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

by dhw, Thursday, July 07, 2022, 08:50 (653 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The bold is absolutely wrong!!! The study used fossils from both periods to establish a new time for the gaps length!

Badly phrased by me. My apologies. There are no fossils to trace links of common descent. Obviously there are fossils of the new species and there are fossils from the earlier period, otherwise we would not be talking of “gaps”. I notice that you have completely ignored the rest of my comment.

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?

DAVID: Simple: 'changed conditions' do not explain the magnitude of difference in the new forms.

I never said they did! Changing conditions “allow” for change, or in this case for major changes. The “actual driving cause” is the quest for survival or for improving chances of survival.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I've told you, over and over, God's actions make perfect sense to me.

You have told me over and over that you cannot explain God’s actions (designing countless life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders which had no connection with sapiens plus food) as a means of fulfilling his one and only purpose of designing sapiens plus food. Your theory “makes sense only to God”.

DAVID: I trust He knows what He is doing for His own private reasons.

If he exists, then of course he does. How does that come to mean that your totally illogical theory must be true?

DAVID: He is a God you do not seem to understand, recognizing the only God you can imagine is overtly extremely human in thought.

You have just admitted that he does what he does for his own ”private” reasons, and you yourself haven’t a clue what they are. So how does that come to mean that you understand him any more than I do? You have agreed that your own God may well enjoy creating and is sure to be interested in what he creates. Is this “overtly extremely human”? I would have thought it was a very logical assumption. Why would he do something he didn’t enjoy and wasn’t interested in? A God who experiments, gets new ideas as he goes along, or deliberately creates a free-for-all is no more “extremely human” than a God whose sole purpose is to create one species which might admire his work and even form a relationship with him, or who is too kind to design something he knows will harm us (three of your own speculations). Please note: mine are alternative, logical, theistic explanations of the history of life. I do not cling to any of them, as you cling to your own incomprehensible set of contradictions. I wonder which of these approaches you consider to be the more “prejudiced”.