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

by dhw, Saturday, March 23, 2019, 10:52 (2070 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] one of the major problems in our discussions is that your beliefs seem to change from week to week. It is you who keep on insisting that your God is in full control, and I keep saying that IF he is in full control, it is illogical that he should spend 3.5+ billion years designing anything but the one thing he wants to design.

DAVID: Wed, 6 March at 18:38:I believe He is in full control. You are the one who is not sure of that because you don't accept God's powers, and I know that. […]

DAVID: (Thursday 21 March at 18:43) I don't know if God is really all-powerful, as I've considered the issue, and fully understand He might have limits as He directs evolution.

DAVID: My belief He is full control covers both sides of your problem in discussion with me. Full control means He has the total right to choose His method of creation.

Of course he has the right to choose, but if he has limits, he can’t be in full control!

DAVID: My standard persistent position. Your view of His 'full control' means you see no reason for Him to have waited to create humans. You have the problem. I don't.

On the days when you believe he is in full control (with the powers you say I don’t accept), you have no idea why he spent 3.5+ billion years specially designing anything but the one thing he wanted to design. So can you then accept the possibility that he might deliberately have chosen NOT to maintain full control, i.e. to let evolution run its own course with the provision that he could dabble if he wanted to? On the days when you believe he may not be in full control, can you then accept the possibility that he may have been experimenting in order to find the right formula for a thinking being like himself? Or perhaps that humans came late on in his thinking, while he was designing all the things he enjoyed looking at, like a painter enjoying his own paintings?

DAVID: Adler gives no explanation for evolution, but as far as vastly different humans arrived, that vast difference proves God exists.

dhw: Our issue here is not the existence of God but your insistence that your God spent 3.5+ billion years designing anything but the one thing he wanted to design. You complained that I was “skipping the importance of Adler’s analysis”. Clearly Adler is irrelevant to this particular discussion.

DAVID: Adler is not off point. His view of the especial nature (consciousness) of humans is we are God's special creation and purpose.

The point of this discussion is your interpretation of your God’s purpose in relation to how evolution works. If humans were his sole purpose (Adler), you yourself have no idea why he specially designed countless life forms to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed H. sapiens. As above: One possible explanation is that your God has limits, and therefore was experimenting. Do you accept this as a reasonable explanation?

DAVID: […] As usual you are confused about evolution in that if God is running it, it will start simple, as in all evolved things, and have a complex, purposeful, desired point to reach. And to this point we have. Very special humans, per Adler's analysis.

There is no dispute between us over evolution starting simple and becoming more complex. If there is a God, of course he must have a purpose. Perfectly logical. The belief that H. sapiens is the desired endpoint is not in itself unreasonable. What IS unreasonable, and what you keep trying to gloss over, is the combination of this hypothesis with your OTHER hypotheses (full control, special design of everything except the only thing he wanted to specially design). Hence my asking you about the reasonableness of other possibilities.