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

by David Turell , Monday, March 01, 2021, 15:59 (1361 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

You forgot to mention your fallback point the cells got an intelligence from God to invent the necessary changes. Design requires intellient anticipation of needs.

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

dhw: 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) .

You are so close to accepting God as the designer. I'll consider the hippocampus for providing new cells, the only place in the brain found to do it !!!

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

dhw: 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.

Of course we have to eat to survive, make money to eat, etc. We all have the motive. You are still struggling to save the Darwin concept of survival to cause evolution , while having given it up in your comment about bacteria who have always survived, as God planned.