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

by dhw, Monday, March 01, 2021, 13:19 (1361 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You didn't answer the concept the neurons have to be added in a special structural form, therefore by design. [...]

dhw: You said “willy-nilly”, and I said “to serve a particular purpose”! Of course they are in a special structural form, and of course they are designed! But instead of your God preprogramming every single new structural form 3.8 billion years ago, or popping in to perform an operation on a group of sleeping homos to add the neurons necessary for tasks to be accomplished 280,000+ years later, we have intelligent cells (possibly designed by your God) adding the neurons necessary to accomplish tasks in their here and now. Please explain why you think neurons designed to serve a particular purpose are “willy-nilly”, whereas neurons designed for some unknown future task are designed in a special structural form.

DAVID: You are talking around the issue of design. Our frontal cortex has a very specific design which is required for us to be as mentally smart as we are. If erectus had this particular design of five tiered layers of neurons, sapiens would not have been needed.

If all the smaller brained hominins and homos had had the bigger brains, then the bigger brains would not have been needed! My whole point is that smaller brains became bigger when more cells were needed to perform tasks which had never been performed before. There is no “issue of design”. The issue is your insistence that your God had to step in and perform operations in anticipation of new requirements, whereas I propose that cells designed their own restructuring and reinforcement (including the frontal cortex) in response to new requirements. That is to say, not "willy-nilly" - in contrast to your theory which has your God expanding brains for no particular reason 280,000+ years before sapiens thinks of something new to do with them.

DAVID: How did erectus' neurons know how to do this? Only God could do it as you reluctantly drag in the possibility.

I do not “reluctantly drag” God in. I am an agnostic. And I find it perfectly feasible that your God could have designed the intelligence which enables cells/cell communities to complexify (as you believe they do) and to add to their number when this is needed (which you refuse even to consider) .

DAVID: And finally there is no survival need for our particular brain, to kill your favorite reason for evolution.

As we have agreed over and over again, there was no “survival need” for any organism beyond bacteria. But as conditions changed, multicellular communities cooperated not only to survive (adaptation) but also to find new ways of improving their chances of survival (innovation). I have no doubt that the same process applied to the evolving human brain: the earliest humans would also have had survival as the main motive for their adaptations and inventions, and even today there are sapiens whose activities centre mainly on survival.

Behe

dhw: […] you still haven’t explained why you regard it as illogical to propose that a successful adaptation/innovation will result in some genes losing their original function and either changing their function or disappearing – i.e. loss of genes results from adaptation and does not cause it. […]

DAVID: Not illogical. A different view of existing thought as the article showed.

Thank you for accepting that my proposal is logical. We could have saved ourselves a few weeks of discussion if you had agreed from the outset, but it’s always pleasing to drag a yes out of you in the end!