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

by David Turell , Saturday, February 12, 2022, 16:27 (804 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm sorry you are so illogical, while I will pursue my points. Your reasoning about God's actions is purely from a 'what a thinking human would logically do'. God is not required to be humanly logical.

dhw: And so your ultimate defence of your illogical theory is that you are firmly convinced that your God would act in a way which you as a human being would regard as illogical. This has even led you to the conclusion that we humans are more efficient than your God when it comes to the fulfilment of a single purpose. I wonder how many supporters you will find in the scientific and the religious communities.

I am describing how you view God as a human. That doesn't mean I view Him that way. Your full misinterpretation of my point shows your hardened bias. I've bolded above to show you what you slid by. I am not you.

Oxygen and the Cambrian: gills appeared

DAVID: I would reason flippers appeared while mammals were paddling around in water.

dhw: At least your God didn’t leave them stranded on the shore waiting for the water to arrive. But to be frank, I would have thought the legs would have turned into flippers when pre-whales actually swam in the water. Paddling only requires legs, not flippers, and it is clear from all the examples you have given that bodies change IN RESPONSE to new conditions, not in anticipation of them.

The anatomic changes from paddling legs to flippers require enormous redesign. You skip over how bodies are changed.

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Pure wishful thinking. Bechly points out the real facts you are ignoring to protect your pet rigid approaches: Early in exploration many fossils are found, filling gaps, but at a later point less and less are found to fill continuity until paleontologists recognize a gap exists. Think Gould's point.

dhw: I find this perfectly reasonable. The last thing I would expect is continuity from hundreds of millions of years ago. That really would be wishful thinking. But the explicable gaps in the fossil record can hardly be called evidence that your equally absent God popped in to perform countless operations on countless organisms, or equipped the first cells with a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every species plus natural wonder etc. in the whole history of life. Absence of evidence proves nothing (see Bertrand Russell’s teapot orbiting the sun), and so we can only speculate on what seems reasonable or logical, given the facts we do have at our disposal. And I don’t think it’s unnatural for us humans to base beliefs on what seems logical to us (e.g. the design argument for your God's existence) rather than to assume that God – if he exists – must think illogically by our standards.

It's your God's standards that are eschew, not mine. See above.