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

by David Turell , Friday, February 22, 2019, 14:51 (1891 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have tried to explain below why survivability is sheer common sense. You have agreed to this and have called it an “immediate driving force”.

It is an immediate design requirement. It doesn't drive God's evolution.

DAVID: 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: If, in your view of evolution, survival was a primary requirement of his design, then survival was a primary purpose for his designing the flippers, camouflage and migration. In most people's eyes, including your own, purpose would be regarded as a driving force. The fact that you believe his primary purpose in designing them and all the other products of life and evolution extant and extinct was to keep life going until he could design the brain of H. sapiens does not alter the fact that a "primary requirement" amounts to a primary “immediate driving force” (your own words). The accumulation of all these innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders constitutes the history of evolution. That does not contradict your theory that “God is running evolution”.

Thank you for a moderate view of survival's role in evolution which accepts my view of the importance of survival and puts 'survival of the fittest' in proper perspective.

dhw: 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.

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

dhw: We have agreed ad nauseam that all organisms need food, the balance of nature has constantly changed throughout the history of life, it always depends on conditions and a particular hierarchy of organisms, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the argument that your God’s sole purpose from the very beginning was to design the brain of H. sapiens. Or do you honestly believe that your God could not have designed the brain of H. sapiens if he hadn’t designed particular econiches in which dragonflies had different reproductive systems?

I can only return to God's choice to evolve humans over eons of time and econiches are necessary.

DAVID: (under “Chixculub and volcanoes”: Whatever the cause dinosaurs had to go to allow mammals to proliferate.

dhw: Yes, when Chixculub struck, the balance of nature changed, which of course makes us wonder why he would have bothered to specially design dinosaurs in the first place if his one and only purpose was to specially design the brain of H. sapiens. You accept the logic of my different explanations – e.g. this was not his one and only purpose, or he didn’t specially design the dinosaurs, the flippers, the slug poison and the different dragonfly reproductive systems (but may have designed the mechanism that enabled the organisms to do their own designing), or he didn’t know how to achieve his one and only purpose, or the purpose did not occur to him until late in the process - but for some reason you think all of these remove your God as the designer.

No, I fully accept that Chixculub alters the course of evolution and may have been used by God to make that correction. And I fully accept that God may have limitations as you describe. I do not accept organisms self-design abilities unless under God's guidelines, which you keep trying to sneak in without guidelines. All the above are possible interpretations of God in his designer role. Also I will not go so far to think God did not know how to evolve humans , but had to learn the process. Your proposals about the weaknesses of God are all mildly possible, but the results of creation strongly suggest God is much more powerful than your diminishing concepts of Him as designer.