Introducing the brain: half a brain is just fine (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, March 13, 2020, 00:10 (1502 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: That is the nub of our disagreement, in the context of both brain and evolution in general. You insist that your God preprogrammed or dabbled all the major adaptations and innovations before they were required. I propose that they came about in response to new conditions.

Of course we will always differ. From my standpoint chance never played any role. God created life and ran the entire process of evolution. The complexity disallows any chance for natural events

DAVID: I gave you the conversion of cc to ounces. The biggest enlargements were less than seven ounces. 'Elephantine' is pure silliness. We got to this final point in small steps. It is all we need and it shrank from increased uses.

dhw: If expansion had gone on indefinitely, we would have finished up with elephantine brains, no matter how many ounces or ccs each expansion was!

No logic at all. Nothing elephantine needed. Erectus to sapiens is 200 cc. with huge difference in mentation. Another 100 cc would have added slight bulk and how much more mental ability might be very large. But our current brain is obviously quite sufficient to handle all issues. it needs no enlargement. Another wild conclusion from you to confuse the issue.

DAVID: The bold is so obviously backward in its misuse of the facts. Sapiens arrived with a barely used brain and then employed your implementation process with in the end shrinking.

dhw: You have totally missed the point of our whole discussion, which concerns the reason for each expansion. That is why I keep emphasizing that it is the first artefact that would have been the cause. Once the new brain is in place, it continues to produce new things until the next “big idea” requires further capacity. Each new capacity is “barely used” initially, and then it is used until it proves inadequate. Sapiens’ capacity would have arrived in the same way, but when new concepts had to be implemented, it complexified instead of expanding etc., as above.

So false an approach. My thought above stands. It is conceiving of concepts that requires the larger brain to be present, not actually making the conceived product. Onc e in mind taht is simple hand work.

DAVID: And I say this last brain was given the capacities to not need any further expansion.

dhw: “Was given” or “has” makes no difference to the process – it stopped expanding and complexification took over. You have no idea why your God would have made it bigger than necessary - “Pounding same dead horse. I don't look for His reasons. No need.” – whereas I have provided a logical explanation for the whole sequence.

Only your illogical naturalism instead of God approach. But I forget, you sometimes throw in a little faux theism in that weird idea of a God, without much purpose, who lets organisms do their own thing.

dhw: Please note that in my theory it was a new "heavy use" that caused the brain to expand - just as it does today, though on a lesser scale.

DAVID: Silliness again. Our overall brain shrank. Don't try to hide a major point.

dhw: I don’t know how often you want me to repeat the explanation. Please reread the bold above. Plus the paragraph beginning "You have totally missed the point..." which you continue to do.

I miss no point except your brain enlargement theory is a complex mess that does not follow any known facts that can make your case.

DAVID: All we have is fossils, with differing brain sizes, and artifacts that advance as size increases. Archaeologists simply observe this and assume the larger size allowed the advances. I don't know why God allowed a bigger brain before it shrunk. Do you? But those are the facts we have, and you can't understand His logic either. Your obvious point is if God did something illogical, He doesn't exist.

dhw: This is the silliest argument yet! I do not accept your theory that your God preprogrammed or dabbled each expansion before it was needed, plus the shrinkage which you can’t explain! It is your illogicality.

You are the illogical one who takes tiny enlargements in a beautifully functioning brain and blow it up into a theory as to why hominin and homo brains enlarged. All fluff. Nothing factual actually supporting the magical pipe dream .

dhw: IF God exists, I have proposed that he provided the mechanisms that performed all these actions as intelligent cell communities responded to changing conditions.

Again, a non purposeful God. Not mine

dhw: And my “point” here is that I do not for one second believe that God would do anything illogical.

Well we agree here.

dhw: That is why your whole theory falls apart, and I offer you various theistic alternatives in which your God’s actions are totally logical.

According to your humanized theory of God. The main point is that when you finally think about God, He is nothing like my God.