dhw: Yes, we are unique, but even if we ignore the chance hypothesis, our presence could derive from any one of the three alternative hypotheses I offered you (God having fun, God experimenting, God leaving the mechanism to sort itself out), each of which is just as likely/unlikely as your single hypothesis that this was God's plan from the beginning. The latter in fact leads to a major question, which I will ask you next time if you really do insist on this single, narrow viewpoint!-The whole history we see smells of purpose and nothing else. An inorganic universe creating consciousness. No way. A universe that appears and the mathematician/cosmologists admit it was an origin. What is the first cause? Life appears, only God knows how; then multicellularity, when baceria have continued successfully since the beginning. The Cambrian Explosion with no evolutionary precursors. You know the drill.


> DAVID: I think your viewpoint is too narrow.
> 
> dhw: Your view is that the bush was designed to produce homo sapiens. I have offered four alternative and equally likely/unlikely explanations for the bush. What is your definition of a "narrow" viewpoint?-Darwin used a tree in his notebook. If we still thought it was a tree with US at the top we might not be arguing. But it is obviously a bush, yet we are still at the top. Same result, different process/method. -All members of the bush do well in their styles of living. They are all separate pinnacles in their own way. And they do provide a balance of nature which the environmentalists keep reminding us is of extreme importance. We really do all need each other. Why then did the human brach break out and become so dominant? There was no NEED for that to happen, but it DID. Chance? We both doubt that. What is left but purpose. In his book Tallis admits this point and is frantically looking for a third way to preserve his atheism!!! Hysterical!


> dhw: 2) God's purpose was to have fun with a totally unpredictable game of higgledy-piggledy; 3) God's purpose was to experiment with life to see what he could do with it, creating this, destroying that; 4) God had no particular purpose in creating life, and left it to sort itself out; 5) Life is one big, purposeless series of coincidences. All of these hypotheses could explain why what we see is a higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings from tiddly-pops to homo sapiens,-My view of evolution is that it got complexer and complexer with great directionality. I don't see anything of 2-5 in it. The Cambrian Explosion beautifully set up all our animal phyla 540 million year ago with brains appearing, and here we are with a giant brain.-> 
> DAVID: Was there some degree of guidance? Yes. Again my example of the apes staying apes and doing just fine and us charging off with big heads, fully upright. There was no Darwinian reason for that to happen, but it did. 
> 
> dhw: Darwin's reason was the same as for all innovations: random mutations. I don't buy that. "Guidance"? This can only mean detailed preprogramming within the first forms of life, or interference (= separate creation). I don't buy those either. But I'm an agnostic.-The picket fence is apparent. I don't buy inerference.
> 
> DAVID: We are different in kind, not degree. Difference by degree is not defensable. By my analysis we [may] not be in the primate family, but a new human family. The Darwin classification is old and by the new findings, wrong. Why stick to ideas 150 years old?
> 
> dhw: If we are not in the primate family, and you believe that all forms of life descended from earlier forms, what form do you think we descended from? Or are you really arguing now for special creation? -We descended from early primates and became quite different. Our posture is totally different. We have much more useful hands with our opposible thumbs, and our brains are enormously different. 
> 
> dhw: Darwin's 150-year-old idea that all life forms descended from earlier forms makes sense to me. Innovation through random mutations does not. A mechanism that creates a vast variety of living forms makes sense to me. -I agree.-> dhw:The idea that this vast variety (most of which are extinct) was from the outset designed to produce one single species does not. -Remember that we eat each other. I think the variety of life idea encompasses the balance of nature. The species are set up to thrive off each other. When the balance is thrown out of kilter there are sad results. Think of the problems the Australians are having with the inappropriate species that were introduced. -The early humans in Africa lived on plants, and then in Southern Africa ussed the shoreline animals as they developed. These are very current theories that have been advanced. The variety and availabilty of edibles is very inportant. -And remember convergence. Evolution is set up as very inventive and very creative. Nature's wonders are another example. It is no surprise we have the bush, not a tree.-I think your viewpoint is too narrow.


> dhw: Thank you, your point is well argued too, except that it's the wrong point. If homo sapiens was the pre-planned goal of evolution, and chimps and humans branched off from a common ancestor, what was the point of the chimp branch of the bush? Of course our brain and posture didn't have to happen.-You still miss my point. If the UI set up evolution to complexify and reach us, as I propose, then complexity will come with a bush of life and we will apper as the pinnacle of the bush, with lots of branches. The tremendous evidence of convergence makes that point. -> dhw:Yes, we are unique, but so is the platypus, the last surviving member of its family. If only we could speak Platypan, it might even tell us that its presence on Planet Earth and its absolute uniqueness prove that it was the goal of evolution. My point is that the higgledy-piggledy bush is the exact opposite of what we would expect from a designed process with a pre-planned purpose. -Of course it is h-p, striving for complexity in many directions, not a straight course to us. If the UI in its wisdom wanted that approach, that is what we would see. But we don't see that. We must adhere to what we see, in judging the teleology. Bush it is. I've personally seen a platypus in Australia. We are much more complex. The poor fellow has to hatch eggs!-Was there some degree of guidance? Yes. Again my example of the apes staying apes and doing just fine and us charging off with big heads, fully upright. There was no Darwinian reason for that to happen, but it did. We are different in kind, not degree. Difference iby degree is not defensable. By my analysis we not be in the primate family, but a new human family. The Darwin classification is old and by the new findings, wrong. Why stick to ideas 150 yearw old?

dhw: But you have agreed that there is nothing logical (by human standards) about a plan to create homo sapiens via an evolutionary bush that involves billions of other species extant and extinct, not to mention other forms of humans that...oops...also got knocked out. (What, I wonder, are your criteria for perfection?!) Your response to this problem was that God has his own logic, and we shouldn't "want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts." If one explanation is not logical by the only form of logic you and I can understand, why not look for another explanation that might be more logical? That the original mechanism "allowed for" complexity and the arrival of good old homo sapiens is obvious, since that is what happened, but "allowed for" does not in any way mean that there was a specific pre-planned purpose.-Your point is well argued, but you are ignoring the development of our upright posture and our brain over the past 8-10 million years. It didn't have to happen. The great apes are still doing just fine for all those centuries, still unchanged with no advancements (exclusvie of our encroachment on their habitat, poaching for bush meat, etc) If we'd leave tham alone they can continue doing just fine. Why was our development pushed?? The only future development I see is in brain enhancement.


