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

by David Turell , Thursday, February 21, 2019, 19:58 (2100 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: From my standpoint, you are totally backwards, by agnostically ignoring God's role. "Demands directly drive" are pure Darwinism unproven theory. I view God as the designer and prime driver of Evolution. Therefore survival is an important part of how He designs the next stage in evolution, but it is always of secondary consideration compared to the design of the next more complex stage with must include provisions for necessary survival.

dhw: Back you go to your hatred of Darwin.

I don't hate Darwin. I hate Darwinism, the stupid result of his thoughts being bastardized. He did base his theory on survivability, which has never been proven.

dhw: Of course demands/needs/requirements directly drive. Hunger directly drives you to look for food, danger directly drives you to look for protection, disease directly drives you to look for a cure, so why do you think the need to survive did not directly lead to the invention of flippers to improve pre-whales’ chances of survival in water, camouflage for cuttlefish to escape predators, migration for monarch butterflies to escape from the cold?

You are still ignoring my primary point. God is running evolution in my view. God decides on the advances, and provides for survival in His designs as a primary requirement of His design. You want survival to be primary. I don't accept that view.

dhw: You are wriggling around trying to forget your own acknowledgement that survival was the “immediate driving force” for all of these. The fact that you consider this “secondary” to your belief that God wanted them to eat or not eat one another so that life could continue until he could specially design the brain of H. sapiens does not mean an immediate driving force is not a driving force!

It must be a primary consideration for God as He designs.

dhw: you keep refusing to acknowledge my agreement with you that if God exists, of course he is the designer and prime driver of Evolution. That is why all the hypotheses I have offered you include your God.

I accept that you look at the possibility God exists. Why wouldn't you as a agnostic?

DAVID: You are forcing me to repeat my series of logical thoughts.God chose to design/evolve every form of life until the process produced H. sapiens. That comes from a preliminary analysis that life is much too complex to have arrived by chance, therefore had a first cause, and it had to be a mind/designer. Since I feel a chance-driven evolution cannot arrive at H. sapiens it must be the goal of the designer. I view the Cambrian 'gap' no larger than the ape/human 'gap'.

dhw: I have never questioned the logic of life being too complex to have arisen by chance, and I do not believe that chance-driven evolution could have arrived at dinosaurs or elephants or humans or dragonflies, and nor do you because you say he specially designed every species, lifestyle and natural wonder. That does not mean humans were his one and only goal. I have asked you to explain why he specially designed different dragonfly reproductive systems if his sole purpose was to specially design H. sapiens. You had written that it was “not ‘beyond our comprehension’, only yours in this discussion.” So once more, please explain it.

Ad nauseum. Part of the food supply balance of nature.

Dhw: You are an expert in using logic to question the dogma of atheists such as Dawkins, and also to support your belief in God, but you seem strangely reluctant to use it when discussing your fixed beliefs about your God’s possible purposes and methods.

DAVID: And just why can't I be fixed for myself? I've agreed your views are logical, but only if God is not the designer.

dhw: Of course you can be fixed, but the point of our discussions is to exchange views and to test how feasible they are. As for the different hypotheses I have offered, every single one allows for God being the designer, and every single one removes the great gap in your own: why would your God have specially designed billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders if his sole purpose was to specially design the brain of H. sapiens?

No gap. Balance of Nature, explained over and over.