This reminds me of another I think we discussed before. I said something about the Cambrian explosion and you ( I think) and others suggested there was plenty of time for the Cambrian development to occur by natural means. Last night I heard a relevant analogy. If the development span of life was condensed to a 24 hour day, for 21 hours of that 24 bacteria type life remained pretty much all there was. The Cambrian produced every major phyla in the next two minutes alone.
Yes, it happened during 20 million years, which is relatively short. But I do not see how this can exclude naturalism. After all, you can pack all evolution from bacteria to us in a couple of decades without having any natural law broken. At least thermodynamical laws.
Actually, I think this is an argument against God. Waiting a couple billion years with protozoah before making up His mind?
Not to talk of all other contingencies that allowed mammals to prosper, getting bigger and evolve primates. Asteroids, earthquakes, vulcanos and the lot. Sure He likes to complicate things after billions years of boredom, if He ever had the final result in mind, as we can expect from a deity that knows what He wants.
My point here is logical not one of preference. In fact it does not even contend with our being non-apes. My position is whether ape or a new species we are astronomically unique. God could have chosen a certain step in evolution to place a spirit in a primate and make him radically different from his ancestors by doing so. I honestly don't care. I only care we have another issue here that can't be explained satisfactorily by materialism alone.
The problem is that there is no evidence of anyone having had a quantum leap of this size within a generation. That would be enough to kill evolution, which is not in discussion, last time I checked. If there is a change, it can still be minor. That does not entail that the long terms effect cannot be major.
The idea that primate X could do most things that his direct parents could not possibly do seems absurd. And has no evidence whatsoever. There must be tiny differences sometimes but surely not in the range you seem to assume. Not enough to justify a soul for them and not their parents, anyway
That does not entail that there was not a remote ancestor of X that did not possess this capacity. But this works both ways. We cannot live in water for more than a couple of minutes without oxygen. Our remote ancestors could. And this a much bigger change, still naturally explainable, than a few additional cognitive abilities against our cousins.
I would rather be unique but I really do not care.
Every species is unique. That is why we differentiate among them.
I have tried at least twice to suggest that I am not talking about brain size. That is my point. It does not seem to be genetically related. It is as if similar brains existed but one's capacity was amplified being any natural explanation. I am not saying we are unique by having a big brain. I do not think our brain is the biggest. I am saying out intellectual capacity is light years ahead of everything else. That fits perfectly with theology and doe snot fit with naturalism.
Again this is not a size issue but one of capacity.
Yes, and this is why i added "wiring" to "size".
It did happen geologically over night. For 99.99999% of the 4 billions years or so intellectual capacity made infetesinmally leaps then a millisecond geologically speaking it made a leap that even all the other leaps added together can't compare with.
All you need is a relatively simple adaptation: the capacity to copy, store and reuse other people's ideas. And show it to your kids.
Once you have that, the sky is the limit. Not even the sky, actually. After all exponential curves appear everywhere in nature. They start very slow, can remain low for a long time, and then explode. They always occur when you have positive feedbacks in a retroactive system.
And our capacity of copying, improve and communicate the improvement is a positive feedback in a retroactive system. The negative feedback is provided by a dramatic scarcity of resources which we have not reached, yet.
I do not buy your social creature argument but any kind of critical mass argument is after the fact. It might explain why we have learned more in the last 100 years than all the others but not why we have always been so far advance comparatively.
Well, you should buy it bacause it might be fundamental. And when you say "we" you should not generalize. There are tribes that are still hunting and gathering. The capacity is there, but the context did not ignite significant progress. They are still on the flat part of the exponential curve without reprogramming.
Hit a nut with a hammer and a chimp will understand what you do. Make just the gesture, without a hammer, and it will not. It is possible that this little difference in abstraction is all you need to make the difference.
After all, you know that the difference between an exponentially growing curve and one which is not exponentially growing can be very small. Just a little delta on the value of the basis. From 1 to 1,00000000001, for instance. With the former, is stagnates, with the latter it will grow monotonically. A few little genes difference, maybe.
Equations involving stability, or lack thereof, are ubiqutous in evolution theory. So, no big biological step required and naturalism is still live and kicking.
I just realized I had already responded to you. I will post this one anyway just see if you find any inconstancies.
Yeah. i have the same problem.
Ciao
- viole
