Evolution and humans: all over Africa (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, October 22, 2017, 13:42 (2587 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I've said human brains were never needed, are an over-improvement since apes survive without them.

Ah well, since bacteria have survived without brains and hands and a few more organs that were “never needed”, apparently the whole vast range of multicellular organisms is an over-improvement. I think I'll leave my hypothesis as it is: evolution has advanced through the drive for survival and/or improvement.

DAVID: I've never accepted your God-created mechanisms because many of the changes require long analysis of future requirements, i.e., planning.

Since nobody knows how all the major changes took place, I really don’t know how you can be so sure that they require long analysis of future requirements, i.e. planning. The only concrete evidence we have of evolutionary change is adaptation, which is always in response to environmental change of some kind. Unless you think your God preprogrammed or dabbled even minor adaptations, they must be organized by an autonomous mechanism. I fully accept that there is no evidence that this can extend its range to the major innovations required for speciation. That is why it remains a hypothesis, as does the hypothesis that an unknown being preprogrammed the very first cells with every imaginable innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder other than those resulting from his personal intervention.

dhw: […] your problem, as I see it, is trying to find any coherent connection between the divinely constructed weaverbird’s nest etc., the “balance of nature” (which simply means life continues one way or another), your God’s roundabout way of fulfilling his prime purpose (producing the brain of Homo sapiens) though you believe the Cambrian shows he can produce species instantaneously, and his wanting a relationship with us but remaining hidden.
DAVID: Except for the whales all perfectly logical to me. Sorry you can't or won't see it.

Sorry, but I can’t see it. Same problem below:

DAVID: (under “how the universe evolved”): That is the way I see the history under God's guidance.
dhw: I know. And the more we examine it, the more illogical it becomes!
DAVID: The 'we' is you and you can't see the logic.

Even you can’t see the logic of the whale. And you are right, I can’t see the logic of the the weaverbird’s nest that keeps life going for the sake of humans, of a God who can create species instantaneously but goes all round the higgledy-piggledy mulberry bush to create the one species he really wants, and who watches us with interest but not with any sort of interest we can understand, and who would like to have a relationship with us but deliberately hides himself.