More miscellany (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 11, 2024, 20:34 (133 days ago) @ dhw

Theodicy (under “the complexity of cell division”):

DAVID: Amazing that believers can live with your complaints. Proportionality is our answer.

dhw: You have ignored all of the above arguments, as well as the theories that evil is the consequence of God giving us free will, or is God’s punishment for our sins, or – your own invention – is God’s “challenge” to us, or is God’s way of making life more interesting. My comments are not complaints: they explain the problem of theodicy and the reason why “proportionality” is a non-answer. Your comment is your usual dodge of repeating what you believe and trying to shut out any arguments that focus on the contradictions which make nonsense of your beliefs.

Yes, believers recognizing your objections, still believe. What you moan about are the cumulative results of thousands of good actions which have a tiny number of side effects.

Back to David’s “schizophrenia”

DAVID: My God is all-powerful and omniscient. He sets goals and achieves them. We don't know if we can apply human attributes to Him.

dhw: My alternatives offer goals and achievement of goals, but without contradictions and without your ridicule of your all-powerful, omniscient God’s imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient means of achieving the goal you impose on him. Thank you for once more agreeing that we don’t know if we can apply human attributes to him, which negates your Jekyll’s belief that he is benevolent, enjoys creating, is interested in his creations and may want us to recognize and worship him, and which also negates your Hyde’s belief that your God certainly has no human attributes.

Your humanized God is so much like us, He can do no wrong. He responds just as we would.

Introducing the brain

QUOTE: “The planarian is thus not only the first animal to possess a brain, but may be the ancestor of the vertebrate brain.”

DAVID: No organized brains in Ediacaran's found so far. They don't have heads. The gap is in the sudden organization into brains of substance.

So although the planarian is the first animal to possess a brain and may be the ancestor of the vertebrate brain, you know that it did not have a brain and cannot be the ancestor of the vertebrate brain. I get it. Is this your Jekyll or your Hyde speaking?

Time is faster on the moon (but still "introducing the brain")

DAVID: […] Our brain is much too big and complicated for the single purpose of survival. Darwin's emphasis on adaptions for survival driving evolution does not fit this example. In short, human beings cannot be explained by Darwin's theory of evolution.

dhw: Of course our brain has evolved beyond the single purpose of survival! […] The question [Darwin] tackles is how species originate. You have agreed that early sapiens used their brain mainly for survival (though they and some of our ancestors had already expanded the use to forms of art, decoration, and even ritual). Yes, we have now extended the use of our brains far, far beyond survival, but that does not alter the fact that we are still sapiens, i.e. that our species and our brains evolved from earlier species and brains. And that is the basis of Darwin’s theory. It’s called “common descent”.

Yes, we evolved from apes, who are still here, not needing any of our advances. Even Lucy was a major unneeded change

dhw: Your totally irrelevant response was to repeat Adler’s proof of God’s existence, as dealt with on the evolution thread. Do you believe that your God designed our brain “de novo”, or do you believe that homo sapiens and his brain evolved from earlier species of homos and hominins and their brains (= common descent)?

Adler used Darwin's evolution theory intact. And used it to show humans should not have appeared as no need was ever demonstrated for survival. You champion Darwin's 'survivability' as a driver of evolution. Explain how the sapiens brain improved that ability, especially since our close cousins, the apes do just fine without it. Then add all the skeletal issues that allow us to do what apes cannot. Let's look at 'de novo'. Do you remember the story I presented in which the scientists had carefully dissected a small area of our brain and found how amazingly complex it was. Jumping from Erectus to sapiens brain is a major de novo design change. Here, our brain: Friday, May 10, 2024, 15:07.