Return to David's theory of evolution PARTS 1 & 2 (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, February 11, 2022, 13:14 (1014 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have said over and over again that you have no idea why, if your God’s only purpose was to design humans plus food, he would have designed countless life forms that had no connection with humans plus food. Why can’t you leave it at that?

DAVID: Your blindness to God's choice of His method is my issue. We both picture the other as wrong. I'll leave it at that if you will also.

It’s impossible to do so when in post after post you continue to refer directly or indirectly to your rigid belief that your God chose your “roundabout” method of achieving what you rigidly believe to have been his goal. Why am I “blind” if you can’t understand the illogical combination of purpose and method you impose on your God?

dhw: Another illogical part of your theory is the claim that speciation takes place IN ANTICIPATION of changing conditions. You have, however, proceeded to give us plenty of examples that show the converse is true. Here’s another one:

Oxygen and the Cambrian: gills appeared

A new Chinese find, early gills from 520 million years ago:

DAVID: These animals had to utilize oxygen somehow. This is probably the beginning.

dhw: You’ve got it. Oxygen first, innovations in response.

DAVID: The free oxygen had to come first. So God provided photosynthesis as a first evolutionary step. God anticipates His needs.

You yourself are not sure to what extent your God manipulates the environmental changes – local and universal – but no matter what he “provides”, even in your theory, speciation only takes place AFTER conditions have changed. Or do you still believe that he changed legs to flippers BEFORE pre-whales entered the water?

dhw: What’s more, new finds are being made all the time, and some of them fill in gaps.

DAVID: Findings now fill only minor skips in specific individual lines. See Bechly entry on fossil finding reaching endpoints. (Wednesday, January 01, 2020, 18:23 & 2020-07-08, 22:45

What is the thread name, please? Or just give us a quote. Meanwhile, I can only repeat that it’s a miracle ANY fossils survive from hundreds of millions of years ago. And the more rapid the process of speciation (e.g. in times of major environmental changes), the fewer fossils there will be.

Cambrian explosion: A new study of a late branch

DAVID: Helps explain the steps in its evolution:
and
DAVID: please note lots of fossil samples are lying around waiting for further study to place them in the right order.

dhw: Yes, even those we have can yield more information about the steps.

DAVID: Only tiny steps in a fossil line. You simply wish along with Darwin. Not happened.

I don’t “wish”. I’m testing theories for their feasibility. Of course the absence of fossils is a problem for Darwin’s theory. The absence of your God is a problem for your own theory. If you can claim that design is evidence of your absent God, others can say that the known links between different species are evidence of absent life forms in the chain of common descent.

Mass extinctions relate to volcanos

DAVID: These complex animals could not exist without lots of oxygen prepared first.

[...]

dhw: So let’s hear no more of this theory of yours that speciation anticipates changing conditions, as opposed to responding to them.

DAVID: It stays my full theory.

dhw: As with your theory that your God pursues his only purpose by not pursuing his only purpose, and you don’t know why but you won’t budge, here you agree that conditions must change before these new species can appear, but you stick to your theory that species appear before conditions change.

DAVID: Your usual error. Not responding to new conditions, but preparing for new conditions or as in our brain handling new, never seen before uses.

What do you mean by “preparing” for new conditions? Once again, are you still saying that your God operated on prewhales to give them flippers to flap until it was time for them to enter the water? Or he gave a bunch of humans 200 cc worth of extra brain cells to lie around in their bigger skulls for a couple of hundred thousand years doing nothing?