> hy:Great stuff! -Glad you enjoy us! dhw and I have ping-ponged these ideas for four years now. And we both stubborn as mules. but at least I've gotten him to admit energy is eternal as the first cause. 
> 
> hy: For my 2¢ worth, I, too, wonder about H. sapiens as the ultimate goal of the creator. The idea goes that "we" are created in God's image, so he's just like us, and vice versa. Theists and religionists of every stripe are united on this front. An inhuman God would be...well, just inhuman. And we can't worship that. The assumption seems to be that, while imperfect, we must be it, the absolute pinnacle of the evolution of life expression (not just so far, but the ultimate pinnacle, the endpoint), no improvement or further advancement (toward godliness?) necessary or even possible. Interestingly atheists cling to this idea of man's supremacy as tenaciously as theists, as proof that there is no need for a god; I find the idea fairly easy to challenge, with even a fleeting glance at a history book, newspaper, TV or Washington DC. -Great conclusion. I think we are the current pinnacle, and more brain development is the only phenotypic area that may develop further, since the brain has such a great capacity for plasticity.


> dhw:This discussion is not about bad design, or about design in general or about information in the genome (see my reply to your zebra-fish entry), and the problem is not atheists/agnostics trying to outthink God. Hyjyljyj's logic is impeccable. I myself am merely trying to understand God (if he exists), whereas you believe you can read his mind, because you insist that his goal was to create homo sapiens. THAT is the problem!-Please see my previous response, just composed. To repeat: the construction of life from the very beginning had to be very complex. Life can only be complex or it won't live. But, part of that complexity was a genome that permitted advancing complexity, a complexity that occurred as nature allowed. We are the most complex thing around. We arrived. It was allowed to happen. It didn't have to happen, but it did. The pre-planning is the input at the beginning. Not along the way. Look at this discussion from today. Old yeast DNA:-"New functional DNA does not appear out of thin air, but is built up gradually from a copy of an existing segment of functional DNA. By reconstructing a piece of prehistoric DNA that was copied several times during evolution, we were able to investigate in detail which changes occur in each of the copies and gradually lead to new functions. As such, our results provide a unique and detailed view into the molecular details of Darwinian evolution" says Kevin Verstrepen.
 
The scientists propose that the events observed here in the yeast cell's quest for sugar may reflect a general strategy widely used for innovation in evolution."-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121211193303.htm--We have consciousness. I don't believe it was invented by evolution. It was always present in the UI. And reappeared in us, made in the image of God in our minds. If a UI started all this it is logical to assume that it wanted a result with consciousness like its own.-As you know I always try to work from what we see. What you see are my logical assumptions snd extrapolations.

hy: "Atheists and agnostics [trying] to out-think God" appears to me to grant a priori truth status to the notion that God exists; whereas of all groups, one might expect these two to be near the very bottom of the list of those who would do that. Is there any presupposition of the truth of the premise here? 
> 
> (I promise these two questions are not intended as some kind of snarky, pedantic retort. I could just be misreading the underlying intent, plus my command of logic is far from towering. Please fill me in, where do I err?)-I'm referring to the oft repeated complaint that God does not design things well. For example the human eye has a backward retina, creatijng all sorts of problems. Not so. I realy don't see my blind spot, and the arrangement makes for the best and highest use of energy by our retina, now a scientifically proven point. The recurrent laryngal nerve swoops about eight feet further in the giraffe, and several inches in us, being pulled down by the aorta in embryological development. Dawkins makes great fun of this and doesn't seem to know his ass from his elbow about all the new findings that refute him (despite his PhD in Zoology). Evolution is clever. The design comoplaints don't pan out, but the atheistic humans use human concept of design to complain that no god did it.

David:The Hobbits are one of four lines of humans that co-existed in the recent past. Our line, the Neanderthals, the Denosovans and the Hobbits. Why produce a branching tree unless the result is an important part of the plan? 
> 
> dhw: Why indeed? Especially when you make all those other lines extinct? Why produce dodos and dinosaurs? If I plan to make a fruit cake (often an apt description of homo sapiens), do I have to make and chuck out a sponge cake, a carrot cake and a battenburg as well?-The problem you are having is the problem atheists have. They want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts. Evolution is a bush, not a tree, even if Darwin's notebook shows his tree. Humans are a pinnacle of development, with a brain that had no reason to develop, no challenges that made it develop. After all our cousins, the apes still exist 6-8 million years after our heads exploded, and they are still tiny-brained, with no more sense than your pet dog. -I don't know why God used the pattern of evolution we see. He knows but He is not explaining. We see the 'how' but not the 'why', so in a way we are back to the divisions between science and religion. It is permissible to guess at the why. And that permission comes from recognizing there must be a first cause, information is present which had to come from somewhere, and that cause did it the way He wanted; His logic not ours! The problem is atheists and agnostics try to out-think God. (Please see my recent entry today about zebra fish altered embryoes, where the scientists tampered and brought out pre-existing information hiding in the genome!)