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

by David Turell , Saturday, April 13, 2019, 21:50 (2049 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

A complete miss of my logical point: I cannot explain His decisions as I cannot read his mind but can analyze his intentions from the results. He chose to evolve humans and provided the diversity for food supply until humans were evolved. Once He formed the universe and a suitable Earth by evolutionary processes, He directly created life in the form of early bacteria, and returned to evolution from that point.

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

dhw: 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.

So in your view God does not have the authority to choose a method of creation? Prefers equals choice in my way of thinking.

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.

dhw: 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.)

The use of evolution is a given if God is totally in charge. I start with that premise. All the hominins and homos have interbred and provided necessary survival advantages in the contributed DNA to the current humans, as I have noted. For me everything is logically explained. You may claim to start with my premise, but raise all sorts of doubts and objections, thereafter, stemming from your inability to choose any answers, which is your right. With nothing firm in your thinking, you stay filled with conjecture.