Convoluted human evolution: a branch is missing (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 15, 2017, 11:41 (2658 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It is not even clear that survival and competition are major factors in evolution. The drive to complexity, I often discuss, seems much more to the point, again by looking at the whales.

dhw: I didn’t mention competition, but it’s pretty obvious that if resources are limited, those organisms which can develop better means of acquiring them, or better means of protecting themselves, will have a better chance of survival. “Better” this and that = improvement. Cooperation, however, is another vital factor in the evolutionary process. As repeated many times over, I don’t see the point in complexity for complexity’s sake, but it makes no difference to the fact that I am NOT leaving out the possibility of purpose driving evolution – I am simply disagreeing with your idea of what that purpose is.

DAVID: But it is complexity that developed. And remember my example that the human line developed and the ape line remained unchanged. Why? Chance? The apes, until recently with humans encroaching, survived just fine with no problems. The human line, leaving the trees, introduced more dangers to their survival than if they had stayed there. In a way just like the whales, why change habitat? I see it all as driven by purpose.

As I said before, maybe the first pre-whales (and humans too) were forced to change habitat, or thought it would be advantageous to do so. The sole purpose you see in the whales changing habitat is to produce the human brain, but even you can’t find any connection. Except that the reason why you think your God preprogrammed or dabbled the whale and the monarch’s migration and the weaverbird’s nest was to keep life going, which has nothing to do with his sole purpose of producing the human brain. As for “unchanged”, bacteria have also remained unchanged, but you and I believe that every species alive today is descended from ancestors that did change. I suggest they all said to themselves: “I wanner survive” or “I wanner improve my chances of survival”, but if you think they said to themselves: “I wanner be more complex,” that’s fine. Though of course you don’t think they said anything. You think God said to each and every one of them: “I wanner make you more complex, so that I can produce the human brain.”