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

by dhw, Sunday, June 26, 2022, 11:08 (662 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Please remember I don't find my theories senseless. […]

dhw: When you tell me you can’t explain your combination of evolutionary theories and I should go and ask God, and your theories “make sense only to God”, I’m afraid the inevitable conclusion is that they don’t make sense to you – unless you happen to be God in disguise, which I very much doubt.

DAVID: That I cannot satisfy your strange objections to the way I see God does not mean my theories make no sense to me. Don't transpose your problems in logic to me.

Please explain why, if your God’s one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens plus food, 1) he would have individually designed countless life forms and foods that had no connection with H. sapiens plus food; 2) he designed H. sapiens in multiple stages, although – being all-powerful – he was perfectly capable of designing species without any precursors; 3) how your statement that these theories ”make sense only to God” comes to mean that they also make sense to you.

DAVID: […] Aside from the Cambrian we still see comparative anatomy as evidence of common descent from ancestral forms. Most speciation has past form as part of it.

dhw: Thank you for confirming Darwin’s theory as supported by the evidence of comparative anatomy. But you have your God designing every species individually (not to mention every econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder), and you have him designing Cambrian species with no precursors. The latter is the exact opposite of common descent. The former might just as well be the belief of a creationist.

DAVID: Common descent from Darwin was based totally on comparative anatomy and geography of neighboring forms. We are way beyond that now with DNA analysis. The DNA bush is not Darwin's tree of life. See my new entry.

DAVID: The point has come up as to how to define common descent, which originally was based on comparative anatomy and geography, now that DNA as a common code shakes up the standard tree of life:
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-dna-technology-is-shaking-up-the-branches-of-the-evolu...

Thank you for this intriguing article, which I have now read in full.

QUOTE: “While Darwin (1859) showed that all life on Earth is related in a single evolutionary tree, he did little to map out its branches.”

The article does not question the concept of the tree of common descent! It tells us that the branches of the tree are related in different ways from those that Darwin would have imagined, because it is not always comparative anatomy and geography that determine relationships. There is not even the tiniest hint that common descent means anything other than my definition that “all life forms except the first are directly descended from earlier life forms”.

Octopus
DAVID: this study shows the availability of certain genes for direct use can create convergence. My point is simple: once useful biochemistry is developed/evolved, it can then be used in many new parallel developments, and certainly gaps in phenotypes.

dhw: Parallel developments would refer to convergence. Otherwise, you are repeating my own argument: evolution progresses through new uses of existing materials. “Common descent”, however, does not mean “gaps in phenotypes”.

DAVID: Darwin knew the gaps but never abandoned common descent. What is your point?

The “gaps” are caused by the fact that new species “suddenly” appear in the fossil record, and they appear to have no connection with earlier life forms. Darwin believed that this was because (inevitably, as some scientists have pointed out, giving logical reasons which you refuse to consider) the fossil record is incomplete. I would go further: “suddenness” is relative, and if we think in terms of generations rather than time as the criterion for what is feasible, even 410,000 years becomes a huge expanse of time. What is “feasible”, however, is not the work of Darwin’s random mutations but that of Shapiro’s intelligent cells. My point is that gaps in the fossil record are open to a different interpretation from yours: I accept the possibility that your God designed the intelligent cell, and I find this theory more believable than the idea that your God preprogrammed every single life form etc. (including the Cambrian) 3.8 billion years ago, or that he conducted a non-stop series of operations on existing life forms or designed totally new life forms without precursors, and did all this solely in order to produce one species plus its food.