Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, September 02, 2018, 15:22 (2056 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The gap is because the body types don't follow in any way. Quoting a Darwin site carries the message, "they must have evolved", without any semblance of proof. Typical Darwin declaration without thought and you present it, but do you believe it?

The gap is because the body types don’t follow in any way. “An unknown, unknowable, sourceless designer we call God must have created them out of nowhere.” Typical theist declaration without any semblance of proof, and you present it, but do you believe it?

dhw: I don’t think you have ever quite understood the reason why I am an agnostic. The explanations of life’s history offered by both theists and atheists are so full of Cambrian-style gaps that I cannot place my faith in any of them. I look for alternative hypotheses, such as cellular intelligence and a form of panpsychism, though even these are too tenuous for me to believe in. The Cambrian is a mystery that nobody has yet solved. Like yourself, I do believe in common descent, and if I believed in your God (and I do not disbelieve), I could certainly contemplate the possibility of a dabble, but I do not find that any more convincing than your God endowing organisms (cell communities) with an autonomous inventive intelligence of their own to create the innovations that mark the Cambrian. This hypothesis preserves common descent and explains the speciation gaps – but I recognize that it too has a massive gap: the lack of evidence that the intelligence of cell communities can extend beyond adaptation to innovation. That is why I keep emphasizing that it is a HYPOTHESIS, not a belief.

I do understand your point of view. That is why the point picket fence analogy. No firm foothold, no firm belief in 'why is there anything'. No firm belief in your own inventive theories. At least we agree life followed an evolutionary course with a degree of branching we can call common descent. We agree on descriptive terms , not cause and effect.