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

by dhw, Monday, June 27, 2022, 09:26 (662 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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;

DAVID: He made the decision to evolve us, for His own reasons.

You have made no attempt to explain the countless non-connected life forms, and if only he knows his reasons, then obviously your theories make no sense to you.

dhw: 2) he designed H. sapiens in multiple stages, although – being all-powerful – he was perfectly capable of designing species without any precursors

DAVID: Same answer.

Same comment.

dhw: 3) how your statement that these theories ”make sense only to God” comes to mean that they also make sense to you.

DAVID: I fully accept the history of evolution as God's designed creation by His choice of method.

If he exists, then so must we all, but if your theories concerning purpose and method “make sense only to God”, then clearly they do not make sense to you, so please stop dodging.

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.
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-dna-technology-is-shaking-up-the-branches-of-the-evolu...

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.”

dhw: 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”.

DAVID: I have no disagreement, except you lose my emphasis on newly available biochemistry allowing for gap changes in phenotypical forms, which biochemistry includes the common code of DNA. The common DNA code underlies common descent.

Presumably “gap changes in phenotypical forms” means species without precursors. The “common code of DNA” changes the lines of descent from preceding forms, but it does not refute my definition of “common descent”, and the theory that your God designed every single life form individually, including some that had no precursors, is creationist not evolutionist.

Octopus
DAVID: The 410,000-year Cambrian gap is like none other in history. It is based on fossils, not absence of them.

Of course this is based on the absence of fossils! If there were fossils of transitional forms, there would be no mystery!

DAVID: You chose to ignore the magnitude of change from very simple to extremely complex in a very short period when compared to known series like the whales with millions of years for only species change.

You have ignored what I wrote: “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…..

I have found an ID site which inadvertently puts the same case:
Cambrian Explosion and Darwin's Doubt - Geoscience Research In…
www.grisda.org/cambrian-explosion-and-darwins-doubt-1

QUOTE: An intelligent being could generate the genetic information needed for a diversity of body types in a short time. There is no need for random mutations, natural selection, or long periods of time. The theory of intelligent design provides an explanation for the Cambrian Explosion.

If we espouse the theory – which you regard as 50% possible – that cells are intelligent beings, we have an explanation for the Cambrian Explosion.

DAVID: All based on God's powers of design and His choice to create stepwise by a system that has the appearance of evolution as envisioned by Darwin. Why should God think like you do?

And now you dodge from the gaps and species with no predecessors to God’s choice to “create stepwise”. Darwin’s theory of common descent – as I have defined it – remains totally unchanged by the shift from comparative anatomy to DNA as the criterion for which branch is which. And of course if God exists, he would have designed evolution. But that does not mean he designed it for the purpose or by the method you impose on him. Your question to me is equally valid for you: “Why should God think like you do?”