Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 07, 2015, 18:33 (3608 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: It is clear that whether you believe in a soul or not, animals and humans share the same mechanism for their modes of thinking, which inevitably leads to the question of just what you think your God created separately. If animal bodies evolved and human bodies evolved, why would the animal soul-brain mechanism evolve but the human soul-brain mechanism have to be separately created? -DAVID: I think you are correct as far as you have gone. Upon reflection I have told you that I equate soul and consciousness. I do think the brain acts as a receiver especially because of the evidence from NDE's. I am sure that animal consciousness/soul complexes are not the same as human and the human is different in kind not degree. I think special evolution by God created the very specialized and different upright body posture, specialized use of the arms and hands, and a very superior and different brain and consciousness. I do not see continuity but special creation. -So far, this is simply a reiteration of your beliefs. You may be right, but the purpose of our discussions is to probe the rationale underlying beliefs (and disbeliefs), even though we always come back to faith.
 
DAVID: The basic reason is I see apes the same as 10 million years ago. Unchanged and vastly left behind when the human development is compared. I see no natural cause for this, or natural impetus that would drive it as a challenge to be overcome. If we assume animal improvements are evolved to improve survivorship, there is no evidence of that need in the animals we seem to have arisen from. We changed. They didn't. It is not a 'how' question to be solved. It is a 'why' question and all I see is purpose.-The key to this is common descent. As you yourself have repeatedly pointed out, bacteria remain unchanged, and so multicellularity and evolution itself could not have been a matter simply of improving “survivorship”. There must be some kind of drive towards improvement for its own sake, and that - as reflected in our own human culture - is a purpose in itself. Multicellularity, sex, the senses - all these improvements would in turn have led to greater competition and even more innovation. Once a life form is established and able to survive, it will remain the same until some individuals hit on new improvements. It's not unreasonable to assume that as with every other innovation, apes survived perfectly well unchanged, but a particular group eventually came up with something new and branched out. (Every innovation must take place within existing organisms if you believe in common descent.) We don't know how it started. We don't know how any innovations started. Tony might argue that this is grounds for not believing in common descent - but you do believe in it. And so the history of startling improvements is not from apes to humans but from bacteria to humans, and NONE of these changes were “needed”.-That is not an argument against God, as it doesn't explain the source of the mechanisms for improvement, but it seems to me to invalidate the claim that humans are “special creations” because their abilities were not needed for survival. If humans weren't “needed”, nor were any of the organs and organisms that evolved from the first cells, and all species remain unchanged until they go extinct, or branch out following innovations! -dhw: I didn't actually ask how it all works, but whenever I raise alternative hypotheses to your own, that is the sort of question you ask, as if not knowing invalidated the hypothesis in all cases but your own.-DAVID: I try to work only from what I already know or can be learned, and then try to work to the best solution to what problem or theory is presented.-So do all honest truth-seekers of whatever persuasion.