Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 07, 2022, 08:45 (715 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I wish you would respect that the issue before us is a theoretical God, whom I accept. Under that approach I have every right to assume that what is here in reality represents God's wishes and accomplished works.

dhw: For the sake of argument, I also accept a theoretical God, and that what is here represents his wishes and accomplished works. Your vague generalisation is equally applicable to a God who wishes for a free-for-all, to experiment, or to give himself new ideas as he goes along. What your vague generalisation does not explain is why he would have “wished” only for us plus food and then “accomplished” countless dead-end life forms which had no connection with us plus food. Please stop dodging!

DAVID: You have not accepted my challenge but sidestepped it. If everything here represents God's wishes, then humans were wished by God. He chose to evolve us which explains all the dead ends in the process of evolution. No generalization. And on ce again I fully reject your imagined humanized god.

You never stop editing out those aspects of your theory that make it illogical. If your God’s ONLY wish was to design us and our food, you cannot explain why he also designed all those life forms which had no connection with us and our food (i.e. the dead ends). You may reject my various explanations, but they fit in with your generalisation that what is here represents his wishes and works.

dhw: And I cannot recognize your claim that all the dead ends were required for the design of us and our food. And as you yourself have repeatedly agreed, all the extinct, dead-end “odd doings” of the PAST have nothing to do with the giant ecosystem of the PRESENT.

DAVID: What I said was past ecosystems in the past fed life in the past and current ecosystems feeds life now, and were evolved from the past systems. Stop distorting!!!

dhw: That is indeed what you agreed in the past. However, this time you wrote: “All of the odd doings you pick on creates the giant ecosystem that barely feeds us eight billion now. It was all connected with his goal.” The “odd doings I pick on” are the dead ends from which our giant ecosystem has NOT evolved and were therefore NOT connected with his goal (us and our giant ecosystem). Please stop dodging!

DAVID: What is here as our ecosystem evolved from the past. Yes, or no?

Yes. And your problem is all those life forms that did NOT evolve into our ecosystem.

DAVID: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/evolution
"Evolution is the process by which the physical characteristics of types of creatures change over time, new types of creatures develop, and others disappear."
Note my bold things disappear!!! They have to go to make way for the improved models.

dhw: You really are clutching at straws. The “improved models” are the life forms that DID evolve from earlier life forms. The dead ends are the ones that did NOT evolve into anything. In your theory the "others that disappear" are the dead ends which you say your God specially designed as preparation for us and our foodbbbalthough they had no connection with us and our food! Now you are saying he specially designed the irrelevant dead ends because they had to disappear! Curiouser and curiouser.

DAVID: You avoided the bold in the definition of evolution: things must disappear. Any form of evolution requires disappearing forms!! Dead ends are part and parcel of any evolution.
And transferred from More Miscellany, Part One:
DAVID: Any evolution requires loss of forms (dead ends). God's use of any evolutionary process will simply result in the same results. God not denigrated.

The definition does not say that things MUST disappear or that disappearing forms are required! It is simply a fact that they disappear! (Raup says it’s all a matter of bad luck, which doesn’t say much for your God’s total control, does it?) But you have your God specially designing all the forms that do NOT evolve into the only forms he wants to design. Why? Because they were required for us plus food although they were not required for us plus food. Or because “all evolutions advance from failed experiments” although he does not experiment or fail. Or because designing failed experiments that had no connection with what he wanted to design was part and parcel of all the human evolutions which would develop billions of years after he started designing his dead ends (which makes him as fallible as us humans). Or he had to design them because otherwise he could not have made them disappear!

DAVID: Full distortion of any true understanding of any evolution.

All I’ve done is list your various explanations for the dead ends.