Mutations, bad not good (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, July 21, 2011, 17:51 (4874 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Dhw: Since we have now established that you reject fundamentalist creationism and the theory that God created all species separately, and you agree that there WAS such a progressive movement, the fact that we do not have (and never have had) a clear delineation between terms is not in my view a problem.-TONY: You misrepresent me. I did not say that I reject anything. I said:
I do not equate fundamentalist creationism with ID. ID, in my opinion, simply means that there was intelligence, planning, and order to the DESIGN and implementation of the 'life, the universe, and everything'.-In my post of 15 July at 15.02, I set out the pattern of what you call the "progressive movement" of evolution and asked if you accepted it. You replied at 16.10: "To the general patterns, I do not now, nor have I ever had any real argument against them. That is not the fault I find in evolutionary theory, and never has been." Since the fundamental basis of evolution is that it is the process by which living organisms have developed from earlier forms, I thought you therefore rejected the creationist version. Evidently this was a mistake, so please accept my apologies. The somewhat cryptic remarks in the next part of your post suggest that what in fact you are doing is setting me a puzzle, and so I'll do my best to put the various pieces together:-TONY: I am searching for an answer to this just like everyone here. Fundamental creationist do take things too far with their 6 days and every single species created individually, I think. However, the 'according to their kind' statement does beg some investigation, in my opinion, even if it does not mean precisely what the fundamentalist think it does. 
I do not claim to know how it was accomplished. I do not even necessarily see that there needs to be a disparity between creationism (even in a sense relatively close to the fundamentalist view) and evolution (in the sense of adaptation). I do not think that there is enough data or that we have enough understanding to categorically deny any eventuality at this point, other than that every single species, as we know them at this time, were not created individually.-It seems then that you are looking for a way to reconcile the biblical version of events with the evolutionary, and the compromise would be that some species evolved as per Darwin and Co, but some ... or possibly just one? ... was specially created by God. The one, of course, is man, because Genesis is unequivocal on this. Would I be wrong in inferring that your preoccupation with "species" centres on this particular point? The relationship between man and chimpanzee is already a problem, and that between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal man really muddies the waters. If you can cast doubt on whatever links people think they have found, this will help the case that God created our particular form of human independently of all other forms of life.
 
The above is the only pattern I can find that joins the various dots of information you have given me, but I apologize in advance if I've got it wrong again! The extremely interesting early-morning, pre-coffee post contains very little that I would disagree with, but when I wrote about "the emergence of new species" I could just as easily have written new forms, new varieties, new organs, or indeed anything new.