More "miscellany" (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 15, 2022, 08:29 (773 days ago) @ David Turell

Clearly answering Darwin

DAVID: So natural selection bows to heredity? In that case now do advances happen?

dhw: You have completely missed the point, which means we must now go right off the track. Darwin believed that advances happened because of random mutations, and natural selection decided which of these were beneficial enough to survive. When confronted with the problem of vestigial structures, he suggested that they were inherited. (I added that they would probably have been discarded if they were harmful.) What’s the problem? And how does that theory draw its power from theology?

DAVID: You missed my point. If Darwin bowed to heredity which caused unnecessary parts to remain, that is the argument for chance mutations to be correct.

Yes of course. He found an explanation that fitted in with his theory. So if we assume that the webbed feet are indeed vestigial structures, what is your explanation?

DAVID: Poor Darwin, knowing so little about how life worked, did demonstrate common descent, nothing more.

dhw: Snipe as much as you like at Darwin’s achievement in establishing common descent as the now widely accepted view of life’s history. How does your attempt to belittle his achievement prove Hunter’s point that the power of Darwin’s theory is drawn from theology and not from scientific study?

DAVID: Darwinism is pure faith, isn't it? Lots of Darwin's compatriots accepted common descent, but not Darwin's explanation. His then detractors were more correct than Darwin.

Darwinism is a collection of theories. I have deliberately laid emphasis on common descent, which even today is widely accepted as being true and is based on scientific study. I cannot see how anyone can argue that its power is drawn from theology. You and I and many others reject the theory that random mutations cause speciation. We reject it because our observations, reason and experience tell us that chance is not capable of such complex inventions. The power of our opposition is not based on theology, though it may well lead us to theological concepts.

DAVID: Hunter is trying to compare Darwinist faith with religious faith. I admit he falls short.

Thank you. I hope it won’t sound presumptuous if I say that the reason he falls short is that like so many others, he wrongly equates Darwinism with atheism. (See below, re you and Dawkins.)

A new dark matter theory

DAVID: The universe is vast, dangerous to life, yet because of the way it is built, we are here. dhw in the past has questioned why God made it that way. We are trying to find out. I don't know the answer, but currently simply assume that is what God needed to do.

dhw: What I question is why, if your God’s one and only purpose was to design humans and their food, he designed the vast universe with all its comings and goings, and the vast bush of life with all its comings and goings.

DAVID: Again, a human-logic view of what God feels He must do. I can simply accept it as necessary, and more research will tell us why.

This is where you the theist and Dawkins the atheist (The God Delusion, p.14)become birds of a feather, except for one highly significant word: “If there is something that appears beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural.” You accept and he hopes.

DAVID: God must know what has to be done to achieve His purposes, but He doesn't tell us why, making it a challenge for us to discover, if we can.

dhw: You keep changing your terms from singular to plural. What plural purposes? You insist that he only had one: us and our food. And you pooh-pooh any other suggestion.

DAVID: Why does single purpose or many matter to you? God sets His purposes as He will. We seek to understand them. You have used the appearance of humans to make God seem tunnel-visioned while Adler and I see humans as proof of God.

It matters to me because you are the one who makes your God tunnel-visioned by insisting that his one and only purpose was to design humans and our food! And that does not fit in with the history of life as you present it, because you have him designing countless life forms and foods that had no connection with humans and our food! So you defend your theory by telling us that we mustn’t think humanly logically, although you praise Adler to the skies for his humanly logical deduction from life’s complexities – and especially those of humans – that God must exist.


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