Evolution and humans: brain plasticity ; learning to read (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 03, 2018, 11:25 (2241 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "There is no one reading area of the brain. Written language developed roughly 5,000 years ago, far too recently in evolutionary history to have part of the brain dedicated to reading."But we have inherited and repurposed specialized brain circuits from our ancient ancestors," says McNorgan. (David's bold)

DAVID: This explains why we developed complex spoken language perhaps 50,000 years ago and written and read language only 5,000 years ago. We had to develop the connections in different functioning parts of our brains. It means our brains had to be designed with plasticity in anticipation of the requirements the addition of language would bring. I see God the designer at work.

Same principle as the illiterate women learning to read. It fits in neatly with my proposal that the different cell communities of the brain cooperate, just as ants do, to meet new challenges. The brain does not change in anticipation of the challenge but in response to it. Of course this entails plasticity, and I would not dispute that the complexity offers the strongest possible case for design. Whether it was designed directly by your God or by the cell communities themselves using their (possibly God-given) intelligence is an open question. It would be interesting to know if all our atheist friends believe these complexities arose by chance or might possibly have been designed by intelligent cell communities. I can’t think of any alternative once they exclude your God. Sadly, we no longer seem to have any atheists contributing to our discussions.