Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 09, 2019, 18:42 (1992 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: If God was in change of evolution, which is my belief, the history of evolution describes exactly what He did. He chose to evolve humans, and not perform direct creation of humans, which is what your criticism implies! It is illogical only to you.

dhw: The history of evolution describes 3.8 billion years’ worth of changing econiches, lifestyles, natural wonders, and life forms, the latest of which is humans. According to you, he chose to specially design every single stage in the evolution of humans, just as he chose to specially design every single non-human life form, lifestyle etc. You have no idea why he chose to specially design all of these if his only purpose was to specially design us, and my criticism does not imply anything other than the obvious fact that if you cannot explain why he chose the method you attribute to him in order to fulfil the one and only purpose you attribute to him, then you cannot claim that your interpretation of the history is logical.

The usual distortion. I believe God chose to evolve and controlled the process. See the other thread.

dhw: I agree with you and Adler that we are extraordinarily and uniquely and astonishingly and especially special. Adler does not support your belief that your God specially designed every other special organism, and did so in order that they would all eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to specially design: the extraordinarily special us. Do you in fact know of anyone who supports this belief?

DAVID: Not in those exact words, but all the ID folks believe God designed the evolution of humans, and most religious believers would agree, although some still believe in direct creation.

dhw: It is not a matter of “exact words”. There is a huge gulf between believing in a God who designed evolution and/or who specially designed humans, and believing in the details summarized above.

What is not clear in the statement? ID folks believe God designed every mechanism in biology and its biochemistry,

Under “our unique speech mechanism:

QUOTE: He concludes that the language faculty emerged with Homo sapiens, or shortly thereafter, but externalization in one form or another must have been a later development, and quite possibly involved little or no evolutionary change. (David’s bold)

DAVID: Note my bold. Anatomy was fully developed before sapiens speech appeared. Anatomic form first, then function. Note, one of the authors is Noam Chomsky.

dhw: Note your own bold: “quite possibly…little or no change” does not mean it was definitely fully developed. In any case, we have discussed this ad nauseam. There is absolutely nothing in this article to contradict the proposal that the original changes to the anatomy were brought about by a need for an increasing variety of sounds. By the time sapiens arrived, all (or perhaps nearly all) the necessary changes were in place. Then generations built on the achievements of previous generations to expand the range of sounds, meanings and eventually linguistic structures. The process is called evolution.

You have then admitted, first phenotypical development of anatomy and then the anatomy is learned to be used and language is learned to be developed through plasticity in the brain. Certainly needed, but drive by need is after the physical apparatus is available to use.