Return to David's theory of evolution PART 2 (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, June 23, 2022, 10:57 (670 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Responding to current conditions is species adaptation, not speciation! That is all species can do and that is not silly. Only a designing mind can create the known gaps.

dhw: Current conditions may offer opportunities that earlier conditions did not offer. One theory is that the innovations which led to new species in the Cambrian may have been triggered by an increase in oxygen. Why is that sillier than a 3.8-billion-year-old book of instructions for all speciation, or your God constantly performing operation after operation on groups of organisms to change their structures before there is any need to do so?

DAVID: How does that explain the sudden appearance of much more complex Cambrians? More oxygen created all those complex organ systems, motility, and eyes? Really???

I sometimes wonder if you actually read what I write. Changing conditions may offer new opportunities. For example, an increase in oxygen may allow for new forms of life, and so the novelties may have been “triggered” by it. Your theory presumably would be that your God had increased the amount of oxygen as this was needed for him to design new life forms (which eventually led to us humans). Instead of God creating and using the new conditions, I am proposing that intelligent cell communities (perhaps designed by your God) used them to invent the novelties you attribute to your God. Same process, so why is my version sillier than your 3.8-billion-year-old book of instructions, or your God's endless operations in anticipation of events that have not yet happened??

How did sex pop up?

dhw: So why did you say chromatin came as new biochemistry?

DAVID: Chromatin is made up from new biochemistry in a new physical form.

dhw: What do you mean by “made up from new biochemistry” if it already existed? It is an example of existing materials being used to create a new physical form – the very essence of common descent.

DAVID: As in the old neuropeptides now used in new brains.

dhw: Precisely: evolution works by finding new uses for existing materials.

DAVID: So accept my theory of common descent. New forms come from newly existing biochemistry, allowing gaps in forms.

It’s still not clear (deliberately?) what you mean by “newly existing biochemistry”. The chromatin already existed and was put to new uses. If by “gaps in forms” you mean species without precursors, why don’t you say so? That is the very opposite of common descent. If you mean gaps in the fossil record, that has been covered elsewhere.

Mud

DAVID: If you learned how to believe in God, it would make sense to you like the rest of us believers.

dhw: I do not accept your extraordinary claim that every believer is convinced that God’s one and only purpose from the very beginning was to design us and our food, and therefore he designed every life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder – including all those that had no connection with us – as preparation and “absolute requirement” for us and our food. And I very much doubt if you would be prepared to go to a synagogue, church or mosque or even ID conference, and inform everyone that your combined theories are correct, you can’t explain them, but you know they are the only possible truth, and – while you’re at it - you know how everybody should think about God.

DAVID: If you take a survey of believers, most will be with me.

dhw: I suspect that most haven’t even thought about the subject. But your prediction still doesn’t make your combined theories of evolution anything other than senseless for all of us humans, since according to you they "make sense only to God".

DAVID: The bold is exactly how to believe in God. Accept what He does for His own reasons! No one can understand everything about God's thoughts. No human can think at His level.

According to you, then, we must simply accept that life is here, and God created it. Theories as to why and how are taboo. So why on earth have you cobbled together theories which entail imposing one purpose on him (as if you know his reasons), and imposing a method on him which makes no sense to you? Your exclusive knowledge of “how to believe in God” makes a mockery of your own theories and of all our discussions.