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

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 05:47 (2186 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Once more, I am NOT disputing the fact that diversity supplies food for ALL forms of life, and life has survived for 3.X billion years so far. The thought process I challenge is your claim that this obvious fact is related to your claim that “all of the varieties of life produced through evolution are steppingstones to humans”.

I view humans as the desired endpoint. I must repeat the very logical point, which you accept, that life must eat until humans appear and keep eating afterward. It explains also the need for the bush of life and diversity in econiches. Why you have trouble with the idea that ongoing evolution requires energy along the way is beyond me, if you recognize that the current endpoint in humans

DAVID: "Unrelated"! without the energy supply from econiches we wouldn't have evolved to be here. […]

Without the energy supply from econiches, NO form of life would be here. That does not mean that every form of life was and is a stepping stone to humans!

DAVID: You illogically want HIM to view spectacles. You've constantly downgraded God to a human level. Of course God is logical in His own purposeful way.

dhw; There is no point in insisting on God’s logic and purpose if you then refuse to consider what that logic and purpose might be.

I've said the arrival of humans with consciousness.

dhw: You asked me for a logical purposeful activity, and I gave you one. It is quite impossible to describe purpose without humanizing – which is why when pressed you have your God watching us with interest, wanting a relationship with us, testing us etc. - and there is no reason

dhw: And what is “pure” purpose? Purpose without any definable purpose?

A single goal.

Xxxxx

DAVID: I would remind you that a firm Darwinist David Raup devoted a whole book to this issue and concluded, survival depended on luck!

dhw: I agree that luck also plays a part: those organisms that were lucky enough to have the means of coping with or exploiting environmental change were able to survive. How does that answer my point that survivability is pure common sense, as above, with an illustration as to how it might work?

'Common sense' that the fit will survive is not proof that survivability plays a role in evolution to the next species. The gaps and the fact that species 'look like islands in the ocean' with this study of DNA enforces the point.

DAVID: (re God giving up control) No one in the religions agrees with you […]

dhw: […] I have given you a full answer to your question about control, but you don’t like it so you dismiss it as “humanizing”.

DAVID: It makes Him human. There is no other way of characterizing your imagination of Him.

It does not make him human. It gives him characteristics in common with humans, as proposed by all the religions you are now so fond of.

dhw: [..] How can we have free will if your God doesn’t give up control? And if he can invent a mechanism for free will, why shouldn't he invent a mechanism for free innovation?

DAVID: Neat sidestep. Human free will is the only freedom God has obviously allowed.You can extrapolate all you want without any proof but you are back to your favorite theories. Free will is my fact to stand with, nothing more.

dhw: Free will is not a fact, but that’s beside the point. My question was: if he can invent a mechanism for free will, why shouldn’t he invent a mechanism for innovation?

Free will is not a mechanism but an attribute of the human brain . Do you make choices every day or not?