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

by dhw, Thursday, February 28, 2019, 10:16 (2093 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I don't gloss over the issue. You want to have me give you an explanation as to why God evolved humans over time. Of course I can't explain it, as you note, because I view it as God's decision to achieve His goals through evolution. That is my explanation: it was God's choice.

dhw: Of course if he exists he decided to achieve his goals through evolution. Why have you used the plural? According to you, there was only one goal: to produce the human brain. I have offered you four different theistic hypotheses to explain what you cannot explain, but in each case at least one element of your combined hypotheses (God always in control; one and only purpose to produce humans; preprogrammed or dabbled every single life form etc. in the history of life) has to be discarded. You have accepted their logic, but you insist on the one hypothesis that you cannot explain.

DAVID: You want the explanation. I don't need it since it was God's choice of action.

You can’t explain why your God would have chosen to spend 3.5+ billion years not designing the only thing he wanted to design. You accept the logic behind different interpretations of the facts as we know them, but you happen to know they are all wrong because your inexplicable hypothesis is right.

DAVID: The only way to solve the problem you have created as to why God used 3.5 billion years to create humans is ask God and He is not talking. Your human logic fights with the history of God's actions.

dhw: You have created the problem! You have accepted the logic of four different interpretations of your God’s actions, but you insist on the combination of hypotheses which you cannot explain!

DAVID: I've explained how God covered the gap in time with econiche food supply. His choice of a gap in time in His choice. We can debate why He made that choice, but we'll not come up with a definite answer, only your other hypothesis which in their own way are logical possibilities.

As above. My hypotheses make perfect sense, yours is inexplicable, but you know yours is right.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I am satisfied also. Within your frame of reference I recognize your thoughts are theistic and logical possibilities.

dhw: Thank you. My frame of reference is exactly the same as yours: we agree that life exists, there have been countless econiches, lifestyles, natural wonders and life forms extant and extinct, of which humans are the latest, and there may be a God who created life.

DAVID: And I would add, once life was started, God guided all the rest which has happened as you described.

dhw: That is not a frame of reference but an interpretation of all the above and the focus of our discussion. Must I really repeat all the alternative theistic hypotheses which you have accepted as logical?

DAVID: No, I'll stick to God in control.

Fine, although on other occasions you are not so sure that he is in control since his powers may be limited. Anyway, control fits in neatly with the hypothesis that God’s purpose from the beginning was NOT solely to produce the brain of H. sapiens but to produce countless econiches, lifestyles, natural wonders and life forms extant and extinct which have nothing to do with our brain but which he could enjoy as a painter enjoys watching his own paintings, to use the analogy which you are sure is correct.