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

by dhw, Saturday, April 13, 2019, 11:28 (2049 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I can fully understand why humans are the goal, based on how unusual we are, mirroring Adler. It is you, not me, who doubts the reasons for his method, all of which we have covered in our discussion.

You still refuse to recognize that it is the COMBINATION of your hypotheses which you yourself cannot understand. If humans were the goal, you “have no idea” why he chose to spend 3.5+ billion years designing anything but humans. You accept the logic of the hypothesis that he might not have known how to fulfil his goal (to create a being in his own image), and therefore had to experiment. It is equally logical to propose that he did NOT set out to design H. sapiens and the idea only came to him late on in the process. I shan’t repeat all the other alternatives, every one of which you agree provides a logical combination of purpose and method.

DAVID: The majesty of the human brain declares His purpose. It cannot have appeared by chance.

dhw: The complexity of ALL life is such that we both find it impossible to believe in chance as the cause. Chance has never been the issue between us. The dispute is over your inexplicable combination of hypotheses (single goal, 3.5+ billion years spent on not fulfilling it).

DAVID: Your same impatient complaint about God. My answer is above. He simply prefers evolving over direct creation.

I was replying to your point about chance. And as regards the problem which makes your COMBINED hypotheses impossible for you to understand, he “prefers” it is no explanation at all, but simply an astonishing assumption that you know exactly what God thinks.

DAVID: He certainly gave them [all the different hominins and hominids] wanderlust to travel all over and adapt to new climates and locations.

dhw: But that does not explain why he would have chosen such a roundabout way to design the only form of human that he wanted to design. The ever increasing variety suggests to me that if your God exists, he may have designed a mechanism enabling all life forms to adapt and innovate in response to ever changing environmental conditions.

DAVID: And I agree that is certainly possible, but I object to the idea, implicit in your suggestion, that the adaptations are free flowing with no purposeful end in sight. If God supplied that mechanism it would not be free from God's guidance.

I have offered you the experimentation hypothesis as an alternative, although I find free flow more likely – leaving open the possibility of dabbling. i.e. he could guide it if he wanted to. That would explain the long, higgledy-piggledy history of the bush and would also allow for the purposeful end you envisage, but NOT for the inexplicable combination of hypotheses you keep insisting on. (Other alternatives suggest a different purpose for the bush.)