Big brain evolution: comparing chimp and brain organoids (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, February 15, 2019, 18:53 (2106 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Your image of God becomes more and more confusing. […]

DAVID: You are amazingly stuck with the same confusion. I view God as free to choose any methods He wants to create humans. We can assume, as you do most of he time, that He is limited and forced to evolve what he wants. We can raise the issue that He might be limited to explain His choice, but that is more a more complicated set of nebulous suppositions than simply accepting God has the right to choose His approach. We do not know He is limited. We know what He produced. I will agree that a million years of Erectus may have been for refinement of that stage in the process, but is still pure guesswork.

dhw: The confusion is entirely yours. I make no assumptions. I merely offer different hypotheses to explain the only facts we know, which are that there have been millions and millions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders, and humans came very late on the scene. If God exists, and since you and I believe that evolution happened, I have no doubt that he would have chosen evolution as his method for fulfilling his purpose. But what that purpose was from the beginning is “pure guesswork”, and whether his powers are limited or not is also “pure guesswork”. ...Both limited and unlimited are possible, I offer hypotheses for both, and you have agreed that they are all possible, but still you insist that the basis of your own is correct: i.e. you know his purpose and you know he chose to do things your way, even though you have repeatedly stated that you don’t know why.

Of course I do not know why God made his choice of evolving humans rather than a direct creation, or He did it because of limitations. These possibilities are all permutations of suppositions, angels dancing on a pine head. If one views evolution as driven by a need for survival and no other drive is present, humans have no need to be here at the level of sophistication they represent. Our ancestor apes are just fine if we would leave them alone. With that reasoning I view evolution as driven by God as designer, as proven by the obvious view that life is too complicated to be the result of chance.

(“God and Evolution" 8 February at 15.37:)

dhw:Just to clarify, we have been discussing theistic interpretations of evolution. You have a fixed view of your God’s (singular) purpose and of the (to me illogical and incredible) way in which he implemented that purpose NOT ITAL[repeated below: re Nature’s Wonders] and also incorporating the 3.8-billion-year old “library” of info and instructions. I have offered alternative views of the purpose, together with explanations concerning how he might have used the method of evolution in order to fulfill those alternative purposes. You have accepted that all of these are possible.

dhw:It would seem that we have now reached agreement on these issues, as well as on that of survival as an “immediate driving force” for evolution, and so I shall refer back to this post if any of these issues arise again. Pax!

DAVID: Peace.

dhw: I am a man of my word. How about you?

We can have peace within our preferred positions, which will always differ.

dhw (re "Nature’s Wonders"): Although I like your "gradual" hypothesis for the cassowaries, once again, the mind boggles at the sheer scale of information and instructions contained in the “library” you think you God installed in the very first cells. Or do you believe he might have popped in to instruct the slugs and the cassowaries? And all of this to ensure that organisms did and didn’t eat one another for 3.5+ billion years until he could design the only thing he wanted to design. But apparently you find this more feasible than the possibility that he gave organisms the means to devise their own ways of survival.

David: We have no evidence of such a mechanism. I view God as in control, and prefer not to suppose about which we have no facts.

dhw: You suppose that your God is in control (but elsewhere he is limited), you suppose that the brain of H. sapiens was his one and only purpose, you suppose that he specially designed 3.5+ billion years’ worth of life forms etc. so that they would eat / not eat one another until he had designed what he wanted to design, but you prefer not to suppose “about which we have no facts”.

The facts we both know have lead to what I consider logical conclusions and a discovery of a faith in God. Your conclusionary road differs. So be it.

DAVID: I'll repeat , the characteristics of humans are obviously not necessary for survival, which as I've shown, is not the driving force of evolution. Apes survived without humanizing. You have no answer for that point.

dhw: Answered again and again (NO life form beyond bacteria was “necessary for survival”) and you have agreed, as above in bold, that in your own words, survival was and is “an immediate driving force”. An immediate driving force is a driving force. What happened to our “pax”?

A total non-answer. You have no answer for why evolution advanced beyond bacteria. Your dependence on survival as a driving force logically goes out the window! Bacteria prove it! Only a designer could have created multicellularity. Bacteria are complex forms, multicellulars are infinitely more complex. All conclusions based on the facts we both know.