Revisiting language and brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, February 10, 2020, 17:02 (1530 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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.

I doubt if anyone would disagree with you that brain changes are specific to the brain. I don’t know what the rest of your sentence means. We are talking about brain expansion. If your God can enable the brain to expand small areas without his interference, why is it woolly to suggest that in the past he might have enabled the brain to expand large areas without his interference?

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

DAVID: 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.

You keep refusing to see the point. You object to my suggestion that your God might willingly have sacrificed control over evolution itself, as if somehow this belittles him. If he is willing to sacrifice control in one area of life (free will), why do you discount the possibility that he might have been willing to sacrifice control in other areas, and why do you refuse to give him the right to choose uncontrolled evolution rather than controlled?

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”!

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

Humanizing views of God cannot be discounted if God “probably has thought patterns and emotions” similar to ours. I have constantly asked you to pinpoint the distortions, and you have never yet succeeded in doing so.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: 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.

Exactly. You've got it!

DAVID: 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.

I have no idea just how many minor modifications might have taken place, but yes, my theory is that the cell communities did all the designing. I’m glad you’ve understood it. And it is a THEORY. See the Shapiro thread.

DAVID: […] 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. […]

DAVID: 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

The appearance of living beings in the form of intelligent cells may well be the work of your God. And there is no question that once we have life, there are automatic processes at work. But automatic processes do not explain variation from the original life form. Hence evolution from single cells to sharks, eagles, ants, elephants, the duckbilled platypus and humans. I do not regard it as beyond your God’s powers to have created an autonomous intelligence that enabled the original cells to evolve as they have done. You may call it magic if you like, but I would suggest it is scientific, whether your God created every species individually or created the mechanism enabling organisms to adapt and innovate autonomously.