Evolution and humans: big brain birth canal (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, October 29, 2018, 12:15 (2215 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You have forgotten that baby and Mum are totally different individuals. Their DNA's cannot cooperate, but it known that the placenta does communicate with the forming fetus. Nothing to do with skull size.

dhw: How does this prove that Daddy’s genes dictated the expansion of the birth canal? I am suggesting that if the fetus had a larger skull, the birth canal would have had to adapt to the size of the skull. But you are right, the cell communities of the fetus would not cooperate to change Mummy’s birth canal– it is her cell communities that would have to adapt to the new challenge.

DAVID: Dad's genes couldn't have any control over the canal. THAT is my point about his part of the triumvirate involved. And how do Mum's genes know the baby was killed by too much squeeze? You have no answer to the obstetrical dilemma. I offer:

You offer what? You wrote that “three separate individuals had to coordinate the result” – the result being the expanded birth canal. I have pointed out that Daddy’s genes did not coordinate the expanded birth canal, and I have agreed with you that baby’s genes didn’t either, so the three separate individuals did not coordinate the result, and we are left with Mummy’s cell communities doing it all by themselves (using their possibly God-given intelligence). I’d call it adaptation to new circumstances. But I know you prefer the hypothesis of your God fiddling around with a collection of pre-human birth canals to prepare them for when he fiddles around with a group of pre-human brains and skulls.

DAVID: Certainly God got his desired big-brained human by enlarging the birth canal.
But then you say:
DAVID: The larger brain required the larger skull and larger birth canal.

dhw: So God did not “get his desired big-brained human by enlarging the birth canal”. The larger birth canal was required to accommodate the larger brain.

DAVID: Above is a misinterpretation, see below:

Not explained below.

DAVID: It all had to be designed and coordinated so everything fit as enlargement progresses.

dhw: I suggest (theistic version) that your God may have given the cell communities the ability to work it out for themselves. “Same process: different hypotheses concerning how your God may have done it.”

DAVID: Baby, Dad and Mum do not communicate their DNA inputs! Baby and placenta communicate but they are both from the egg, Mum is separate, as shown by Rh blue-baby problems.

Agreed. So when you said “three separate individuals had to coordinate the result”, i.e. the expansion of the birth canal, you meant that three separate individuals did not have to coordinate the result, because Mum is separate.

DAVID: It is obvious from the record that evolution took quite awhile. You are upset that your version of God wouldn't act like you ( a human) would. That is why it is silly to analyze Him like a human personality. He isn't human. His mystery is not the mysteries you concoct from your human reasoning.

dhw: Evolution has taken approx. 3.8 billion years so far, and I have no doubt that it will continue for millions/billions of years to come! I am not in the least upset. I simply challenge your claim to know that your God’s prime purpose all along was to produce the brain of Homo sapiens. I have proposed a different interpretation of his purpose, which even you have admitted fits in perfectly well with the history of life as we know it, but which upsets you because it does not correspond to your own illogical interpretation. And so you would rather not talk about the purpose you constantly refer to, on the grounds that you know you are right, and therefore God thinks with the same illogicality as you. Maybe he doesn’t, and your interpretation is wrong.

DAVID: Stop looking for a human side to God and I'll quit complaining.

Stop insisting that your illogical interpretation of God’s purpose and method is correct and that we mustn’t even consider the possibility that God’s logic might be the same as ours, and I’ll quit complaining.