Introducing the brain;complexity: autopilot (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 12, 2018, 11:13 (2171 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Same old battle between us. I simply accept God did what we see. You are constantly criticizing his method of creation.

dhw: I am doing no such thing! I am criticizing your interpretation of his method of creation, and I am challenging your view that the quest for survival has played little or no role in evolution.

DAVID: If survival was so important, why did humans lose their hair covering? Purposeful God action. Remove hair and give a better brain to allow hide clothing invention.

This is getting silly. God: “I’ll take off your hair, give you a bigger brain, and then you can invent clothes.” Pre-human: “Why, God?” “Well, when I specially design H. sapiens, he’ll be able to hold fashion shows, and girls will be able to wear pretty dresses. No, no, my dear pre-human, your invention of clothes has nothing to do with helping you to survive now that I’ve taken off all your hair and left you stark naked in the snow and ice.”

DAVID: Apes and monkeys are still enjoying the trees and the fruits available. The advent of bipedalism introduced all sorts of problems and dangers not faced by the tree dwellers. Bipedalism is not a survival advancement if apes are compared.

dhw: You keep telling us that you do not regard survivability as playing any role in evolution. We are not just talking about humans, but even with humans you tell us your God deliberately expanded pre-human brains, and only then were they able to invent the tools, weapons, clothes etc. which served the sole purpose of improving their chances of survival. The single example of bipedalism – which I have suggested may well have originated through conditions that required the descent of SOME anthropoids, while others remained in the trees – does not cover the whole of evolution. And I would suggest that the brain’s evolution – whatever the method and timing of expansion – was always linked mainly to survival until humans as we know them reached a point of awareness that took them beyond the basic needs and into the realms of thought beyond survival.

DAVID: Survivability is pure Darwinism. The capabilities of early hominins were well beyond the need for survival as compared to the apes they left behind who did not need any changes to survive for the last eight million years of side by side development.

“Pure Darwinism” does not mean it is wrong! I have answered the point about apes in the paragraph you have quoted. Now please tell me: do you think the invention of clothes, tools, weapons had nothing to do with survival? And please tell me if you think that whale fins replacing legs, baleens replacing teeth, fish camouflaging themselves, butterflies migrating to warmer climates, spiders spinning webs etc. had nothing to do with improving their chances of survival.