dhw: big brain evolution:comparing chimp and brain organoids (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 02, 2019, 10:33 (1852 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...if [God] can’t fulfil his one and only purpose unless he follows one particular path dictated by limiting circumstances, he is NOT in full control! He is dictated to by those circumstances. And that makes for a mighty peculiar mode of fulfilment, since he would have created the circumstances in the first place!

DAVID: Again, your definition of 'full control' and mine differ. I state He is the 'sole driver' of events. As such He is in full control, even if He finds that His invention of life has limits for Him so that He is forced to evolve the Forms He want. You want 'all-powerful' without limits, but you have suggested limits in the past. I'll stick to my approach.

I cannot see how being the sole driver or having limits can be equated with having full control, but in any case I don’t “want” omnipotence or limitations. I am merely pointing out that, as you have so frequently acknowledged, you cannot explain why your God should have spent 3.5+ billion years specially designing dinosaurs, whale fins, cuttlefish camouflage, and umpteen different apes, hominins and homos before specially designing the only thing he wanted to design, the brain of H. sapiens. Hence the different hypotheses you are now at last beginning to accept as possible alternatives to your own.

DAVID: Note my point above: We do not know if God sees His own future with omniscience, a religious interpretation. He might not have foreseen that life is difficult to create without evolution.

You have now moved from omnipotence to omniscience – but that’s fine with me. In this latest hypothesis, perhaps he only learned how to specially design H. sapiens after 3.5+ billion years of not being able to do it (= limitations), and at the beginning he didn’t realize how difficult it would be (= ignorance). I’m pleased to see that your vision of your God is now allowing for these hypotheses. We are making progress.

dhw: On the other hand, he may be in full control, i.e. have the power to do whatever he wants. In that case, he deliberately did all the above preprogramming and dabbling, even though all he actually wanted was H. sapiens. Does that make sense? Since you admit that you have no idea why he “chose to evolve humans over time”, it obviously doesn’t.

DAVID: Sorry, but it makes complete sense. Obviously, I cannot know why He chose the course He did, so not knowing why is no fault of mine. And you've agreed He has the right to choose his methodology.

As usual, you say it makes sense, but you can’t explain how your GUESS at your God’s purpose ties in with your GUESS at his choice of method unless you accept the possibility that he is limited and unable to see what will happen in the future. That ties in with one of the hypotheses I proposed: experimentation. If he is in full control and is omnipotent, then that ties in with the hypothesis that he CHOSE to give evolution a free rein (hence the higgledy-piggledy bush), and that humans may have been an afterthought – perhaps a late dabble – or even a natural consequence of the process he set in motion.

dhw: I shan’t repeat all the different hypotheses I have offered in order to resolve these illogicalities. You have admitted that they fit in with the real history of life, and so the only point of agreement here is that we cannot know anything for sure.

DAVID: I've admitted your hypothesis have alternate logical bases, but I have the right to choose the one I think is more correct.

Of course. So what have you now chosen? That God was limited and ignorant of the future, and that is why he could not specially design the only thing he wanted to design? Or he was all-powerful and omniscient, but chose not to design the only thing he wanted to design, and you don’t know why?