Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 18, 2021, 18:11 (1372 days ago) @ dhw

Evol: always advancing or not?

DAVID: My logic is God chose to evolve. He makes history and so that is logical.

dhw: Yes of course God, if he exists, must have chosen to set up the process of evolution, and yes of course he is responsible for the history of life. How does that explain your theory that he only had one purpose – to design H. sapiens – and proceeded to design anything but H. sapiens?

Your inverted reasoning is amazing. How do you get from bacteria to humans without the intermediate steps? And you concede God could have chosen to evolve and create known history, as in the bold..

DAVID: The Darwinian article is discussing the viability of the 'fitness' theory, and finds evolution doesn't really fit it.

dhw: And “more broadly, it implies that directionality and progress in evolution may be illusory”. But you believe in directionality – because according to you every life form was “part of the goal of evolving humans”.

DAVID: God wanted us but was not at high speed over 3.8 billion years.

dhw: So your God had only one purpose, and was mighty slow in even beginning to fulfil it, and so he quickly designed millions of other life forms that had no connection with humans. You don’t think it might just be possible that he actually wanted to have the vast variety of life forms that preceded ours and had no connection with ours?

Again, purpose forgotten or conveniently omitted: necessary food supply for a huge human population .

Extreme extremophiles

dhw: It is truly amazing. Note that even you lay emphasis on survival as the prime purpose of life forms.

DAVID: Just the opposite!! Life is so tough it easily survives everywhere. As usual you are backwards in you thinking.

dhw: How does that come to mean that the prime objective of all life forms is not survival? Please tell us what other purpose these extreme extremophiles might have in “adapting to their freezing home”.

Different interpretation: God made life so tough it easily survives everywhere. No sttruggle.

Physical change in speciation

DAVID: We ID folks believe only a designer had to do it.

dhw: I know what you believe. Now please tell us why you ID folks consider it impossible for your designer to have designed a mechanism that would enable cells to do their own designing.

Secondhand designing requires too many instructions, and may cerate mistakes.

Chimps ‘r’ not us

DAVID: Did you miss the point? Yes we descended, but we are not 98% the same as materialistic Darwinists tout.

dhw: You and the materialists still believe that we are descended from a common ape ancestor. So what is the new percentage meant to prove?

God required for new highly different designs. We are amazingly different. Bo simple change.

Immunity from Neanderthals

DAVID: A little interbreeding helped us sapiens folks. This has been discussed before when it was found that Neanderthal genes help our general immunity. This is a more specific case. dhw asked in the past why God would produce so many varieties of hominin/homo types and this result offers a reason.

dhw: No it doesn’t. If H. sapiens was the only species he wanted, and if he is always in total control of evolution, why this roundabout way of doing it? (In anticipation of your stock reply, no, I am not questioning God. I am questioning your interpretation of your hypothetical God's purpose and method in creating the evolutionary process.)

DAVID: I can only look at the real history and not question why God did it the way it appeared. It resulted in more sapiens immunity noting bad bugs were around.

dhw: I am not disputing the real history. For some reason, you always present your interpretation of history and God’s role in it as if it were a fact. It’s not. It’s a theory, and you refuse to question the logic of your theory.

I luckily have you to question me.