Evolution and humans: all over Africa (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, October 07, 2017, 10:17 (2603 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I understand perfectly well why you believe there is a designer. And I understand perfectly well why you think the human brain is the most complex organ that evolution has produced so far (although you do not believe it is the source of our extraordinary level of consciousness). What I do not understand is why your teleology is confined to the production of the human brain. Eight stages of whale, froggy poison, weaverbird’s nests, wasps laying eggs in spiders, and today’s toxin-eating snakes – all specially designed by your God to keep life going for the sake of the human brain? But I am NOT trying to define God from total logic. I am trying to find logic in your interpretation of how your God thinks and works. If your interpretation defies logic, we must face the possibility that it is wrong. (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Your probing of God's reasoning is your problem. I don't know if I am right. I can only make suppositions from what we see He has produced. You question why He has produced certain organisms in evolution. I don't worry about it. I find a reasonable explanation in balance of nature to allow energy to be produced to have evolution continue until the human brain arrives. You can't seem to recognize human specialness in discussing the brain, in that to me evolution appears driven to produce us while all the other primates are left behind. The overall picture I present is very convincing to me. I'm sorry it doesn't move you. (dhw’s bold)
In your answer you have again shifted the discussion to God's intentions. You have again, as always, avoided the issue of a need for a designer by agreeing that you understand my reasoning. I don't understand your reluctance in accepting a designer is needed. No matter how you squirm the only source of what we see is chance or design. Nothing else fits the issue. (dhw’s bold)

Once we agree (the sections in bold), there is nothing further to discuss! That is not an avoidance of the issue. Your design argument makes sense to me, and I acknowledge that the human brain is special. However, the atheist argument that the mysteries of life cannot be explained by creating another mystery in the form of an unknown, unknowable, sourceless, superintelligent, universe-encompassing being also makes sense to me. Hence my agnosticism. Your interpretation of your God’s evolutionary intentions do not make sense to me, and since you cannot answer my questions, they clearly don’t make sense to you either, but you don’t worry about it. That’s one way of avoiding the issue, but fine, I don’t worry about it either. I just keep looking for more logical explanations of evolution than yours, while always allowing for a designer. “No matter how you squirm”, you have acknowledged that my theistic hypothesis (your God designing a process in which organisms can do their own designing, though he can dabble if he wants to) fits the facts as we know them, and so “I don’t understand your reluctance” to accept the possibility that it might be closer to the truth than your own.