Evolution and humans: Neanderthal lungs larger (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, November 08, 2018, 11:45 (2205 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Balance of nature is not useful for itself, which I view as a strange off the point comment. Any presently existing balance of nature supplies energy for on -going evolution which takes time to create new forms.

dhw: The ever changing spectacle is an ever changing balance, it is not “useful for” balance. All you are telling us is that life requires energy, and evolution has gone on for a long time. That does not explain why your God specially designed 50,000 webs and Neanderthal lungs when his purpose was to produce the brain and body of H. sapiens.

DAVID: Ignored as usual my point: balance supplies the necessary energy for life to take time to evolve. Having a spectacle is a good human view of evolution. You don't know it was God's intent to view spectacles. He needed to feed life as it evolved and diverse forms do just that.

Nobody knows your God’s intentions, but obviously evolution has so far lasted from the time life began up to the present (that is “time”), and we all know that living forms need energy to survive. Nothing whatsoever to do with designing 50,000 webs in the hope of producing Homo sapiens.

DAVID: All I have said is God may have tried out different approaches on his way to Humans. I have no idea how rigidly He followed a direct plan or a more fluid one.

dhw: If he tried out different approaches, either he didn’t know what he wanted, or he knew what he wanted but didn’t know how to get it. I don’t know how a direct plan would result in billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct, including 50,000 spider webs and Neanderthal lungs, and I really don’t see how they would result even from a fluid plan to produce H. sapiens. Perhaps it would be best if you followed the principle you keep trying to impose on me, and abandoned all your attempts to read your God’s mind, which would save you the trouble of saddling him with a purpose which you can only link to life’s history by claiming that your God’s logic is different from ours.

DAVID: I only try to interpret God's mind because you are constantly doing it at your human level of thought. Of course there was no direct plan.

So why did you say above that you had no idea how rigidly he followed a direct plan or a more fluid one? As for interpretation, you constantly talk of God’s purpose (which requires interpreting his mind), identify it as being the production of H. sapiens (as if that wasn’t human thought!), and then complain if I suggest an alternative.

DAVID: God obviously used 3.5+ billion of years of evolution to get to this point. The issue, no matter how much you twist and misinterpret it, is diversity of living forms produces balances of nature that produce the energy for evolution to take so much time.

There is no issue whatsoever (apart from the figure) over the fact that evolution has taken x billion years to get to this point (see above). And there is no issue over the fact that living organisms need energy, and the balance of nature changes as conditions change, and this has led to diversity, with billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders coming and going. However, I’m afraid that by continually stating the obvious, you do not provide any evidence for your theory that your God designed 50,000 webs and the Neanderthal’s lungs, not to mention the weaverbird’s nest, in order to provide the energy to enable evolution to produce the brain and body of H. sapiens.