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

by dhw, Wednesday, June 15, 2022, 09:35 (890 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: What you cannot comprehend is I do not question God's motives and what history shows me makes perfect sense to me as God's doings. This approach makes perfect sense to me, if not to you.

You do not question your theory that God’s one and only motive was to design humans plus food, and you acknowledge that you have no idea why he would choose a method to fulfil this purpose which entailed specially designing the countless life forms and foods that had no connection with humans plus food. You have admitted over and over again that you can’t explain why, and your theory “makes sense only to God”. Stop dodging.

Ediacaran-Cambrian transition: 410,000 years

dhw: I’m not disputing the findings, but I’ve got used to the fact that “recognized experts in the field” often disagree with one another, and since this is a brand new article, I thought there might be other views. In the abstract, it says:

"The replacement of the late Precambrian Ediacaran biota by morphologically disparate animals at the beginning of the Phanerozoic was a key event in the history of life on Earth, the mechanisms and the time-scales of which are not entirely understood.”

DAVID: What you have quoted is a standard form of beginning an article: there is a problem we are trying to solve and then results are presented of findings.

dhw: That does not mean that the findings represent an indisputable truth.

DAVID: It will be hard to refute, since the uranium dating method they used is fully accepted, much to your obvious disappointment. This is a standard, not an ID article, but they have picked up to tout.

I am not “disappointed”, and have explained why the new findings make no difference to the discussion on missing fossils or to the feasibility of new species developing within the shortened period.

dhw: The article I quoted suggested that “many of the Cambrian organisms […] did not possess all of the defining characteristics of modern animal body plans. These defining characteristics appeared progressively over a much longer period of time.” You responded: “Form changes take time to develop new DNA instructional information. That is the required time lapse for speciation.”

DAVID: The issue still is even early Cambrians are vastly advanced over Edicarans, thus enormous change in a little bit of time.

Already answered below:

dhw: And secondly, even 410,000 years is a long time in terms of generations, and it is generations that create new species, not time. You yourself wrote:
DAVID: The true answer to how long speciation takes is unknown. The many gaps don't tell us.

dhw: […] If you allow say 10 years for generations, you have 41,000 generations to produce your innovations. Halve it if you like. Even 20,000 generations should be enough for intelligent cell communities to come up with their innovations.

DAVID: You are asssuming species change slowly over generations. There is no existing proof of that concept. All we have is fossil gaps. We do not know how species appear or the theoretical times involved. All you have is quoting hopeful explanations while I see a designer is required.

You have hit the nail on the head. WE DO NOT KNOW. And so I quote possible explanations, as alternatives to your “hopeful explanation” that there is a God who created new species without any precursors (although conversely you also believe in the continuity of the evolutionary process – see Part Two).