How I came to believe: More about Darwin (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 13, 2015, 12:27 (3111 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Wednesday, October 14, 2015, 07:38

DAVID: And I disagree with your interpretation.
dhw: You agree that Darwin's theory does NOT offer any explanation as to the origin of life, and yet you agree that Darwin's theory purports to explain the origin of life?-DAVID: It is a difference in a nuance of thought: Darwin gives an explanation for evolution by common descent. Therefore he implies that first life is prepared for that process. Of course he gives no explanation of first life. No one can. And he obviously doesn't explain evolution in his theory which is a chancey purposeless process. Thus by inference first life was a chance, purposeless event, and atheists love the idea. And theists resent it.-Millions of theists now accept Darwin's theory on condition that evolution was God's work. It is not the theory of evolution that they resent, but the atheistic interpretation of it, and in any case both sides use the same distortion for their own agenda. Once more, Darwin's theory does not purport to explain the origin of life, and it is a misrepresentation to say that it does. Please do not defend such disgraceful behaviour! Join me in the crusade against ignorance and distortion! Stand firm in the cause of truth and justice! Yeehallelujahah!-dhw: As for purpose, the only one you are prepared to offer us is God's intention to produce and feed humans, and of course Darwin does not subscribe to this. That does not make his theory atheistic. Survival is his overriding purpose (to which I would add improvement, substituting my hypothetical autonomous inventive mechanism for his random mutations).-DAVID: Of course, we are back to the tautology 'survival of the fittest'. Of course anything living has to try to survive until death appears for the multicellular. Haven't you forgotten the first single cell on Earth is still alive in its split-away progeny 3.6 billion years later! Darwin's survival idea does not explain speciation, or multicellularity.-I agree, which is why I have added improvement to survival. It is what you called the drive to complexity, and it is implemented by a mechanism that may or may not have been designed by your God: in your view, the mechanism is apparently a 3.8-billion-year computer programme, supplemented by divine dabbling, and in my hypothesis it is an autonomous intelligence.
 
dhw: Darwin on race and slavery [/I commondescent.net/articles/darwin_on_race.htmCached
[i]In order to counter the smear and innuendo spewed forth by many antievolutionists on the subject of Darwin and racism, here are some of Darwin's actual words ... -DAVID: Thank you for the clarification. They also seem to blame him for the terrible Eugenics efforts of the early last century.-Yes, in much the same way as atheists might blame "God" for the atrocities committed in his name. There is no limit to the intellectual contortions practised by people with a fixed agenda.