Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 04, 2017, 18:35 (2662 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: For animals with a brain, intelligence testing is straight forward. With single celled animals, one tests intelligent planning or intelligence, either or.

dhw: In both cases, the tests relate to an organism’s ability to solve problems with which it is not normally confronted. How does one test to see if an organism has inherited a computer programme designed 3.8 billion years ago by God, or has received God's personal guidance?

We cannot differentiate, since all we can study are the genomes that are present now.

dhw: As always, you highlight complexities, which I keep acknowledging are a major argument against atheism. ...the complexities of dinosaurs evolving into birds, like the complexities of whale evolution, monarch migration and the blessed weaverbird's nest, do not denote that the whole of evolution was directed towards the production of humans.

Not directly, but the appearance of teleology to reach humans is overwhelming to me.

DAVID: No, I've included the issue of dabbling. Not a perfect program from the beginning, but God stepping in to direct the changes.

dhw: OK, but dabbling also means personal design. What do you mean by “not a perfect program”? Did your God make mistakes in his planning? Or are you now going back to your “freewheeling” inventive mechanism which two days ago turned out to be neither free nor inventive?

My approach assumes God is always in control to guide evolution to reach the current human form, which I believe is the final step, with no further human change. Total control means pre-planning, possible dabbling, and some degree of free-wheeling modifications edited by God as He sees fit.

DAVID: Your scenario requires organismal genetic intelligence they obviously don't have, but assumed to possibly exist. The complexity of life obviously requires meticulous planning to create life and then have it advance with increasing complexity.

dhw:However, even if I accept the God theory as a basic premise, I can still find no sense in the attempt to link the whole history of evolution to the production of a single species. Since you can’t understand the relevance of that history yourself, why can’t you accept the possibility that he did NOT plan humans right from the start?

The reasoning I follow starts with the miraculous appearance of a universe that is fine-tuned for life, followed by one unusually specialized planet that can allow life to appear. Life appears miraculously on an inorganic planet, then modified by living matter into a very different planet. And finally that life modifies in an evolutionary pattern to produce humans who can study and partially understand the universe they live in. I'm sorry if you cannot see that the majesty of that series of events requires a master mind to drive the entire process. Humans were always to goal. I remind you other primates were living happily eight million years ago, without an advance to us required. But it happened. End of case.