Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, June 22, 2020, 15:46 (1403 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: So you do not object to my explanation of evolutionary advancement, which was the purpose of my post. I even went out of my way to emphasize that this explanation applied whether one believed in autonomous intelligence or in control by your God. Thank you for accepting it. Your objection is a complete non sequitur. I have not claimed that autonomous intelligence can exist for no particular reason – and I don’t know why you have switched the focus from the manner in which evolution proceeds to the existence of God. Your statement “intelligence must have source, cannot appear simply from nothing” is at one and the same time an excellent argument for design and a bad argument for God, which is one reason for my agnosticism.

DAVID: The bold is an strange statement on its face. Who does the designing if not a designing mind? For arguments sake it does not need be named.

dhw: Thank you again for accepting my explanation of evolutionary advancement. As regards the bold, I accept your design argument, but if intelligence must have a source, it is patently absurd to argue that the intelligence you call God does not have to have a source! You simply solve the mystery of organic intelligence by creating a mystery of non-organic intelligence. The claim that it has always been there as a “first cause” is a philosophical cop-out. You might as well claim that the source of intelligence was a chance combination of energy and materials during an eternal history of “first cause” energy and materials combining. Or all materials have a rudimentary form of intelligence. No, I don’t believe in any of these “first causes”, though one must be right!

Yes, one is right! And it allows appears out of inanimate inorganic material.