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

by dhw, Wednesday, April 03, 2019, 13:04 (2059 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Again, your definition of 'full control' and mine differ. I state He is the 'sole driver' of events. As such He is in full control, even if He finds that His invention of life has limits for Him so that He is forced to evolve the Forms He want. You want 'all-powerful' without limits, but you have suggested limits in the past. I'll stick to my approach.

dhw: I cannot see how being the sole driver or having limits can be equated with having full control, but in any case I don’t “want” omnipotence or limitations. I am merely pointing out that, as you have so frequently acknowledged, you cannot explain why your God should have spent 3.5+ billion years specially designing dinosaurs, whale fins, cuttlefish camouflage, and umpteen different apes, hominins and homos before specially designing the only thing he wanted to design, the brain of H. sapiens. Hence the different hypotheses you are now at last beginning to accept as possible alternatives to your own.

DAVID: I still don't understand your demand that I explain God's choice.

That is because you insist that your guess as to his choice is actually his choice! It is YOUR choice that is under scrutiny: you have chosen to believe that your God’s ONLY purpose was to design H. sapiens, and yet that he also chose to spend 3.5+ billion years designing anything and everything EXCEPT H. sapiens.

DAVID: I simply accept it and you don't. History is there for all to see and since I believe God is in charge, that ends the point for me. I don't have to try to explain. Since you keep demanding, unchanged in your approach, it is obvious you have not have anything else to bring forth.

It is not a matter of “acceptance” but of belief. The only facts we both “accept” are that all those life forms etc. exist/existed, and humans were a late arrival on the scene. It is your single and for you and me inexplicable interpretation of those facts that remains rigidly unchanged, whereas I have “brought forth” a range of different interpretations, all of which you agree make perfect sense.

DAVID: Note my point above: We do not know if God sees His own future with omniscience, a religious interpretation. He might not have foreseen that life is difficult to create without evolution.

dhw: You have now moved from omnipotence to omniscience – but that’s fine with me. In this latest hypothesis, perhaps he only learned how to specially design H. sapiens after 3.5+ billion years of not being able to do it (= limitations), and at the beginning he didn’t realize how difficult it would be (= ignorance). I’m pleased to see that your vision of your God is now allowing for these hypotheses. We are making progress.

DAVID: All guess work, since you demand to know what cannot be known.

Of course the true explanation cannot be “known” and it’s all guesswork. Why are you now so bashful at having accepted the feasibility of your hypothesis that your God might not have known what was coming?

DAVID: I've admitted your hypothesis have alternate logical bases, but I have the right to choose the one I think is more correct.

dhw: Of course. So what have you now chosen? That God was limited and ignorant of the future, and that is why he could not specially design the only thing he wanted to design? Or he was all-powerful and omniscient, but chose not to design the only thing he wanted to design, and you don’t know why?

DAVID: Not choices, forced guesses to try and satisfy your unanswerable questions.

Of course they are choices. Nobody knows the truth, but if someone has a fixed belief in one particular guess, at least he should be able to defend the logic of his choice of guess – as you do so admirably in your use of design as an argument for the existence of your God. It is you who volunteered the possibility that God has limitations (and even falsely accused me of sticking rigidly to the conventional view of an all-powerful God), so I don’t know why you are suddenly so reluctant to answer a straight question. If you can’t choose between those two options, then you must be open to both, as well as to their implications.