Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 19, 2022, 12:25 (733 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The subject is dead ends, as explained above. You agree that a God in full control would know how to design what he wanted to design. When I pointed out the illogicality of an all-knowing God designing countless life forms that had no connection with those he wanted to design, you told me I didn’t understand design theory. Why did you mention design theory if it was not meant to explain what I didn’t understand? It turns out that design theory entails experimentation – one of the three alternatives I have suggested as explanations for the dead ends! And so you promptly tell us that God does not experiment but is “direct”! Back we go: If he is “direct”, how do you explain all the dead ends?

DAVID: As usual you ignore or have forgotten my discussion of dead ends to which you have previously agreed. Living forms disappear as evolution moves to new stages. Living forms must eat and are supplied by ecosystems. As living forms disappear so do ecosystems. This naturally creates dead ends.

So far, so good – except that your use of the word “naturally” subtly omits your fixed belief that your God deliberately designed every living form that came to a dead end.

DAVID: A continuously branching, designed evolution by God will have a definite direction to end in humans. But not just humans, but a giant bush of life supplying, we hope, enough food for humans.

Yes, there are continuous branches that have led to humans and to our food. Those branches were NOT dead ends. Your problem is all the branches that WERE dead ends, i.e. which did NOT lead to us and our food, but which you say your God deliberately designed because they were necessary for him to design the branches that DID lead to us and our food. Please stop dodging.

DAVID: I can see a careful plan by God, which anticipates our current population of eight billion. Why can't you?

I can see that all the specially designed dead ends that did NOT lead to us and our food, cannot have been necessary as preparation for your God to design the branches which DID lead to us. Why can’t you? Meanwhile, you have also dodged the rest of the paragraph at the start of this thread, in which I point out that you have inadvertently agreed to the theory of experimentation, but then backtracked in favour of direct design, as if all the dead ends were direct design of us and our food!