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

by dhw, Friday, June 24, 2022, 09:23 (881 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???

dhw: 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??

DAVID: I know all your strange theories. And my usual response is cells can't plan for changes such as the Cambrians. Oxygen allows for change but doesn't drive them. We are arguing the identity of the agency of change.

Why do you keep ignoring my usual response: CELLS DO NOT PLAN FOR THE FUTURE. THEY RESPOND TO PRESENT CHANGES. And I have just stated (now bolded) that “an increase in oxygen may allow for new forms of life”, so why do you repeat it as if somehow you were correcting me. I did not say oxygen “drove” the changes. Triggering entails providing the conditions which set in motion the processes for adaptation and innovation. Changes in organisms are “driven” by organisms (or your God) responding to the changing conditions. As regards the “agency”, yes, that is what we are discussing, and I have asked the question now bolded at the end of my comment. Of course you haven’t answered.

Mud

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Theories are not taboo, but your doubting approach at your human level of logic raises all sorts of possible interpretations based on your humanized form of God, which is your personal view of him. I don't recognize your form of God as compared to mine.

My “doubting approach” on this thread refers to my doubts about the reasonableness of your evolutionary theories. Your “human level of logic” has produced theories which you find senseless. But apparently that is how we must believe in God: we must provide a theory that doesn’t make sense to us! My theories, you find, are logical, and your only objection to them is that they entail human patterns of thought which differ from the human patterns of thought you think your God probably has. It’s three cheers for human logic when you argue for design, and it’s boo to human logic when your evolutionary theories are shown to be senseless.