Return to David's theory of evolution PART 2 (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, April 11, 2022, 09:00 (955 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID (March 19): The gap is phenotypical bbnot biochemical which is continuous!

DAVID: The above is the key to my thinking.

Fine, except that you wrote: “Simply, following genes and biochemistry, there are too many changes to find a steady pattern of simple steps, one following the other. A designer at work would explain all the jumps and discontinuities.” Why did you specify gaps in biochemistry if you thought there were no gaps in biochemistry?

DAVID: There is no biochemical discontinuity. The phenotypical gaps are God's jumps as in the Cambrian.

So you got in a muddle when you made the above statement about “jumps and discontinuities” in biochemistry. In any case, biochemical continuity would encompass all species, which hardly amounts to proof that your God’s one and only goal was to produce the human species, so you are still stuck with the same Cambrian dilemma, which you now try to gloss over:

DAVID: Your blindness to God as designer makes you confused about what I am presenting. Basic biochemical processes stated in Archaea and carry through to the present in a much more complicated way.

Agreed. This applies to the evolution of all multicellular organisms.

DAVID: God designs the jumps in phenotypical form creating the gaps.

This is your theory that your God preprogrammed each “jump” 3.8 billion years ago, or alternatively dabbled each one, but sometimes he dabbled them in already existing life forms (= common descent”) and sometimes he created them from scratch, with no precursors (Cambrian), and it is from these that we are descended.

DAVID: Cambrian and the ones Gould described. Common descent in biochemistry of life but gaps in body designs.

So if your God’s one and only purpose was to design the human body plus the bodies of those lucky species that we were going to eat in umpteen million years’ time, what do you think was his purpose in specially designing all the bodies which would die out before he designed ours and which we would not be eating?

DAVID: The direct line to us is underlying biochemistry of life, with phenotypical gaps in lines and branches that can be followed from Archaea to our branch.

The underlying chemistry is a direct line to every organism that ever lived, and the lines and branches led from Archaea to every organism that ever lived, including all those that had no connection whatsoever to our branch or to the branches we use for our breakfast.

DAVID (transferred from ID): Your usual blindness about the continuity of evolution. Of course the past is the past. Past bushes of food for past animals. Present bush for present animals and us.

Thank you for confirming the discontinuity between past and present food bushes, and thereby removing once and for all the argument that all life forms and food bushes were “preparation” as “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and our food.

Transferred from “More miscellany”:

DAVID: What I cannot explain is why God chose evolution over direct creation. Why can't you accept that explanation? You constantly distort it!!!

I cannot accept an explanation which consists in the statement “I cannot explain”. There is no distortion.

I have had to edit your next entry for reasons of space, but have kept in your main points.

DAVID: The rest is entirely clear reasoning. There is nothing illogical in Adler's argument for God showing that the evolution of most unusual humans requires God. That leads to concluding God having a purpose all along to create humans from His creation of the origin of life. […] The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes is brilliantly clear. The difference is ours from all previous animals. […] Adler is unaware of ID which post dates him. There he and I look at God somewhat differently. That is why I've responded to your questioning as to whether Adler follows my theory in the past as I have. Adler is not an IDer in any current way. But Adler believes in God the creator and so do I. Therefore he and I agree. We both use evolution with the same endpoint of God's work, God's purpose, unexpected humans based on the probable expectations from all past evolutionary animals. […]

You go on and on about Adler’s focus on human uniqueness as proof that God exists, and I keep telling you that I have no quarrel with the logic of the design argument, or with the statement that we humans are exceptional because of our mental powers. Your little diatribe is totally irrelevant to the theory which I find fault with: namely, that if your God’s one and only purpose was to design us and our food, why did he design all the life forms and foods that did not lead to us? But yes, as at the start of this post, it also raises the question of why he did not design us directly. Yet again, thank you for admitting that you can’t explain it. I just wish you wouldn’t then claim that you have explained it.