Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 28, 2022, 10:51 (512 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I bring up human examples of dead ends to try and empty your head of worry about dead ends in any form of evolution, and back you bounce to worry about God's form of evolution. All dead ends are of equal importance as examples of how any form evolution works!

dhw: So your God specially designed countless forms of life that had no connection with those that he wanted to design, because dead ends are important to show that evolution works by repeatedly failing to design what you want to design. I hope your all-powerful God knows what you are talking about.[…]

DAVID: [….] All forms of evolution may have dead ends while working from start to end. I used human to help you see the need for dead ends. Direct creation solves the dead-end problem, as you have noted.

dhw: What “need” for dead ends? Even on a human level, do you think every inventor, philosopher, scientist says to him/herself: “I need to fail before I succeed”? Do you really believe that your God said the same thing when – as you claim – he started out with the one and only goal of designing us and our food? “I need to design failures so that humans will know how important it is to fail before they succeed.” Of course direct creation would solve the problem! The problem is the fact that according to your theory, your God did NOT directly create what he wanted to create, but created failures! (See also “Viruses fight bat immunity” etc.)

DAVID: Of course dead ends can be considered failures, but evolutions advance from failed experiments in form and function and then new attempts at success. Dinosaurs disappeared but gave us birds. But as always you ignore that God produced everything we know about, and if God created it He felt it was required to appear.

The question is how dead ends that had no connection with his purpose could be required to appear in order for him to achieve his purpose. Thank you for again accepting one of my theistic answers, which is that the dead ends might be the result of your God experimenting. The last time I pointed this out to you (16th November), you replied: “God is direct and knows exactly how to proceed with no alternative experimentations.” I’m glad you’ve changed your mind. Another of my theories (God had new ideas as he went along) could also fit in with your description above: producing a particular dinosaur might have given him the idea to produce a bird. I don’t “ignore” that God produced everything, because another of my theistic theories – which offers an equally logical explanation for the dead ends – is that he did NOT produce everything we know about, but that he created an autonomous mechanism (cellular intelligence) which in turn produced not only us and our food but also all the dead ends which did not lead to us and our food. Your only objection to all of these has been that they “humanize” him in different ways from your own “humanizations” of him. One down, two to go!

dhw: (referring to the Cambrian): 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!

DAVID: A designer can create any gaps He wishes in phenotypes, but not in the biochemistry of living. Only advances in biochemistry permit advances in phenotypes. True evolutionary continuity is in advancing biochemistry, never phenotype.[…]

dhw: [….] What permits speciation is the flexibility of the biochemistry of life. The theory of common descent, which you claim to believe in, is not based on the fact that all speciation entails changes in the biochemistry! Common descent consists in the “forms” that develop from earlier forms.

DAVID: It is time to forget Darwin and his ancient form of common descent. Modern work on relationships is done at the genome level, which at times finds surprising relationships contrary to analysis from form.

Not “contrary to” but “in addition to”! Do you really think the new-found genomic relationships invalidate the form relationships? The more shared characteristics we find at whatever level, the greater the support for Darwin. And that does not resolve the contradiction between your two theories! If there are relationships at any level between the Cambrian organisms from which we are descended and those that preceded them, then the Cambrian organism had predecessors. That is why you agree that we are descended from bacteria! So how can you argue that the Cambrian organisms had no predecessors?