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

by dhw, Tuesday, April 26, 2022, 14:36 (940 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […]. I see evolution as a continuum and you split it into segments.

dhw: […] The continuum in terms of speciation is common descent (except when you say here is no continuum (the Cambrian), and the “segments” are the different branches, including all those of the past that did not lead to humans or our food.

DAVID: Your reply is a perfect example of how you split evolution into separate parts. You think God is inconsistent, using the Cambrian. The complexity compared to the Ediacaran is large, but tiny when compared to us with our giant brains. The continuum I've shown you is at the biochemistry level, not the phenotypic level.

You are constantly mistaking yourself for God. It is you who are inconsistent. You use the Cambrian gaps as evidence that God exists, but the gaps break the line from bacteria to us which is essential for your theory that we were the goal from the beginning.The fact that all species are biochemical does not mean that all species were designed to lead to humans plus food! And you even admit that you cannot understand why your God chose to design our species in stages rather than directly although he designed other species without precursors.

DAVID: I've remined you other gaps exist, a major one the plant bloom.

The more gaps there are, the more puzzling it becomes that he would have chosen to design in stages the only species he wanted to design. So maybe there is something wrong with at least one of your theories.

DAVID: Your problem is not recognizing God knows exactly what He is doing and needs to do, as in guaranteeing a proper food supply for all. You've left out part of my proposals in your discussion above. Why?

3.X billion years’ worth of food supplies would not be necessary if his only aim was to design humans plus food! “Your problem is” that you assume you know what God wanted, but can’t figure out how what he did fits in with what he wanted to do. Hence your announcement that you can’t explain “why God chose evolution over direct creation. Why can’t you accept that explanation? You constantly disort it!!!” As if one can distort the claim that an inability to explain something is an explanation. And furthermore, “God makes sense only to Himself!” That is to say, your theory makes no sense to you.

“Humanization”

dhw: […] My point is that if you can guess what his human attributes might be, then so can I, and so it is absurd for you to dismiss logical theories solely on the grounds that they invest him with human attributes which are different from those that you suggest/guess (although it was actually you who were “sure” that enjoyment and interest were two of them).

DAVID: I am 'sure' God has reactions to His creations, which we discuss in our human terms. Yes, in His own way, I'm 'sure' He has reactions. […]

This would mean there is no enjoyment and interest until after the actions. Since you believe he was hard at work for 3.X billion years creating each species, natural wonder etc., I’m a bit surprised that he didn’t realize he was enjoying the job until after he’d performed each action, or that his creations would be interesting for him! However, since you reject even the possibility that his purpose might have been enjoyment and interest, I asked you what you thought “was your purposeful God’s purpose in giving organisms “free will”.

DAVID: Organisms act freely and therefore can perform unexpected activities is all I pointed out. As for their free will, God obviously did not produce automatons. Simply, they need to act freely as in red in tooth and claw.

You have carefully avoided answering the question, though I’m happy with your answer, which supports my proposal that your God would prefer the unexpected to the expected (far more interesting) and that he did NOT specifically design carnivorousness but left it to the organisms (cell communities) to design their own methods of survival. Perhaps the reason why you avoided answering the question is that you believe your God’s one and only purpose in all his designs was to produce homo sapiens plus food, and you have realized that this does not fit in with the history of life as we know it.

Biochemical controls

DAVID: God knows what He is doing even if dhw has doubts with his second-guessing. It seems agnostics know better than God how to do things.

Another of your silly distortions. Of course if an all-powerful God exists, he will know what he is doing. I have made no criticism of the system or of God. On the contrary, I have gone out of my way to emphasize that if God is all-powerful then the system we have must be the system he wanted! Not a system containing errors he did not want and could not control, but a system in which the different cells had the capability of taking their own decisions – i.e. were given the “free will” you have just unwittingly endowed them with.