possible that your God was in primary control, and even that humans were his goal, as you propose. However, that leads to the problem you can never solve - why he would directly design all those millions of life forms that had no connection with humans

Same strange complaint as if you think God should have done our creation in some other way than history tells us.

dhw: – but I CAN solve it with another theory: that God is a learning God, not a know-all, and so either he experimented, or humans were a late arrival in his thinking. All this is “entertaining all possibilities and having a fair and open discussion” – and you try to block it at every turn with your refusal to face up to the problem just mentioned, and with your silly objection to any explanation as “humanizing” a God who probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours, and very well could think like us.

I face up to my problems and come up with solutions that fit my logic. God is fully in charge, He knows exactly what He wishes to accomplish and evolved us over time. Not the wishy-washy semi-deity of your very fertile so-called theistic imagination.

And your final objection:

DAVID: Evolution from bacteria to humans is a continuum. You want to chop it up into unrelated segments when everything present is obviously related to the past.

dhw: Everything present is related to the past through common descent, but you have agreed that evolution branched out in millions of directions. There can only be one “continuum” from bacteria to humans, but the other 99% of extinct life forms, food supplies, econiches, strategies, natural wonders etc. by your own admission had no connection with humans, No connection means unrelated segments. Why do you constantly agree with these objections and then try to withdraw your agreement?

They are all connected to the original bacteria by common descent. They all use the same DNA. Even Darwin drew a tree of life in his famous notebook. I guess as you analyze you are a splitter, not a grouper.