Human evolution; early ancestor probable upright posture (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, September 27, 2019, 18:15 (1884 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The definition of evolution is a change from one form to another, or have you forgotten? […] And as before, its not that I have 'no idea', I don't question God's choice to evolve all forms.

dhw: Since we both believe evolution happened, the disagreement is not over what evolution means but over your explanation of your God’s thinking! And you use every means possible to avoid combining the two irreconcilable parts of your theory. […]

DAVID: My meaning of the word evolve, since you brought up the word's meaning, is that new complexities developed from past complexities creating a process that advanced complexity. We differ in that I firmly think God guided the process and in doing so He actually designed what required design and gave organisms the epigenetic ability for minor adaptations.

“Guided the process” means that he either preprogrammed or personally dabbled every innovation, not to mention every lifestyle (e.g. the monarch butterfly) and natural wonder (e.g. the weaverbird’s nest), which you insist were also specially designed. Since you are now distinguishing between actual design (preprogramming and/or dabbling) and “epigenetic ability”, I can only assume that the latter means he gave autonomous intelligence to all organisms. If it was not autonomous, then it was still “guided”, i.e. preprogrammed or dabbled. Firstly, this autonomy can also apply to bacteria, and secondly this is the mechanism which I call cellular intelligence and which may also have directed evolution, though that remains an unproven hypothesis. Just trying to clarify. Any disagreement with this interpretation of your statement?

DAVID: As for humans, we are such an unusual result they are an obvious goal of evolution. I am not confused about God's thinking, since I believe what happened is God's doing as Creator. He obviously chose to evolve humans over time.

Yet again you try to separate and even change the different parts of your theory in order to hide the illogicality of their COMBINATION. Firstly, you’ve gone back to “AN obvious goal” as if there were others, but you insist that the goal of all preceding life forms extant and extinct was to provide food to keep life going because he had decided – for reasons you cannot fathom – to wait 3.X billion years before he started designing all the life forms that led to the only one he wanted. But secondly, even if it were true that his one and only goal was to produce H. sapiens, you refuse to consider any logical explanation of the delay (e.g. experimentation), and so you believe he “had to” abide by the procedure bolded above, because you happen to know that he is in total control and he cannot possibly have any characteristics (such as the desire to experiment) in common with the humans you say he specially created.

dhw: The illogicality of your explanation is not justified by complaining that a logical explanation entails using human logic!

DAVID: Having no idea as to why God made His choice to evolve humans, means only that I cannot know His reasons, only guess at them, and therefore is a totally logical position.

How can not knowing his reasons but making a guess which you yourself cannot explain (you have no idea why) be called a totally logical position?

dhw: […] I still don’t know why you think an always-in-control God found it necessary to specially design H. sapiens by first designing umpteen different hominids and homos, with a useless 21-million- year-old vertebra here and a Neanderthal gene there. In any case, you now give us a quote which leaves wide open the effect of these genes on people today:
“But researchers cannot yet say how these archaic sequences affect people today, much less the humans who acquired them some 50,000–55,000 years ago."

DAVID: What a wild assumption. The researchers know the genes exist, but how much they affect us is still under current investigation, not that they are probably valueless as you imply.

It was you who wrote that the “tiny inconsequential lumbar change 21 million years ago […] didn’t change the lifestyle of that monkey and wasn’t necessary at that time”, which I take to mean valueless. And it was you who wrote: “Neanderthal genes affect our skin and immunity and are beneficial to us. A wise God would let various homo types to contribute to the final sapiens product by developing different appropriate responses to a variety of environmental issues”. What a “wild assumption”, when the researchers themselves leave such claims wide open.