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

by dhw, Monday, February 22, 2021, 13:14 (1368 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You are trying to disarm the impression that big brain, unused, brings to anyone who thinks. "All dressed up and no place to go" is an obvious thought. Or, the earliest sapiens built a rocket for a moon launch, 315,000 years ago and just finally used it 50 years ago. This analogy fits as you wildly talk all around the obvious impression.

dhw: ...you say your God expanded the brain 315,000 years ago, but sapiens did nothing with it. Why did he expand it then if nothing was done with it for 280,000+ years? You simply refuse to consider the possibility that the pre-sapiens brain expanded 315,000 years ago as a RESULT of some new requirement.

DAVID: What new requirement? Each next stage of human development starting at Lucy (or similar) grew 200 cc average until it stopped at sapiens with 1,200+cc alj due to frontal and prefrontal enlargement. Very full use of big brains started only in the past 10,000+ years when we left caves. Each anticipatory enlargement forms the same pattern since Lucy. Are you proposing new chance small requirements each time? Doesn't the pattern fit a plan? I chose God's agency.

I don’t know how often you want me to repeat that NOBODY KNOWS what caused brain expansions, which is why we have different theories: new artefacts, new discoveries, changing conditions providing new problems to solve or opportunities to grasp. All we know for sure is that the modern brain changes when acquiring new skills or meeting new requirements, but now it has stopped expanding and complexifies instead. So maybe in the past, when brains were smaller, they expanded once their complexification capacity had been exceeded. It’s a theory – as is your belief that your God kept popping in to perform operations on sleeping groups of hominins and homos – but you have never yet explained why you find it inconceivable.

DAVID: You constantly stumble around not finding a natural driving cause and history tells us there was no need for such a big brain, but not any sort of driving force is known as you try to worm around in your explanations.

dhw: History does not know what caused the brain to expand. All we know is the brain changes when it meets new requirements. But I doubt if there are many historians who would tell you that an unknown power operated on a few brains 315,000 years ago, so that the brain-owners could learn how to use their brains by achieving nothing until 285,000+ years later.'

DAVID: You are offering atheistic historians to what purpose? To support your agnosticism? Theological historians would support me.

You do not have to be an atheist to support the theory I have proposed, and I have specifically focused on your illogical comments regarding the stasis: do you happen to know of any “theological historians” who argue that God operated on pre-sapiens brains 315,000 years ago so that the brain owners could learn how to use their brains by achieving nothing until approx. 305,000 (the figure keeps changing) years later?

Behe

DAVID: Yes, new genes happen, but loss of genes is also observed, and your question to me is is it chicken or egg first. New adaptation with loss of genes means loss of genes caused the adaptation as the authors imply in the article.

dhw: It "means" no such thing. Please tell us why it is impossible for new adaptations (and the acquisition of new genes) to make certain existing genes redundant.

DAVID: That is not my impression of the article's import, having reread it.

I am not asking about the article’s “import”. I am asking you to respond to my argument.