Different in degree or kind: our hands (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 08, 2016, 20:52 (3182 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: I have reproduced the whole comment to which you have replied, since your response is shooting at the wrong target. I have always acknowledged the degrees of difference, most notably in the context of the human mind being vastly more complex than the minds of our fellow animals. And I keep pointing out that all species (broad sense) are different in kind. But you believe ALL the special differences were specially preprogrammed or specially created by your God, so if they are all so special to your God that he must specially preprogramme them or specially create them, what are you trying to prove by insisting that he specially preprogrammed or specially created human hands?-You missed the entire point of my presentation, purposely?. You will accept that evolution is a form of common descent, with modifications going from the simple (relatively, as single cells care highly complex to begin with) to very complex multicellular organisms, us. Isn't evolution descent with modification? That is descent by small to moderate degree. In descent by kind, it is meant that the final step, humans, are much more than descent by a series of modification and are an unexpected truly different modification of enormous proportions, suggesting strongly a mammoth saltation.-Both elephants and I are mammals. We are related and we are different kinds of mammals. But we are so different in kind from elephants in a very different sense of the word 'kind'. Let's stop playing word games. You know what I mean.