Darwinist ignorance, confusion & epigenetics (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 19, 2010, 13:52 (5118 days ago) @ David Turell

David has argued that the "only way" the human species could have evolved is "if the big brain was programmed in advance just as all the other complex organs were." I have suggested an alternative, whereby the UI didn't know what lay ahead, but kept on improvising and inventing as it went along. I asked what facts were contradicted by this scenario.-DAVID: None!!! You have given me my UI, and the only difference I see is I say the UI gave DNA and epigenetics the power to do this so all He need do is sit and watch.-The important concession as far as I'm concerned is that you agree my scenario is as plausible as your own, i.e. that there are two ways the human species could have evolved through a UI: 1) planned from the start, 2) the result of constant experimentation, and hence direct intervention by a UI, without an initial plan. -Of the two, I find the second far more convincing, as it covers the various gaps I listed at the end of my post of 18 November at 13.18. Your scenario leaves unexplained the need for all the extinct species, for all the long periods of stasis, and indeed for evolution itself, because if man was the goal right from the start, all the intervening stages were clearly superfluous. (What was the point of all those dead dinosaurs?) Since "we can only imagine His reasoning, based on what we see as factual information", what do you imagine was His reason for the delay and the wastefulness covering so many billion years?-The reason why I'm pushing this argument is that like yourself, I believe evolution happened, but if it was organized by a UI, I cannot for the life of me see why it would deliberately choose such a messy, wasteful, roundabout way of achieving its purpose. The mess seems to me far more consistent with a process that has not been planned beforehand. However, interestingly, your choice of Option 1 fits in far better with the atheist scenario: you and they start with a single mechanism, and the rest follows on of its own accord: an automatic, unbroken, unguided, self-regulating, messy, wasteful and roundabout progression from bacteria to human brain.