Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 08, 2022, 09:14 (744 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You keep forgetting your agreement God can do whatever He wishes. The history of evolution with its dead ends is what God produced on His way to the creation of humans.

dhw: You keep deliberately leaving out your fixed beliefs (which are not facts) that 1) he individually designed every dead-end life form, ecosystem, natural wonder etc. that had no connection with us and our food, in spite of the fact that 2) his only purpose was to create us and our food. And you keep forgetting that if he can do whatever he wishes, it is totally illogical for him to “have to do” 1) as an “absolute requirement” if he is to achieve 2).

DAVID: God decides what He has to do. I'm sure you accept that point.

No, I don’t. If your God exists as first cause, there is no pressure on him to do anything. I assume he does what he wants to do, not what he has to do.

DAVID: Therefore, the dead ends you complain about are God-produced from His method of evolution, which has Him design all forms and provide ecosystems to feed them along the way in time.

I do not complain about the dead ends, and of course all life forms require/required ecosystems to feed them. What I complain about, as you know perfectly well, is your illogical theory that his one and only purpose for creating life was to design sapiens plus food, and so he designed countless extinct life forms and ecosystems that had no link to sapiens pus food. Please will you stop dodging!

dhw: You cannot claim that there is a continuous line from the first life forms to us and our ecosystems and at the same time claim that we and our ecosystems are descended from a line of life forms and ecosystems that had no predecessors!

DAVID: Again confusing the relationship of phenotypes with evolutionary biochemistry. The two are separate parts of evolution. We can trace our start from the first vertebrate fish in the Cambrian which is based on the biochemistry from the Ediacaran. A designer obviously can jump form types. The continuity is the living biochemistry.
And under “an aged enzyme”
DAVID: this article puts to rest dhw's complaint about evolutionary continuity being disrupted with the advent of Cambrian forms without form predecessors. Evolutionary continuity is in the biochemistry, which then can be used in a massive variety of forms, as shown by the massive bush of life.

All living forms are composed of cells (that’s your biochemistry). According to you, your God began creating life with the sole purpose of combining cells into the forms of sapiens plus food, and so he proceeded to combine cells into “a massive variety of forms”, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with sapiens plus food. After 3.X thousand million years’ worth of combining cells into forms that had nothing to do with sapiens plus food, he combined cells into forms which had no predecessors, and from some (but not all) of these forms he went on fiddling with cells until eventually he produced the forms we call sapiens plus all the other forms that sapiens eats. You can natter on about biochemistry (cells) as long as you like, but how does that explain why he used the biochemistry to create forms that had nothing to do with his one and only purpose? Please will you stop dodging!

dhw: […] if we are descended from phenotypic forms which your God designed in the Cambrian without predecessors, we cannot be descended from any forms that existed before the Cambrian!

DAVID: You are so confused without God. As designer He can do what He wishes. You are right. We come from Cambrian forms. Your strawman is that we come from nowhere. Preposterous!!! We are here and Archaea bacteria are the start of life. You cannot tear apart those facts, much as you are flailing around trying to do so.

It is you who are erecting preposterous strawmen! Where have I said we come from nowhere? Yes, we are here, and yes bacteria were the start of life. And my conventional theory is that we are descended from bacteria. Yours is that we are descended from species that “came from nowhere” (had no predecessors) during the Cambrian! It is you who flail around trying to tell us that because all life is biochemical we are descended from bacteria, but then you say we we are descended from Cambrian life forms that had no predecessors, which means we are not descended from bacteria!

Cambrian explosion: early skeletal form found

QUOTES: This really is a one-in-million discovery.

"In other words, external skeletons probably didn't arise just once but probably evolved several times in multiple different lineages.”

"Even from the little evidence scientists have found, it is clear that tube-shaped animals were popping up before the explosion of animal diversity that once took our life by storm. What triggered their expansion remains an open question…”

A few days ago I pointed out that the quest for fossils was not yet over. Thank you for proving my point and for providing us with another link between pre-explosion and explosion.