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

by dhw, Sunday, November 26, 2017, 13:41 (2552 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: A strange response! You ask me to “throw out Darwin theory completely”, and when I refuse to throw out common descent, which lies at the heart of his theory, you say you mean survival of the fittest. Why bring Darwin into the discussion at all? You are discussing this with me, not with Darwin, and in any case you know perfectly well that I add improvement to survival, do not believe in Darwin’s gradualism or random mutations, and am a devoted follower of Margulis’s theory that evolution depends just as much on cooperation as on competition.

DAVID: Your response is strange. I did not ask you to throw out Darwin completely, only his insistence on the struggle to survive.

Thursday, 23 November at 15.50: “Throw out Darwin evolution theory completely, accept God as in control and your problems disappear.” You changed your tune when I pointed out to you on Friday 24 November at 13.42 that this would mean rejecting common descent.

dhw: Meanwhile, anyone who believes in God and believes in evolution will agree with you that God prefers to evolve life’s forms through an evolutionary process. The discussion is for what purpose and how he uses the process (if he exists). Fulminating against Darwin may be a useful diversion from the anomalies that riddle your hypothesis, but it provides no evidence for your contention that your God preprogrammed or dabbled every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct in order to keep life going so that the preprogrammed or dabbled brain of Homo sapiens could finally appear. And it is no answer to my alternative proposal, with which you can find no fault as an explanation of evolutionary history.

DAVID: I'm not fulminating against Darwin, just pointing out his errors, caused by theorizing at a time he did not have the knowledge we have now. Not his fault. And your alternative is God lite, without accepting God. An alternative God approach is still God.

We have dealt with his “errors” over and over again, and they provide no evidence whatsoever for your own hypotheses concerning God’s purpose and methods. "God lite" is a meaningless expression. If God decided to create life with a mechanism that enabled organisms to find their own methods of survival and/or improvement (much as you believe he has done with humans and free will), as you quite rightly point out, he “is still God”. The question is which of our explanations of evolution fits the history. You have acknowledged that you cannot find any fault in mine. And on several occasions you have acknowledged that you do not know the answers when I have questioned yours.