Convoluted human evolution: a branch is missing (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 12, 2017, 14:59 (2661 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: If I decide God is fully in control, and you don't want Him to be, then my faith makes no sense to you.

I have no problem with the concept of a God in full control. My problem is with your interpretation of your God’s intentions, when I look at the reality of evolutionary history. I simply don’t understand why a God in full control, who has the single purpose of producing the human brain, should devote so much attention to preprogramming or personally dabbling eight stages of whale, the monarch’s migratory lifestyle, the weaverbird’s nest, and a zillion other innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders. So I offer a different theistic hypothesis, in which your God chooses to allow his invention of life and evolution to run its own course. Even you have agreed that this hypothesis fits in perfectly with the history of evolution as we know it.

Yes it fits evolution as we see the history. Your views simply leaves out the possibility of a purpose driving evolution. The crowning achievement of the process is the human brain, the most complex functional biological organ in the universe. Nothing else organic or inorganic is equal to it. Just add purpose to your purposeless thinking.

DAVID: The only explanations are chance or design, but you don't like that dichotomy and try to weasel in third ways that are pipe dreams, like panpsychism which introduces a nebulous form of consciousness from nowhere. I try to extrapolate from established scientific belief. You tend to invent theories with no basis.

dhw: I don’t know what “established scientific belief” provides a basis for the hypothesis that there is an unknown power “from nowhere” which created life for the sole purpose of producing the human brain, and preprogrammed or personally dabbled a zillion innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to fulfil that one and only purpose.

All of science provides a background to see the purpose in evolution. Designs found in nature, elucidated by science, provide the background to understand a planning mind is required.