Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, November 13, 2022, 16:24 (739 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't see how you have solved dead ends. We are studying the same evolution with the same human result as its end point. God starting life at the Archaea and ending it with us defines His purpose.

First of all, in your post on “coming death of the sun”, we’re told that “humanity only has about 1 billion years left unless we find a way off this rock” and “that increase in brightness will end life on Earth. Our oceans will evaporate, and the surface will become too hot for water to form. We'll be about as kaput as you can get.” Bearing in mind the current climate change crisis, I for one would not like to predict what new species might evolve during all the environmental changes that will take place in the next thousand million years. For all we know, the endpoint might be loads and loads of new extremophiles. But that is a minor point in our discussion, since you have not understood how my three theistic alternatives “solve dead ends”: 1) in a free-for-all (which of course would also fit in with atheism), your God wants an ever changing and unpredictable variety of life forms, which he may watch with interest as different forms come and go. Hence all the dead ends. (But he may dabble if he wants to – e.g. Chixculub.) 2) Your God’s purpose was to design a material being with thought patterns and emotions like his own, but since he’d never attempted anything quite like it before, he had to experiment. As a result, he designed countless life forms which failed to fulfil his purpose (the dead ends), but eventually he hit on the right formula. 3) He had an idea: to create material life, and as he went on creating different forms, so he kept coming up with new ideas. These eventually led to the concept of a being with thought patterns and emotions like his own, and gradually he got close and closer to this goal. All three theories explain the puzzle of the dead ends, and your only objection has been that, just like your own version – which fails to solve the puzzle – they endow him with certain human thought patterns and emotions.

God started a universe, created life (which is a lot more complicated) and evolved a human brain. Contrast that with you totally humanized bumbling God in your description. You are a great storyteller, but I think have little recognition of what a God is supposed to be.

DAVID: Again, you avoid the issue of food supply for what is currently alive. When they are replaced so is their food supply. If you really understand dead ends your complaint is totally irrational.
And under “toxoplasma”:
DAVID: Evolution is a continuum and everyone must eat along the way. Now what has survived makes up the giant system of ecosystems that must be here to feed us now.

dhw: You’ve got it: what survived evolved into the life forms and ecosystems of today. What did not survive were the countless dead-end life forms and ecosystems which you say your God specially designed because they were absolutely necessary for us and our food although they had no connection with us and our food!

And you don't have it. The dead ends were necessary food supply through all stages on the way to now.

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!

Irrational. God as designer can skip forms when He wishes. Proof is the Cambrian

DAVID: Again your illogical distortion of my explanations.

dhw: What have I distorted?

DAVID: The entire concept of God designed evolution. The Cambrian is not break in evolution, but a gap in forms. Evolution is a continuous process either by chance or by a designer.

dhw: I agree that evolution is a continuous process, but if you insist that we are descended from life forms which your God designed WITHOUT PREDECESSORS, it is you who are breaking the continuity of the evolution of species! You have seized on the gaps in the fossil record as evidence of your God’s existence (only he could create species from scratch), without realizing that by doing so, you are contradicting your belief that we were our God’s purpose right from the beginning and that he began our continuous line of descent with bacteria.

You are so conflicted in your total lack of understanding of design theory. God is bright enough to see Archaea and envision the human brain to appear later on. Your guy surely isn't. See the bumbling mess of theory presented at first, above.