Human evolution; "Little foot's" balance mechanism (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 27, 2019, 12:35 (2125 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] Whatever may have been your God’s motive in starting life and evolution, the purpose, motive or driving force for creating all the individual elements (innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders) – according to your own hypothesis – was to enable the organisms to survive. If purpose or motive is not a driving force, then I really don’t know what is.

DAVID: We are close together, but there is a major nuance of difference. Survival is required but does not drive evolution to force new advances in complexity.

I did not say it forced advances in complexity – I do not regard fins as more complex than legs. But I believe that if the pre-whale’s legs turned into fins, that was because fins improved its chances of survival in water.

DAVID: I view God as the designer with the prime purpose to create beings with consciousness. That consciousness at the human level is not required for survival is demonstrated by all the other primates.

We have both agreed a thousand times that since bacteria have survived, NOTHING else was “required” for the survival of life itself. I don’t understand why suddenly you are confining evolution to humans. Once multicellular organisms evolved, there was diversity, and all kinds of innovations were designed (by your God or by my cell communities) to improve chances of survival – leading to all the different econiches (see below under “Neanderthal”) that existed thousands of millions of years before humans arrived.

DAVID: I repeat survival as a driving force is not proven and never will be. I will continue to believe in a designer with an identifiable purpose.

I repeat: (a) none of our hypotheses about God or about evolution are “proven”, and (b) if you think the purpose of or motive for an invention is not a driving force, then I don’t know what is. And if God exists, of course he has a purpose, but you are in no better a position than I am to identify it or to read the thoughts behind his method for achieving his purpose.

Under “Neanderthal”
QUOTE: "And so we have consistently mistaken survival and extinction with biological superiority or inferiority. That is why we have incessantly sought differences to explain our observations. We are here and they are not and so we must seek differences to explain the data. (David's bold)

DAVID: […] Note my bold. Survival does not indicate natural superiority. We still do not know all the reasons for survival and therefore for evolution to newer 'better' forms. Evolution is not driven by a need for survival. On the other hand it is obvious there is a drive for evolution to proceed.

The fact that we don’t know why Neanderthals as such did not survive has absolutely nothing to do with the reason why new organs, lifestyles and natural wonders have originated throughout the history of evolution. Superiority or inferiority are not the point either. As you yourself keep emphasizing, all econiches depend on a hierarchy. For the econiche to survive, the “inferior” organisms must also survive or the “superior” ones will perish. You simply refuse to recognize the obvious fact that if innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders help organisms to survive, then survival is the obvious reason for their existence, no matter how they came into being. And it is patently absurd to say that the reason for something coming into existence is not a driving force.