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

by dhw, Saturday, April 30, 2022, 08:58 (936 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm not creeping anywhere from the concept God knows exactly what he wants He wants to create. I don't pretend. I accept exactly what history shows us God did. You simply cannot wrap your brain around such a concept.

dhw: I agree that God, if he exists, would know exactly what he wants. He could have wanted to create a free-for-all, or he could have wanted to create a being like himself and kept experimenting until he finally got what he wanted. Both theories would explain why he created the higgledy-piggledy history of life, as opposed to a theory which has him doing things you can’t explain.

DAVID: I can explain everything God has created to my satisfaction. The higgledy-piggledy bush is the ecosystems of food supply.

But not food supply for humans, though you tell us that all past life forms, econiches etc. were preparation for us and our food supply.

DAVID: What you keep unreasonably harping on is I cannot give you God's reasons for his actions. We both have guessed at them.

You always pretend that my criticisms of your theories are criticisms of God. I offer alternative, logical theories (not beliefs) while you cling to one, the logic of which is unfindable!

DAVID: We have agreed that God dabbling along the way is a reasonable concept.

dhw: Yes indeed, it's extremely reasonable, as it explains the many changes of direction which indicate that he had not got everything planned from the start, or did not know exactly where he was heading.

DAVID: Not at all. Simply adjustments as necessary to follow His purposes, set up well in advance.

Yes, that is the theory of experimentation: he begins with a purpose, and makes adjustments (according to you, the dinosaur extinction meant “totally new directions”) when he finds that his work is not heading towards fulfilment of his purpose. Thank you for supporting this particular theory.

“Humanization”

DAVID: Isn't the concept of evolution that the past leads to the future, the past the precursor? But you keep it sliced up in your mind.

dhw: That is a concept of time. You keep agreeing that most past life forms and food bushes did not lead to us and our food, so please stop hiding behind vague generalizations.

DAVID: Your usual distortion. The past is the necessary precursor for the future. We can trace our appearance from bacteria.

Past and future are the sequence of time. That doesn’t mean that every past event is preparation for every future event! I’m delighted to hear that you can trace our appearance from bacteria, as that is the basic tenet of common descent – that the colossally diverse bush of life forms extant and extinct all go back to bacteria. The difference between us is that you think every single life form was designed to prepare for us humans, and yet the lack of fossils and your belief that we descend from animals with no precursors (which you use as evidence of separate, direct speciation and hence of God’s existence) suggest that we do not go back to bacteria.

Biochemical controls

DAVID: Of course He designed the system He wished to have. Thank you for recognizing all organisms are designed to die. I made exactly that point here years ago in response to some quote of yours that needed correction.

dhw: So why do you keep harping on about “errors” and your all-powerful God’s efforts – often in vain – to correct them?

DAVID: You refuse to recognize the truth about our living biochemistry system. To repeat: trillions upon trillions of reactions occur every nanosecond. Therefore, errors are extremely rare. Your usual resisting bias is showing.

I do not dispute your description of our living biochemistry system. The rarity of what you call “errors” results in countless diseases and deaths, but in any case is totally irrelevant to our discussion. You call them “errors”, and you say your all-powerful God didn’t want them and tried to correct them, but in some cases couldn’t. I suggest that an all-powerful God designed the system precisely as he wanted it, because without the freedom of cells to diversify both creatively and destructively, there would have been no evolution and – our latest agreement – no death, which I take to have been integral to his plans for a constantly changing history of life.