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

by dhw, Monday, April 08, 2019, 11:40 (2054 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As usual your objections make no sense. You do not recognize the extreme evolutionary event that human brain/consciousness represents, as Adler points out. You simply give lip service to our consciousness, without realizing the deep meaning it represents.

dhw: You know very well that I have never denied that human consciousness is exceptional. That does not mean it hasn’t evolved from lesser forms of consciousness, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the incongruity of your belief that your God’s purpose in specially designing whale flippers, cuttlefish camouflage and the weaverbird’s nest was to keep life going until he could specially design our brain. Yet again you refuse to see that the problem lies in the combination of your hypotheses. Hence your “eternal question” below: why bother with all the whale changes if his one and only purpose was to design the human brain?

DAVID: I've answered that question continuously with the need for ecosystems supplying food for life to continue. Dead whales provide food for all the ocean creatures. History tells us God did not choose direct creation so food systems are necessary. My issue with God and whales is simple: He created sharks and other fish by simple evolution. Evolving land animals to develop seagoing mammals shows His power of creation, But I still have no idea why He bothered with that route. And my doubts don't damage my logic.

So now apparently you are puzzled that your God chose a roundabout route to create whales, whereas you are not puzzled that your God chose a roundabout route to create the brain of H. sapiens. I don't see why land to sea is any more complex than sea to land, and I don't know how you can call any aspect of evolution "simple" when apparently even a food trap (not to mention the weaverbird's nest) requires your God to give special courses to antlions.

DAVID: You again ignore that your proposed 'goal of diversity' has its own secondary purpose of affording food supply so evolution can continue and therefore was part of God's purpose, but not a separate goal.

dhw: Of course evolution could not continue without food. That does not mean your God specially designed every single food chain for the sole purpose of letting life go on for 3.5+ billion years until he specially designed the brain of H. sapiens!

DAVID: Again you assume direct creation by a Biblically-described God is what God should have done.

I don’t assume anything. I simply question the logic of your version of God specially designing billions of life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders so that they could eat or not eat one other until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design.

dhw: Hence the alternative hypotheses I have offered you, including one in which humans really were the goal: namely, he knew what he wanted, but didn’t know how to achieve it (i.e. an experimental God with limitations).

DAVID: All you are doing is second-guessing God. Accept history as His obvious choice.

It is not history that I reject, but your insistence that your own reading of God’s mind (he only wants to design the human brain, and so he designs billions of other life forms to keep eating each other until he does what he wants to do) is logical.