Human evolution; neonatal human and Neanderthal brains (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 15, 2019, 15:41 (1803 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: What I believe is God guided evolution constantly or with much pre-programming or pre-planning.

dhw: The only way your God could “guide evolution constantly” is through preprogramming or dabbling. So do you think he preprogrammed or dabbled every single “enormous” whale change in order to cover the time he had decided to take before embarking on achieving his one and only purpose – the design of H. sapiens? And would you agree that since these enormous changes were “adaptations”, it is difficult to draw a borderline between adaptation and innovation as processes that lead to speciation?

DAVID: You are confusing two words: as I use them adaptation is the same species slightly adjusted. Innovation creates a new species.

Your exact words were:
DAVID: Another partial step as whales adapted more fully to living in water, which required an enormous number of physical and physiological changes.

dhw: So which changes between land-based pre-whale and modern whale do you consider to have been innovations and not adaptations?

Still word games. If the changes were large enough, we would call it a new species! I'll stick to my view of the words.

dhw: …please explain your theory of why he needed to preprogramme/dabble all the different stages of whale in order to cover the time he had decided not to achieve his “final goal”, and why he needed to preprogramme or dabble all the different and now extinct forms of human if all he wanted was us and he was always in charge.

DAVID: Covered all of this before. The different final forms lived in different environments and with interbreeding brought different beneficial attributes to the human final product. It is quite clear to me God knew how to evolve humans from bacteria, but rather than directly implanting those beneficial attributes, he created mechanisms within the various hominin/homo groups to allow natural living development.

dhw: What does “natural living development” mean? I thought you thought your God preprogrammed or dabbled every single “beneficial attribute” that contributed to the design of his one and only purpose: H. sapiens. If he allowed “natural living development”, with all sorts of hominins and humans coming and going but contributing different bits and pieces while other bits and oieces got left out, I can't help wondering how this could possibly fit in with the concept of a God who is in total charge, has only one purpose, and knows exactly how to achieve it. I’m not surprised that you have “no idea” why your God would have chosen such a roundabout method of achieving his one and only goal. Maybe he had something else in mind. (See "David’s theory of evolution"

No, it is quite obvious God had Denisovans and Neanderthals to develop different attributes to then contribute to human genomes in helpful ways. The literature I read is full of comments about this. I note you are still fully into God's mind with humanizing questions. I just look at what we know from history and note obvious explanations, as I just gave.