dhw: big brain evolution:comparing chimp and brain organoids (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, April 12, 2019, 11:15 (1843 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You are demanding knowledge of God's mind I cannot have. Your complaint is totally illogical. Read your own first sentence.

dhw: But you claim that you do have knowledge of your God’s mind: his one and only purpose was to design the brain of H. sapiens, and he chose to spend 3.5+ billion years designing every other life form so that they could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design, and you have no idea why. My first sentence accepts that he would have had a purpose and would have chosen his method to achieve that purpose. And I have proposed different purposes and methods, all of which you have agreed fit logically into the history of life on Earth.

DAVID: You have mirrored my interpretation exactly. I cannot know why God chose His method, We have discussed all the possible reasons and all are logic al guesses.

Yes, it is your own interpretation of his goal and method that you cannot understand. And since you have no idea why he would have chosen such a goal and method, I have suggested different interpretations of goal and/or method, all of which we can both understand perfectly well. I suggest therefore that the least likely of all the interpretations is the one neither of us can understand.

DAVID: You simply object to my opinion that God's major purpose was human minds.

dhw: I have offered you a logical explanation of evolution IF God’s one and only purpose was H. sapiens’ brain. I “simply” object to your combined opinions that humans were his only purpose and he therefore chose to design anything but humans for 3.5+ billion years, and you have no idea why.

DAVID: The majesty of the human brain declares His purpose. It cannot have appeared by chance.

The complexity of ALL life is such that we both find it impossible to believe in chance as the cause. Chance has never been the issue between us. The dispute is over your inexplicable combination of hypotheses (single goal, 3.5+ billion years spent on not fulfilling it).

dhw: And all I can say is that I sympathize with you when you say you have no idea why your God chose to design all these different hominins and hominids when the only homo he wanted to design was sapiens.

DAVID: He certainly gave them wanderlust to travel all over and adapt to new climates and locations.

But that does not explain why he would have chosen such a roundabout way to design the only form of human that he wanted to design. The ever increasing variety suggests to me that if your God exists, he may have designed a mechanism enabling all life forms to adapt and innovate in response to ever changing environmental conditions.