More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, August 24, 2024, 08:31 (23 days ago) @ David Turell

99.9% versus 0.1%

DAVID: You ignore that a small population of forms evolved into many multiples of the initial forms. Thus 99.9% extinct became/created the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: You just won’t stop, will you? Approx. 99.9% of the many multiples were forms that did not evolve into the current 0.1% but reached a dead end. The process is vividly illustrated by the fact that 696 dinosaur species had no descendants. Only four of them (= 0.57%) did and, allowing for a bit of latitude in the exact percentage, this confirms your own conclusion that the vast majority of creatures that ever lived were NOT our ancestors. We are descended – as you have agreed – from the 0.1% (or in this case 0.57%) that survived. Your only evidence to the contrary was your blundering belief that 696 dinosaur species were the ancestors of modern birds. Please stop it!

DAVID: Of course, it took 696 to find four to produce 10,000 bird species. Small numbers become huge numbers in evolution. 99.9% extinct are the ancestors of the 0.1% surviving. And the 0.1% are an enormous population compared to the past smaller numbers.

Since you believe God is responsible for speciation, why do you think he needed to create 700 dinosaurs in order to “find” four? That is the whole point of this discussion. You insist that he designed and had to cull 99.9% of species irrelevant to the ones he wanted! Hence his messy inefficiency! No, the 696 were NOT the ancestors of the birds now living. Only four were. That has nothing to do with the fact that current species have multiplied. You are still stuck with your ridicule of your God’s method of achieving the goal you impose on him.

The universe

DAVID: Designs had a designer. You are stuck with that point.

Answered already:

dhw: Design of evolution can be explained by designers – billions of them (intelligent cells). If you ask who designed the designers, the atheist will ask you who designed your designer – as if it’s OK to assume a supreme designer came from nothing, whereas loads of mini-designers had to have a source. A “first cause” universal, conscious mind seems to me as unlikely as “first cause” chance producing evolvable mini-minds. We are going round in circles.

DAVID: Yes, you are.

dhw: It is you who keep repeating that designs had a designer, instead of responding to my comments.

DAVID: Yes, to repeat: how did intelligent cells appear? From the designer, who for you can't exist?? Circles.

Will you please stop pretending that I am an atheist! I accept the logic of the design argument. I also accept the logic of the argument that if mini-consciences must be designed by a mega-consciousness, why doesn’t a mega-consciousness need to have been designed? “First cause” God, or “first cause” chance? I don’t know. Nor does anyone else. But theists and atheists have blind faith in one or the other.