Miscellany: gaps in evolution cause discontinuity (General)

by dhw, Monday, June 21, 2021, 08:57 (1042 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: Saw lots of fossils.

Good for you. And what did they prove?

dhw: Neither he [Shapiro] 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: You make it sound as if cell committees drive evolution. Pure theory which I wish was that simple to answer. My answer is the complexity of design requires a designing mind.

We don’t use your word “committee”, but yes, like every other theory of speciation, including yours, it is unproven. It is perfectly compatible with your “answer”: God can be the designer of cellular intelligence, just as you think he designed the human brain, which autonomously comes up with complex designs of its own.

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

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

DAVID: I should have written 'my' God. Yours does.

Mine remains a theory, not a rigid belief. And I hope you will now stop pretending that Shapiro does not advocate evolution through cellular intelligence.