Evolution: more genomic evidence of pre-planning (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, February 20, 2021, 10:46 (1370 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I don’t know how often you want me to repeat the line above: nobody knows the cause of brain expansion. For some reason you restrict yourself to the current brain, and you restrict yourself to artefacts. And stepwise enlargement refers to the different expansions from one species of human to another, not from sapiens to sapiens.

DAVID: Just note sapiens suddenly had 200 cc more frontal lobe with no existing requirement to use it, based on any new needs for required activities of daily living, in modern terminology.

There was no requirement to use it AFTER it had expanded – and that is why there was a period of stasis! And nobody knows why it expanded, but there could have been any number of causes – not just artefacts.

DAVID: Read the following article about our brain since Luther:
https://nautil.us/issue/96/rewired/martin-luther-rewired-your-brain?mc_cid=12a60281c6&a...
Actually don't bother. It simply describes Protestantism pushing reading for all and how our brains obviously changed by its designed plasticity.

dhw: I did bother, since your caveat illustrates a point that you desperately try to avoid, and which is repeated in the very first line of the article:
QUOTE: Your brain has been altered, neurologically rewired as you acquired a particular skill.

DAVID: That line I fully accept as describing built-in plasticity changes.

Of course the brain has to be plastic if it is going to change. The point is that it changes when it acquires a new skill. It does not change in anticipation of acquiring a new skill.

dhw: Summary of my proposal: every brain change throughout hominin/homo history resulted from the effort to respond to something new: e.g. an idea, a change in conditions, a new discovery. Every expansion has been followed by a period of stasis until the next new requirement appears...Please explain why you find all this impossible to believe.

DAVID: Simple. You have not explained a huge new brain appears with very little new to do. It is obviously designed for future use.

How many more times? Nobody knows what caused the initial expansion! But whatever was the cause, there were no NEW requirements (or skills) for the next 285,000 years. Now please tell us why you think your God popped in to operate on a few brains if there was no need for him to do so for the next 285,000 years.

Behe

DAVID:...Adaptation can result from loss of genes, as you note.

dhw: I did not note that at all. I said that adaptation can be ACCOMPANIED by (not result from) loss of genes, and I explained why.

DAVID: The oddity is in that adaptation seems to require loss of information or a rearrangement of information so necessary previously hidden information can appear. Proof: it appears necessary future information is planted beforehand, in anticipation of need, just what you reject.

dhw: My suggestion is that it does not REQUIRE loss of information (I don’t know why you’ve switched from genes to information) but is accompanied by the loss of information/genes that are no longer relevant to the organism’s situation. And you have forgotten the fact that the process is accompanied by NEW genes. (Initially, you even denied that there were any new genes!) NEW genes were not “planted beforehand”!

DAVID: Genes are removed according to the article, which I have reread.

The article talks of loss or deletion of genes and loss of function. Please explain why you think the loss of genes would have CAUSED adaptation rather than being the RESULT of adaptation (i.e. they were no longer needed), and please acknowledge that adaptation/speciation is accompanied by NEW genes.