You are absolutely correct that I am incapable of reading the mind of God.
And if God wanted to start with a lot of diversity among the phyla and then
not create any new phyla at all later, I must agree with you. This question
is intimately involved in the question of God's methodology. Does God work
solely by miracle (PC) or does he use natural processes (TE). What would we
look for in each case?
Do we expect God to produce a pattern from his miraculous activity?
If so, and if the pattern is repeatable, then a law can be derived from the
pattern. A good analogy to this problem may be the theological view that God
moved the planets. When Newton provided the laws, he explained the motion of
the planets, but it might be that God moves the planets and gravity is wrong.
All God has to do is always move the planets in the form Newton suggested
(or observed). From this perspective we can not tell the difference between a
miracle which always occurs and activity which is governed by a law which was
in turn instituted by God.
It is this which I am (very poorly) attempting to convey. There is a
pattern in the fossil record of lots of phyla early. Like a random walk of
numerous worms in a DNA phase space the early phyla were generated. I
believe that the DNA phase space is a multidimensional map of all possible
animals. If you release numerous worms to travel through this phase space,
it is unlikely that any two will go in the same direction, especially if the
phase space is made of billions of billions of dimensions. If some of the
worms going in particular directions go extinct, it is highly unlikely that
the survivors, which are in an entirely different part of the phase space,
can easily retrace the steps of the extinct worms. The survivors are
somewhat limited in their ability to traverse the space due to the fact that
some regions of the phase space are lethal. Thus a novel life-form which
originally radiated from the same DNA phase point as most other macroscopic
animals would now be limited to producing variants on the basic plan
determined by the region of DNA phase space it is already in. Thus, the
phyla once extinct would be expected to remain extinct in TE.
In PC, if God so chose, He could re-establish a lost phyla. He has not
so chosen.
Can I prove that God didn't use PC? No. You are correct here. Can I
point out that the expectation of a random walk in DNA phase space is
substantiated by the fossil record? I think so.
Gordon wrote:
>>I agree; this does seem to fit in well with the TE perspective. But
unless you can read the mind of God, I see no reason why this does not fit
into the PC perspective as well.
It still seems to me that it is possible that both the PC and TE positions
are correct - in that no amount of effort is going to demonstrate that one
view is correct and the other is wrong. (The last phrase is important.)<<
I do agree with you here. Neither one will disprove the other. That being
the case, the game becomes one of persuasion. :-)
glenn