Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, May 18, 2020, 13:25 (1440 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: There are two unanswered questions: why did brains expand, and why did they stop expanding?

DAVID: Remember, my God expands brains. Your theories are no more logical than that.

That is not an answer to the two questions.

dhw: […] please tell us why you think your God switched from dabbling expansion after expansion to dabbling non-expansion and the complexification takeover.

DAVID: Obvious, He reached his goal.

If his goal was a brain of a certain size, which would complexify in response to new requirements, why do you think he found it necessary to specially design all the different hominins and homos and expansions? You believe in common descent and in a God who perhaps might set processes in motion and watch them simply evolve,so isn't it possible that the mechanism he invented might have spontaneously produced all the progressions? After all, you believe complexification works “naturally” without a dabble. So why not expansion?

DAVID:I understand organs cooperating in life, but not evolution, in which an active positive change in the DNA of germ cells must be required.

DAVID: […] The sentence I've now bolded above in my last reply is the key point about your cooperation theory, and you've totally ignored it or more likely have no answer. Those germ cell's genomes run the show for every expansion of the brain and must be changed to handle all the bony problems I've mentioned attendant to brain enlargement. It is NEVER cell committees cooperation. They are developed from the germ cells instructions to stem cells. Cooperating organs come as a result. Your problem is not recognizing this prior requirement in evolution.

dhw: Your problem is that you continue to ignore the fact that organs are cell communities! Of course the genomes must be changed if the organ is to change! You claim your God stepped in to dabble the changes in the genome. I propose that the intelligent cells themselves made the changes. If they did so through germ cells instructing stem cells, then that is how the cooperation took place! How can you have cells giving or obeying instructions without cooperation? Intelligent cell communities within organs cooperate to make the changes through which the organs can cooperate with one another. It’s what Shapiro calls “natural genetic engineering”.

DAVID: Genetics and embryology tell us that a new organism is reproduced from the combined DNA of male and female gametes. That combination runs the show […] Please reread my last comment above which is a recitation of scientific fact. Simply ignoring it doesn't negate the points.

Not ignored but answered directly! Your comment above tells us the germ cell’s genomes run the show and issue instructions to the sperm cells. Are you saying that cells instructing other cells does not constitute cooperation? What is your theory? That God delivers lectures to the germ cells before they can pass on his instructions? Of course the male and female must cooperate. If the brain has expanded and new babies have bigger heads, the cell communities of the birth canal must respond by also expanding! The whole system works by cell communities cooperating to cope with new requirements. I suppose you now want fossils of burst birth canals and dead babies before you’ll accept the logic. You say God dabbles every change (usually before needed – do you think he expanded the birth canal before brains expanded?), whereas I propose that all changes occur in a natural sequence as intelligent cells (with your God as the possible source of their intelligence) respond to new conditions.

DAVID: Your bold is bottom up control whereas the fact is genetics runs top down. You have made up a conglomeration that makes no sense at all. There is no evidence beyond Shapiro in bacteria of bottom up. In fact today I will show how complex bacteria really are.

I don’t understand your bottom-up versus top down. We agree that intelligence runs the show. You think your intelligent God dabbles every genome change in every organ/organism. I propose that the changes are made by the intelligent genome itself (which your God may have designed with the capability of changing itself). I don’t know why you’ve suddenly brought in bacteria, other than to snipe at Shapiro and all the other scientists who are convinced that cells are intelligent.

QUOTE: "No one knows whether the structures seen in bacteria represent primitive, intermediate steps in the evolution of eukaryotic organelles, or separate innovations that evolved independently of those of eukaryotes. It’s possible that the answer varies with each organelle. But even if the bacterial and eukaryotic organelles did evolve completely independently, the prokaryotic structures may be useful for understanding the eukaryotic ones. (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: My bold represents the key point: the evolutionary jump to eukaryote cells may have been much smaller than previously thought, and therefore original bacteria at/after the start of life may have been much more complex than previously realized, implying even more the necessity that a designer was/is required.

Nothing to do with why the brain expanded and then stopped expanding to let complexification take over. But I accept your argument that the greater the complexity, the stronger the case for design.