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

by David Turell , Monday, March 18, 2019, 22:32 (2075 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: God made an obvious choice, since other methods were available. It's your problem, not mine.

dhw: You cannot explain why an always-in-control God would choose to spend 3.5+ billion years designing anything but the only thing he wanted to design (the brain of H. sapiens).

Of course I can't explain it. No one can. What you keep harping on is God's choice of method. I don't read His mind so how do I know why? You and I have covered all the theoretical possibilities and cannot prove any answer. My reasoning stays logical to me. It is your problem only.

dhw: Why do you think he specially designed Neanderthal when all he wanted was H. sapiens? Could he have been experimenting, then, as opposed to being in full control, or could he even have left all the experimentation to the intelligent mechanisms he had designed so that they could do their own designing?

DAVID: You've forgotten that Neanderthal/sapiens interbreeding has been shown to provide a better immune system for the resultant sapiens now existing. […] God might have had different groups develop different aspects of DNA in just this way. Not experimenting, purposeful, as usual.

dhw: If your God was in full control and H. sapiens was his one and only goal, why could he not have directly provided H. sapiens with the better immune system? Possible answers: he was not in full control; H. sapiens was not his one and only goal; he deliberately designed different groups in the course of his “experiments in humanity”; he gave free rein to the evolutionary mechanisms he had designed. Or of course your own answer: he chose to do it that way, and you have no idea why.

I do have a reasonable idea for this question: Neanderthal and Denisovan groups lived in different environments, and produced different patterns of immunity, which with interbreeding allowed current humans who now live everywhere to have a broad pattern of immunity. Why He didn't do direct creation goes back to the original decision by God to evolve whatever He desired. And please don't go back to questioning His choices. It is your sole problem.I have no factual proof of any answer.