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

by dhw, Tuesday, June 28, 2022, 11:19 (877 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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 “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.

DAVID: I agree. God's method is evolution by designed creation.

The bedrock of the theory of evolution is that all varieties of plants and animals have “come into being through a progressive diversification that has accompanied their biogenetic descent from their ancestors” (Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought).That is the meaning of common descent. The article that we are discussing only tells us that the lines of descent are different from previous interpretations. It does nothing to contradict my definition of common descent as “all life forms except the first are directly descended from earlier life forms”, which you rejected “emphatically” last week. I have asked you to provide your own definition, but all you have come up with is your theory that God designs all species separately, some of which have no precursors (the exact opposite of common descent).

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

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

DAVID: You miss the mystery. How did so much change in form occur in such a short time? Especially when compared to other time gaps in speciation? Think Whale series as one esample.

Apart from your leaping away from the fossils mystery, you obviously don’t read my replies, so I will summarize them. Speciation takes place as a RESPONSE to new conditions. If conditions remain the same for a long time, then there will be long periods of stasis (Gould’s punctuated equilibrium). Nobody knows the cause of the Cambrian explosion, but whatever it was (an increase in oxygen?) must have made a huge difference to the range of possibilities for the innovations that produce new species. 410,000 years may well be too short a period for Darwin’s random mutations to produce the new complexities, but the theory of cellular intelligence would allow plenty of time for let’s say 30,000 generations of organisms to invent new ways of exploiting the new environment.

DAVID: I do not think the intelligent cell theory is at all possible!!! And you know it. The appearance of the cells from the outside has a 50/50 probability of cause! I've picked my 50% side of the equation.

If you reject a 50% possibility, your rejection of the theory can only be the result of sheer prejudice. You would laugh your head off at me if I said I was an agnostic (= 50/50 for and against the existence of God) but I do not think God’s existence is “at all possible”!

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?

dhw: 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?”

DAVID: I've agreed God's form of evolution is designed creation. Again, you act ignorant of Adler's position which is mine: humans, as a result of natural evolution, are so unusual, we should not expect a natural cause, but accept humans are a proof of God.

When will you stop dodging? The discussion here is not about God’s existence - ALL life’s complexities and not just humans can be viewed as evidence for the existence of God - but about your illogical combination of evolutionary theories. See Part Two.