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

by dhw, Wednesday, March 03, 2021, 11:22 (1147 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I do not believe that adaptation and innovation require gazing into a crystal ball. I believe that organisms adapt and innovate IN RESPONSE to new requirements and not in anticipation of them, just as the human brain is known to RESPOND to new requirements and not to change in anticipation of them.

DAVID: Forgetting brain stasis. Our huge brain did nothing much for over 300,000 years. It obvoiusly came prepared for the future.

And in response to the article which supports my theory, you wrote the same objection:

DAVID: God gave us the giant brain in preparation for future use 315,000 years later. Your usual response has been to describe stasis but avoiding discussing its real meaning of foresight in preparation.

Round we go. I keep disputing your interpretation of its "real meaning"! You have your God operating on a group of pre-sapiens for no immediate purpose, or “willy-nilly”, 300,000 years before they would need the extra cells. I have a group of pre-sapiens needing the cells to perform new tasks (= a “real meaning”, though we can only theorize about what the tasks might have been). That, I propose, is the CAUSE of expansion, but having performed the tasks, they did not have any further new requirements (as in all the earlier stages of expansion) for thousands of years.

dhw: […] 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: […] I'll consider the hippocampus for providing new cells, the only place in the brain found to do it !!!

dhw: […] If the hippocampus can produce new cells, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the addition of cells in earlier brains followed the same procedure.

DAVID: You are confused. The hippocampus memory center is deep in the brain; the cells you want to appear must rise in the frontal and prefrontal areas, but don't.

Because they don’t need to! Complexification can cope. But in the early days, when complexification could not cope, all relevant sections of the brain would have required extra cells to perform new tasks. Why else would they have expanded? You have your God popping in to perform the necessary operations. I have the cell communities (as possibly designed by your God) doing exactly what we know they do now – namely, changing the existing brain. In their case through adding to their number – in our case through complexifying, except apparently in the hippocampus, where new cells are still required. Or do you think your God is still popping in to give your hippocampus the required number?

dhw: You have tried to conflate two forms of “survival”: 1) the continuation of life, for which you claim that the sapiens brain was not “needed”. I have pointed out that no other life form was “needed” for the continuation of life, since bacteria have survived, and so that argument can’t be used to justify your anthropocentrism.

DAVID: I make the opposite point. As bacteria have survived through all time of living organisms, why did evolution have to happen?

That is not the “opposite point”! You argue that evolution did not have to happen, and therefore your God must have made it happen in order to design H. sapiens! I then ask you why he designed all the millions of life forms which did not have to happen and which had no connection with humans, and you dodge the question.

dhw: 2) I don’t see how you can possibly believe that the motive for adaptations is NOT to enable individual species to survive changes in their living conditions, and by the same token innovations cannot possibly survive if they do not fit in with living conditions. Here my proposal is that they improve chances of survival. Our prime example has always been pre-whale legs turning into flippers, as flippers offer a better chance of survival in the water.

DAVID: I see a different God motive: securing that life does not disappear, the reverse of your thought. Survival never drives evolution.

It is not the reverse of my thought. It is No 1) above. And you try to ignore the fact that life consists of individual living organisms. It is not a being in itself. And individual living organisms adapt for the sole purpose of surviving. You tell us (under “Miscellany”) that flippers are not adaptation but speciation, to “allow mammals into living in water”. Thank you. I would suggest that the flippers therefore improved the whales’ chances of surviving in water. What other purpose did they serve, since you also tell us that they were not an advance but only a “side step” in evolution?