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

by dhw, Sunday, July 03, 2022, 09:26 (661 days ago) @ David Turell

David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: Same weird thought process, how to go from bacteria to humans without all the in-between forms? All of this makes sense to God and to me, if not you.

I can only assume you don’t read what I write, so all I can do is repeat it. Yes, evolution leads from bacteria to humans through a succession of in-between forms. But if your God’s one and only purpose was to produce humans plus our food, why – according to you – would he have specially designed all the countless life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders that had no connection with humans plus our food, and since they did not lead to humans, how could they have been preparation for and an “absolute requirement” for humans and our food? You can’t explain it. It “makes sense only to God”. Ergo it doesn’t make sense to you.

The Krebs cycle

dhw: Back we go to the origin of life, and I agree that this is one of the strongest arguments for the existence of a designer. But the existence of a sourceless, immaterial, all-powerful mind which can create a whole universe and living material beings out of its own immateriality is just as great a mystery as the origin of life, and no amount of blather about “first cause” can solve it.

DAVID: First cause is a reasonable issue, not blather. You prefer design without the designer. Logical?

When will you learn that I do not prefer any explanation? I am an agnostic. “First cause” is a cop-out. Nobody knows the source of consciousness. You say the source of consciousness is consciousness. And by calling it God, you have solved the mystery.

The Cambrian Gap

dhw: Of course, nobody knows how speciation happens, and of course I accept that the Cambrian is a mystery, and so I look for possible answers to the relevant questions...You accept that there is a 50/50 chance that cells are intelligent, and offer no reason for rejecting my proposal that evolutionary changes take place between generations, regardless of the amount of time between bursts of innovation. So please explain why you think it is impossible for your God to have designed intelligent cells which, given the right conditions, might have produced the same changes within the same period of time that you say he took to produce them?

DAVID: A lot of talk around the main point I present, so I'll try again to nail it and you down. A 410,000-year gap in which very complex animals appeared from simple forms was measured from existing fossils. Wholly new organ systems and eyes appeared. Now look at other known fossil series such as the whales. Millions of years from one earlier form to the next, not with such a massive invention as the Cambrian animals, but a species modification of all the existing complex systems and eyes.
And your newly minted, invented theory, to save your prejudices, is some generations can do it. Any authoritative source?

As you have edited out parts of my earlier response, please tell me the authoritative source for your theory that an unknown mind programmed these inventions 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in 550 million years ago to cobble together new organ systems and eyes (although all he ever wanted to do was design sapiens and our food). Of course we can only come up with theories. Why have you ignored the perfectly reasonable proposal that speciation happens when conditions change, and that although there were long periods of stasis when conditions did not change, the Cambrian was an exception, and whatever may have been the change was sufficiently drastic to allow for major innovations? And why do you consider it unreasonable to assume that changes take place from generation to generation, regardless of the time that elapses between bursts of innovation?

DAVID: As for second-hand design mechanisms, I have given you my objections, not worth repeating, many times.

I know that you reject the 50/50 possibility that your God might have created cellular intelligence capable of designing “evolutionary novelty”(Shapiro), but why should your prejudice automatically mean that the theory is unreasonable?