Return to David's theory of evolution and theodicy (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, November 23, 2023, 12:44 (156 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I’m Adler in our thinking. So I’m not just a nut in the wilderness.

Adler follows Darwin, but you don’t. Adler accepts evolution by steps or stages, but you don’t, except when you do. (“What looks like an evolutionary step is God inventing biologic complexity in stages.”) Adler offers no support for your theory that your God’s only purpose was to design us and our food, and therefore designed and had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us and our food.
dhw: I’m afraid all this leaves you, to use your own expression, as the only “nut in the wilderness”.

DAVID: Welcome to David's theology.

dhw: And goodbye to Mr Adler.

DAVID: No way. Adler used our arrival to prove God. I'm with Adler.

And that is the only theory you share with him, so stop pretending that the rest of your wacky theories are “with Adler”.

Irreducible complexity

DAVID: Nuts! IC requires design!!!

dhw: But design does not require IC!!! […] if you cut off my leg, it will still carry on walking, will it? (Or if you think the whole body is IC, will the loss of my leg stop me from breathing?) IC refers to a single unit which is complete in itself. […]

DAVID: The body is an integration of many IC parts.

dhw: How can each part be a single unit complete in itself if it cannot function without being integrated with other parts?

DAVID: Consider your kidneys, Totally IC. Totally transplantable. Every organ is totally IC within itself and totally integrated with its body.

dhw: If you stuck a pair of kidneys on a table, would they function? Of course they wouldn’t. IC denotes a single unit as defined above. If the spring broke on Behe’s mousetrap, it could be replaced, but that does not make the spring IC! It’s the mousetrap that’s IC. A pair of kidneys will be functionless on their own.

DAVID: Why did you ignore kidneys are transplantable and IC as such?

Springs are also “transplantable”, as above, but it is the mousetrap that is IC.

DAVID: Unless the kidney had its highly designed very complex glomeruli, its ascending and descending loops, its specialized blood supply it could not properly function in a body.

Agreed. But if it doesn’t have a body to function in, then it cannot function. It is not a single unit complete in itself, but can only function in cooperation with other parts of the body. (See “More Miscellany” for the rest of the discussion.)

DAVID: God create evolution by His designs. It is a total process by design. God's process resembles an evolutionary development.

dhw: How can you call it evolution or even resembling evolution if you insist that all parts of all species are irreducibly complex (i.e. all parts were created simultaneously, as opposed to most being handed down from earlier species) and were designed without precursors?

DAVID: Welcome to evolution by God.

dhw: It’s called Creationism.

DAVID: Is that a dirty word?

dhw: Of course not. But it's the opposite of evolution, so you should not keep using the term “evolution” in defence of your dislocated theories.

DAVID: God created the process we call evolution. I can use the term.

Evolution is the theory that all living organisms except the first are descended from earlier ancestral forms. If you believe that your God created every species individually without precursors, you cannot call the process evolution. But perhaps you should give us your own definition of the word, as we know from other examples that your use of language can be weird to the nth degree (e.g. “all-powerful” means “with limited powers”).