Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Friday, September 24, 2021, 11:30 (946 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: … survival does not drive evolution.

dhw: It is not survival but the quest for survival. In your theory, this means that instead of organisms adapting to or exploiting new conditions, your God looks into his crystal ball, sees the new environment coming, and so fulfils the quest for survival by dabbling the changes he hasn’t already preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago (e.g. changing legs into flippers). BBThese are the changes that cause speciation.BB So how can preparations for survival come to mean that survival is not the purpose of preparations for survival? And how come "purpose" is not the driving force behind an action?

DAVID: We know organisms have the epigenetic resources to make minor adaptations. You stretch that somehow into speciation.

That is irrelevant to the question of why, according to you, preparations for survival somehow mean that survival is not the purpose of preparations for survival.

DAVID: For me design for future use is required and God does that in His designing. God drives evolution, not survival.

And for me, design for future use is NOT required, since I believe evolutionary changes take place IN RESPONSE to changing conditions and not in anticipation of them. As regards the "drive", I have just pointed out that the two concepts are not incompatible. Your God’s purpose in changing the anatomies of his creatures was, according to you, to prepare them for survival, which means that the purpose of the changes that lead to speciation is to prepare the creatures for survival. The purpose of something is usually the force that drives the doer into action. So for you, your God drives evolution by fulfilling his purpose of preparing life forms to survive under new conditions.