Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 12, 2022, 11:37 (529 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I agree setting up a free-for-all is a goal. It is the aftermath where things happen independently and unexpectedly, and are entertaining that means a God no longer in control.

dhw: Of course a free-for-all means giving up control, and it is the unexpected that makes things more interesting than total predictability. But there is always the option of a dabble (e.g. a mass extinction) if he wants a change.

DAVID: You won't leave your concept of a very human God.
And under “horizontal gene transfer”
DAVID: Guesses do not make a picture of the God personality I envision.

As I keep pointing out, the God personality you envision with your own guesses – enjoying creating, interested in his creations, too kind to design murderous viruses, trying to find antidotes, wanting to be admired, ready to help us if we’re threatened by an asteroid etc – is just as “humanized” as my various alternatives, but at least mine solve the problem of dead ends, which in your guesses leaves your God inexplicably designing life forms that have no connection with the one and only purpose you impose on him.

dhw: […] Do you think he says to himself: ”All evolutions have dead ends, so I have to create dead ends?”

DAVID: This is logically nept!! All evolution has branches that lead to dead ends as types of individuals don't survive and the ecosystem, they support, stop.

The only evolution of life we know about has dead ends. You don’t need to tell us what a dead end is. The dispute is over your absurd theory that they were all absolutely required for the design of sapiens plus food although they had no connection with sapiens plus food!

dhw: I agree that we are descended from Archaea, but YOU say he descended us from Cambrian forms that had no predecessors, so how can we be descended from Archaea? If your God exists and really did design every form from the beginning, he must have had a reason for designing the dead ends (I’ve offered you three possibilities), but it couldn’t have been us plus food if he never even began to design us plus food until he’d finished designing dead ends that had nothing to do with us!

DAVID: Again your illogical distortion of my explanations.

What have I distorted?

Cambrian explosion: early skeletal form found

DAVID: All new organisms appear in the fossil form fully prepared to handle their lives. There are no itty-bitty steps required by Darwin theory, fully admitted by Gould. […] God produces new forms when the underlying living biochemistry is ready to form them.

dhw: Of course every living form was able to live – otherwise it would never have existed! […] you believe our ancestors were created in the Cambrian without predecessors, and you believe our ancestors were created before the Cambrian! As for living biochemistry, I thought you agreed that environmental conditions had to be ready before your God could use the biochemistry to create new forms. Why else would he have waited to create our ancestors without predecessors?

DAVID: Simply accept a designer can do it any way He wishes.

Of course I accept that a designer can do what he wishes in the way he wishes. But I do not accept your illogical theories concerning the dead ends and the ancestors with no predecessors, both of which directly contradict your theory that his only purpose from the beginning was to design us and our food.

MASS EXTINCTION IN THE EDIACARAN

dhw: […] it’s wonderful how all these new discoveries are being made, although at one time you thought no more fossils would be found. Once more we have emphasis on the link between environmental change and speciation, and once more the question arises why your God would have deliberately designed the 56 dead-end genera that did not survive this particular extinction. Do you really believe they were “necessary” for God to be able to design our ancestors which had no predecessors?

DAVID: No new fossils were found!!! Extinction is disappearance. Whatever new biochemical processes came in the Ediacaran supported the next steps in the Cambrian.

Thank you. I may well have misunderstood the entry (my bolds) and your comment:
QUOTES: "[…] researchers have typically suspected a relative absence of soft-bodied animals in the Ediacaran's later stages are simply the result of a failure to be preserved. […] But the global fossil record indicates otherwise.
"The team found that there was an overall increase in biodiversity between the earlier and middle stages of the Ediacaran, known as the Avalon (575 to 560 million years ago) and White Sea stages (560 to 550 million years ago).

DAVID: Note the new ease of finding 'soft body' forms.

Thank you again for the correction. Meanwhile, of course, my question concerning the 56 dead ends remains unanswered.