Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 06, 2021, 08:56 (1415 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I don't dodge your series of complaints. I have a singular belief, not chopped up into your parts: God started life and chose to evolve us from bacteria. Simple. Logical.

Of course it’s simple and logical on its own. But you have again left out your belief that although designing H. sapiens and his food supply was your God’s one and only purpose, he directly designed every life form, food supply, natural wonder etc. in the history of life, and 99% of these had no connection with humans. Once again I quote:

DAVID: You are correct. I have no idea why He uses that method.

dhw: Thank you. That is the acknowledgement I asked for. I suggest we leave it at that.

DAVID: Fine.

dhw:

dhw: I have absolutely no objection to your presenting evidence of design, and indeed am most grateful for every example of Nature’s Wonders. But I think I have every right to question your theory concerning your God’s purpose and method of achieving that purpose, as above, and to put forward alternatives of my own – especially since you agree that they are all logical.

DAVID: They are all logical if I accept your humanized form of God and His humanized thought patterns.

dhw: And since you agree that your God probably has humanized thought patterns, there does not have to be any such qualification of your acceptance that they are logical.

DAVID: Your God is way more humanized than my approach to Him.

How do you know the extent to which God has humanized thought patterns?
[…]

DAVID: As we discuss there will always be two diametrically opposed theoretical Gods, yours and mine.

dhw: I do not have one theoretical God. I offer alternatives, all of which you have tested and found to provide logical explanations for the history of life as we know it. In contrast, you have no idea how your theoretical God’s single purpose fits in with the history of life as we know it, but you continue to promulgate your combination of beliefs, as above, and want to stop me from opposing it!

DAVID: I know what you oppose. We can't change each other.

You acknowledged that you had no idea how to explain the COMBINATION of your beliefs, and we agreed to leave it at that. But since you go on insisting that your God designed every non-human and unconnected life form etc., and did so to fulfil his purpose of designing H. sapiens, I have no choice but to go on reminding you that the COMBINATION of your beliefs makes no sense even to you.

Cambrian Explosion
DAVID: What the article shows is that very late Edicarans and very simple early Cambrians are related. […] There certainly isn't an abrupt dividing line in evolution. [dhw’s bold]

dhw: This finding and your final sentence greatly reduce the strength of the argument that the Cambrian did create a gap or dividing line, and did produce totally new life forms without antecedents. […]

DAVID:[…] You can't escape the enormous complexity that developed with no transitional forms, as very simple Edicarans became simple Cambrian forms and then very complex Cambrians.

The article is based on the recent discovery of “exceptional fossils” proving that there were transitional forms from Ediacarans to Cambrians. It is astonishing that there are still fossils dating from 500 million years ago! We really can’t expect a continuous line of fossilized transitional forms. I am not denying the complexity. I am simply pointing out that 55 million years is a helluva long time, and the latest discoveries confirm that the process of evolution is a slope and not a cliff, and that “there certainly isn’t an abrupt dividing line in evolution” (your own words, bolded above). So I don’t find it impossible to believe that if humans can evolve from apes in 4 million years, other complex forms can evolve from simpler forms in 55 million years – especially if we substitute cellular intelligence for Darwin’s random mutations.