By FRANS de WAAL: refuted (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, November 14, 2016, 17:57 (2712 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Hold on. Yes, we did quite literally build brick by brick on their foundation. The giant leap, which I acknowledge, is our enhanced consciousness. Everything else follows on from that. Our early ancestors lived in caves, like their fellow animals, but then they started to build, and brick by brick their buildings “evolved” from the simplest of huts to the colossal edifices of modern architecture. The same process applies to all the other manifestations of our enhanced consciousness – all built brick by brick on the foundations we have inherited.

Of course learning to use our huge ability with our new consciousness took time after it appeared in the first H. sapiens 200,000 years ago. But our current culture and ability was ordained back then. You have talked around hat gap in evolution.

DAVID: You cannot accept our vast difference as a true jump beyond the type of change we see prior to the development of a series of humans.... Other primates hardly changed in that period, but we leapt forward. An intervention by God is the best explanation.

dhw: I keep emphasizing that stress is not the only factor, but you refuse to accept the drive to improvement. Nobody knows how humans acquired their extra degrees of consciousness, but I have repeatedly accepted the possibility that there may be a God who dabbled. Whether that is the “best” explanation remains open to question, as does the existence of God, but you always revert to this mode of attack when I question your interpretation of evolution.

I've noted previously my drive to complexity includes improvement. I am not espousing complexity for the sake of unreasonable useless complexity.

dhw: It is perfectly possible to recognize the vast gap between our consciousness and that of our fellow animals without believing that every single innovation and natural wonder was specially designed by God to keep life going so that humans could appear. THAT is the disagreement between us.

Then tell me why humans appeared for no reason, against all odds.