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

by dhw, Tuesday, June 21, 2022, 10:48 (884 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your response to this is sheer waffle, dodging from one point to another as you try to avoid the plain fact that you can’t explain your combination of theories, which “makes sense only to God”.

DAVID: I don't have to explain to you God's reasoning, because I do not/cannot know it.

It is YOUR collection of theories that your God had only one purpose (sapiens plus food), that he specially designed every species, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder (e.g. the weaverbird’s nest), and that all those that had no connection with us and our food were preparation and an “absolute requirement” for designing us and our food. YOU find this collection of YOUR theories inexplicable, and it is YOUR reasoning that you cannot explain.

dhw: Your combined theories “make sense only to God” – and as far as I know, you are not God.

DAVID: I accept that God knows/knew exactly how to evolve all: your incredulous bold.

If God exists, of course he does/did. That doesn’t mean his purpose was the one you impose on him, or the totally illogical method you impose on him to fulfil that purpose. Since it “makes sense only to God”, it does not make sense to you, so why do you keep defending it?

DAVID: We can create a pattern of history that shows a common descent in the branches of the bush of life from simple to complex.

dhw: Also true, but it does not mean that your God created every single species individually, or that every individual species was an “absolute requirement” for humans and our food.

DAVID: But it is exactly what I believe, based on the evidence.

Yes, it is your belief. What “evidence”? All we know is that history shows a vast bush of organisms, most of which are extinct and did NOT lead to humans (the latest species) or our food. Hence the illogicality of your belief.

dhw: If you believe in common descent, then your God would take an existing species and introduce an innovation from one generation to the next...Do you believe in common descent, i.e. that all life forms except the first are directly descended from earlier life forms.

DAVID: Yes, based on continuous development of ever more complex biochemistry allowing gaps in form by the designer God.

By “gaps in form” do you mean species with no precursors (the opposite of common descent)? If not, what do you mean?

DAVID: What is irrational is your clear view of design and refusal to decide a designer is required. Do you really see how complex the design is? That it is beyond chance.

dhw: I keep agreeing, and you keep ignoring the reason why I find the God theory equally irrational. So I will repeat it: “I find it equally difficult to believe that there is an eternal, immaterial mind that had no source, and has simply been “there” forever, somehow creating vast quantities of matter out of its own immateriality, and exercising its powers of psychokinesis to manipulate the materials into galaxies and solar systems, bacteria and dinosaurs, humans and the duckbilled platypus.”

DAVID: Something made this all happen, not chance. There is too strong a drive to increasing complexity to not to assume a creative mind is behind it all.

And so you replace the mystery of our origins with the mystery of an unknown and unknowable thingummy that did it all, and by giving it a name, you think you’ve solved all the problems.

Ediacaran-Cambrian transition: 410,000 years

dhw: This may well be true, and if it is, I’ve offered you a list of reasons why there may be no more fossils, but you dismiss them all because the list was written in 2019!

DAVID: And three years later we find the Cambrian gap is 410,000 years in size based on existing fossil studies. What would the 2019 writers say now!

dhw: The 2019 writers offer a list of reasons why there may be no more fossils. Nothing to do with the length of the Cambrian gap. Stop dodging.

DAVID: Stop dodging. Has everything to do with the Cambrian gap.

You continue to ignore reasons why the fossil record is incomplete, so here are some of them, selected from various websites:

The fossil record certainly has gaps, mostly because the conditions required to create fossils have been rare ever since life began on Earth. A very small percentage of animals that have lived and died ever became fossils. Thus, many pieces of the puzzle are missing; some will never be found.

Soft tissue fossilization is rare […] due to decomposition and scavengers.

Sediment has to cover an organism’s remains in order for the long fossilization process to begin. Most organisms decompose before this can happen.

Fossils may be set in stone, but they’re far from impervious. Like all rocks, they erode, melt and fragment.

You expect a record of every species and transition, with bodies preserved for hundreds of millions of years. Every new fossil creates a sensation precisely because preservation is so unlikely. But because there’s a new calculation that the Cambrian gap was only 410,000 years, you think none of the above reasons can possibly be valid any more, and there should be a complete fossil record of every organism that evolved 540 million years ago!