Evolution and humans: Neanderthal contributions (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, September 02, 2019, 09:34 (1908 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: [..] So he was able to directly design every life form etc., but he couldn’t or wouldn’t directly design what according to you was the only thing he wanted to create: H. sapiens. Therefore he indulged in “byplay” for 3.X billion years before indulging in more byplay with lots of different hominins and homos, some of whose features got passed on to other homos until his final direct creation of the remaining features of H. sapiens (brain, pelvis etc.). And this, according to you, is not a roundabout process!

DAVID: Once again you give evidence your concept of God as making wrong decisions in achieving a purpose, creating humans. I use history as evidence. We evolved. God did it. You don't accept that. We remain apart.

Absolutely not! I am not criticizing your God, I am criticizing your INTERPRETATION of his purpose and his method of achieving that purpose! YOU say he is always in control, his only purpose was to design H. sapiens, he decided not to fulfil his one and only purpose for 3.X billion years, and he therefore had to design all the other life forms, and then all the non-sapiens forms! None of this is “history”. History, for those of us who believe evolution happened, tells us that complex life forms developed from simple life forms, creating a huge bush of non-human life forms until eventually lots of different human life forms appeared, with H. sapiens as the latest and possibly the last. THAT is history. Even if we accept that “God did it”, there are several ways in which that history can be interpreted theistically without any of the above illogicalities.

DAVID: As the design argument keeps you an agnostic, do you really think your God would conjure up cell committees with an ability equal to brain work. That really is a roundabout theory.

dhw: Nothing roundabout here. Humans have designed machines with an ability to do different forms of brain work. You believe your God invented the brain to do brain work, and yet you don’t believe that the components of the brain can do brain work. Or had you not realized the brain is composed of cell communities?

DAVID: All of which are designed to be wired together to work together with purpose.

Yes. So what makes you think your God is incapable of “conjuring up cell communities (“committees”) with an ability equal to brain work”? Cells do brain work! But you cannot accept the possibility that your God created them to do brain work. You have to have him doing all the brain work for them.

DAVID: Is your God so lazy He sets up a mechanism to do the work for Him?

dhw: What work did he want done? Perhaps he wanted to create a mechanism that would autonomously provide a vast variety of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders which he could, in your own words, “watch with interest”. “That makes him human!” you cry, objecting to your very own proposal. No it doesn’t. It simply gives him and us something in common. And it fits in perfectly with the history of life as we know it.

DAVID: How do you know we have anything in common with God other than consciousness? And how does history prove that?

I don’t know. I simply object to your insisting that you know your God’s nature, purpose and method, and therefore you can reject alternative interpretations of his nature, purpose and method. You are the one with fixed beliefs!

dhw: You have still not told us the difference between a goal and a single purpose. Please do so, as it is central to our disagreement.

DAVID: Goals and purposes are the same but the way you approach the argument is to strongly imply that my God was dominated by his desire for humans and foolishly took too much time to reach the evolution of humans. A complete distortion of my view of God, but a neat debating trick on your part.

The debating trick is yours. If your God’s one and only purpose or goal had been to design H. sapiens, then of course he would have been dominated by his desire for humans. And therefore it makes no sense to have a purposeful God focusing on anything but his one and only purpose. I do not for one second believe that your God would be “foolish”. The foolishness lies in your insistence on a reading of his mind which you yourself cannot understand. See “Unanswered questions”.