Revisiting language and brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, February 07, 2020, 13:24 (1749 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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: God gave the local enlargement mechanism as part of the complexification mechanism.

And the shrinkage? Please clarify: Did God decide he’d given us too much capacity?

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.

dhw: 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. [...] Why is this “unreasonable”?

DAVID: Simple. I accept that God designed these mechanisms. Your cells magically replacing God is what I object to.

You do not “accept”, you believe. Cells do not “magically replace” God. Instead of your God directly preprogramming or dabbling every change in the brain (not to mention every change in the history of evolution) I have him designing a mechanism enabling organisms to do their own designing. Why is this “magic” and why is it “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.

dhw: 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

DAVID: You forget, my view of God is that He is fully purposeful. No distortion. My God does not have humanized sugestions like yours.

You forget, I also have him fully purposeful, but I dispute your version of his purpose and of his methods of achieving that purpose. Your God is a humanized control freak; one version of mine (I have others, all of whom fit in logically with the actual history) is a humanized “let’s-see-what-happens-if” creative artist. Following on from your silly talk of “rights”, why do you deny him the right to experiment, to watch and enjoy, to learn as he goes along….?

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I know that is your theory, which does not explain the gaps, which require design.

Of course it explains the gaps. Intelligence does the designing, in the form of cells restructuring themselves instead of God having to restructure them. (See also Shapiro thread, but worth repeating since you keep ignoring my replies.)