Brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, August 14, 2020, 10:28 (1560 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I theorize God as the agent running evolution.

dhw: If we accept God’s existence, the question will have to be HOW he runs evolution. You have him directly preprogramming or dabbling every single development...An alternative is that he set up the mechanisms for evolution in such a way that organisms could ”run” themselves. In the context of brain expansion, this means the brain cells responded to new requirements by changing their structure through complexification or expansion. This process is confirmed by those that take place in the modern brain.

DAVID: The only confirmation is shrinkage under the complexification process, while small precise areas thicken slightly.

Thank you for your generous addition of shrinkage as confirmation, but no, shrinkage was merely the result of complexification’s enhanced efficiency. The confirmation lies in the fact that the modern brain RESPONDS to new requirements; it does not complexify or expand in anticipation of new requirements.

DAVID: It all requires coordinated design. Designs keeps you agnostic, so it is my most powerful argument for God the designer.

dhw: For the sake of argument, I am accepting God the designer. But in case you hadn’t noticed, I am proposing that God the designer designed a mechanism that enabled the cells of which all organs and organisms are made to carry out their own designing. Your vision of God doing a brain/skull/pelvis operation on the Moroccans is “pure theory” with no facts to support it. At least my theory has as support the known fact that the modern brain complexifies and/or expands (small scale) in response to new requirements.

DAVID: Your only confirmation is our large brain shrinks from complexification while enlarging precise small regions.

See above re shrinkage, but yes, the fact that parts of the brain expand in order to meet new requirements suggests that the major expansions of the past might also have been in response to new requirements.

DAVID: My confirmation comes from a bigger brain fossil always develops advances in life style and artifacts over time. Sapiens history as shown by the
Moroccan fossils supports my approach, not yours.

No history that I know of supports your theory that your God operated overnight on a group of Moroccans to enlarge their brains, skulls and pelvises. I don’t know to what extent all the different brain sizes created new lifestyles and artefacts “over time” (i.e. after expansion, as opposed to them being the driving force for the expansion itself) before the new brain sizes came into being. Perhaps you’ve done the research or have time to do it. I have mentioned these as POSSIBLE CAUSES of brain expansion. But it is certainly true that after the initial expansion to sapiens size – whatever the cause – there was a long period of stasis before the new brain suddenly had to respond to new requirements by complexifying, expanding certain sections, and also discarding some cells which were no longer necessary. I don’t know how that supports your approach and not mine.

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Thank you for all the other posts. No need for me to respond, but I must say I found the meteorite one particularly interesting. So many of the ingredients for life flying in from outer space...