Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, November 25, 2022, 12:47 (517 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: As for your mantra that all evolutionary processes have dead ends, we only know of one evolutionary process for life on Earth. Or have you secretly travelled round the universe documenting all of your God’s other evolutions of life?

DAVID: There are all sorts of evolutions: human inventions have failed forms that are discarded; failed concepts in philosophy; failed political parties; etc. All dead ends.

So now you are telling us that your God, who knew exactly how to design what he wanted, designed life forms that failed to come up with the life forms he wanted to design. Your God kept failing, exactly like us humans! And you think I'm the one who " humanizes" your God! (Heaven forbid that you should accept that his failures might be a sign that he was experimenting.)

DAVID: As for your failed mantra that God makes no sense to me, it is an empty space filler of a contorted accusation. My view of my God makes perfect sense to me.

Please stop manufacturing straw men. I have never said that God makes no sense to you! It is your theory concerning his purpose and actions that you admit you cannot explain – it "makes sense only to God”.

DAVID: I think your rigid Agnosticism distorts any view of God. I don't recognize the 'Gods' you invent.

I think your rigid adherence to a theory you cannot understand yourself “distorts any view of God”. You recognize the logic of my alternative explanations concerning his purpose(s) and methods, but you prefer to dismiss these on the grounds that they imply patterns of human thought, emotions and logic that differ from those you attribute to him. (Surprisingly these now include the desire to design his own failures.)

DAVID: You give a perfect description of how evolution works and then complain about it. Of course, the necessary dead ends are not in our line!!! Pure logic.

dhw: So they were NOT necessary for us and our line, although you keep telling us that they were! And so your logic leads you to conclude that it was logical for your God to design dead ends that had no connection with his purpose because they were necessary for his purpose although they were not necessary for his purpose. Alice would have loved you.

DAVID: You totally ignore the point I start with. God, the creator, created everything He thought necessary. Which then leads to accepting everything in God's evolutionary process was required. Alice is not helping you out of your confusion even while reminding us confusion exists.

You agree that the dead ends were not necessary for our line plus food. But now you believe your God thought designing dead-end failures was necessary for him to succeed.

DAVID: A designing mind can do anything it wishes. It evolved us from Archaea. That is known history, assuming the mind in action as I do.

dhw: I agree. It is therefore nonsense to claim, as you do, that we and our food are descended from life forms which he designed during the Cambrian WITHOUT PREDECESSORS. You use the Cambrian gap as evidence for your God’s existence. (You wrote: “ The gap is the prime example of the need for a designing mind.”) But if there is a direct line from Archaea to us, then there have to be pre-Cambrian predecessors! You can’t have it both ways! (See also below, under “a new fungal family”.)

DAVID: Totally illogical. Only a Darwinian wants tiny step-by-step evolution!!! Gould pointed out small gaps everywhere. The Cambrian gap was recognized by Darwin, who hoped it wouild be filled about 170 years ago. Still there in spades with al the new discoveries in China.

Of course there are gaps. You can’t expect to find fossils of every single link in every single line for the last 3.8 billion years! But as usual, you have simply ignored the contradiction between your two sets of theories! If you believe there is a continuous line of descent from Archaea to us plus food, it makes no sense to state that we plus food are descended from life forms that had no predecessors!

New Edicarean fossils; new ones with meal

DAVID: we knew they had to eat and are early animals but not anywhere near as complex as Cambrian's.

dhw: That’s evolution for you – later animals build on the foundations laid by their ancestors. More support for the continuity of speciation, as opposed to speciation without predecessors.

DAVID: The Cambrian is exactly what you decry! Darwinian evolution of tiny phenotypic steps is dead! (dhw: David’s Cambrian theory is that God designed our ancestors plus foods from scratch, without any predecessors.)

And under “A new fungal family”:

DAVID: Where did our Archaean genes come from? CONTINUITY! "Darwinian evolution of tiny phenotypic steps is dead!"

Forget Darwin. Do you or do you not believe that we and our food evolved in a continuous line from Archaea? Or do you believe that we and our food descended from Cambrian life forms which your God designed from scratch without any predecessors?