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

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 18:29 (2074 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).

DAVID: 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.

What you keep “harping on” about is 1) God is in total control, 2) his one and only purpose was to produce the brain of H. sapiens, 3) he specially designed millions of life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders so that organisms could eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the brain of H. sapiens. These are your fixed beliefs, you say their combination is logical, but you can’t explain the logic. Yes, inexplicable logic is a problem for me. On the other hand, you have acknowledged that my different alternatives are logical, but you reject them all. The fact that NO explanations are provable does not alter the fact that you continue to “harp on” about each of your three hypotheses although you are fully aware that in combination they do not make sense.

Of course I have explained it, but not to your satisfaction. The only thing I can't explain, because I can't read God's mind as to why He chose evolution as a method. But I can interpret the real history. If God is fully in charge and all-powerful, He has, and you've agreed, the right to choose His method of producing whatever He wishes. He has produced the most complex of all living things, the human mind in the human brain. I follow Adler's logic, a leading American philosopher, that we are different in kind and that predicts the existence of God in action and His intention. You love to quote beloved experts whose ideas you live by. I have the same right to live by Adler. I offer Adler's logical argument to answer you. When will you fully accept God made His choice of method to achieve goals? Evolution, obviously, must work toward desired endpoints.

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.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: I have no objection to your immunity theory. It is the problem of your fully-in-control God opting out of direct creation that is the issue between us, and you know full well that I am not questioning his choice. I am questioning your INTERPRETATION of his choices and methods. I have offered you four logical alternatives above, but you have ignored them all and opted for the fifth: “he chose to do it that way, and you have no idea why”.

Not knowing 'why' is an illogical response to me. You have no right to demand I must know why He made His choice or I am illogical. Talk about illogical thinking. Every evidence in reality shows God chooses to evolve: the Universe, conditions on Earth, and life itself. And it fits human immunity, as I've shown above. My interpretation fits history, and that cannot be denied. I'm still with Adler and the theological importance of human consciousness.