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

by dhw, Saturday, March 09, 2019, 12:20 (2084 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: [History] only shows that the brain of H. sapiens arrived approximately 300,000 years ago, preceded by billions of unrelated life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders and by various forms of ape and hominin and human. […]

DAVID: Part of my thought pattern is the recognition, to which you also ascribe, that living organisms need energy to exist during all the 3.8 billion years of evolution. But above you ignore all that.

The obvious fact that all organisms need food provides no support for your combination of hypotheses: sole purpose H. sapiens, full control, and billions of years spent designing anything but H. sapiens.

DAVID: I accept that God is in charge. You obviously, as an agnostic, don't, but give lip service to the possibility.

If God exists, then of course he is in charge. My agnosticism does not magic away the illogicality of the above combined hypotheses or the logicality of alternative theistic hypotheses.

DAVID: Since He decided to slowly evolve the human brain, all of the necessary bush of life had to be in place so every form at every advancing stage had to be part of an econiche of the balance of nature to eat the food needed for energy to exist until the next stage was designed.

The whole issue revolves round your fixed belief that your God decided to “slowly evolve the human brain”, which was his one and only purpose. See above for the illogical combination of your hypotheses, but you cling to them as if they were a fact: “Since he decided…” Maybe he decided to create a bush of life!

DAVID: You try to present a picture of God running helter-skelter in all directions at once until He got His act together and got to the point of popping in our advanced brains.

That is YOUR hypothesis! You have him designing millions of life forms etc. extant and extinct (helter-skelter in all directions) until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design (got his act together).

DAVID: I view God as fully purposeful and fully aware of His goals.

If he exists, I have no doubt that he is fully purposeful and aware of his goals. That doesn't mean your interpretation of his goal (you only allow him one), and method of achieving it, is correct.

DAVID: The history supports every bit of my description.

See the first comment for what history tells us.

DAVID: Note your statement in bold. Everything is totally related in my view as evolution advances from single cells to very complex forms ending in the most highly complex item in the universe, the current human brain, different in kind, not degree, which Adler notes, cannot be by chance. Your objections are reasonable, as long as you don't accept God and recognize His purpose.

I do not recognize that dinosaurs, whales, elephants, cuttlefish camouflage, monarch migrations and weaverbirds’ nests – all apparently specially designed by your God – were/are all “totally related” to his specially designing the current human brain. As regards my objections, you acknowledge that you cannot explain your version of God’s purpose and method, and that alternative theistic interpretations are possible and indeed logical, but now apparently they are only reasonable if they are NOT theistic! I do not accept your inexplicable (and hence unreasonable) version of his combined purpose and method, and that is why I offer theistic alternatives which you recognize as being logical and reasonable, but regard as unacceptable because I am agnostic and because they contradict your fixed beliefs.