Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 19, 2013, 15:43 (3778 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We don't know why hominins left the trees [...] but transitional hominin forms have been recently found to have heavy arms for tree work, but also more upright postural changes and better walking ability. This is highly suggestive that they weren't forced to leave the trees as they prepared to descend. Looks for all the world as preplanning!-Only to those who like to think it was all preplanned. I can see no reason at all why the first generation of primates to leave the trees should immediately have developed human-type arms. Refinements would have taken generations, and we can hardly expect to find fossils covering all the generations in between the first primate descenders and the first proper hominins. The higgledy-piggledy line of transitional forms looks for all the world like nature taking its own evolutionary course, as cell communities gradually found more efficient and more sophisticated ways of mastering the environment.-Dhw: Why, then, is it a problem for you if we say that humans are simply different from the other primates, just as chimps are different from gorillas, and primates are different from dogs, crows and ants?
DAVID: But, they are not 'simply different'. They are vastly different. You are minimizing the difference. You can do lots better stuff than sniffing other dogs butts, flying, or tunneling underground.-A misunderstanding. I meant simply 'different', as opposed to 'different in kind'. Of course all these organisms are vastly different. You can hardly begin to compare a dog to a crow to an ant to a human. But that's all we need to say. "Degree" versus "kind" is a non-issue, except for anthropocentrists trying to prove an unprovable point.-Dhw: Perhaps David thinks that all languages were preprogrammed into the very first cells, along with billions of other innovations, lifestyles etc. that God crammed in there.
DAVID: What's wrong with preplanning?-Despite the conclusions of many scientists in the field, you find it incredible that cells should be regarded as intelligent beings. And yet despite the lack of any evidence or support from the scientific community, you are prepared to believe that your God inserted into the first few living cells billions of programmes that had to be passed down through billions of generations of cells and cell communities to cover virtually every innovation, lifestyle, strategy throughout the history of evolution ... from kidneys to fire-ant rafts to Swahili. (The only alternative you are prepared to consider is that your God popped in to teach cells how to make kidneys, fire ants to make themselves into rafts, and various African tribes to speak Swahili.) I just find the scale and the inconsistencies of your divine preplanning hypothesis beyond the bounds of credibility ... but I guess that's faith for you.