Chimp vs. human brain (Introduction)

by hyjyljyj , Thursday, December 13, 2012, 15:48 (4364 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Thursday, December 13, 2012, 16:12

From dhw-DAVID: [...] the construction of life from the very beginning had to be very complex. Life can only be complex or it won't live. But, part of that complexity was a genome that permitted advancing complexity, a complexity that occurred as nature allowed. We are the most complex thing around. We arrived. It was allowed to happen. It didn't have to happen, but it did. The pre-planning is the input at the beginning. Not along the way.-I've written very similar things myself over and over again and am in complete agreement with you and hyjyljyj (under Ch 16, A Mad World): this is atheism's Achilles' heel. And if only you would stick to this argument, instead of insisting that the whole of evolution was pre-planned for the production of homo sapiens, this discussion would be unnecessary. If now you accept that it didn't have to happen, i.e. that the arrival of homo sapiens was NOT pre-planned as the goal of evolution, we could shake hands and end the discussion. But we can't, because your anthropocentrism is still present in the following argumentsAVID: We have consciousness. 
Agreed.-DAVID: I don't believe it was invented by evolution. 
And of course your belief may or may not be right. I have no idea how consciousness was "invented", but it seems to me that there has been a clear increase in degree from, say, bacteria to animals to humans. OUR degree of consciousness/self-consciousness may therefore have evolved through the billions of species, generations, adaptations and innovations that have arisen out of the potential inventiveness of the original mechanism. This seems just as likely or unlikely as the following theoryAVID: It was always present in the UI.
This presupposes the existence of a UI...-DAVID: And reappeared in us, made in the image of God in our minds.
...and it also presupposes that we were made in the image of a self-aware God, as opposed to evolving through a less conscious intelligence (as per my slant on panpsychism), or an unconscious energy (as per atheism) ... all of which I find equally difficult to believe.-DAVID: If a UI started all this it is logical to assume that it wanted a result with consciousness like its own.
(Ah: anthropocentrism again!) Or of course it could have entertained itself by playing games with different forms of life just to see how things would turn out (one form of "deistic" God ... see hyjyljyj under Ch. 16).-DAVID (under Ch. 16): Such planning in ancient life requires a self-aware intelligence because it shows teleologic planning.-It only requires self-awareness if there IS teleological planning! Yet again you are reading purpose into the original mechanisms, and that purpose yet again seems to be the production of homo sapiens. You go on: "I doubt any tweaking was ever needed. Of course, I am assuming a perfect planner makes a perfect plan with a perfect result." And "As you know I always try to work from what we see. What you see are my logical assumptions and extrapolations."-But you have agreed that there is nothing logical (by human standards) about a plan to create homo sapiens via an evolutionary bush that involves billions of other species extant and extinct, not to mention other forms of humans that...oops...also got knocked out. (What, I wonder, are your criteria for perfection?!) Your response to this problem was that God has his own logic, and we shouldn't "want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts." If one explanation is not logical by the only form of logic you and I can understand, why not look for another explanation that might be more logical? That the original mechanism "allowed for" complexity and the arrival of good old homo sapiens is obvious, since that is what happened, but "allowed for" does not in any way mean that there was a specific pre-planned purpose.-Great stuff! -For my 2¢ worth, I, too, wonder about H. sapiens as the ultimate goal of the creator. The idea goes that "we" are created in God's image, so he's just like us, and vice versa. Theists and religionists of every stripe are united on this front. An inhuman God would be...well, just inhuman. And we can't worship that. The assumption seems to be that, while imperfect, we must be it, the absolute pinnacle of the evolution of life expression (not just so far, but the ultimate pinnacle, the endpoint), no improvement or further advancement (toward godliness?) necessary or even possible. Interestingly atheists cling to this idea of man's supremacy as tenaciously as theists, as proof that there is no need for a god; I find the idea fairly easy to challenge, with even a fleeting glance at a history book, newspaper, TV or Washington DC.