Return to David's theory of evolution PART 1 (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 08, 2022, 11:53 (897 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I firmly believe God created the history we know. You cannot tell me not to do that! I accept it exactly as God's !!!

But the history we know is that countless life forms and econiches have come and gone, and humans are the latest species to have evolved, and we evolved in stages. Yet again: it is NOT history that your God designed every single one, that humans plus food were his one and only goal from the very start, that every single life form and econiche was designed in preparation and as an “absolute requirement” for us and our food, or that your God designed new species de novo without any predecessors (Cambrian explosion).

dhw: So long as you continue to conflate your theories with the history, and continue to combine theories which are so illogical that you admit you cannot explain them and they “make sense only to God”, of course we will ping pong forever. If you can’t accept your own statements, what chance do I have of convincing you that your statements mean what they say?

DAVID: My statements mean I accept the history as God's direct work. He is the author/creator of the history. The fact that you do not accept that is why my theories confuse you. We are discussing at two different levels. Remember I do not accept how you think about God in any way.

For the history see above. As regards your theories, the statements I am referring to have nothing to do with your “acceptance” of history, but concern the logic behind the theories, which over and over again you say you can’t explain, you can’t know God’s reasons, I should go and ask God, and they “make sense only to God”. Do you really want me to compile a list with dates?

The rise of the mammals

QUOTE: "Within just a few hundred thousand years of the asteroid impact that wiped out all nonbird dinos some 66 million years ago, mammals moved in to fill the vacancy, rapidly getting a lot bigger, ballooning from, say, mouse-sized to beaver-sized. Pretty soon, they got a lot smarter too. In a geologic blink — a scant 10 million years — mammals’ brains caught up with their brawn, and then the Age of Mammals was off to the races."

DAVID: from the standpoint of design, the story fits perfectly. Their waiting in the wings sounds exactly liike pre-planning. What is the driving force that chance mutations could create? IT doen't exist. Only a desinging mind could direct mutations to produce a big-brained human.

We long ago dismissed the concept of random mutations as the “driving force”, and according to you, only a designing mind could produce every species that ever existed. And so from the standpoint of design, the story sounds exactly like lack of planning. If your all-powerful God’s intention right from the start was to design humans (plus food), what was the point of him specially designing dinosaurs and then wiping them all out?

Giraffe (shifted from “More miscellany")

dhw: […]it’s hard to see why the giraffe’s long neck was – according to your theory of evolution - an “absolute requirement” for the design of humans and our food.

DAVID: You gave the reason above. Giraffes contribute to their required ecosystem.

dhw: All life forms contribute to their ecosystem, but that doesn’t mean all past life forms and ecosystems were specially designed as “absolute requirements” for humans and our food!

DAVID: Your view of the need for our huge human population food supply is shortsighted as usual.

So if the giraffe didn’t have its long neck, we humans would starve? And 3.X billion years’ worth of life forms and ecosystems, the vast majority of which had no connection with humans and our food, were specially designed as “absolute requirements” for us and our food! And you think I am shortsighted?

New extremophiles
QUOTE: “[Polycephalum] makes decisions with no apparent source of intelligence.”

dhw: I suppose you believe that 3.8 billion years ago, God gave these extremophiles instructions on how to survive, because they were all “absolute requirements” for him to design humans and our food.

DAVID: My view is if life started in the Hadean period of chaos on early Earth, it had to have very tough aspects of its resistence to adversity. That life is here is a miracle I would attribute to a designing God.

dhw: I agree with most of this, and I certainly can’t discount God as the designer of the original cells. But your theory that all these life forms were “absolute requirements” for humans? Nah, I can’t buy that.

DAVID: What will it take to open up the cement strangling your concepts of evoution?

I have offered several theistic concepts of evolution, each of which fits in logically with the history of life as we know it. You have offered one, which is so illogical that according to you it “makes sense only to God”. Please ask yourself the question you have asked me.