More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, July 22, 2024, 09:17 (122 days ago) @ David Turell

Back to David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: Inventions evolve: chuncks of ice to hydrofluorocarbon refrigerators. Model T to today's luxurious sedans, early tiny black and white TV screens. Much is trial and error per Addison's quotes. I have every right to use human evolutionary efforts as a comparison!!!

dhw: “Trial and error” by a God who is supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient? At the very best, this concept would fit in with experimentation, but you keep dismissing that as “humanization”. Now you are all for “humanization” – your God provides us with a mirror image of human fallibility.

DAVID: Stop stretching. Just examples of evolution you asked for.

My point was that we only know of one evolution of life. It’s you who insisted on comparing your God’s evolution to human forms, thereby suddenly embracing the “humanization” that makes you reject all alternatives to your illogical theory. As above, you have tried to make your omniscient, omnipotent God into a reflection of human fallibility!

Biochemical controls (99.9% versus 0.1%).

DAVID: The 99.9% are the ancestors of the living 0.1%!!!

dhw: So 696 dinosaurs which had no descendants were the ancestors of current species. Only the four species which evolved into current species were not the ancestors of current species. Astonishing!

DAVID: Snatching 696 dinos out of all evolution to complain about Raup's overall statistic's is nonsense.

dhw: There is no complaint about Raup’s statistics! The complaint is your nonsensical claim that we are descended from 99.9 species which have no descendants. Why do you keep forgetting your agreement?

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: But now you believe that we are descended from organisms that had no descendants!

DAVID: The 0.1% descended from the 99.9%!!!

Why do you keep repeating this absurd statement which you have already rejected? How can humans plus food be descended from all the creatures that had no descendants???

Symbiosis and theodicy

DAVID: [...]The exactly required bacteria to fill the need must arrive. How does that exact solution happen? Not by chance!! A designer is required to bring the plant and bacteria to be together. From a theodicy viewpoint this is a good bacterial infection!!

dhw: Nobody would question the good that is done by bacteria. The problem is the bad, which your all-powerful, all-knowing God knew would happen but lacked the power and knowledge to prevent, or which he actually wanted.

DAVID: Knowing there would be problems, He gave us the brain power to solve them.

Why would an all-good, omnipotent, omniscient God create problems of evil? If he was omniscient, clearly he knew how to solve them, and so your answer was that he wanted to challenge us. Why do you think he would want to challenge us?

killfish

QUOTE: "It has long been observed that organisms modify their traits, including reproductive patterns, in response to changes in their environment. This type of evolutionary plasticity has been observed in many types of animals in different habitats and with varying predators.”

DAVID: quick adjustments are well known in Resnick's guppy studies. More than likely these instincts are designed. How would early forms have survived without this adaptation? How quickly does a species learn a lesson to survive? Very quickly is my guess.

How could an organism adapt “instinctively” to conditions it has never encountered before? “More than likely” is that if environmental conditions are new, and species are quick to learn a lesson, their response is not instinctive but is the result of intelligent processing of new information, and intelligent decision-making on how best to handle it.