The Dodo Problem (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, December 03, 2010, 14:18 (5103 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

David and Tony believe that humans were pre-programmed in the very first self-replicating molecule. I have argued that the many branches of evolution suggest that at best this would have been a very wasteful, roundabout process, and I have taken the dodo as a symbol of the illogicality of this belief.-TONY: As for the Dodo, what ate the dodo? What ate the dodo's remains, or droppings, or eggs? What mites festered beneath the dodo's feathers? What did the Dodo eat? Was it something that no other animal at the time ate? Did the Dodo have or develop any unique immunities that it passed on to the creatures that ate it? What about and unique genetic mutations that were passed on to the creatures who ate it? Unless you know absolutely every detail about the Dodo, you can not say that the Dodo was irrelevant to the process of preparing the earth or sustaining the growing life on it.-In that case, you presumably believe that every living and extinct plant and creature on earth was pre-programmed in the first self-replicating molecule, since no matter what example I give, you can say it may have been essential for the ultimate goal of evolution: the human being. Of course I can't prove otherwise, because unless we know absolutely every detail about every plant and every creature (which we will never do), we can't say they were irrelevant. Nor, of course, can we say they were relevant. Nor can we say they were or were not pre-programmed. We can only say what seems to us to be logical, and what fits in with the facts as we know them. (I don't think anyone has ever established an evolutionary link between the dodo and man, apart from the fact that man may well have been responsible for its extinction.) Even David has to admit that with this interpretation, we are forced to rely on God having a different form of logic from our own. No problem for you or for him, but a problem for me because I can only think as a human being, and I can only believe what actually makes sense to me. If I allow for a God, and leave aside the atheist view that humans are just one of the branches that grew out of the original chance-created mechanism, I find that the branching process fits in more logically with God allowing life to go its own way and occasionally intervening with innovations, possibly improvising as he went (without plan), or possibly experimenting in order to get to a creature that might reflect himself (with plan). I will therefore ask you, as I asked David, how do these two possibilities, both of which explain irrelevances and extinctions and also eliminate dependence on random changes in the environment, contradict the facts as we know them?-TONY: The baker analogy is more fitting. Does the baker have to plan precisely how much sugar the yeast will consume, or how much they will ferment, or how much gas they will release? No. He simply knows that in 45 min, the yeast will feed on the sugars in the dough and make the bread rise before it is ready to put in the oven.-More fitting than what? My objection to your analogy was the fact that your baker wanted to make a loaf of bread but accidentally baked a dozen jam tarts as well, and then threw them away. However, your dodo argument suggests that God the baker can't make a loaf without also making jam tarts.