Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing: cognition (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, November 08, 2021, 14:18 (1109 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Not illogical when evolution is understood to be stepwise development of more complex body forms.

dhw: Evolution is the stepwise development of countless complex body forms, most of which had no connection with humans plus food, and you claim that your God designed them all, even though humans plus food were his one and only purpose. You have already admitted that you have no idea why he would have fulfilled such a purpose through such a method. Please stop dodging!

I'm not omniscient. I can't know why God makes his choices of method.

DAVID: You forget I'm with Adler. Our specialness makes us a prime purpose for God who chose to evolve us from bacteria as history shows. The God I believe in creates the history we study. I find your objection totally illogical.

dhw: I have no problem with our specialness. You have said that your beloved Adler used this as proof of God’s existence, but does not claim that every single extinct life form was specially created for the sole purpose of producing us. And you have no idea why your all-powerful God would have chosen to design all the life forms that had no connection with us, or why he would have chosen to design us in stages although according to you the Cambrian proves that he can design complex life forms de novo, without any precursors.

Same answer. I can't read God's mind, even if you insist. It makes no point

DAVID (under “fungus controls male flies”): You have finally understood my designer God makes new species in completely new forms (phenotypes) without precursor forms.

dhw: I have understood this belief of yours right from the start. And I asked you why you thought a God who can create completely new species without precursors chose not to do so with the only species (plus food) you believe he actually wanted to design, namely us. You have no idea why, and you still insist that we are descended from bacteria, although you agree that evolution is development of body forms and not biochemical processes, and therefore we are not descended from bacteria but from your God’s new creations during the Cambrian.

You have forgotten my statement that all life forms use the same biochemistry when life started, but even that biochemistry evolved to more complex processes as more complex forms appeared. God wanted to design all the species He did design or they wouldn't be here.

dhw: I proposed that the body form gap might be explained by absence of fossils and/or cellular intelligence capable of designing major as well as minor innovations.

DAVID: Absence of fossils for 170 years since Darwin resulting in the gap unchanged or larger is becoming a faint hope. Why do you cling to it?

dhw: I do not expect a complete record of all stages of speciation for the last 3.X billion years, but since new discoveries are constantly being made, I do not regard the book as being closed.

How about your mind closed on this subject? 170 years of active fossil searching since Darwin and the gap is the same.

DAVID: As for cells bright enough to jump the gap, the theory is extrapolating the the appearance that single cells do act as if intelligent. That intelligence is confined to their simple responses to stimuli producing standard results.

dhw: Two days ago you agreed that there was a 50/50 chance that cells really are intelligent. I wrote: "So please stop dismissing it." You replied: “50/50 is not dismissal. You are so touchy!” The above authoritative statement is a direct dismissal of the suggestion that cells may be intelligent enough to make major as well as minor changes to themselves, which is the whole point of the theory, as bolded above.

Accept that I have my point of view and you yours or we wouldn't have a debate