Evolution and humans: big brain size uses energy (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 13, 2017, 13:11 (2565 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Once again you have skipped over the issue of food supply. If evolution had to occur then everyone has to have food to survive and balance of nature does that. If God simply created us and nothing else, do we eat each other?
dhw: And yet again the answer is that food supply is necessary for ALL organisms.... Even today, I doubt if you would eat a weaverbird’s nest, or a wasp that laid its eggs on a spider’s back, or a skull-shrinking shrew. And if they and we disappeared, life would still go on with a new “balance of nature”.
DAVID: Your answer ignores the eco-niche of each area of balance. I eat in my own.

So if God’s purpose was to produce you and the food you eat in your own eco-niche, why did he specially design the nest, the wasp that lays its eggs on the spider’s back, the skull-shrinking shrew and the duckbilled platypus etc.? Or are you going to tell me that life couldn’t have gone on without them?

DAVID: You seem to misunderstand the meaning of 'design'. Design requires planning to create a working design for a new organism.

So do you think humans designed umbrellas before rain fell on them, medicines before they got ill, warm clothes before they felt cold? We design things IN RESPONSE to need or to the opportunity for improvement. Carnivorous humans needed to kill animals. Then they designed their spears. My whale hypothesis: whales needed food, which they found in the water. Once they were in the water, they needed to make changes to their bodies. The cell communities designed the changes in response to that need. No planning in advance of the need. I suggest that organic design is a response to need or opportunity for improvement, just as it is for human design.

DAVID: ...you are forgetting the huge gaps in the fossil record, which is especially seen in the whale series in which each step is so different from the past one.

In my hypothesis, the cell communities are capable of designing saltations – as opposed to your God providing the first living cells with a programme to pass on for every saltation for every innovation throughout the history of evolution (or alternatively dabbling each one personally), just to keep life going till he can produce Homo sapiens.

DAVID: [..] And you know that mammals made their own decision to enter the water. Perhaps God made the decision for them by transforming them in stages.

I don’t “know” anything – it’s a hypothesis. You are constantly talking of purpose, but you refuse to acknowledge the possibility that organisms might have a purpose of their own; namely, survival and/or improvement. And if God exists, he may have given them the means to try and achieve that purpose.

DAVID: You are just as confused as I am about whales.
dhw: I know you are confused about whales. What is confusing about the process I have described above?
DAVID: The process is exactly what I propose. God-directed change.

Which you say leaves you confused. So what is confusing about the process I have proposed above?

dhw: Suggestion: he WANTED the higgledy-piggledy bush, and not just Homo sapiens. Is that not a feasible theistic explanation of the higgledy-piggledy bush?
DAVID: Because history shows what history shows. God prefers starting stages and then evolving. Fits history perfectly. In the bush you are trying to interpret His mind. I just read history.

I thought your reading of history was based on what you believe to be God’s purpose (which is your attempt to read his mind): that he planned every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to keep life going until he could produce the brain of Homo sapiens. But you are confused because you don’t know why he had to produce the eight stages of whale, or (in an earlier post which I don’t have time to look for now) why he had to produce the big universe if all he wanted was us, or whether he has limitations or not. But you are right: starting stages and evolution fit history perfectly. It’s just your theory of your God’s motive and method that doesn’t fit history and causes you so much confusion.