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

by David Turell , Sunday, May 22, 2022, 16:35 (697 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Without the diversity of forms, necessary ecosystems cannot form. Without ecosystems no one eats!! When will dhw recognize it with its true implications?

dhw: Usual question: necessary for what? How were 3.X billion years’ worth of extinct organisms and ecosystems “necessary” for current humans and our current food?

DAVID: I described a long winding course overtime in the other thread: necessary ecosystems for food for all.

dhw: Dealt with on the other thread. “Food for all” does not mean that 3.x billion years’ worth of food supplies for countless extinct organisms were “an absolute requirement for the evolutionary process to finally produce humans”, bearing in mind that according to you, the “evolutionary process” means God specially designing every species and econiche. Please stop repeating these vague generalisations.

Note no generalizations in the parasite contribution to ecosystems of today!

dhw: Do you think I have spent my whole life in an armchair talking only to agnostics? Please stick to the arguments, and stop pretending that all believers agree with all your beliefs.

DAVID: Yes, beliefs come in a variety of forms. My form of belief was perfectly comfortable with IDer's I met. The way you propose to think about God has always been foreign to me, probing, doubting, and always conceiving of Him as partially human in thought.

dhw: You and ID-ers and all religious folk would be comfortable with the theory that God exists. But your antipathy towards the possibility that God has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours would be bitterly opposed by most of the religious folk I know, and you have never yet succeeded in finding one single name to back the combination of contradictions that make up your theory of evolution, as dissected ad nauseam on this and the other thread.

I self-distill many expert thoughts to reach my own conclusions. All we who accept God can completely assume is that He created reality. Beyond His role as a planner and creator, any guesses about his personal thoughts are sheer conjecture. I try to avoid considering the human conjectures in the various religious books. Adler's suggests that God having any feelings is 50/50!

Gene continuity

DAVID: Even Darwin saw both continuity and the Cambrian gap. In this case I agree with Darwin and you don't.

dhw: Please identify any passage in Darwin which states that the Cambrian gaps denote God’s intervention by designing new species without any precursors. The gaps remain a mystery, but Darwin expressly states: “I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally proposed.” (Difficulties of Theory) You disagree with Darwin, and once again you gloss over the contradiction between your belief in continuity and your belief in gaps.

Of course there is biochemical continuity.

DAVID: My definition of common descent and yours are not the same. Mine fits the current knowledge of the biochemistry of the genome. I have no idea what yours really is or how it fits into current knowledge.

dhw: I have told you mine: that all species (except the very first cells) are descended from preceding species. The article appears to confirm this theory. Now please tell us your own definition.

DAVID: The same as always: biochemical continuity with phenotypical gaps, which fits the current science. As an example, we use mouse brains to explain ours. Both mammals from an ancestor who lived with dinosaurs. Fits your theory perfectly.

dhw: Yes, we and mice are believed to have evolved from a common ancestor about 75 million years ago, which fits Darwin’s theory perfectly. What does that have to do with the appearance of brains and vertebrates about 500 million years ago – according to you, in species which had no precursors and from which we and mice are descended. You seem to think that by adding the tag “phenotypical” you can gloss over the fact that gaps break continuity. And if there is no continuity, you can hardly claim that humans were God’s one and only goal from the very beginning. (One might also ask why mice – like maple seed pods - were “an absolute requirement for the evolutionary process [i.e. God] to finally produce humans”.

The gaps are phenotypical, but jumps in form can only indicate the design of an active designer, no matter how you attempt to distort the point.