Mutations, bad not good (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 12, 2011, 22:27 (4861 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: I think there is a 4th possible path that you have not listed. I am a theist, and for that I make no apologies. However, I am not against a scientific understanding of our origins, nor do I pretend to know how the UI did it if it did do it. It is beyond our current technology and understanding. 
The 4th possible path is one of humility. It is admitting that you do not know now, so that you can learn and know in the future.-This is a pretty good definition of agnosticism, which I listed as my fourth possible path.-I agree with your comments on speciation, the definition of which provides enormous problems, but your concluding comment seems to me to miss the main thrust of my response to DragonsHeart:-TONY: "That we have two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, four limbs, and sexual reproductive organs proves nothing more than that we are efficiently designed, whether by chance or pre-planning. That we look like apes proves nothing. To me, the entire crux lies in speciation, or as they say, 'the proof is in the pudding'."-Both you and DragonsHeart argued that mutations were not beneficial. There is general consensus among scientists that humans were late arrivals on the scene. I don't know if you accept this or not. I do. The similarities which I listed suggest to me that we may well share common ancestry with earlier mammals. The similarities do not provide proof, but even if I were a theist, I would regard it as far more likely that a creator would produce variations and innovations using his existing creatures (evolution) rather than starting from scratch with each separate species. In other words, a creator would continually be making changes to existing species in order to produce new ones, and these changes can be called beneficial mutations. -Although this is speculation on my part, it is an attempt to understand how a creator MIGHT have worked. Not knowing should not, in my view, be a reason for not trying to understand, and dismissing the concept of beneficial mutations (which is so crucial to evolutionary theory and is not incompatible with theism) seems to me just as blinkered as dismissing the concept of an intelligence responsible for producing the complexities of life.