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

by dhw, Thursday, July 14, 2022, 09:09 (861 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You are twisting away from the issue of speciation. We agree adaptations within species are small changes, not innovations. The rest for your point is pure theory with [dhw: presumably should be “without”] underlying factual support.

dhw: I am not “twisting away” – I am offering a theory to explain speciation. I keep agreeing that adaptations are small changes, but I am proposing that the same mechanism might be responsible for major changes (i.e. the innovations that lead to speciation). Although there is support in the scientific community for the theory of “cellular intelligence”, which is the mechanism I propose both for adaptation and innovation, of course it’s a theory. Nobody knows how speciation happens. Your own theory has no more factual support than mine!

DAVID: In an accepted definition of absolute proof my choice of God as the designer is from the preponderance of evidence.

The design argument is an excellent one, but if it constituted absolute proof, then there would be no discussion on the subject. In any case, our disagreement is not over God the designer, but over your view of how and why he might have designed speciation. And there is no more “proof” of his 3.8-billion-year-old book of instructions than there is of his personal intervention. So please stop pretending that your theistic theory has more “factual support” than mine.

DAVID: Again we must consider your very humanized God. Not my version a very organized purposeful God who knows exactly how to proceed without deviations.

dhw: Your version is precisely the opposite: he has one goal (sapiens plus food), and proceeds to design countless life forms and foods that have no connection with sapiens plus food. That’s what I would call “deviations”, and you can’t explain them!

DAVID: You don't seem to absorb what I write: see other thread for my reply. "The process of evolution presents a series of discarded forms and many branches which do not lead specifically to humans, but necessarily form the ecosystems which provide food for life to continue."

dhw: Of course, all extinct ecosystems provided food for whatever species existed at the time. You just keep leaving out the fact that if your all-powerful God’s one and only purpose was to design sapiens plus food, his individual design of countless forms and ecosystems that had no connection with humans plus food was a “deviation” from his one and only purpose! Thank you for this very apt description, which pinpoints the illogicality of your combined theories.

DAVID: God did not deviate from His goal. All along He designed evolution to produce us, and we are here. It is your sole objection He took too long, when He could have simply produced us, but the food had to be there also, didn't it?

It is not my objection that he took too long! My objection is that if his one and only purpose had been to “produce us” and our food, it is illogical that he should have individually designed countless life forms and foods that had no connection with us. You agree! Your theory “makes sense only to God”! Why do you keep agreeing that it makes no sense to you, and then keep on insisting that you know it’s true?