The difference of Man (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, February 18, 2013, 20:52 (4092 days ago) @ dhw


> Classifications are man-made. Here is a definition of primate: "a placental mammal, typically having flexible hands and feet with opposable first digits, good binocular vision, and in the higher apes a highly developed brain." Is there anything in this definition that does not apply to humans?-No, but it proves nothing. it is a classification, not a truth. however, the classfication is used to remove an concept of specialness in regard to humans. We startd as primates but for some unknown reason we became upright physically and extremely brainy, when evolutionary pressures did not require those changes.-
> dhw: The classification does not in any way degrade their [camel] specialness, but if you think that calling man a very special primate is degrading, of course that is your prerogative. Perhaps we should also stop calling ourselves mammals.-Arguments all off the point. Of course camels are special in their own way. All the disparate species have their own specialness.Try injecting 8 mgms a day of selenium as llamas do, and then die. These are variations all species have. but only one species has a giant brain.
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> dhw: if your God-made "intelligent cells" were able to invent the camel's immune system, the dog's nose, the spider's silk, then they were able to invent the human brain, ALL of these being part of the innovative process of evolution. Or are you now arguing that humans did not evolve like the rest of the animal kingdom?-We evolved, but I think I know where the information came from in those intelligent cells, really their intelligent genome. Information cannot come from chance. The information to run the processes of life must come from a designing intellect.
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> dhw:And so the atheist can repeat your own argument against you: "The skeptical wish to deny the role of chance and will not be won over, because they will want absolute proof, which is impossible." We are back to Tweedledum and Tweedledee.-Making a choice between chance and God is a personal choice. If one is willing to accept proof beyond a reasonable doubt, then God wins. Absolute proof will never bring an answer, so I assume those skeptics prefer to remain in darkness.
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> DAVID: This reference to the mistakes in our primate-modified design makes my point. We are just mis-engineered primates, and unfortunate at that. This is a constant theme of the atheistic scientific deluge that laughs at a God-designed human as a huge mistake. Therefore no god!
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> http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/02/human-evolution-gain-came-with-p.html?ref... 
> dhw: It has nothing to do with our classification as primates..... This is an attack on the whole concept of design, and obviously by implication on the concept of a designer-That was my point. - 
> dhw: However, note the conclusion of this article: "Evolution doesn't act to yield perfection," he says. "It acts to yield function."[/i]
 
 
> I'd go along with that. It fits in with the higgledy-piggledy bush, and the observations themselves seem to me to be accurate enough. Would anyone deny that the human body has weaknesses? But that doesn't prove there's no designer, If there is a designer, it's perfectly possible that he designed life to "yield function" and not "perfection". -Exactly. Life is not perfect design, it is functional design; the exact point of the Intelligent Design theorists. Again to use an old horse, the retina: it sees upside down and backwards, but it all sees one photon with an extremely powerfully efficient use of energy. All primates have it, but only one has that huge brain.