Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, January 11, 2015, 22:42 (3604 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You have cut out the alternative which followed the quote: “...Or he might have specially created the duck-billed platypus. Or there might be some strange way in which matter generated its own intelligence, with the same result.”-We've covered strange life forms before. I've explained that as a need for balance in nature since everyone has to eat someone. Also I've told you that life is obviously very inventive, from the information it works with. As for matter generating information in a strange way, yes, that is enormously strange. No one can point to information generated by matter in our reality. You are being very inventive to avoid the issue of the origin of information. Only a mental state, an originating intellect can do this.-> dhw: You seem to have decided to abandon the “key point” which forms the subject of this thread, but perhaps you feel you are on safer ground with your old friends information, and chance v. design.- The key point is I maintain humans are obviously different in kind, and only guidance by God can help evolution to do that. 
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> dhw: Of course he doesn't say God did it. And I have never said initial information was not required. Nor have I ever said that God did not provide it (or did provide it - I'm an agnostic!). Nobody knows where it came from. That is the great mystery which you think you have solved through conjuring up another great mystery: an infinite and eternal mind from nowhere.-I understand your objections, but only an intellect can create information. So I am left with the only logical choice I see, an eternal mind.