Revisiting language and brain expansion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 09, 2020, 22:07 (1537 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: God gave the brain the ability to make changes called plasticity. As we learn small areas can enlarge to handle new knowledge. Touting 'cells' doesn't change the concept.

dhw: If your God gave brain cells the ability to enlarge small areas without his preprogramming and/or dabbling, is it not possible that the same ability was used earlier in evolution when large areas were expanded, with the resultant expansion of the whole brain?

Any woolly theory is possible. I think brain changes are specific to the brain which requires that special ability to handle how we use our brain.

dhw: You simply refuse to answer the above questions, and to realize that free will is an EXAMPLE of your God deliberately sacrificing control.

Control over the activities of one desired species to which He purposely gave consciousness and the right of choice in managing their lives. That is all the issue entails. God knew when He decided to produce us what our attributes would be. Please let Him the right to choose.

DAVID: You are mixing and matching my statements to distort my view of God and his purposes as clearly stated, and you ignore.

dhw: This has nothing to do with your view of God and his purposes. I asked you why you considered my alternatives “bumbling” and why you denied him the right to experiment, watch, enjoy etc. even though he probably has thoughts and emotions in common with us. These alternatives are mine, not yours. They do not “distort your view of God and his purposes”!

What you list are your humanizing views of God. No they do not describe your distortions, which I have listed previously and elsewhere.

DAVID: The bold above is silly. Only germ cells can do the changes. The legs have to tell the germ cells. Let's stick to real biology, please, not lala land.

dhw: I couldn’t care less which cells do the actual thinking and directing, so long as you acknowledge that thinking and directing take place within the cell community. Why don’t you focus on the rest of the paragraph which vividly illustrates exactly the same process you are trying to ignore: cells RESPOND to new requirements and do not change in advance of them.

Yes, in a new environment there are new demands that require major design and physiological changes. Let's look: the legged mammal jumps in the watery environment and major changes MUST happen because that is what the fossil record tells us. You want your beloved cells to design the major changes, without any interim minor modifications. A designing mind is required. The
cells of yours don't have it as there is no evidence they are that smart.

From “magic embryology” (the rest of which is dealt with elsewhere)

dhw: Epigenetics does not explain how cells adapt! My proposal is that the cells themselves have the intelligent autonomous ability to adapt. Why did you raise the subject of epigenetics in the first place?

DAVID: To answer, epigenetics is the only proven mechanism we know. As you seem to point out, we don't know how the mechanism is managed with the organisms, but, as I view it, it must be germ cells changing the next generations through reproduction. At your theory level they receive pleading messages from somatic cells to please fix things.

dhw: Reproduction doesn’t make the changes – it ensures that the changes are passed on. I wish I knew more about stem cells, as they might be the thinkers that make the changes in the first place. What is clear is that there has to be intelligent communication between all the cells involved in any change. Are you not aware of messages from cell communities within your body when you do things they don’t like? They don’t have to speak Texan to make themselves understood. Fortunately, in many cases other cell communities hear the messages and leap into action. I’d have thought doctors would know about such things.

Those miracle living cells, designed by God, produce and receive all sorts of myriad molecular signals, responding automatically and in so doing living beings appear! Those are you cell communities, not the magical cell committees which can design anything as you conjure ways to avoid God designing when He has to.