Evolution and humans: all over Africa (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, October 08, 2017, 13:01 (2601 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: But someone or something had to do the designing is my starting point. To me it is required. Major difference in thought between us.

I find this a very logical and acceptable answer. It is one of the major reasons why I cannot embrace atheism, and why I admire the thoroughness with which you have accumulated your evidence for design.

dhw: Your interpretations 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.

DAVID: I gave you an answer you will not accept: balance of nature, until the human brain exists. Your mind is as closed as you infer below mine is.

This is the answer I find illogical and hence unacceptable: that your all-powerful God sets out to produce the human brain, but on the way has to design eight stages of whale, the weaverbird’s nest, the toxin-eating snake, the monarch’s reproductive cycle etc. in order to “balance nature” so that life will go on until he can do what he really wants to do. You can’t make sense of it either (it is one of several questions you can’t answer), but you refuse to consider any other explanation.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Theories that fit facts are not proof. I have identified what I view as powerful factors that point to God's purpose that include more than just studying evolution. I'll stick to my conclusions as I fit it into my overall views. I've crossed over to faith in my beliefs.

None of the hypotheses are proven, though I would suggest that if they fit the facts, they have a better chance of being true than theories that don't fit the facts! I can understand and accept your faith in the God hypothesis, for which you provide logical reasons, but that is a separate issue from your faith in your illogical explanation of the great higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. And so whenever you claim that new discoveries or natural wonders support this particular aspect of your faith, we go down the same path: I ask how they fit the facts and you don’t know. Design: yes; anthropocentrism, no (although the option of a dabble remains open).