Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 11:23 (1674 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your suggestion is not close to fact. I've read a theoretical article I have not presented that theorized the human brain could ideally reach 3,300 cc! Please try to convert to ounces: 2,000 extra cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can't handle that? Back packs are much heavier.

My suggestion is not close to fact because you’ve read a theoretical article!

dhw: So what is your explanation for the non-expansion? And why do you keep telling us that an expansion of 200 cc is too huge to have happened naturally…? All of a sudden, even 2000 cc is nothing!

DAVID: You invented the size problem, and suddenly it becomes real. It simply never expanded because it was designed to complexify with use and shrink, following real factual history.

YOU invented the size problem! Later in this post, you’ve even referred to 200 cc as a “giant enlargement” – far too big for my theory – and now suddenly even 2000 cc is nothing! If, as you propose, your God specially designed our brain, and bearing in mind that H. sapiens was the only species he wanted to design, what was the point in his specially designing all the preceding brains?

dhw: [..] explain to me why your God deliberately produced the gaps.

DAVID: Not contrived gaps, deliberate evolutionary advances. And it is you who keeps complaining about a patient God, who should be impatient. How else to analyze your God mantra?

How can a gap be an advance? If your all-powerful God wants a sapiens brain and eventually designs it directly, how do all the gaps advance the process? There is no patience or impatience involved. That is another of your inventions. Now please answer my question.

DAVID: You don't deny the delays in use, so why demand it needs explanation? it is all of a pattern. Each new larger size had to be learned to be used. Do you think erectus or sapiens had bright new thoughts hey fist day they arrived as adult thinkers. My view of evolutionary changes take time.

It’s you who keep demanding an explanation of the gaps. I keep asking you what you mean by “learn to use” (divine lessons, instruction manuals, for sapiens 260,000 years of trial and nothing but error?). Never answered. I propose that once the new brain had formed as a result of a new big idea, life went on – as you rightly pointed out with your earlier reference to indigenous tribes – without any major change until a new “big idea” came along. Gaps explained. In pre-sapiens that led to the next expansion. In sapiens it led to complexification and minor expansion.

dhw: … clearly you have no idea why your God decided to specially design all these different homos to hang around for millions of years before he specially designed the only homo he wanted to design. Patience has nothing to do with it. Your stock answer is usually that we can’t know his reasons.

DAVID: Your usual total confusion. My theory is under discussion. God chose to evolve instead of immediate direct creation.

Another massive contradiction, because according to you there is no phase in evolution that was not directly designed by your always-in-control God. (See post on your theory of evolution.)You reject my expansion theory because according to you even a 200 cc expansion needs God’s intervention.

DAVID: We must follow the history of evolution, but we cannot know why He made the choice to evolve. My stock answer is logical following initial assumptions.

Yes, we should follow the history of evolution, and since we cannot know why he would have directly designed anything but the only thing he wanted to design, we should acknowledge that something is radically wrong with your interpretation of evolution.

dhw: Firstly, what is your explanation for shrinkage, since apparently you now refuse to accept the explanation you have accepted umpteen times before (the efficiency of complexification)?

DAVID: Distortion as usual. Of course the 150 cc shrinkage was due to more use and complexification. Note the stock answer I gave above, as usual.

Your stock answer now relies on the new unproven theory that our brains could double in size with no ill effects on our anatomy, and therefore your God must have stepped in and specially designed our brain. I ask why he needed to go through all the other brain phases if all he wanted was ours. My (unproven) theory is that further expansion would have been deleterious, and so complexification and minor expansion took over.

dhw: You have acknowledged that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention. Why should he not have done the same with earlier brains?

DAVID: Mini-expansion and complexification with shrinkage is not giant enlargement [dhw: 2000 cc is nothing, but 200 cc is “giant”] [..]

Once again you simply refuse to answer the question! It is you who told us that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention! Do you think he was incapable of inventing the means to maxi-expand without his intervention?