More Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 07, 2024, 15:08 (22 days ago) @ dhw

Origin of humans

DAVID: God chose to evolve us as a purpose, stepwise, for His own unknown reasons. Experimentation not necessary as He is omniscient.

dhw: Omniscience is another attribute you wish for. Experimentation would not be necessary IF he was omniscient. Hence the question why an omniscient God with only one purpose (sapiens plus food) would not design us directly. “Unknown reasons!” you cry, as if that explained anything! God experimenting and learning would be a logical answer. Your response: “That goes against the God I wish for.”

Your dive into God's brain is your refusal to understand theologian's views. Your logic is not God's logic!

Darwin’s survival theory

dhw: You agree that your God’s original purpose was to improve chances of survival, and your God did not control subsequent complexifications. These resulted from new ideas, many of which were and are extensions of basic survival improvements through inventions, discoveries and institutions. All perfectly in keeping with Darwin’s theory of survival.

DAVID: As a very limited view of it. Adler used the very opposite view.

dhw: Please stop hiding behind Adler. All of the above illustrates the obvious link between the human brain and its ever-present use from origin to present in the cause of survival. Your wish that your God gave it neurons that would not be used or only barely used for 290,000 years does not invalidate the theory that it originated as a continuation of the quest for improved chances of survival. Darwin’s theory is not wrong.

Survival and common descent everyone agrees to. Only some see God the designer.

Introducing the brain: Defining sex differences

DAVID: We'll wait for a slew of trans brains to study.

dhw: It could make a big difference to negative social attitudes if scientists could explain these feelings as natural consequences of brain differences.

DAVID: What is now true is obvious very male and quite feminine homosexuals, with exactly the same in lesbians: 'butch' and very feminine.

dhw: Indeed. And horrifically they were once branded as criminals (and still are in some cultures). There are vast numbers of animal species that are also gay, and I’m sure their brain wiring would be different too, as would “trans brains”. But I must admit that the latter do create social problems that do not arise from homosexuality and lesbianism. No blame attached, but in the competitive world of sport, and in places like prisons and public lavatories, integration of “trans” people is a tricky matter which is causing a lot of controversy over here.

AND here.

Evolution and purpose: teleonomy.

QUOTES:[the authors have explored] “in depth the different ways in which living systems have themselves shaped the course of evolution.”

As this collection compellingly shows, and as bacterial geneticist James Shapiro emphasizes, “The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable.”

ID’s answer

dhw: I’ll summarize my response, which was that the author devised a straw man by pretending that the book sets up natural selection and random mutations as the answer to ID. It doesn’t. The above quotes propose that evolution develops through the autonomous ability of organisms to do their own designing. The ID reviewer then criticizes the book for not dealing with the origin of life (or in this case the origin of cellular autonomy), but that is not the subject the book is concerned with (unless the description is horribly selective).

DAVID: You've made a good review. ID accepts God. What you have avoided is the obvious purpose in evolution, the point of the book, which it tries to explain.

dhw: I didn’t avoid it. I wrote: “Of course they design with purpose! Every organisms‘s prime purpose is survival, and every evolutionary development either enables survival or improves the chances of survival.”

The reviewer is looking for purpose as God evolved us.

Handedness origin

QUOTES: "Monkeys that adopted an urban lifestyle in India are mostly left-handed – in contrast to humans and many other primates that live on the ground.”

"The findings clash with long-standing claims that primates that come down from the trees generally evolve a tendency to be right-handed, raising questions about what really drives this trait.”

dhw: I am applying for a grant to conduct a worldwide survey in order to establish the exact proportion of right and left handedness in monkeys and babies, and how this proportion is proportioned in proportion to the right and left handedness of parents and grandparents. All contributions will be most welcome.

From my lefty point of view I'll help.