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

by dhw, Monday, February 14, 2022, 08:53 (796 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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. […]

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Personally, I’d be more inclined to believe a theory that I as a human being find logical than one which goes against all my human reason.

DAVID: Once again you wish God to be humanly logical. How is that logical? To quote Adler, God is a personage like no other person from "How to Think about God".

Nobody could possibly imagine that a God who creates a universe and life is just like any “other person”! But calling him a “personage” (another word for person) is in perfect keeping with your own belief that “He and we probably have similar thought patterns and emotions beyond just simple logic”, and “All we can be sure of is logic on his part”, and the fact that you are “sure we mimic him in many ways”. I can only repeat that I’m more inclined to believe a theory that makes sense to me than one that requires the theorist himself to abandon the human logic which leads him to believe in God (design theory - one up for human logic) but also leads him to give up trying to understand his own theory (one down for human logic).

Anticipation of use
A paywalled article offers support for this view in its abstract:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01656-0

QUOTE: [..] However, persistent life-habit evolution throughout the early Palaeozoic, combined with iterative functional convergence within adaptive strategies, results in major expansion of ecospace and functional diversity. The interactions between tempo, divergence and convergence demonstrate not only that anatomical novelty precedes ecological success, but also that ecological innovation is constrained, even during a phylum’s origin. (David's bold)

DAVID: This clearly states that new organisms arise and then adapt to their environments. It clearly states morphology first, adaptive functions later. Assuming a designer at work, he is obviously assuming anticipation of future use.

dhw: You can’t have adaptation before you have a body to adapt! You agree that the Cambrian innovations appeared AFTER the increase in oxygen. Once life forms exist, they “expand their ecospace” and adapt to different environments. If your God exists, he will have designed the mechanisms enabling life forms to adapt to different environments or to exploit them through innovation. Back to our favourite example: The pre-whale – I suggest to you – was not given flippers before it entered the water, but legs changed into flippers and there were various other changes IN RESPONSE to the pre-whale’s new way of life in a different environment. The same process would apply to ALL species: first the changing conditions, then the new species (constrained by those conditions), and then expansion of “eco-space”, adaptations and functional diversity. Always in response, never in anticipation.

DAVID: The adaptations in the whole whale series requires intense design. How can a whale deep dive without having the phenotypic changes to do that from the whale's beginning?

It can’t deep dive from the very beginning! Only when it begins to attempt deep diving will the cells adapt to the new requirements. Just as legs won’t turn into flippers until the pre-whale lives in the water. What is your theory? Did God pop in one night and operate on a few whales to engineer the “phenotypic changes”, and they woke up next morning realizing that now, yippee, they could go deep diving?

dhw: Humans are the result of one line or branch of past stages, not “all”. Thousands of other branches led to thousands of other life forms, most of which never had any connection with humans or with our food. Hence the illogicality of your theory […]

DAVID: The connection is the huge requirement for a food supply. You admit it must exist and then try to diminish its importance. All the ecosystems layer one upon the next to support the need for consuming energy.

dhw: The fact that ALL life forms need food does not prove that humans are the result of ALL past stages of ALL life forms and econiches in the history of life, including ALL those that had no connection with humans!!!!!

DAVID: Humans need food not connections to all the bush. Humans evolved in their line didn't they?

Yes, humans evolved in their own line. Thank you for echoing my response to the absurd notion that ALL lines and ALL food bushes were designed as “part of the goal of evolving humans” and their food, although most of them had no connection with humans and their food!