Return to David's theory of evolution PART ONE (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, March 26, 2023, 12:49 (396 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

DAVID: The generalizations are very specific. The evolutionary process is a sorting process reaching toward more and more complex forms.

dhw: Agreed. But that does not explain why your God, whose only purpose was to design us and our food, would deliberately design countless life forms, 99% of which had no connection with us and our food.

DAVID: You agree to my definition and then immediately deny it. "Sorting" means eliminating forms! One line of eliminations became us, massive other lines become our food. We use every living form as aspects of our food.

More silly equivocations. The focal point of our disagreement is not on living forms but on the extinct forms which had no connection with us or our food. The living forms that contribute to our food supply or the ecosystems that give rise to it are descended from the 1% of past survivors, not from the 99% that had no connection with us or our food.

DAVID: As for a goal or goals for God, humans are obvious. God may well have others not so obvious.

dhw: With this statement, you have opened a promising door. Please name what you think might have been his other goals. […]

DAVID: I said 'may well have', a supposition. Recognize it for such.

dhw: Door closed! Every theory about God – including his very existence - is a supposition, since nobody knows him! Why should inexplicable suppositions – yours make sense only to God - be more likely than others which fit in with the history of life as we know it?

DAVID: Of course God's actions make sense to Him!

Another equivocation. You have left out the all-important “only”. If your theory makes sense only to God, it does not make sense to you. Meanwhile, do please tell us what suppositions you have concerning possible "other goals".

The environment

DAVID: Because of varying climate and environmental conditions dhw somehow thinks luck is involved!! […]

dhw: […] his lack of control over weather and environment meant luck determined what he could and couldn’t design under current conditions. You also believe luck determined which organisms failed to adapt when conditions changed, and so luck determined which 1% survived for him to work on at the next stage (until the Cambrian, when he started all over again).

DAVID: Raup: organism's bad luck results in low survival.

dhw: Yes, in your theory it was their bad luck that your God had failed to give them adaptability to the new conditions, as above.

I have left this in, because you continue to deny that luck was involved, and so this section still stands in need of comment from you.

Supernovas and biodiversity

QUOTE: […] there’s a long history of Earth being affected by past cosmic events.[…] it’s possible that one effect of a supernova is a change in Earth’s climate. “A high number of supernovae leads to a cold climate with a large temperature difference between the equator and polar regions…

DAVID: This study says the cosmologic events change the Earth's environment. I stand by my theory that God does [not] interfere with or control these events. They happen and whatever results pop up God designs for them, no luck ever needed. […]

dhw: Yesterday your God was NOT in control of such major environmental changes as forests turning into deserts (the result of changes in climate) and asteroids hitting the Earth, but today your theory is that he DOES control such events!!!

DAVID: Sorry for the typing error. Not is reinserted where it belongs. The next sentence fits the 'not'. My general views never change. And you can't change them by constantly producing gross distortions of interpretations of my entries.

I really don’t think I should be blamed for your typing error, which totally reverses what you meant, and even emphasizes it! Back we go, then, to my above response to your denial of “luck”, which you ignored, although we should not forget the fact that you also believe your God did interfere with the environment by specially designing the oxygen supply which enabled him to design our ancestors without predecessors during the Cambrian. You constantly accuse me of gross distortions, but you have never given me an example. Please do so.