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

by David Turell , Monday, July 04, 2022, 15:48 (871 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: […] Your usual complete non-sequitur: " Yes, evolution leads from bacteria to humans through a succession of in-between forms." And then an opposite totally contradictory thought: "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," It is obvious the two sentences totally conflict!!! Making total sense, God chose to do it this way.

dhw: You have edited out the link which emphasizes the “conflict” that makes nonsense of your combined theories. My second sentence began: “But if your God’s one and only purpose was to produce humans plus our food, why etc.” It makes no sense for your God to have a single purpose and then to deliberately design countless life forms and foods that had no connection with that purpose. You have recognized the “conflict”, which I call “contradiction”, and far from it making “total sense”, you can’t explain your theory, which “makes sense only to God”.

Design theory is presented once again in the other thread. An existing God created our reality for His own reasons, unknown to all of us. Your strange analysis distorts all of that.

The Cambrian Gap

DAVID: […] 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.

dhw: 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: More blather about how speciation may occur because you cannot answer my challenge, that the Cambrian is like no other gap and requires tremendous amounts of new designs in a figurative blink of the eye.

dhw: I keep agreeing with your “challenge”, and have offered explanations. A “figurative blink of the eye” is not a real blink if you take into consideration the fact that common descent works through changes in existing life forms, which means generations and not periods of time.

TIME is a major issue for the Cambrian. There is no 'gradual change in existing forms'. You just made my case for abrupt design.

dhw: When I say the change must have been sufficiently drastic “to allow for major innovations”, I mean “to allow for innovations”. Why is that sophistry? The driving force is the will of life forms to survive and/or improve their chances of survival. I propose that this will exerts itself whenever existing conditions change. We know that life forms adapt (or die), and I suggest that when conditions allow for new means of survival, intelligent cells produce “evolutionary novelty” (Shapiro). Whatever environmental changes took place during the Cambrian must have allowed for this process to be accelerated – and that is true whether your God did his dabbling, or intelligent cells (perhaps designed by your God) did their own designing.

Same long discussion to avoid the logic of required design to explain the enormous changes in a short time.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: Another non-answer. Handing off a design project to another designer creates more difficulty than it is worth, if a specific goal is required. The first designer must instruct the second designer or, in your case, brilliant cell design committees.

dhw: What specific goal? Back you go to ignoring all the illogicalities that arise from your anthropocentric theory of evolution. Maybe your God did NOT start out with the one goal of designing humans plus food. Or maybe he did NOT design every individual life form etc. Or maybe he did NOT design new species without precursors. Maybe he designed a free-for-all, but dabbled occasionally when he felt like it. Or maybe one of my other alternative theistic theories is true. At least they make sense to you, unlike your own.

Back you go to an entirely humanized God bumbling along. Of course, in this humanized form your proposals make sense. God is a person like no other person. I wish you would remember that.