Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 22, 2016, 13:31 (2675 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If there is no new information of any kind (including the fact that you are still you after the death of your body), you may as well be dead. Please explain your beliefs, and tell us why you use NDEs as evidence for them.
DAVID: I've explained that NDE'ers are not really dead. They can bring back emotions from their experienced. Once really dead my soul goes to heaven but adds nothing to the overall organization of my personality, other than the experience of being in heaven. Loved ones are recognized and there is telepathic communication which adds no new knowledge. I use NDE'ers because I fully believe they have been to heaven and come back.

Thank you. I don’t know how one can experience being in heaven after only having experienced Earth, and communicating with others after their bodily death, and yet not acquire new knowledge, but this was all a digression, and perhaps I should not have mentioned it in the first place.

DAVID: Plasticity is not required if bacteria have all the alternative pathways they need for any crisis from the beginning, which I think they do have.
dhw: How can a cell alter its own structure, or have its structure altered by preprogramming, without having a structure that can be altered (which is what I understand by “plasticity”)?
DAVID: The plasticity I envision is molecular processes, not fixed structure and scaffolding, which stays the same.

Then perhaps structure was the wrong word. I don’t know how a cell can alter its own molecular processes without having molecules whose processes can be altered (which is what I understand by “plasticity”).

dhw: [...]perhaps you could just tell us if you think pre-homos and pre-whales “freewheeled” into existence or were specially created by your God, and if it’s the latter, why you think he specially created pre-homos and pre-whales if he only wanted to produce sapiens.
DAVID: Whales came into existence under God's guidance. That is all I really believe. The rest is theory. I have repeated over and over God used an evolutionary process so pre-whales and pre-humans had to occur first.

It is ALL theory, including God’s guidance of whale evolution. We both believe that all organisms except the very first have come into being through an evolutionary process, and so of course pre-whales and pre-humans came before whales and humans. But you cannot explain WHY your God specially designed pre-whales and pre-homos in order to produce sapiens. That is the part of your theory I am questioning. Previously you have admitted that you are puzzled by it. So why not consider the possibility that there is a less puzzling explanation: namely, that he did not specially design them, but that evolution “freewheeled” (your very own expression), apart from when he might occasionally have dabbled? Then the puzzle disappears.