And that’s kind of the problem with assigning importance to the argument. If our universe is not, in fact, the top-level reality and has some kind of master controlling its every detail we necessarily only get to his influence to the extent that he wishes us to...
Natural selection molding creatures to match the universe? We can see that happening pretty well.
The universe itself being molded to produce a particular type of creature? How exactly would we even be able to notice that?
The only thing I can personally think of is that, in such a scenario, a universe where the inhabitants somehow developed the ability to more correctly divine the will of their creator from subtle clues and/or racial memory would be less likely to get mushed up and tossed in the wastepaper basket...
Or religion could be just a random side-effect of evolution that merely doesn’t hurt us badly enough to offset the power of our brains...
Perhaps if we someday discover other, unrelated sapient life and it also has religion… Still wouldn’t be proof, but likely to be the most conclusive evidence we could get without either a time machine to go back and see where the old religions really started or some way to look at our universe from outside.
Actually, what exactly are the arguments/evidence that distinguish these two hypotheses?
Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.
God tweaked the ape (or common ancestor) blueprint to create the human blueprint.
I’m pretty new at evolutionary biology so I don’t really know… anyone want to point me in the right direction?
And that’s kind of the problem with assigning importance to the argument. If our universe is not, in fact, the top-level reality and has some kind of master controlling its every detail we necessarily only get to his influence to the extent that he wishes us to...
Natural selection molding creatures to match the universe? We can see that happening pretty well.
The universe itself being molded to produce a particular type of creature? How exactly would we even be able to notice that?
The only thing I can personally think of is that, in such a scenario, a universe where the inhabitants somehow developed the ability to more correctly divine the will of their creator from subtle clues and/or racial memory would be less likely to get mushed up and tossed in the wastepaper basket...
Or religion could be just a random side-effect of evolution that merely doesn’t hurt us badly enough to offset the power of our brains...
Perhaps if we someday discover other, unrelated sapient life and it also has religion… Still wouldn’t be proof, but likely to be the most conclusive evidence we could get without either a time machine to go back and see where the old religions really started or some way to look at our universe from outside.