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

by dhw, Monday, December 03, 2018, 14:26 (2180 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your probability supposition is only is only an extrapolation of the use of our brain. If we have a brain we logically have independent thinking and the freedom to do as we will. Could God have given us a consciousness with a brain and put a governor on our thoughts? Silly idea!

dhw: I presume you mean our special human brain – otherwise all organisms with a brain have independent thinking and the freedom to do as they will, which has always been quite contrary to your beliefs.

DAVID: Not true. My dog makes conscious choices all the time: eat, not eat, play, not play, etc.

Apologies for my mistake, but now it’s clear. You think every organism with a brain logically has independent thinking and the freedom to do as it wants. (Let’s forget about bacteria for the moment.) Theoretically, that leaves every organism with a brain capable of independently working out its own means of coping with environmental change, if that is what your God wanted them all to do. One up for the autonomy of whales, ants and weaverbirds. (I'll leave out spiders, since their form of "brain" is controversial.)

dhw: Once more: If your God was prepared to sacrifice control over human behaviour, it is equally possible that he might have been prepared to sacrifice control over how organisms evolve. Given the history of life as we know it, this theistic hypothesis is just as likely as the hypothesis that “He still remains in full control”.

DAVID: How a brain works and whether it has free will or not is at a consciousness level, not a body adaptation level of evolution. I don't think your stretch from one level to another makes any sense at all.

Again missing the point of this discussion, which concerns your insistence that God remains in full control. You believe he has chosen NOT to remain in full control of humans. So he is willing not to be in control. Therefore, how do you know he was not also willing to sacrifice control over how evolution proceeded?

dhw: […] now that you have agreed that 50,000 spider webs, whale fins and weaverbirds’ nests were not stepping stones to humans, we are just left with the question of why your God must have designed every innovation in advance of any need for it. Wouldn’t life and econiches have continued to evolve, with all their comings and goings, if he had given organisms their own means of responding to environmental change instead of him preparing the lucky ones in advance?

DAVID: That is logical if God supplied the necessary engineering design instructions to cover the really insurmountable gaps of the fossil record. Understanding needs of the future are required for design, for example as mammals hopped into the water. You are still hoping that tiny adaptations can somehow bridge the gaps. That is pure unadulterated faith in Darwinism.

God giving organisms the design instructions is the exact opposite of my hypothesis. As usual, you insist that innovation requires knowledge of the future, whereas we know that adaptation requires response to the present. Unless you are now going to insist that your God preprogrammes or dabbles every single adaptation, there has to be an autonomous mechanism for minor changes. My hypothesis, as you well know, is that the same mechanism may be capable of major changes in RESPONSE to environmental changes. Please stop talking about “hope”, and harping on about Darwin, and tell me why my own unproven hypothesis is less likely than your own unproven hypothesis, in which your God changes pre-whale legs into fins before there is any need for them to enter the water, and removes pre-baleen teeth before filter-feeding becomes a better way of survival than chewing?