Different in degree or kind: our hands (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 09, 2016, 16:07 (2968 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: ...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.-I know what you mean, and I challenge you most of the way. Evolution goes from the (relatively) simple to very complex multicellular organisms, INCLUDING us. Long before us there were mammoth saltations - not small to moderate, but huge, as you keep pointing out with reference to the Cambrian. I agree with you 100% that our brains are extraordinary, and because of our brains we have been able to achieve feats far, far beyond the reach of our fellow animals. But the enormous gap between your thinking and mine lies in your anthropocentric interpretation of evolutionary history as having been preprogrammed into a few minute cells, with every subsequent species, lifestyle and natural wonder, extant and extinct,somehow geared to humans. Whether we are indeed the “final step” is open to question, but even if we are, your theory leads to all the anomalies we have discussed down through the years. I have taken as a prime example your belief that your God preprogrammed or personally organized the building of the weaverbird's nest as part of his plan to “balance nature” in order to produce or feed humans. You can multiply this example a few billion times over. I could even allow for your special focus on humans by accepting that your God might have intervened to tweak the brains of a few apes, but the claim that all of life on Earth - not to mention all the environmental changes, plus the universe with its billions of solar systems - revolved and revolves round us seems to me to lack all reason, let alone what you call “reasoning to the best solution”. Yet you won't even consider the possibility that your God gave the weaverbird the intelligence to design its own nest!