Evolution and humans: all over Africa (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, October 23, 2017, 13:58 (2586 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I've said human brains were never needed, are an over-improvement since apes survive without them.
dhw: 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: And I'll always ask what created the drive, material nature?

Exit the term “over-improvement”. Thank you. I don’t know how often you want me to acknowledge that the origin of the (hypothetical) cellular intelligence which drives organisms in the quest for survival and/or improvement is unknown, but it may be your God. I am an agnostic.

DAVID: I've never accepted your God-created mechanisms because many of the changes require long analysis of future requirements, i.e., planning.
dhw: 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.
DAVID: Adaptation does not provide the long term planning of full speciation.

I dispute your assumption that speciation requires long term planning. You have ignored the rest of my paragraph in which I accept that there is no evidence that the inventive mechanism can extend its range to speciation. That is why it is a hypothesis, just like that of an unknown being preprogramming or dabbling every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder.

DAVID: The 'we' is you and you can't see the logic.
dhw: 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.
DAVID: God does what He prefers to do. I accept that. My problem is the whales which I view from a human standpoint. In that view, it seems a lot of extra effort to arrange for ocean balance of nature, but I fully believe it was easy for God. So be it. God's logic is not ours.

You might say the same for the weaverbird’s nest, the monarch’s lifestyle and migration, the wasp that lays its eggs on the spider’s back, the toxin-eating snake: a lot of extra effort to arrange for terrestrial balance of nature. Of course it would have been easy for God, but it simply doesn’t fit in with your theory that it had to be done in order to keep life going until he could produce humans, even though he is perfectly capable of instantaneous creation. I suggest your logic may not be your God’s.