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

by David Turell , Friday, November 24, 2017, 14:54 (2554 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm perfectly content with my approach. I'm sorry that you see them as anomalies from your human point of view.

dhw: I hope you’re not telling me that your approach is from your God’s point of view! I shan’t go over the anomalies again, since you have so often agreed that you can’t explain them.

DAVID: We will remain apart. You refuse to see the problem in our existence. We are not required by an evolutionary process that is considered to be the result of challenges and stresses and opportunities. Throw out Darwin evolution theory completely, accept God as in control and your problems disappear.

dhw: You refuse to see that what you call the problem in our existence applies to every other organism that developed after bacteria: none of them were “required”. But all the changes that followed on from multicellularity, including those that led to humans, can be explained by a drive for survival and/or improvement. If you throw out Darwin completely, you have to reject the heart of his theory which is common descent, and until today you have always believed in it. Throw out your insistence that you know God’s anthropocentric purpose and that he preprogammed or personally dabbled every twig of the vast bush, including the weaverbird’s nest, eight stages of whale, and the duckbilled platypus, just so he could produce us, and then all the problems of your theistic evolutionary theory (the anomalies) will disappear. But you are right that my problem of ORIGINS would disappear if I accepted God. They would also disappear if I accepted chance or atheistic panpsychism.

I have not changed from my contention that God prefers to evolve life's forms. That is common descent! What I throw out is Darwin's survival of the fittest, which implies a struggle for survival. That Darwin concept means improvements beyond the level of survival appear for no good reason for survival but appear anyway. Our brain is a prime example, multicellularity another. As I've told you before, your Darwin background is an impediment to your thinking.