Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 12, 2020, 22:08 (1684 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: ...but the dualist’s soul can use existing information to come up with new concepts (the spear example). But it can’t develop them if the brain does not have the necessary connections or capacity. Hence development of concepts leads to brain complexification (proven) or expansion (proven on a minor scale).

DAVID: Totally backwards. What proof except tiny areas of our brain? The bold is your lonely theory only.

dhw: The bold is proven! Learning to read, memorizing maps, playing musical instruments entail mental developments which are known to change the brain by complexification or minor expansions.

Only in our very different specialized brain. Existing artifacts from previous brains i

DAVID: […] How does your theory provide for the time gaps that we know existed? It doesn't.

DAVID: Of course those minds did it in their lesser way. You've not diminished the vast difference in how our brain works. […]

dhw: I have dealt with your time gaps, I have explained the importance of the FIRST artefacts for each new species, and now I’ve shown how our brains are not “totally different”. You ignore all these answers! I have always agreed that there is a vast difference.

I don't ignore your answers. I find then totally unreasonable and unacceptable working with known facts.

dhw: You have missed the point as usual, so I’ve bolded it now. Your silly “humanistic” argument has already been proved irrelevant by your own statements that he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, and why is it “weird” to propose a God who – while reserving the right to dabble - is interested in creating an ever changing spectacle of autonomous creatures rather than puppets, as actually exemplified by the free will you believe he has given to human beings?

DAVID: Jumping back to previous statements of mine out of the context of that time to avoid the argument, and returning to God-lite as you attempt to really image God as truer theists would. Really: a spectator God who watches all the nutty things folks do?

dhw: . You have not explained why it is “weird” to suggest that your God’s mechanism enabling the brain to complexify and expand (on a small scale) naturally, could also have been the unknown cause of major brain expansion.

Just because our very special brain makes tiny enlargements, does not mean it relates at all to the very large previous enlargements. You h ave jumped to a wishful theory with no known support.

2. dhw: Your statements that God could very well think like us, probably has thought patterns etc. similar to ours, are not only perfectly feasible, but can hardly have any context other than the nature of God. Two days ago you wrote: “All I have agreed to is that God thinks logically as we do, nothing more. "Emotions and attributes similar" is a possibility…” You merely reduced probability to possibility.

What I have really thought underlying all this is my God is totally different than your weakly imagined humanized God. My God does not possibly think as you want Him to.