Extinctions: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? A nod to D. Raup (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 10, 2011, 15:14 (5035 days ago) @ dhw

David believes that God planned humans from the very beginning, and I asked whether he thought God had also planned dinosaurs, dodos and the duck-billed platypus.
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> Of course you're right that no-one can really know God's thoughts. But although you don't KNOW them, you BELIEVE (see our epistemological framework) you have a good idea of what one of them was ... i.e. that God planned humans. So I hope you won't mind if we continue to probe the implications of this belief.-I think you are thinking a bit too much about my theory of pre-planning! ;-() All I propose is that humans are the end point of evolution, with evolution driven to advance complexity in living organisms. Evolution is built like a branching bush, more so than a Darwinian tree. Complexity strikes out in many directions at the same time. Just look a the Cambrian Explosion: all at once 57 animal phyla appear, then reduced by selection to 37. The punctuated evolution we see in the fossil record supports vigorously the concept that this is the way the complexity drive mechanism works. -As a result dodoes, dinosaurs, and ducks all pop up. I've already explained that the dangerous universe and the contortions of Earth to make it the Earth we have today, provide lots of expected challenges for natural selection to be a big, if passive, player in the advancement of the branches of the bush of life. God started all of this, but didn't expect to step in for much management. I don't think He had to. Hippos, hens, and hyenas all appeared as if scheduled, but they appeared when they appeared. I hope this satisfies your philosophic questioning.- I can't carry my suppostions about God too far, and I try to make those suppostions have simple beginnings. I don't know if God is omniscient, omnipotent, all-caring, etc. as religions wish. There HAS to be a UI from the evidence I view, but after that, it is all questions.