Evolution and humans: Neanderthal lungs larger (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 06, 2018, 08:50 (2208 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As for God knowing what He wants, you've forgotten that God used evolution to produce all the results we see.

dhw: If your God exists, I am happy with this. The result that we see is an ever changing spectacle of life forms extant and extinct, which suggests to me that your God wanted an ever changing spectacle of life forms extant and extinct.

DAVID: As before, purposefully useful for balance of nature.

As before, the balance of nature constantly changes as life forms come and go. How can an ever changing balance of nature be useful for balance of nature?

DAVID: If God is so powerful that He could make a universe uniquely suited for life and then start life, it might seem He could have just produced H. sapiens right off the bat, but He didn't. He chose to evolve organisms and we are stuck with that observation, and have no way of questioning His motives in that choice, although you love to try and find human reasoning in Him.

dhw: As usual, if your hypothesis makes no sense to you, you insist that it is correct and we are “stuck” with it. No, we are not. It is just you who are “stuck”. It is perfectly possible that your God has reasons that make perfect sense, as you admit below! You yourself offered experimentation as an explanation for all the different species of human!

DAVID: My hypothesis makes perfect sense. It is obvious God chose to use evolution to create the organisms he wanted to appear. I can only guess at God's motives when you ask about them, and not be in any way sure of the answer.

If God exists, the only thing that is obvious is that he created life and the mechanisms for evolution. There is nothing obvious about the hypothesis that he specially designed the lungs of the now extinct Neanderthal or 50,000 types of spider web in order to “balance nature” (though nature constantly changes its balance) so that he could fulfil his purpose of producing the brain and body of Homo sapiens. None of us can be sure of any answers – including the existence of your God. That is why all these discussions are taking place, in which we try to test the reasonableness of all the hypotheses.

dhw: I agree that your view of God (if he exists) as an experimenter who either doesn’t know what he wants, or does know but can’t work out how to get it, is a logical deduction. But it is equally logical to suggest that your God (if he exists), does know what he wants and does know how to get it, and what he wants is the ever changing spectacle of different life forms, as suggested by the whole history of evolution.

DAVID: I agree that your point does explain why God used diversity evolved from evolution.

dhw: So why must we “stick” to your inexplicable and unreasonable hypothesis?

DAVID: Because diversity supplies the balance of nature necessary for the survival of life, a point repeated over and over.

Life only exists through life forms, and most life forms do not survive. Balance is essential for all life forms and econiches to survive, and when there is imbalance, life forms die and econiches change their balance. Why does this mean we must stick to your belief that your God specially designed 50,000 types of web in order to produce 50,000 differently balanced econiches in order to produce H. sapiens?

dhw: Let me really stick my neck out. I truly believe that life would have continued even if there were not 50,000 different types of spider web. And I truly believe that H. sapiens would have evolved and would continue to exist if there were only a dozen webs, or no spiders at all, or even..wait for it...no weaverbird’s nest! Are you shocked?

DAVID: No. Not shocked. The operation of an evolutionary system allows experimentation in many directions. We have only one result to study, but I can imagine others leading to H. sapiens, with different diverse organisms in a different sets of balances of nature.

What are you saying now? Experimentation implies either that you want a particular result and don’t know how to get it, or you are trying out new things to see what they will lead to. Your last remark suggests that your God specially designed 50,000 different spider webs in the hope that they would somehow lead to his longed-for H. sapiens. (The alternative would be that he designed them to see what would happen as a result.) And you absolutely refuse to consider the possibility that spiders, using their possibly God-given intelligence, simply designed their own webs to give themselves the best chance of catching their prey.