Miscellany: gaps in evolution cause discontinuity (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 20, 2021, 14:48 (1042 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Make a fun point. My background in geology is what I illustrated. Our Geology professor guide taught us three semesters of geology in nine days.

dhw: Happy to have a bit of fun. Did he tell you that God personally designed every living form de novo “as part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” plus lunch, and this is proven by the fact that the Grand Canyon does not contain a complete record of every life form that ever lived?

Saw lots of fossils.

dhw: Neither he [Shapiro] nor I use the words “brilliant committees”. He says that cells are cognitive beings which produce “evolutionary novelty” by means of self-modification. I wish you would stop pretending this doesn't mean intelligent cells were responsible for speciation.

You make it sound as if cell committees drive evolution. Pure theory whichv I wish was that simple to answer. My answer is the complexity of design requires a designing mind.

dhw: Ten million years is an enormous expanse of time in terms of generations of intelligent organisms adapting to or exploiting new conditions. Ignoring Shapiro's theory does not invalidate it.

DAVID: The 10 million years is in the start of the Cambrian and only Cambrian complexity appears!!!

dhw: How does that prove that intelligent cells (possibly created by your God) did not design the complexities?

DAVID: I've disagreed before: God does not do secondhand creation.

dhw: Your usual statement of blinkered opinion as if it were a fact.

I should have written 'my' God. Yours does.