Tyrannohotep

I've given up on the conversation. He won't change his mind (and he won't even explain the details of the "grand plan" he believes in when asked), so I've figured continuing the discussion is not worth it.

He seems to think that, because the hominins that stayed in the African "cradle of humanity" longer ended up evolving into modern humans whereas the ones that left Africa in earlier waves (e.g. Homo erectus, and then the Homo heidelbergensis ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans, etc.) appear more "stagnant" with regards to behavioral modernity, there was some sort of conscious (theistic) force guiding modern human evolution in Africa. My rebuttal to that (which I just posted in the original Egyptsearch thread) is that the trend we observed simply reflects the African "cradle" being more conducive to the evolution of behavioral modernity than other regions, hence why hominins staying inside it ended up more modern than those that left earlier.

An online friend of mine asked me for my input on the evolution of modern human intelligence, especially when contrasted to that of "archaic" hominins like the Neanderthals and Denisovans. As far as I can tell, his position seems to be that since one specific lineage of humans (i.e. Homo sapiens) evolved greater "behavioral modernity" (i.e. intelligence) than other branches of the hominin family tree, it had to be the product of some sort of "grand plan" or "direction in evolution", as opposed to the standard "Darwinist" model. His language made me think he was arguing for some sort of theistic evolution that contrasted with atheistic "Darwinism". Anyway, I feel the crux of his argument (namely, that other hominin branches not reaching the same level of behavioral modernity as Homo sapiens contradicts the Darwinian model) hinged on a teleological assumption that all hominin lineages must necessarily "aim" for modern human intelligence in the Darwinian model. Unfortunately, when I pointed this out to him, he accused me of "not addressing his evidence" (namely, Homo sapiens being more behaviorally "modern" than other hominins, which I did not dispute). He also said that, when I pointed out that there were religious undertones to his argument that made me uneasy about engaging with him further, he cried "ad hominem". This is his latest post in our conversation (http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=009989;p=2#000071) So what are your thoughts on this discussion? Do you think he has a point? To provide the full context, here is the link to our conversation: http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=009989;p=1#000044