Convoluted human evolution: a branch is missing (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 08, 2017, 08:57 (2665 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Free will is an example of your God’s willingness to give up control. The anomaly of your God designing eight different types of pre-whale when all he wanted to do was produce the human brain has nothing to do with “removing God in control” and everything to do with the fact that, as you have admitted, even you can’t make sense of your own hypothesis. Setting something in motion and letting it run its course is a strange way of describing total control.

DAVID: What happened followed my approach of God allowing invention under guidelines.

dhw: Back we go to your nebulous “guidelines”, but I’m delighted that you are at last granting organisms the possibility to do their own inventing. So let's take the pre-whale, and decide what were the guidelines and what were the pre-whale's own inventions. First guideline, perhaps: God said: “Go live in the water,” and behold, the pre-whale did go live in the water. What happened next? If God invented fins and blowholes and a fishy tail, there wouldn’t be much left for the whale to “invent”, would there? So what guidelines are you envisaging? Did God say: “Them thar legs ain’t much use in the water, so get rid of ‘em”? And the pre-whale said to itself: “God says to get rid of my legs, so I’m gonna invent fins instead”? May I suggest that if the pre-whale could invent its own fins, it could also make its own decision to enter the water and its own discovery that legs weren’t much use in the water? So do please tell us precisely what “guidelines” you envisage for the pre-whale, and what you think the pre-whale invented all by itself.

DAVID: The whale is still under God's guidelines. I've not changed my point of view much as you wish it. God controls evolution.

I am not asking you to change your point of view. Taking the example of the various pre-whales, I am asking you to clarify what you mean by “guidelines” and what you mean by the “invention” God allows.