Human evolution: early thumb tool grip advance (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 30, 2021, 13:34 (1393 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The dexterity of our hands and the opposable force of our thumbs make our hands vastly more useable than apes or early forms like Lucy. I can't imagine an ancient hominin playing the piano or violin.

dhw: So what are you proposing here? That 2 million years ago, your God stepped in to design opposable thumbs, anticipating H. sapiens’ invention of the piano and violin? Or is it possible that these homos had conceived of artefacts that required additional dexterity, and the process of making and improving on these artefacts RESULTED in more efficient thumbs?

DAVID: Think it through! Two million years ago who walked the earth? Early erectus and some older forms dying out:

Am I saying they didn’t? I am simply asking you if you think your God stepped in to design opposable thumbs in anticipation of pianos and violins two million years later, or did early erectus have new ideas which required greater dexterity for their implementation, resulting in changes to the thumb? Your next comment doesn’t help:

DAVID: Early small-brained erectus made stone tools so the new form of thumb from God was more useful, and anticipated the bigger brain hand uses later.

What do you mean here by “anticipated”? You keep telling us that he popped in to perform his operations. So he popped in to give erectus a waggly thumb because he knew that a million years later he was going to give someone else a wagglier hand and a bigger brain?

dhw: I really don’t know why you think your God had to preprogramme all this 3.8 billion years ago, or to keep stepping in and operating on countless thumbs and pre-whale legs and human brains and pelvises when all he had to do was give cells the intelligence to restructure themselves, as we know they do during processes of adaptation.

DAVID: You know exactly why I think as I do. God designs advances. God could not pack into cells His knowledge of design. It is always easier to just design it yourself as I have done in architectural designs in the past. You seem to love your second-hand God character, a weak confused fellow.

I know you think he designs every single evolutionary change, but I have no idea why “you think as you do”. I’m not going to denigrate your skills in architectural design, but you obviously believe you did it yourself. Do you think your God would have found it easier for himself to pop in and do it for you? You have him either devising a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every life form, econiche, strategy, lifestyle and natural wonder, or popping in over and over again to give special courses to weaverbirds and cuttlefish, or to perform operations on legs and fins, thumbs, hands, pelvises, brains etc. But he does it because this is “easier” for him than giving them the ability to do it all themselves!

And finally, there is nothing second-hand, weak or confused about a God who knows what he wants, designs it, and gets it.