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

by David Turell , Saturday, March 23, 2019, 14:12 (1862 days ago) @ dhw

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.

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

If you choose to turn right or left, aren't you in full control? You imply He might be constrained by limits. WE have no idea if your supposition that He has limits is true.

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.

dhw: 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?

Your doubts about God's abilities are all reasonable for you to entertain, since we are in an area where there is no factual material to study except the path of evolution..

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.

dhw: 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?

I have agreed it is a possibility in any discussion about God's method, but it offers no consideration of the point humans are different in kind, and therefore are a special result of evolution.

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.

dhw: 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.

Your asking just reflects your own doubts about God's powers. You keep harping on 'delay' of human appearance . That is a human 'impatient' style judgment.