Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Friday, June 11, 2021, 12:13 (1051 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If God exists, he can do what he likes. That doesn't mean his one purpose was to design H. sapiens, and therefore he designed millions of organisms “de novo”, 99% of which had no connection with H. sapiens. Dodge, dodge, dodge!

DAVID: 'Dodge, dodge, dodge' is my belief!!!

dhw: Not exactly the most productive way of holding a discussion.

DAVID: It is not a dodge, but a full rejection of your constant illogical complaint. We have previous had full discussions of why God does what He does based on evidence.

The only way you can reject my complaint is by providing a logical reason why your God, whose only purpose you insist was to design humans plus lunch, should first have designed millions of life forms etc, 99% of which had no connection with humans or their lunch.

Clear evidence of common descent
dhw: It's you who claim that because there is no fossil record of every stage of every organism, God must have created species “de novo”. That means you believe evolution was NOT a continuous process of common descent.[…]

DAVID: […] I believe in a God-caused common descent. They look the same.

Common descent means that every life form (apart from the very first) is descended from a preceding life form. De novo creation means that life forms were created from scratch – i.e. without any precedent. Please clarify which of them you believe in.

Horizontal gene transfer
QUOTE: "...the smelt discovery and other recent examples all point to horizontal transfers playing an influential role in evolution."

DAVID: The paper then covers many pages of research review on possible mechanism including parasite transfer. Nothing is conclusive but it certainly fits my notion of God dabbling.

Indeed, even the tiniest of changes fits your notion of your God dabbling. If you wished, you could claim that every word you write on this forum fits your notion of your God dabbling. After all, who can tell the difference between autonomous intelligence and God-guided intelligence? Meanwhile, these mechanisms also fit my notion of a free-for-all.

Controls over cell division
DAVID: A very clever mechanism, that had to be designed. Haphazard growth is not a logical process, and chance evolution is not logical.

I can’t pretend to understand the technicalities, but I can certainly agree that such processes are anything but the product of chance. Evolution is one long history of cells changing or adapting their structures as and when new problems and conditions arise. Design of some kind is apparent in every phase – but even a believer like yourself has no way of knowing whether the intelligence required for such design is that of the cells themselves (possibly designed originally by your God) or that of your God doing his divine programming/ dabbling. You have repeatedly offered odds of 50/50.