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

by dhw, Thursday, November 29, 2018, 10:25 (2184 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I don’t think any evolutionist would disagree that all life requires food, you can’t have evolution without life, and so humans, mosquitoes, elephants and the duckbilled platypus could not have evolved if life had not continued. But this does not depend on recognizing that we are the current endpoint, and it certainly doesn’t mean that trilobites, brontosauruses, 50,000 spider webs, whales and the weaverbird’s nest were/are steppingstones to humans!

DAVID: They provided the food energy for evolution to continue, as you agree.

But that does not make them stepping stones to humans, as you clearly agree since you resolutely avoid the sheer illogicality of your stepping stone image.

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.

DAVID: I've said the arrival of humans with consciousness.

dhw: Yes, but if your God is purposeful, he must have had a purpose for producing humans with consciousness, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that he would have had a logical way of achieving that purpose.

DAVID: Yes by evolving humans from single celled life.

How does that tell us his purpose for producing humans with consciousness?

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

DAVID: A single goal.

dhw: So what do you think was your God’s single goal in specially designing 50,000 spider webs, eight stages of whale, the weaverbird’s nest, Neanderthal lungs and the brain of Homo sapiens?

DAVID: Simple, the creation of humans.

So he specially created 50,000 webs, eight stages of whale, the weaverbird’s nest and humans in order to create humans. I will refrain from commenting.

Xxxxx
dhw: If the environment changes, it is commonsense that organisms will try to survive. You said that “survivability did not make mammals take to water”, and I offered a commonsense scenario […]

DAVID: But your so-called common sense does not tell us how surviving species changed into more advanced forms. Survival only preserves an existing form. You can't seem to leave Darwin's adaptation theory behind.

Once more, NOBODY knows how speciation takes place. You have challenged the role of survivability in evolution, and you believe that your God changed pre-whale legs into fins before it was necessary, and then told pre-whales to enter the water. Why is that more commonsensical than the proposal that food was short on land but plentiful in the water, and so in order to survive, pre-whales entered the water, flourished, and their bodies changed accordingly? Nobody knows how, but this explains how survivability is integral to the evolutionary process, which is the current point at issue.

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?

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

dhw: Actually, since you claim to be a dualist, I’d have thought free will was an attribute of the soul and not the brain. But we’d better not re-open that can of worms. The brain is a mechanism. If you think free will is a product of that mechanism, then that’s fine. So if you think your God can invent a mechanism for humans which in turn produces free will, why shouldn’t he create a mechanism for other organisms which in turn produces free innovation? In answer to your question, I myself believe in free will but recognize that there is a strong case for not believing in it.

DAVID: You know darn well the brain is the seat of the soul during life. Don't open the can again.

I said myself that we shouldn’t re-open it. Perhaps now you will answer the bolded question.