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

by David Turell , Sunday, April 14, 2019, 19:59 (2048 days ago) @ dhw

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.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: And he “chose to evolve” every life form, including all those that have no connection with humans. That is why you have no idea why he would have chosen this method if his SOLE intention was to produce humans. You use the terms “evolve” and “were evolved”, but since according to you every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder required special design either by preprogramming or dabbling, once more you skate over the problem that if he specially designed everything else, why did he not specially design the only thing he wanted to design?

Again total non-sequiturs. First of all in God using evolution, everything preceding humans were involved in their creation from what was developed before them. And, of course, God did specifically design humans by carefully managing their eventual appearance, including providing the enlargement of their magnificent brains. You are contending He was hands off. Not at all, which is why when you propose organisms managing their own future changes thru a God-given mechanism I've always contested that it must have God's guidelines.

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

dhw: […] he “prefers” it is no explanation at all, but simply an astonishing assumption that you know exactly what God thinks.

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

dhw: Of course he has the authority to choose! But you have no idea why he chose/preferred the purpose and method you ascribe to him, and so I have suggested different purposes and methods, all of which you agree make perfect sense.

Of course they are logical alternatives, IF He had limitations that caused Him to make His final choice of methods. But we do not know if He found He had limitations, do we? You are the doubting agnostic and comment from your non-belief.

DAVID (dhw in bold): The use of evolution is a given if God is totally in charge. [Yes.] 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. [See below.] For me everything is logically explained. [Except that you admit you have no idea why he chose such a method, which = you can’t explain it.] 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. [True. You have chosen to believe in one conjecture which you find inexplicable. That is also your right. Just as an atheist might choose to believe in the chance conjecture. The fact that he has chosen one conjecture over another does not endow his belief with any more logic than your own.]

It is your unreasonable insistence that I explain God's choice, when I can't know , but interpret reasonably, that keeps this irrational discussion going. You keep hunting for a semi-competent God, when we can only make assumptions that for many of us are based in faith. We are separated by the chasm.

DAVID: (Under “Denisovans”) After surviving so long, there should be fossils to help us understand.

dhw: There are, and new ones are being discovered all the time. And each new discovery adds further mystification to the hypothesis that your God’s purpose from the very beginning was to specially design H. sapiens.

DAVID: Well, the one thing that is certainly true is that we are the only ones here with bits and pieces of their DNA which added to our prospects for healthier living. Not so silly after all. Everything we discover adds to knowledge of God's purposeful activities, but only if one has an open mind.

dhw: But you “have no idea” (your words) why your God chose to separately design all the different bits and pieces in different hominins and homos at different times instead of separately designing the only homo he wanted to design: H. sapiens.

I view God as hands on all the way. Again you unreasonably champion direct creation. That is not a requirement.

dhw: If you can’t explain this method of achieving his one and only goal, but you cling to it and refuse to consider other possible and completely logical interpretations of goal and/or purpose, I’m afraid the last thing you can claim for yourself is open-mindedness.

And all you want to propose is the probability of an incompetent God. What if He is totally competent?