Evolution and humans: all over Africa (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 18, 2017, 15:09 (2591 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You attack my suggestion that he created a spectacle for himself as “humanizing”. It is no more “humanizing” than your own suggestions.
DAVID: Spectacle is pure humanizing. Look at our history: from gladiators in ancient Rome to cricket to soccer today we create sports for entertainment. What if God is pure purpose. More logical than your humanizing approach.

dhw: What is “pure purpose”? You tell us human consciousness is part of God’s, which “must be somewhat similar to ours”, you are pretty convinced that he watches his creation with interest, and you believe that he produced us because he wants us to think of him and to have a relationship with him, but you can’t see that this is just as “human” a purpose as wanting to create an ever changing bush of life that he can watch with interest.

It is my belief God is more serious in his purposefulness than you do. Watching spectacle is a fun and games approach.

DAVID: What I see in the history of evolution is over-improvement. First multicellularity. The in humans such as our hand ability, our brain. Therefore a drive to complexity. If 99% of all have disappeared, survival is not a major point, just Darwin's supposition.

dhw: Why are the human brain and hand “over-improvement”? I find mine quite useful actually.

Of course you do. But the apes have survived with all their clumsiness.

DAVID: I used inanimate in the sense of mentation. You are strictly right. The fudge is God's secondary mechanism in your hypothesis is still God in control.

dhw: Some scientists think that all living cells are capable of a form of mentation. You insist that your God controlled every phase of evolution, and my theistic hypothesis is that he chose NOT to control it but to allow it to pursue its own course (with possible dabbles). What is unclear (fudgy) about that?

'Possible dabbles' are watching, guiding and correcting. God in control.

DAVID: Of course without whales the balance would be different, but still balanced. But the whales are HERE. We are dealing with an evolutionary history presented to us to interpret. Should we get rid of great apes in discussing how humans appeared?

dhw: I keep saying that so long as there is life, there is some kind of balance, regardless of whether there were/are/will be whales or no whales, humans or no humans. I don’t understand your question about apes.

You got rid of whales in your discussion so I suggested imagining evolution without apes.

DAVID: I logically interpret history as I see it. It tells me it needs a planning brain, which you, illogically, can't accept. You overuse the word 'logic', amazingly, as a supposed defense.

dhw: I accept as logical that some form of intelligence (I didn’t know you thought your God had a brain) may have designed the mechanism that created evolutionary history. I see no logic in the claim that every twig of evolution’s higgledy-piggledy bush was planned 3.8 billion years ago to keep life going for the sake of humans, which is why I propose that if your God exists, his “plan” was to produce a higgledy-piggledy bush, and not just one particular species. You keep acknowledging that you can’t explain the higgledy-piggledy course to the fulfilment of his prime purpose, but then you trot out “balance of nature”, which explains nothing except that all life requires some form of balance. And most important of all, you keep acknowledging that my hypothesis fits the history and answers all the questions you cannot answer. Why are you so afraid to acknowledge the possibility that your God wanted to create the ever-changing spectacle of life’s history, which he watches with interest?

Explained above. He is a more serious personality in achieving His purposes.