An Alternative to Evolution: pt 2 (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 10, 2018, 10:56 (2116 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: DHW, you are playing fast and loose with language. The Theory of Evolution is dependent upon random mutations. Period. It is entirely based on chance. A chance that has been proven impossible mathematically according to all we know (which admittedly isn't much).

Tony, you are closing your eyes to the fact that there are evolutionists who believe that God designed the whole process, and they reject random mutations in favour of design. David is one of them. Period.

TONY: If something is not random chance, it is designed. Any answer to the Theory of Evolution is going to be rooted in Intelligent Design. Something is either random, or its not. We have all agreed, repeatedly, that random chance is out of the question. That leaves design.

Precisely the argument of our dear friend David, a theistic evolutionist, and I wish he would say so himself.

TONY: It has never been observed, to my knowledge, that a species suddenly acquired brand new genetic functionality that it didn't have before.

Yes, innovation is the problem.

TONY: I know they can be manipulated into that, but that is design. I know that they can re-purpose existing functionality to adapt to their environments. But new functionality being inserted into the genome during its own life has not, that I am aware of, been observed. And that is the observation that must be made before I consider the idea of an inventive intelligence at the cellular level, because that is what must be done in order to pass that information to the next generation.

All agreed. I keep saying it myself: we know organisms can adapt, but we do not know if the mechanism for adaptation can extend so far as to innovation. That is why it is a hypothesis.

TONY: I've considered your hypothesis multiple times, but that is the sticking point for me. At least one organism needs to cross the threshhold of adding a working function to their genome during the lifespan of a single celled organism.

And why do you think your God is incapable of doing just that? Or incapable of installing a mechanism that would enable cells to do just that?

Tony: Again, this hypothesis does not question the nature of the designer. But if there are questions about things that we see,like the Cambrian Explosion, it gives a new perspective, a new way of looking at the data. A good way to bring science to bear on the questions, and perhaps even find that our way of looking at things is backwards and much of what we think we know is wrong because everyone is looking for random chance in a world full of design. How many lives would be saved if we cracked the universal genetic code down to the programming level? ALS? Alzheimers? Diabetes?

All fine, except that back you go to random chance. The history of life as we know it shows a vast bush of organisms that have come and gone. As far as we know, humans are a late development. As far as we know, bacteria have been here since the year dot. So why do you think your God could not have designed a mechanism for life to produce a vast bush of organisms that have come and gone, starting with bacteria and (possibly) culminating in us humans? If we accept your belief in God, the alternative here is not chance versus design. It is between evolution designed by God and….what designed by God? You still haven’t told us!