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

by dhw, Monday, February 25, 2019, 13:08 (2096 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: God is the driving force, survival an immediate need in design.

dhw: I have just said that if God exists he is the driving force behind evolution. He is the doer, and an immediate need or purpose is the driving force behind the doer’s actions. Why do you insist on changing your own description of this as the “immediate driving force”?

DAVID: Because there is a nuance of difference. You agree God is the driver. Survival must be achieved by His new organisms as they are created. The survival requirement drives His design.

Exactly. Even in your own hypothesis, survival is the immediate force that drives his design (= immediate driving force) of the innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders that make up the history of evolution.

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.

dhw: 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: Its role is balance of nature. Stop describing what 'doesn't make sense to me'. I make my own sense.

But you admit that you cannot explain why your God chose to design millions of niches, including those involving different dragonfly reproductive systems, when all he wanted to do was design the brain of H. sapiens.

DAVID: Of course there is no direct link between fireflies and human brains. It is all part of evolution as I view it. To repeat, I make perfect sense to me.

Of course it’s part of evolution, as is every other life form, lifestyle and innovation. But that does not explain why he “chose” to design them all when the ONLY thing he wanted to design, according to you, was the human brain.

dhw: If God exists, of course he drives evolution, but not necessarily in the way or for the purpose you impose on him. And that is the nub of the matter. You accept the logic of my objections to your hypothesis but you refuse to budge. That is the essence of dogma.

DAVID: I won't budge. I am not agnostic.

Nothing to do with agnosticism, since all the logical alternatives I have offered you are theistic.

DAVID: (from the "gene complexity" thread) You like a slightly impotent God.

dhw: […] there is no impotence involved if God chooses to give evolution free rein through his design of an autonomous mechanism (cellular intelligence), as opposed to providing a 3.8-billion-year-old library of information and instructions for every single undabbled life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, plus solutions for every single problem that bacteria would have to solve for the rest of time.

DAVID: You do not see a purposeful God as I do. If He is driven to achieve certain goals He will keep tight control.

dhw: If I believed in God, I would see him as all purposeful. But (a) since your theory that his one and only goal was you and me is logically incompatible with his 3.5+ billion years’ worth of anything but you and me, I challenge it, and (b) since you firmly believe in free will, it should be obvious to you that he did not wish to keep tight control over at least one product of evolution, and so it is feasible that he might not have wished to keep tight control over the evolutionary process either. And you are sure that he enjoys his creations, just as a painter enjoys his paintings, but you are unwilling to even countenance the idea that he might have started the whole higgledy-piggledy process for his enjoyment. (The word was yours. I would prefer to delve a little deeper.)

DAVID: But you don't believe in God. In that point of view I agree all of your thoughts have logic, but your thoughts don't change my mind.

Same answer as above. The “logical” thoughts I have offered you are all theistic. But I am satisfied with your earlier acknowledgements that you can't explain why your God chose to spend 3.5+ years not fulfilling his only purpose, and that all my alternative theistic explanations are logical and possible. I do not ask you to believe in any of them.