Evolution and humans: Neanderthal contributions (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, August 30, 2019, 10:07 (1911 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: “It makes it hard to argue that there was ever some … special evolutionary event or genetic event that triggered the evolution of humans as we know them,” he added. Humans have been continuously evolving through the mixing of varied populations for hundreds of thousands of years. (In fact, Scally posits that our species did not originally evolve from a single population in Africa, but rather from many interconnected populations spread out across the continent.)
“'This is telling us, ‘Oh, this is not a weird one-off,’” Hawks said. “It’s a continuing interaction.'”

DAVID: The rest of the article is a review of possible migrations and interbreeding. My point in presenting it is that it is a direct refutation of the dhw point that God seemed to diddling around with so many parts of a developing human bush instead of getting right to the point of making modern humans. He obviously had a plan to use different forms to offer contributions to the final result, forms that developed (evolved) different contributions.

So your God, who is always in control, was apparently perfectly capable of preprogramming or directly dabbling every single feature that is now combined in H. sapiens (the only species he wanted to design), but he chose to design all these features separately and pop them into different forms of hominin and homo. And you have no idea why he chose this method instead of directly creating the only species he wanted to design. (For some reason you have denied that he only wanted to design us, but now you are telling us that he only wanted to design us and chose to do it in this roundabout manner!)

Dhw: (Thursday, August 29, 2019, 19:31):"According to you, then, it was his decision to take 3.X billion years before starting to fulfil his one and only purpose, which was to design H. sapiens (though even then he designed lots of hominins and homos before designing the only one he wanted to design – see below). He therefore had to design the rest of the bush to cover the time he had decided to take. '"

DAVID: dhw doesn't seem to be able to imagine a God that is entirely purposeful and knows exactly what He is doing. dhw's view of God has Him bumbling along.

Dhw finds it hard to imagine a God who is entirely purposeful and always in total control having a single purpose (H. sapiens) but fulfilling that purpose by deciding not to fulfil it for 3.X billion years, then having to design lots of non-humans to cover the time, and then having to design lots of non-sapiens hominins and homos containing bits and pieces of future sapiens plus bits and pieces that would not be needed for sapiens. To me that sounds like a God bumbling along, and so a bumbling God is what you are depicting. It may be so. Your God is unknowable. But maybe he is not bumbling at all. Maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing. Maybe his purpose was not just to design H. sapiens. Maybe the great variety, the higgledy-piggledy comings and goings as new forms replaced old, and yes, even the emergence of greater degrees of consciousness in different forms of homo, and the fascinating career of H. sapiens with his highest of all degrees of consciousness were ALL part of his purpose, as he “watches with interest” (you used that expression once) the fascinating ways in which his original invention develops. Only maybe. At least it ties in with history and does not present us with the blatantly illogical picture you have drawn of your God’s single purpose and bumbling way of achieving it.