Big brain evolution: our mutation rate is slowing (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 30, 2019, 13:24 (1913 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The only way God could get to humans if He wished to evolve them was to design all predecessors first! That is totally logical.

So your God, who according to you is always in control, said to himself: “I only want to specially design humans, but I want to specially design them by spending 3.5+ billion years specially designing millions of other life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders to eat one another and then in most cases to go extinct. Then I can say that instead of my specially designing humans (although according to one of my faithful, I did actually specially design their brains and their pelvises), they have evolved from trilobites, dinosaurs, whales, cuttlefish monarch butterflies and all my other special designs.”

DAVID: […] I have no way of knowing why God chose to evolve. But I and you should accept the history, without saying God is illogical, which is what you always do by telling me I am illogical.

You have no way of knowing why your God should have inflicted the above procedure on himself, but you insist that the above were his thoughts. Yes, you and I should accept historical facts (which are confined to the bush of life and humans being the last species we know of). However, if for argument’s sake I accept the premise that God exists, I am challenging your next non-historical premise, which is that his sole purpose was to design humans but he chose first to spend 3.5+ billion years designing millions of other life forms etc., as above. You don’t know why, but you insist that your interpretation of goal and method is correct. I’m not attacking your God’s logic, which none of us can know, but YOUR logic! And I have suggested several alternative interpretations of your God’s logic which you have agreed are all logical, unlike your own. One of these is that since evolution reveals a constantly changing spectacle of life forms, maybe your God’s purpose was to create a constantly changing spectacle of life forms. Hence the next exchange:

DAVID: I'm sure He watches everything He created, like an artist enjoying his own paintings.

dhw: Thank you for the image. It is you who are now using the word “enjoy”. Since you are sure, perhaps you will stop ridiculing the idea that the history of evolution is that of a spectacle in itself, as opposed to serving no purpose other than to provide 3.5+ billion years of food until your God could specially design the only thing he wanted to design.

DAVID: [..] You keep saying He wanted to do it as a spectacle. That term and human desire is my objection to your thinking about God. He views it as fulfilling His purpose.

Then let’s drop the word “spectacle”. You are sure that he watches everything he created, like an artist enjoying his own paintings. So it can hardly be beyond the bounds of possibility that what he created actually fulfilled his purpose of creating something he wanted to enjoy.