Revisiting language and brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, February 06, 2020, 15:05 (1750 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: There is no confusion. You are simply ignoring my explanation of the jumps, and refusing to answer my question about shrinkage.

DAVID: I totally do not accept your explanation of the gaps. I've bolded my shrinkage answer above.

dhw: My question about shrinkage concerned your view that only God could have caused the expansions, and only God could have provided the ultimate brain, so presumably God caused the shrinkage. Why? “Oops, I gave ‘em too much brain. Let’s do a shrink!” Enlarging small areas when necessary does not explain shrinkage, which I suggest is due to the efficiency of complexification. You have ignored this explanation.'

DAVID: I've not ignored your unreasonable thinking. Overall shrinkage is not large, but is a definite result of complexification.

Thank you for agreeing with me. Nothing to do with your God fiddling, then. So the cells might have decided for themselves on shrinkage.

DAVID: Enlargement of very special areas (cabbies, reading) is a very special plasticity of the brain, both processes part of the plasticity process give to the brain by God, as He managed the evolution of the unique human brain.

Yes, the brain is plastic. So too are all the other cell communities to the extent that they are capable of making changes to themselves in response to new demands, as is proved over and over again by adaptation. What do you mean by “managed the evolution of the brain”? If the brain responds to new demands now, why do you think it was incapable of responding to new demands through its earlier phases of development? Initially perhaps it coped through complexification until it required a greater capacity, hence expansion…Repeat the process until expansion is no longer practical, and then complexity takes over completely. Why is this “unreasonable”?

DAVID: You keep bringing up your cellular committee system of evolutionary design, denying God his right to keep full control. Your view of God is strange, to say the least.

This is one your weirder distortions. How is it a denial of God’s “rights” to suggest that he DID NOT WANT full control, but that he WANTED precisely what history shows us…a constantly changing variety of life forms, including humans – not, as you rigidly maintain, one single life form which for unknown reasons leaves him designing anything but the one life form he wants?

DAVID: […] the recognized gaps in evolution cannot be explained by your thinking cells.
dhw: NOBODY can explain the gaps but the theory of thinking cells is one possible explanation.

DAVID: No it isn't. Cells don't plan design for the future requirements.

IN MY THEORY CELLS DO NOT PLAN FOR THE FUTURE, THEY RESPOND TO PRESENT DEMANDS. THEY DO NOT PLAN. THEY RESPOND. THERE IS NO FORETELLING OF THE FUTURE. Next time I shall fill a whole page with this, in the hope that you will remember it.

dhw: Your analogy of modern appliances and autos is way off the mark. The analogy should be with the thinking humans who create the appliances .

DAVID: Off the mark? Exactly my point you are finally recognizing. It takes brains to create new design!!!

No, it takes intelligence. Cells do not have brains but they may have an equivalent. Engineers restructure their cars…continued in next comment:
dhw: But instead of creating objects outside themselves, thinking cells restructure themselves. You say they can’t, but we know they can and do (through adaptation), as you acknowledge below. We just don’t know how far that ability extends.

DAVID: No scientist has ever seen a cell reconstruct, except in embryology or stem cell studies. The bacteria Shapiro studied are still the same species, even as they edit their DNA!.

And nobody has ever seen your 3.8-billion-year-old programme or your God dabbling. They are theories. But it is a known fact that cells can reconstruct themselves. As above: We just don’t know the extent of this ability.

DAVID: There is evidence they have design capacity, only epigenetic minor modifications within the same species. My firm explanation for speciation is a designer. I accept nothing else.

dhw: I know you have made up your mind. And I keep asking you questions about your explanations (not about design but about the motives, abilities and methods you impose on your designer), and the only answers I get are that you have no idea, we can’t “know”, why bother?

DAVID: The usual distortion of my views. I cannot know God's reasoning about how He arrived at his motives.

You cannot know his motives, and his motives are his reasons, and you have specified them in your illogical theory, repeated below. Please stop messing about with language.

DAVID: But I know what He did.

What you “know” is what the rest of us “know”: if he exists, he somehow produced the great changing bush of life, with humans as the latest branch. That is all we “know”. But you pretend you “know” that humans were his only motive/reason, and you have no idea why, with his total powers, he produced the great changing bush as an “interim goal” to keep life going and to cover the time till he produced the only thing he wanted to produce.