David's theory of evolution: James A. Shapiro's view (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 05, 2020, 12:42 (1535 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: It was you who changed the subject from evolution to cosmic events (see the first quote) and apparently you still haven’t realized that my question concerned evolution and precise control. (Chixculub was a cosmic event that had a huge influence on evolution, but I was referring to environmental changes both global and local.) So do please answer the question now: do you think your God controlled all the environmental changes, both local and global, which were and still are associated with every adaptation, innovation and bacterial response throughout the history of life and evolution. If not…see above re a crystal ball.

DAVID: As is quite clear, I am not sure God has precise control over ongoing environmental and cosmological individual events in ongoing processes He set up originally, as the Chixculub comment shows. Your desire to know God precisely is an impossible task. You always push for guesses.

It's quite clear that it's not clear. I’m sorry, but when someone advances a theory, I push for answers to the questions that theory raises. You do exactly the same when I present you with alternatives. According to you, your God either preprogrammed the first cells with answers to all the problems bacteria would face for the rest of time, and with all the innovations that would lead to new species, or he continually dabbled. You describe him as “knowing exactly what He wants and sees to it it happens”. Evolution is the history of ever changing life forms that cope or fail to cope with ever changing environments. You cannot separate the one from the other. In the case of bacteria, how could your God possibly preprogramme solutions to every problem if he did not know the problems in advance? The same applies to all the innovations and major adaptations which you insist preceded the relevant changes in the environment. Why are you so afraid of facing up to this question and to other questions related to your highly personal theory of evolution? And if your own brilliant mind is incapable of finding any logical answers to them, why are you so afraid of alternatives that do provide logical answers?