Evolution and humans: Neanderthal lungs larger (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 10, 2018, 14:07 (2203 days ago) @ David Turell

As you have skipped the post on Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”, I am transferring this comment to "Neanderthal":

dhw: Sorry, but your polemic does not lend any credibility to your own hypothesis, whose illogicality you admit by claiming that your God’s logic must be different from ours.

DAVID: How do you logically know God's logic is like ours. I believe in Him but I don't know I know His form of logic must be like mine. You must know Him better than I do.

dhw: Neither of us “knows” if your God even exists, let alone how he thinks. However, in the past you have quite rightly argued that the only way we can guess how he thinks is by studying his works. We have both studied his works, and by your own admission, your hypothesis is illogical, while mine is logical. But you reject mine and cling to yours. Why is it more logical for you to believe in your illogical hypothesis than to even consider the possibility that my logical hypothesis might be correct?

DAVID: I have constantly considered my thoughts as perfectly logical. I have never said I was illogical, unless you have misinterpreted what I write, which you sometimes do. You have constantly told me I am illogical to the point now where you believe I said it about myself. What are you smoking? I view your initial concepts as totally unreasonable, but have agreed your logic following the false starts have logic. So?

You cannot find any logical reason why your God chose to specially design billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct if his purpose was to produce H. sapiens. One moment you have “no idea how rigidly he followed a direct plan or a more fluid one”, and the next moment, in the same post, “of course there was no direct plan”. One moment you have him experimenting, and the next moment he knows exactly what he is doing. Over and over again, in defending your hypothesis, you say your God’s logic is different from human logic, and we shouldn’t try to read God’s mind. That is not a claim that your hypothesis is logical! But over and over again you fall back on obvious truths such as evolution takes time, life requires energy, the balance of nature has to be balanced if it is to be balanced, econiches have to be balanced, econiches depend on a food chain (hence the articles about top predators), and somehow all this explains why your God specially designed Neanderthal lungs, 50,000 types of spider web and the weaverbird’s nest in order to progress to the production of H. sapiens. No it doesn’t.

DAVID : We agree life needs energy. The diversity in life and in your esamples supplies that. Nothing more.

Thank you. So now please explain the logic behind your hypothesis that God specially designed them all, though his purpose was to produce the brain and body of H. sapiens. The rest of your post follows the same track, exemplified by the final exchange:

Dhw: I do not accept that an illogical explanation is more likely to be true than a logical explanation, just because we don’t know how God thinks.

DAVID: The illogical conclusion is in your mind, not mine. The variety supplies the energy for a long living evolutionary process.

Yes, all varieties of life need energy to go on living. That does not explain why your God had to specially design every variety of life, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extant if – as you never cease to remind us – his purpose was to produce H. sapiens.

xxxx

Thank you for the rest of today’s posts, which offer a fascinating variety of discoveries. (As you can imagine, I’m particularly impressed by the tool-making orang-utans!) I don’t have time to respond to these articles, but in any case, possible points of controversy (e.g. concerning cells or why your God personally designed all the different varieties of pre-sapiens) will lead us to the same points of disagreement.