Miscellany: gaps in evolution cause discontinuity (General)

by dhw, Sunday, June 20, 2021, 09:33 (1042 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My Grand Canyon experience tells me the boundary line is quite clear between the two layers and the Chinese discoveries have only increased the complexity gap.

dhw: I don’t know why you assume that every organism that ever lived must have visited the Grand Canyon and left a fossil or two behind.

DAVID: Make a fun point. My background in geology is what I illustrated. Our Geology professor guide taught us three semesters of geology in nine days.

Happy to have a bit of fun. Did he tell you that God personally designed every living form de novo “as part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” plus lunch, and this is proven by the fact that the Grand Canyon does not contain a complete record of every life form that ever lived?

dhw: If God is capable of designing cellular intelligence, why do you dismiss Shapiro’s theory and cling to your equally unconfirmed theory – that God designed every species individually – which raises insoluble problems of logic when combined with your other beliefs? Please bear in mind that Shapiro’s theory does not exclude God.

DAVID: I know that. I don't dismiss his theory. It is in my book!! I dismiss your extrapolations of his theory.

dhw: What extrapolations? The quotes could hardly be clearer: he believes that cellular intelligence produced the “novelties” that resulted in speciation. What have I added?

DAVID: You know, darn well, the extrapolation: brilliant cell committees produced evolution.

Neither he nor I use the words “brilliant committees”. He says that cells are cognitive beings which produce “evolutionary novelty” by means of self-modification. I wish you would stop pretending this doesn't mean intelligent cells were responsible for speciation.

DAVID: But the fossils exist and the complexity gap worsens.

dhw: This is getting silly. We only know of the fossils that have been found. We do not know if there are others, but even if there are no more to be discovered, that does not prove that no other life forms existed.

DAVID: The point is the gaps require a designer.

dhw: The point is that you are tying yourself in knots over what constitutes continuity, and I am trying to straighten out the mess.

dhw: Ten million years is an enormous expanse of time in terms of generations of intelligent organisms adapting to or exploiting new conditions. Ignoring Shapiro's theory does not invalidate it.

DAVID: The 10 million years is in the start of the Cambrian and only Cambrian complexity appears!!!

dhw: How does that prove that intelligent cells (possibly created by your God) did not design the complexities?

DAVID: I've disagreed before: God does not do secondhand creation.

Your usual statement of blinkered opinion as if it were a fact.