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

by David Turell , Saturday, March 09, 2019, 18:17 (2084 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

Again you question why God waited and evolved life in stages. I can only answer it was His
choice. And therefore a big bush of life to supply food for all stages. Totally logical.

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.

dhw: 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!

Of course the bush was His decision.

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.

dhw: 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).

Not helter-skelter but obviously as food supply.

DAVID: The history supports every bit of my description.

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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.

I have my fixed beliefs which I have logically explained to my satisfaction. Observers can decide for themselves who is closer to the truth, which we cannot fully ascertain.