Evolution and humans: big brain birth canal (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, November 01, 2018, 11:12 (2212 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: And over and over again I have accepted the argument for design as opposed to random chance, but I disagree that “only an outside designer” can do it. Hence the hypothesis of cellular intelligence, which = an inside designer (possibly invented by your God).

DAVID: Your approach is so illogical you constantly have to run back to possibly God inserting a inventive mechanism. Cells cannot plan for a future they cannot visualize.

And I keep repeating that I do not regard evolution as the result of planning but of intelligent RESPONSES to changing conditions. Why is this illogical? Even if I believed in your God, I would still see this as more logical than having him fiddle with or preprogramme millions of individual anatomies in order to prepare them for conditions that don’t yet exist.

DAVID: The preponderance of evidence is overwhelming. You weak response is cell committees have the intelligence to do it, implying they know how to visualize the future and design for its requirements.

dhw: And over and over again I have rejected your interpretation of evolution as the result of planning for the future. (Not to mention the illogicality of every design, including the caterpillar’s viper-like head, being geared to the production of the human brain.)

DAVID: The caterpillar produces a look-alike of a snake it has never seen and cannot visualize,coming from egg to larva to insect. The only logic of that video is 'someone' had to help the caterpillar develop that ability.

I’m not going to pretend, as you do, to know how every natural wonder in life’s history originated, but once it had – maybe by sheer chance – it would have been passed on. (Yes indeed, I accept Darwin’s logical proposal that what is useful is likely to survive). This would be true even if your God had dabbled the first viper look-alike in his effort to balance life so that it would continue until he was able to fulfil his purpose of producing the brain of Homo sapiens. Or do you think he pops in and dabbles with every egg?

dhw: Once more: I see evolution as the result of organisms RESPONDING to - not prophesying - the needs and/or opportunities presented by environmental change.

DAVID: "Responding" to create the gaps we see in the fossil record requires design, which you accept. You insistence that it can naturally happen by the organisms themselves is totally illogical. Responses to 'environmental changes', from the evidence are huge gaps in form and function requiring design. You approach is obviously wishful thinking that somehow it happens.

I’m having difficulty following your train of thought here, but I think I’ve answered you with my first comment in this post. I suppose, though, that I’d better repeat that my hypothesis is a hypothesis and not a belief. I find it at least as logical as the hypotheses of random mutations and of divine preprogramming and dabbling in anticipation of conditions that don’t yet exist.

DAVID: You forget I was invited to your website to attack your lack of beliefs. I will continue to use that license until you tell me to quit, and continue to present evidence I find on an almost daily basis. The caterpillar/snake is one of the best I've ever seen. And I've been partially successful in that you are much less a Darwinist than you were in the beginning.

It was a red-letter day when you joined in, and it is you who have really kept the website going with all the marvellous articles you keep presenting. So please don’t quit! I was merely drawing attention to the fact that I keep having to repeat points which you already know: e.g. that my cellular intelligence is only a hypothesis, and your “balance of nature” arguments amount to nothing more than the fact that living organisms require balance, and without it they die, while econiches keep changing to a different balance.