Evolution and humans: Neanderthal lungs larger (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, November 16, 2018, 11:44 (2197 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: First you accuse me of being illogical by erecting a straw man (you know perfectly well that I do NOT believe in a chance origin of life and consciousness), and then you dodge the issue (yet again) of why your God would personally design every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct if his purpose was to produce the brain and body of H. sapiens. In fairness, however, you did offer “experimentation” as a logical explanation, but when I pointed out that this meant either your God didn’t know what he wanted, or he knew what he wanted but didn’t know how to get it, you dismissed the idea and scurried back to your God’s logic being different from ours. If you refuse to accept a logical explanation, and cannot come up with another logical explanation that you find acceptable, then you can hardly blame me for attacking your logic, or for pointing out that if your God’s logic is different from “ours”, that is an acknowledgement that you can’t find a logical explanation![/b]

DAVID: My logical explanations remain the same. Design is required to cover the gaps in form and physiology. You don't deny evolution is punctuated, but your response is always that somehow organisms change. It is a non-answer faced with the need for design.

dhw: Once again, I accept the need for design, but the question is WHAT is designed? Since nobody knows how speciation happens, everybody’s response has to be that “somehow organisms change”. You say your God preprogrammed or dabbled every single change before the necessary conditions even came into being. I suggest that if he exists, he designed the MECHANISM for change, but not every individual change. That is not a non-answer, it is a hypothesis. But all of this sees you yet again dodging the whole issue I have raised above, which I have now bolded just in case you should miss it. And you talk of non-answers!

DAVID: We've gone round and round. You recognize the need for design, but refuse to recognize the enormity of the required changes we see after a gap in the fossil record such as the one Lucy presents. Yes, she is transitional, but the word glosses over the magnitude of change. Bit by bit adaptations will not cover this gap. You need to fully accept the punctuations for what they are, a requirement for prior design. Your resort to God designing a mechanism for the organisms to advance simply admits god is needed. This is the logic you cannot accept. I don't see how this aspect of our disagreement can go further in discussion. We both have our individual point of view.

There are two separate issues being discussed here. 1) I accept the magnitude of change. I do not accept that the changes must have taken place in anticipation of new conditions. I also point out that nobody has yet explained how these changes took place, and that is why we only have HYPOTHESES like yours and mine. I accept your objection to mine. I offer you a theistic version of mine, because it relates to the mechanisms of evolution and not to the existence of God. I agree that we can go no further, and so if you refrain from repeating your unproven hypothesis that your God must have designed everything in advance of changing conditions, I will refrain from repeating my unproven hypothesis that there is a mechanism (possibly designed by your God) that enabled organisms to design themselves in response to changing conditions.

Meanwhile, yet again you have resolutely ignored issue 2) (bolded above), which is the one on which I challenge your logic. However, since you have repeatedly accepted that this part of your hypothesis cannot be explained by human logic (i.e. is illogical according to your human mind), I will refrain from pointing out its illogicality until the next time you repeat it.