Progressive Creationism vs Darwinian Evolution

Pro starts by linking a reading assignment, saying he needs more room than site limit of 8000 characters allows. Attempting to break the character limit is a conduct violation under site rules. Arguments must be made entirely within the debate. I will not read Pro's linked arguments, and they cannot be counted as a response. Pro says the external arguments define God's attributes. Defining magical attributes would not, in any case, answer my objections that an appeal to magic is not an explanation. Pro is not debating. He is giving a statement of belief while largely ignoring my arguments. Pro claimed explanatory power from creationism; I rebutted that magical creation is not an explanation, He made no response. He said fine tuning necessarily implies a God. I responded that if there were an intent to design for human benefit, the universe would not be so overwhelmingly hostile to human life. Moreover, I gave several possible natural explanations to apparent fine tuning. It may be that life is fine tuned for a niche in the universe, rather than the other way around. It may be that there is an underlying theory that links all the physical parameters. It may be that there are billions of parallel universe having all the combinations of parameters, with only the one we are in visible to us. Pro must prove that only a creationist theory is viable, so he must prove all the natural alternatives are impossible.Pro claimed that time cannot be infinite. I pointed out that multiverse theory does not call upon an expanding universe, so infinite time is not disallowed by inflation theory. In addition, it's a mistake to assume that cosmology is determined by our ordinary experience of time. Hawking has proposed that time has two dimensions. While the Big Bang is a singularity in real time, continuity is maintained in the other dimension of time, called imaginary time. “If space and imaginary time are indeed like the surface of the Earth, there wouldn't be any singularities in the imaginary time direction, at which the laws of physics would break down. And there wouldn't be any boundaries, to the imaginary time space-time, just as there aren't any boundaries to the surface of the Earth. This absence of boundaries means that the laws of physics would determine the state of the universe uniquely, in imaginary time.” [7. http://www.hawking.org.uk...] For present purposes, it suffices to say that time may not be infinite, but also not have a beginning. Pro has not responded to my previous arguments. Suboptimal designPro points out an objection to intelligent design that I did not make, then tries to answer it with only two examples. The objection is that an omniscient designer would not have made as many design errors as are apparent in humans. Humans share use of the esophagus for feeding and breathing, and that leads to people choking to death when food blocks air intake. In the U.K., there were 16,000 hospitalizations in a recent year due to choking accidents. [8. http://news.bbc.co.uk...] In the U.S. there are about 3,000 accidental deaths from choking yearly, and perhaps ten times as many hospitalizations. The solution is evident. Dolphins, for example, are mammals with separate feeding and breathing openings. Another good example is the incidence of back problems. The human spine evolved before walking upright, and it's designed to lock when horizontal rather than vertical. Scientist Bruce Latimer notes, “Over the course of a lifetime, with the stresses and loads of daily activities, we're apt to develop problems such as a herniated disk. Even walking, with the process of moving our arms and legs to carry an upright back, results in a constant twisting and torquing of the spine, Latimer said. No other animal has to deal with a mechanical system in this way.” [9. http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com...] Another scientist points out, “Likewise, the human foot's structure has evolved in a way that also causes problems. There are 26 bones in the foot, and as a whole it's not designed to shield us from pain. In fact, there's ancient evidence of ankle sprains, osteoarthritis and fractured ankles, back to the origins of upright walking,” [9, op cit] Chronic pain from wisdom teeth is another example cited in the article. Hemorrhoids and hernias are two only consequences of evolution failing to keep up with the needs of the human species. “symptomatic hemorrhoids affect at least 50% of the US population at some time during their lives” [10. http://en.wikipedia.org...] It's a clear design shortcoming. Pro notes that non-coding DNA was once erroneously called “junk DNA,” although the term was and is much more commonly used by the lay press than by scientists. “Non-coding” means that the DNA does not produce proteins. With respect to evolution, it doesn't matter what, if any, functions non-coding DNA has, the important thing is that non-coding sequences are used to trace the lineage of species in evolution. Non-coding DNA reveals that whales, cows, and hippos have a common evolutionary ancestor not shared by mice, horses, and kangaroos. [11. http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org...] Virtually no scientists believe that in humans all non-coding DNA has a function, although more functionality may be discovered. Non-coding DNA is the part that varies from individual to individual and is used for DNA identification. Pro gives two examples of apparent design defects that turned out to have some function. I'm sure there are others. It is a hasty and unwarranted generalization to suppose that all design flaws will be found to be optimal. Pro can start by giving the advantages of choking, back pain, haemorrhoids, foot pain, chronic wisdom teeth pain, hernia, and so forth. Evolution does not require that species be perfectly designed for their environment. It only requires that they have have a design good enough to survive in the environment. Design Decay Pro cites a creationist who claims that design defects like susceptibility to disease are not part of the original design, but rather the result of decay due to mutations. No peer reviewed scientific literature is cited to support the theory. Various species have different susceptibility to mutations. Horseshoe crabs are highly immune to mutation and have changed very little in 400 million years. [12. http://www.sciencedaily.com...] They live in a “microbial soup,” yet survive without an immune system, and they can survive such indignities as having 30% of the blood drained out of them. [13. http://www.horseshoecrab.org...] Humans, by contrast, have evolved significantly by mutation in the last million years, and have had significant evolutionary changes even in the last ten thousand. If mutation are harmful deterioration, then God has perfected the design of horseshoe crabs to a much greater degree than humans. Should we therefore conclude that horseshoe crabs are God's favored creatures? No, intelligent design fails to predict what has happened. Rapid mutation has aided human evolution by evolving intelligence as a survival attribute. Horseshoe crabs are well-adapted to their ecological niche, so resistance to mutation is a survival advantage. For humans who must adapt to different environments, it is a disadvantage. Susceptibility to disease is hardly the only design defect of humans. Do creationists suppose that humans once had separate passages for breathing and eating, and that mutations spoiled the design by merging them? Or that the design of the spine once favored an upright stance, and has recently deteriorated? No, such theories are contrary to the fossil and DNA evidence.