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

by dhw, Sunday, May 01, 2022, 08:32 (935 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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: In any evolutionary process, by definition, the past prepares for the future.

In common descent, one past species leads to (not the same as “prepares for”) a future species. Alternatively, it may continue as itself, or die out altogether and lead to nothing. How does that come to mean that every species and econiche that ever lived and died was specially designed as preparation for current humans and econiches although, in your own words, “The current bush of food is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms.” And “Extinct life has no role in current time”?

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: God's eyes are always on His final intent. I can accept dabbles/adjustments along the way.

And you can accept him moving in “totally new directions”. If his eyes are always on his final attempt, and he keeps “adjusting”, that is experimentation. Thank you for repeating your support for this theory.

DAVID: […] We can trace our appearance from bacteria.

dhw: […] 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. […] 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.

DAVID: Now you try to deny first life was bacterial, and bacterial processes in biochemistry are not represented in our biochemistry?

How can I be denying that first life was bacterial when I have specifically stated that “I do believe there’s a path from bacteria to humans” which is “the basic tenet of common descent”? And of course all life is biochemical. My point is that your claim that the gaps and species without precursors, from which you say we are descended, provide evidence for your God’s existence, simultaneously contradicts the theory of common descent, i.e. a direct line from bacteria to the species “homo sapiens”. You can’t have it both ways.

Biochemical controls

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID:The directionality of evolution from simple life forms to very complex life forms is obvious.

Agreed.

DAVID: My view of God would not have a free-for-all form of directionless evolution.

In two of my alternative theories, I have accepted the idea of your God having humans in mind as THE purpose (experimentation) or as A later purpose (new ideas).

DAVID: You have the cells themselves producing a direction of evolution. All the evidence of cell activity we see is automatic, nothing more.

Yes, their direction would be survival. Many scientists would disagree with you that all cellular behaviour is automatic, but I accept that the concept of cells producing their own innovations remains a theory as unproven as your own.