Return to David's theory of evolution PART ONE (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, January 09, 2022, 13:51 (1047 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

dhw: I am merely pointing out to you that since the final expansion, our brains have coped with all the new requirements by complexifying instead of expanding.

DAVID: Yes! Because our brains were prepared in advance for all the future uses.

dhw: The complexifications take place in response to the demands made on them, not in anticipation of them. This suggests that changes to the brain, just like all other evolutionary changes, take place IN RESPONSE to new requirements and not BEFORE those requirements exist.

DAVID: Totally confused. The complexification mechanism supplied in advance accommodates all the new uses.

Three cheers. We need not take this discussion any further. The brain was your chosen example to illustrate how your God created new forms, organs, organisms in advance of any need for them. My favourite example was that of him changing pre-whale legs to flippers before the animals entered the water, but you chose the brain. At last, however, we now have your God providing the MECHANISM for change in advance of the changes. Precisely. With the brain, it's the MECHANISM initially for expansion and for complexification, but then almost entirely for complexification, and in both cases, the mechanism responds to the new requirements. This applies to the whole of evolution. My theistic proposal is that your God provided the MECHANISM for all evolutionary change, and this mechanism (the flexible and intelligent cell) brings about all the changes IN RESPONSE to new conditions and not in ANTICIPATION of them. Your God did not need to look into his crystal ball and preprogramme every solution to every problem, every response to new conditions, every innovation leading from bacteria to ants and eagles and humans and the duckbilled platypus, not to mention the weaverbird’s nest. He supplied the initial MECHANISM which would accommodate all uses. Agreement at last!

PART TWO (Let’s combine them.)
dhw: Now your dodge is to jump from God’s existence to the fact that evolution goes from stage to stage, from simple to complex. Each stage of what? Are you now telling me that all other life forms that had no connection with humans plus food were part of God’s one and only goal to produce humans plus food because they were all designed by him in stages (except, of course, for those that he designed without any predecessors)?

DAVID: I don't jump. God's design of evolution is one complete package, with simple stages leading to more complex ones.

But the more complex ones include countless “packages” that had no connection with humans and their food, and that is the problem you dodge and dodge and dodge.

DAVID: When He can, i.e., enough oxygen present to allow complex organisms, created by God's invention of photosynthesis, He uses the biochemical processes previously created to form the new phenotypes of the Cambrian. Your dodge is to forget God and try to separate the necessary parts.

I do not forget God – I propose that if he exists, he designed the mechanism which enables organisms to adapt to or exploit new conditions. What do you mean by the “necessary parts”. Necessary for what? According to you, the only goal was humans plus food. Why were all the brontosaurus’s “parts” necessary for your God’s design of humans plus their food?

DAVID: We are debating God's role in producing humans, whom He obviously wanted to produce, since we are here at the current endpoint of evolution. It is God's anthrocentricity in my view.

dhw: If he exists, and if – as you claim – he designed every other life form, then equally obviously he wanted to design all the other life forms which were here but had no connection with us, which makes nonsense of your claim that his only goal was to design us and our food!

DAVID: Of course He wanted and understood the need for other life forms to supply our food. You can't have one without the other. You admit the food supply is needed and then somehow it proves humans are unconnected from the process of God's designed evolution.

Of course we need food and our food consists of other life forms! But that does not mean that every single extinct life form and food was part of the goal of designing humans and our food! Please stop dodging!