Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, March 03, 2023, 12:40 (420 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You claim that your God’s sole purpose right from the start was to create us and our food, but that he created our ancestors and our foods de novo during the Cambrian. Therefore all the life forms which preceded the Cambrian, and which you call his “mistakes”, “failed experiments”, “wrong decisions”, were totally unnecessary. Your explanation?

DAVID: You don't understand evolution at the biochemical level. That biochemistry developed until the Cambrian and afterward. Biochemistry underlies, and therefore allows all phenotypical changes. If it ain't there, you can't do it is the rule. And you've forgotten all those lovely bacteria, started life, still here helping.

More dodging! ALL life is biochemical! And you omit to mention that you have your God using biochemistry to design phenotypical changes, 99% of which had no connection with what you say was his one and only purpose. And you omit to mention that all the biochemical phenotypical changes prior to the Cambrian were unnecessary because he created our ancestors and foods de novo during the Cambrian! It’s you have forgotten the lovely bacteria from which we have descended. How can we have descended from them if your God designed our ancestors without any predecessors?

DAVID: I've purposely overstated how messy evolution of life actually is. But God used it. Successfully, we are here.

dhw: are you now telling us that when you accused him of mistakes etc., you didn’t mean to accuse him of mistakes etc., and when you tell us he knew he was making mistakes, you didn’t mean he knew he was making mistakes?

Not answered.

DAVID: God knew in any evolutionary process each step to the present would depend on past performances.

dhw: And so he kept making mistakes until the Cambrian, when he started all over again de novo, and then carried on making mistakes, but finally succeeded in designing us and our food although he could have done it without all the mess if he had wanted to.

DAVID: This disaster of mistaken and muddled misunderstanding of how pre-Cambrian forms contributed to the Cambrian handled above.

Not handled at all. The fact that all life is biochemical has nothing to do with your theory that your God designed all life forms, 99% of them were mistakes, failed experiments, wrong decisions etc., and he designed our ancestors and food without any predecessors, and he was responsible for what you call the mess of evolution. Stop dodging!

DAVID: Raup analyzed the system.

dhw: Well done, Raup.

DAVID: You know nothing of Raup's short, brilliant book. Remember, no failures but bad luck when circumstances changed.

It is you who keep using the word "failure"! The “bad luck” was caused by the fact that your God’s designs "failed" to cope with changing circumstances, and so the 99% perished. You regard non-survival as a mistake or "failed experiment" because the 99% did not lead to what you believe to have been your God’s one and only purpose: us and our food. Stop dodging.

DAVID: See below: God never needed to experiment as all-knowing brilliant mind. Designed limited adaptability required later designed speciation.

It was you who used the expression “failed experiments”. An all-knowing brilliant mind according to you knew that it was making mistakes and conducting experiments that would fail. The limitations of his designs required new designs when organisms were exposed to conditions over which you say your all-powerful God had no control. Why do you continue to gloss over all your criticisms of your God?

DAVID: I assume God invented it. He knew how it would work.

dhw: If God exists, of course he would have invented it. And thank you for confirming your belief that he knew the system he invented would lead to all his blunders.

DAVID: Blunders is your perverted view of God handling evolution with all its loss of forms that ended up with us.

Blunder is another word for mistake. The loss of forms did not end up with us. It was the survival of forms that ended up with us. The loss of forms, according to you, was the result of your God’s faulty designs, mistakes, failed experiments – “failed” because they did NOT lead to us plus food.

dhw: The theories that 1) your God experimented in his quest to create a being like himself – and did so by means of countless successful experiments until he hit on the best formula – and 2) that his successful experiments resulted in more and more new ideas on what to do with his invention of life, both fit in with the history of life, […] and mercifully free your God from the image you present of an inefficient, incompetent, cumbersome bungler, who depends on luck to allow him the chance to do what he wants to do.

DAVID: I love it. Back to defending a God you don't believe in, my God, any God. God never needed to experiment as all-knowing brilliant mind. Designed limited adaptability required later designed speciation.

As above – why would an all-knowing brilliant mind with a single purpose design 99% of life forms which have no connection with his one and only purpose and which he knows are mistakes and failed experiments? Why do you keep describing your blunderer as brilliant, and sneering at interpretations which have him doing precisely what he wants to do?