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

by dhw, Wednesday, July 06, 2022, 11:29 (660 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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: I did not say there was a gradual change! My point is that the change in environmental conditions must have been such that it allowed for major innovations, and that innovations do not depend on the passage of time but on the response of each generation to the new conditions. I find it feasible that intelligent, inventive organisms would respond within very few generations.

DAVID: Your invented generational theory for speciation does not explain wholly new life forms with no precursors in such a short period. Time is of the essence in this discussion.

Your God’s existence, his 3.8-billion-year-old book of instructions for the whole of evolution, his ad hoc dabbling, and theories 1), 2) and 3) are all “invented” theories. Since you believe in common descent, please explain why you do not think evolutionary changes in general could have occurred through the responses of each generation to new conditions. The Cambrian is an anomaly, because there are no fossils and because of the comparatively short time during which major changes took place, resulting in new species. We are talking of events that took place 550 million years ago. There are good reasons why there is no complete fossil record, but in any case, the theory that changing conditions could have been exceptionally favourable to innovation (which would also apply to your own theory of God using them) is perfectly feasible. It is also feasible that instead of your God using his intelligence to design the innovations, he endowed cells/cell communities with the intelligence to do the same, and this could be accomplished over a short period by sequent generations of intelligent cell communities.

dhw: […] whatever may have been the change was sufficiently drastic to allow for major innovations [...]

DAVID: The bold is sheer sophistry. Changed conditions allow for change but are never the actual driving cause, are they?

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?

Why did you accuse me of sophistry?

dhw: I propose that he gave cell communities the ability to do their own designing.

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. .

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.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: My God is not “entirely humanized”, and he does not “bumble along”, and I do not imagine for one moment that a sourceless, eternal, all-powerful, immaterial, conscious being is a person like us. But you agree that your possible Creator probably has thought patterns in common with his creations (us), and “I wish you would remember that” and would stop pretending that you alone know which thought patterns he has or hasn’t got. However, I must admit that I have a certain prejudice which puts me more in tune with theories that make sense to me and you than with theories which don't even make sense to their proposer (you).

DAVID: You are prejudiced to form a thought-experiment humanized God who thinks as you do. My God makes perfect sense to me ever since I realized a designing mind is necessary and must exist. Pure obvious logic you lack.

As always, I accept the logic of the design argument. I do not accept your interpretation of life’s history. Hence my various alternative THEISTIC theories. I don’t know why you consider that a series of different but logical alternative theories denotes “prejudice”. I would have thought the term was far more applicable to your rigid faith in a theory which you tell us makes no sense to you or to anyone else except your God.