Human evolution: we are entirely improbable (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 17, 2021, 09:26 (1187 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The heading you have given to this thread is a truly shocking distortion, as part of your attempt to prove that humans were your God’s sole purpose. The article is about the odds against life. It does not specify humans. The brontosaurus, the whale, the crow, the ant, and all the cells of which they are composed are entirely improbable. The heading should read: Evolution: life is entirely improbable.

DAVID: Agreed, but humans are part of all life, and our improbable brain is not explained by anything but a designer.

Your heading implies that the article supports your contention that your God’s purpose was to create humans. I’ll stick to our agreement and refrain from relaunching my attack on your general theory of evolution. Thank you for agreeing that your heading is wrong.

DAVID: Multiverses is simply gambler's fallacy as the author points out. There is no substantive scrap of real evidence, only the attempt at anything but God the designer.

dhw: Pots and kettles. EVERY explanation is “gambler’s fallacy”! Instead of an infinite, eternal universe or an infinite number of eternal universes producing the right combination, you opt for a mysterious, unknown, eternal, conscious mind without any source creating the only universe we know, containing billions and billions of stars and galaxies coming and going, in order to produce a single dot to contain life. You simply cannot grasp the fact that solving one mystery by substituting another is just as much a “gambler’s fallacy” as the atheist explanation.

DAVID: The fallacy in your retort is the overwhelming evidence of design, needing a designer.

The fallacy in your retort is that an unknown, eternal, conscious, immaterial mind without any source gives rise to just as many unanswerable questions as the theory that chance assembled the bits and pieces that made up the first living cells. Belief in either demands a huge leap of faith (which you have always acknowledged). You and Dawkins are prepared to leap in your different directions, and of course you have a perfect right to do so. But you should not kid yourselves or us that your respective faiths are supported by science.

RNA can’t work

DAVID: The way life evolved won't ever be found by humans is my point. Hunter and I have made the same comments many times.

dhw: And I couldn’t agree more. All explanations are unprovable theories. You have made out an excellent case for agnosticism.

However, I must stress that the purpose of this website is not to proselytize for agnosticism. All of us are looking for clues, and there is an enormous amount to be learned from the search. We should not give up. But after 13 years of discussions, it seems that even you occasionally acknowledge that all paths lead to agnosticism!

DAVID: No, I think the evidence brings belief, and I am an example of an agnostic who was convinced.

If you believe the way life evolved won’t ever be found by humans, you will never find it, so your belief that you have found it can only mean….but no, I’ve met you. And you are definitely human.