dhw: Evolution and humans: Neanderthal lungs larger (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 19, 2018, 10:19 (2194 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If he wants to produce 50,000 spider webs etc., then 50,000 spider webs etc. are what he wants to produce, and this does not square with your constantly repeated statement that “His purpose was humans”.

DAVID: That is an illogical comment. There is no jump from spiders to humans. All of the varieties produced through evolution are steppingstones to humans; that is what a evolution means and I believe God designed what He thought was necessary all the way from the first cells to humans.

dhw: Who says there is a jump? In what way are 50,000 spider webs “stepping stones” to humans? That is the illogical part of your hypothesis. He designed what he thought was necessary for WHAT? Do you really and truly believe that 50,000 spider webs were necessary stepping stones to the production of the brain and body of H. sapiens?

DAVID: You are again skipping over my insistence that econiches of natural balance for life to have the energy by eating at all times to continue the prolonged process of evolution to be able to continue until humans are produced. You clearly know that life requires a constant input of energy. God's designs set up the energy supply in the delicate econiches.

I have repeatedly accepted the obvious fact that all life requires energy. But that does not mean your God had to design 50,000 spider webs to enable life to continue “until humans are produced”. Life and any kind of econiche would have required energy whether humans were produced or not. So please explain why your God specially designed 50,000 spider webs as “stepping stones” to humans. There is absolutely no logical link, and you know it, because that is why you repeatedly come up with the mantra that God’s logic is different from ours.

DAVID: You illogically accept design, but cannot understand the logic that there must be a mind doing the design.

dhw: […] I have always recognized the logic of your design argument, which is a major reason for my inability to accept atheism. I have explained a hundred times that I am equally unable to believe in an infinite, eternal, sourceless, hidden form of consciousness that knows everything etc. I am wrong one way or the other, but I’m afraid that does not mean you are right any more than it means Dawkins is right, and it most certainly doesn’t mean that your interpretation of your God’s evolutionary purpose and method is right!

DAVID: Written like a true agnosiic. but you carefully didn't answer the point that design comes from very complex mental processes, therefore a mind, which for me must exist. You simply cannot accept that thought and I understand it, but it leaves you with nothing but non-belief and no answers. I see the answer for me and we are both uncomfortable in the other's position.

I carefully pointed out that I do accept the logic of your design argument (bolded). And I carefully explained the reasons for my non-belief, which of course leaves me with non-belief and no answers. And none of this provides the slightest support for your fixed belief in your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution. Let me once again quote your wise words from the James thread: "Fixed religious beliefs do not help in ascertaining accurate history."