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

by dhw, Thursday, November 22, 2018, 09:10 (2192 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'll repeat the link: to evolve humans took 3.5+ billion years. The econiches provided the food supply for life to have energy for all those years.

dhw: Two separate statements without a link! Econiches have provided food for all forms of life from the beginning to the present. That does not mean that every econiche was specially designed as a “stepping stone” (your delightful metaphor) to the production of humans.

DAVID: You have not followed the logic based on all my reports on the delicacy of the balance in niches. If a top predator is removed the niche is in trouble. The spider may be a top predator.

I have followed, repeated and totally accept the logic of the delicate balance of econiches and top predators. You resolutely refuse to acknowledge that this has no link whatsoever to your argument that 50,000 spider webs are “stepping stones” to humans.

DAVID: Spiders are part of a balanced niche. Spiders were evolved into a large family as part of the diversity of the bush of life which creates the niches so all eat.

All eat until all don’t eat, econiches are balanced until they are not balanced, and then econiches change. Nothing whatsoever to do with spiders as “stepping stones” to humans.

DAVID: I've not invented anything illogical. Humans are an illogical supreme endpoint, but here we are. I can see purpose. Your position doesn't allow for a recognition of purpose.

dhw: I hope that by "illogical" you are now agreeing that there is no logic in regarding 50,000 spider webs or other unrelated forms of life, lifestyle or natural wonder extant or extant as “stepping stones” to humans. Whether we are an endpoint of any kind is something that will only become apparent in the next few billion years, which you and I won’t be around to see. And finally, you keep emphasizing (theistic) purpose, but the moment I challenge your idea of (theistic) purpose and suggest a different (theistic) purpose, you complain (a) that I don't see purpose, or (b) that my (theistic) purpose – which you agree fits in logically with the history of life - requires reading God’s mind, whereas your (theistic) purpose – which leads to an illogical endpoint – requires your God’s mind to have a different logic from ours. Your reading of God’s mind apparently extends to the fixed belief that by human standards it is illogical.

DAVID: Your hope is hopeless. We remain apart. Remember I see God when you don't. I see purpose when you don't. Your theistic purposes never seem to fit mine.

My hypothesis allows for God. It does not allow for an illogical God. If your God exists, of course he has purpose, and you are quite right that my theistic purpose does not fit yours. That does not mean I don’t see God and I don’t see purpose. It simply means that I am offering a logical view of his purpose as an alternative to your own illogical view (he designed 50,000 spider webs as stepping stones to humans).

DAVID: Your logic is not mine.

You have offered no logical explanation for how the design of 50,000 spider webs provides a stepping stone to "illogical endpoint humans", so you are quite right, my logic in this case is not yours.

DAVID: For example you can see design like I do, but the logical next step that a mind must exist, is not acceptable to you, simply because you cannot accept an eternal mind.

Agreed, apart from the equally nebulous possibility that it is not “a mind” but billions of evolving minds (my atheistic panpsychist hypothesis). I am the logical ass starving between two identical bags of hay. But I’m afraid this does not make your anthropocentric view of 50,000 spider webs logical, and it does negate the logic of your God designing the mechanisms of evolution (as opposed to designing every individual life form, life style and natural wonder extant and extinct) to produce the ever changing spectacle of life’s history as we know it, though always allowing for the occasional dabble if he feels like it (Chixculub perhaps). Sometimes I accept your logic (design). At other times I reject it (50,000 spider webs as stepping stones to humans). Quoting the times I accept it does not provide any defence for arguments which make it necessary for your God to have a different (and inexplicable) logic from ours!