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

by dhw, Thursday, June 30, 2022, 08:35 (875 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You realize over and over that complexity of design keeps you agnostic but refuse a necessary designer. Same old dodge.

I do not “refuse”. I am an agnostic, and all my alternative theories allow for your God. See Part One.

DAVID: How evolution occurs is obviously large changes in DNA, and our debate is who or what controls those changes, not my theories about God wishing to create us.

Our debate is indeed over who or what controls these changes, and how they are achieved. Hence your theory that your God controls them, that he does so for the sole purpose of designing sapiens plus food, and in order to do this, he designs countless life forms (plus econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders), the vast majority of which have no connection with sapiens plus food. This combination of theories “makes sense only to God”.

DAVID: If God chose to evolve us, all your weird interpretation of that position cannot apply. You have evolution disappearing.

We both accept that humans evolved, so if God exists, it is perfectly reasonable to say that he chose to evolve us. But according to you, he also chose to “evolve” all the life forms that had no connection with us, which makes nonsense of your theory that all extinct life forms etc. were preparation for and an “absolute requirement” for humans plus our food. You agree, because according to you, this combination of theories “makes sense only to God.”

DAVID: Why can't you understand I accept history as God's doings for His own reasons. My interpretations always follow that approach. I can't help you with your desire for God's personal reasoning.

Anyone who believes in God will accept history as God’s doings for his own reasons. That does not mean that his one and only reason was to design us plus food, or that he did this by designing countless life forms that had no connection with us and our food. Similarly, we evolutionists accept that humans evolved in stages, but if you argue that your God was capable of designing species without precursors, and if you say that humans were his one and only goal from the beginning, we have the same problem as above: why would he have “chosen” such an indirect method of achieving his one and only goal? According to you, the theory “makes sense only to God”. Maybe there are other, more logical theories that we humans CAN understand, but you reject them all, because you insist that your inexplicable “interpretation” is fact, not theory.

dhw: […]most speciation occurs in bursts after long periods of stasis (= punctuated equilibrium). This fits in with the theory that evolutionary change takes place when the environment changes. It is possible that the Cambrian explosion was caused by a major change in the environment (increased oxygen perhaps?), which allowed for a major burst of innovations over a comparatively short period of time.

DAVID: Again, fully dodges the point of the time needed for new complex phenotypes. The Cambrian is still, after 150+ years of new fossil findings the one premier outlier of all the time gaps!!! It wasn't just more oxygen, your present crutch.

Nobody knows the cause, but increased oxygen is one theory concerning the conditions which allowed all the changes. I have devoted several entries suggesting that the time needed for speciation depends on generations and not on the calendar, and that it is not unreasonable to suppose that intelligent cell communities (as opposed to random mutations) might produce the necessary innovations within the 30,000 or so generations that would have succeeded one another over 410,000 years.

Under Extremophiles,yet more repetition:

DAVID: I accept that what history shows for all occurrences/events is/was God's doing. We arrived after a very prolonged time period of about 3.8 billion years

If God exists, then we would all accept that the history was his doing, and I think we all agree that humans arrived after 3.8 billion years or so. And lots and lots of other life forms that had no connection with us and our food came and went during those billions of years, so how does that come to mean they were all preparation for and an “absolute requirement” for us and our food?

DAVID: You don't believe in God, so therefore He didn't do it?

You usual misrepresentation of agnosticism and my alternative theories, ALL of which allow for God’s existence.

DAVID: That means it all happened by chance, but since it shows purposeful directionality of ever more complexity, how can chance produce that?

And you know perfectly well that I find chance as difficult to believe in as “an unknown and unknowable, sourceless, eternal, superintelligent being” (see Part One).

Your further comments are further repetitions. If only you would stop pretending that your combined theories are facts, and you would acknowledge that if they "make sense only to God", then they do not make sense to you, we could put a stop to the repetition and all your evasions.