Chimp vs. human brain (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 11, 2012, 21:36 (4162 days ago) @ David Turell

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?-DAVID: The problem you are having is the problem atheists have. They want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts. -Hyjyljyj: if our logic and reason are God-given (Thomas Paine's foundational cornerstone of deism), then why wouldn't we expect him to have a series of logical thoughts essentially congruent with our own, even if on a far grander scale?-An excellent response, if I may say so. We are swift to leap on the illogicality of certain atheist arguments, so why denigrate human logic when applied to your interpretation of the theory of evolution? However, we are making progress, since you now agree that your own anthropocentric argument is illogical.
 
DAVID: I don't know why God used the pattern of evolution we see. He knows but He is not explaining. -You have offered us an illogical explanation, so why aren't you prepared to consider an explanation that does fit in logically with what you call the bush structure ... namely, that evolution sprouted in all directions because there was no plan?
 
DAVID: 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!)-Hyjyljyj: "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? -DAVID: I'm referring to the oft repeated complaint that God does not design things well. For example the human eye has a backward retina, creating all sorts of problems [...]
 
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!