Different in degree or kind: animal minds (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 21:13 (3025 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: As far as patterns of form and shape are concerned, I would suggest there are greater differences in kind between an ant and an elephant than there are between a chimp and a human. You just have a problem figuring out how the rest fit in with humans being God's purpose.-Phenotype differences are just different body form developments in the branches of the bush of life. All cells work about the same whether as single-celled organisms or multicellular. The chimp human difference is consciousness, and you know it. Again, if you have time read Nagel, Mind and Cosmos. He says we have not explained human consciousness as a result of evolution.-> 
> dhw: To get to the duckbilled platypus everyone has to eat to survive. Evolution produced the duckbilled platypus. The duckbilled platypus is related primarily to evolutionary processes. The balance of nature is a secondary issue because according to you it exists so long as there is any organism alive, which makes it irrelevant as an explanation of anything.-Total non-sequitor. Evolution can only continue as long as there is a proper food supply. 
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> DAVID: You keep trying to tie everything together according to your sense of logic, while judging God's. God could certainly have designed everything if He had the power to create the universe and guide evolution. I believe He did. Faith does not require an explanation of every jot and tittle of reality.
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> dhw: I am not questioning your God's logic or his potential powers; I am questioning your logic and your interpretation of his thinking, which entails a 3.8-billion-year computer programme for, or personal supervision of, every innovation, lifestyle or wonder, regardless of its relevance to humans, even though humans were his purpose. I am surprised that you should dismiss as “every jot and tittle” the burning question of how evolution works. Over and over again, with excellent human logic, you attack Darwin's concept of random mutations (I agree with you), but once your own hypothesis comes under attack, suddenly human logic goes out of the window.-Simply, what we see in the evolutionary bush is what happened through the ages. I think God guided evolution to get to us. I can't explain His reasons, so why try and use human logic on it?