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

by dhw, Saturday, February 23, 2019, 12:48 (1890 days ago) @ David Turell

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”.

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

If God exists, then he is the driving force behind evolution. But even if it were true that his only purpose was to design the human brain, and even if it were true that he specially designed flippers, camouflage and migration, the reason he did so was to improve the organisms’ chances of survival. The reason for doing something is, in your own words, its “immediate driving force”.

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. [etc.]

DAVID: 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.

We have long since agreed that “survival of the fittest” is a tautology that simply means the survivors are fit to survive. Nothing to do with your agreement that survival is a “primary requirement”. Thank you for accepting my view of the primary importance of survival as the “immediate driving force” for the invention of innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders. Now please let's stop all this quibbling and move on.

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.”

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

dhw: […] 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?

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

Econiches are necessary for all forms of life extinct and extant. Nothing to do with your anthropocentric view of evolution. If you can “only return” to repeating your fixed belief and cannot explain the role of dragonfly reproduction systems in your God’s design of the human brain, then please stop telling us it all makes sense to you.

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.

DAVID: 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.

Firstly, more contradictions: you “fully accept” that your God may have limitations, but you do not accept the possibility (= limitation) that he didn’t know how to fulfil the purpose you have imposed on him. Your acceptance that weaknesses (limitations) are mildly possible hardly amounts to “fully accepting” the possibility of weaknesses (limitations). Secondly, however, my views are not “diminishing concepts of Him as designer” – they are hypotheses to bridge the logical gap in your reasoning, as exemplified by the dragonfly example. These hypotheses include God having full power (= no weaknesses or limitations), and choosing to endow life forms with the ability to do their own designing, as opposed to their automatically picking out the correct instructions from his 3.8-billion-year-old library of complete information and instructions for the whole of undabbled evolution - which you keep trying to “sneak in” under the guise of “guidelines”.