Natures wonders: bacteria can spear amoebas (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 23, 2017, 17:53 (2647 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: That comment always brings me back to 'everyone has got to eat' along the way to the brain. We have no answer to the question as to why God took so long to get there. But that is what happened.

dhw: What happened certainly happened. But of course that does not mean it happened in the way or for the purpose you have conjured up in your imagination. I have offered you several theistic answers (afterthought, experimentation, not knowing how to do it), but they don’t fit in with your subjective interpretation of your God’s mind: an all-powerful God’s only purpose was to produce the human brain, and although you can’t make head or tail of why he would personally design the eight-stage whale and the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest, or take so long to fulfil his one and only purpose, it has to be true because that is what you believe.
There was once the nicest of thinkers
Who insisted on wearing his blinkers.
When it came to design
His vision was fine,
But the rest of his theories were stinkers.

DAVID: Great limerick, but not to the point. Your one suggestion of liking to experiment may apply to God. all we know is He took His time. Endpoint always the same, the most complex result in the universe: the human brain.

dhw: “All we know”? We don’t even “know” if God exists. If he does exist, we don’t even “know” what he’s like or what he thinks, so how can you “know” that the human brain was his one and only purpose and constitutes the “endpoint” of evolution, and therefore he “took his time”, though you don’t know why! Too many basic premises taken for granted. But the design argument remains your strong point. I stand by the limerick.

We do know the brain took a very long time to appear, and for no good reason based on competitive survival or environmental pressures. And it appears designed. I've picked a cause, you haven't.