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

by dhw, Saturday, December 08, 2018, 10:06 (2175 days ago) @ David Turell

This thread, “whale teeth and baleens” and “strange DNA finding” are now overlapping to such a degree that we need to combine them. I should have thought of that before embarking on all this repetition, but I don’t have time to do the editing now. My apologies.

DAVID: You can theorize about His wants and motives all you want. It doesn't tell us anything of substance. What tells us anything is studying His works. He couldn't feed life without making a huge diversity to form the econiches. It is so obvious.

dhw: You have simply ignored what I have written. You believe that your God specially designed every life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder that ever existed in order to keep life going until he could fulfil his sole purpose of producing humans so that he could have a relationship with us. Your conclusion above leaves out the crucial “sole purpose”, and in any case is patently wrong. Life was “fed” when it comprised nothing but single cell life forms. It is indeed blindingly obvious that the huge diversity forms all the different econiches. Nothing whatsoever to do with your anthropocentric theory concerning your God’s wants and motives (a relationship with H. sapiens).

DAVID: Again ignoring the need for energy . Larger more complex forms need more energy while evolution evolves to create humans. All answered elsewhere. What you have written makes no sense to me and perhaps many others.

All life forms require energy, and larger more complex forms require more energy, and evolution evolved to create trilobites and dinosaurs and spiders and whales and the weaverbird and the duckbilled platypus and us, all of which has taken time. All blindingly obvious and – as in the passage you have quoted but ignored – it has nothing to do with your anthropocentric interpretation of your God’s wants and motives and methods.

DAVID: Cellular intelligence is your mantra, not Darwin's. I don't understand your question. 'Punc-inc' is Gould's excuse to cover gaps.

dhw: You said that my hypothesis was “pure Darwinism”. I don’t recall him ever proposing cellular intelligence as an alternative to random mutations as the mechanism for innovation. Punctuated equilibrium is not an excuse – it is based on observation of life’s history, and runs counter to Darwin’s insistence that nature does not make jumps. Nobody has yet discovered how the jumps take place.

DAVID: Darwin tried to get rid of God. Your cell intellect proposal is of the same order. Don't fully get rid of God but reduce His apparent controls.

My hypothesis is not “pure Darwinism” – he never even mentions cellular intelligence. He himself was an agnostic, explicitly stated that his theory was NOT meant to get rid of God, and even inserted references to the Creator in later editions of Origin. With my theist hat on, I have suggested that your God may have deliberately sacrificed control over evolution (see my answer on the baleen thread), in the same way and for the same reason as he deliberately sacrificed control over human behaviour.

DAVID: Because I analyze from what I see history and it tells us about what happened. I build on what I think God intended from those facts.

dhw: And yet you tell us you don’t try to read your God’s mind! Thinking what God intended means trying to read his mind! All of us see the history, and theists, atheists and agnostics all try to understand how it happened. I have put on my theist’s hat and I have pointed out the sheer illogicality of “what you think God intended”, but when I offer you alternative versions of what your God “might have intended” (= his motive), I’m told you don’t care about motives.

DAVID: I cannot read/enter His mind, nor can anyone else. I can guess at intentions based on the results I see.

So if it’s OK for you to guess, and insist that your guesses are right even though you can’t explain how the method fits the intention, why do you criticize me for guessing at his intentions in a manner which does link up logically with the results we see?

dhw: Thank you for the interesting article on the discovery of another new Australopithecus.

DAVID: It suggests God liked diversity in evolving humans, just as He created diversity in the huge bush of life. I suspect the reason for the diversity in life is econiches for food, while I suspect He already knew what H' sapiens would be like when evolution got to that point.

dhw: So now you have your God creating millions of life forms and econiches in order to expand the menu, and creating different hominins and homos because he liked diversity, although his sole purpose in producing different econiches and different hominins and homos was to produce H. sapiens so that he could have a relationship with us.

DAVID: I can only look at what fossils are found and what they tell us about God's possible intentions. Human existence, based on survivability, is not a reasonable view. We are too complex for that approach (Darwin).

You are not talking to Darwin, you are talking to me, and I did not mention survivability. I was simply pointing out yet again the dichotomy in your thinking.