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

by dhw, Saturday, March 06, 2021, 10:05 (1146 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Again no answer to the impression the new-sized brain gives: giant with little to do. All dressed up and no where to go. You can't give a natural reason for 200 cc jumps, producing more capacity than required at the time of the jump.

dhw: I keep suggesting that there WERE natural reasons for the jumps (though nobody knows what they were, just as nobody knows how expansion happened): e.g. new ideas, inventions, environmental conditions, discoveries – which required additional capacity.

DAVID: But this not ever explain, why vast overcapacity is created. You always ignore that point.

You always ignore my answers to that point, but what overcapacity are you talking about? Prior to sapiens, there is no overcapacity. Yet again: in my theory, the brain expands in order to meet a new requirement. Then there is stasis until the next idea, discovery etc. requires more cells. In the case of sapiens, the same process would have applied, but when the bigger brain had to meet new requirements 300,000 years later, it increased its capacity to complexify, presumably because further expansion would have required major changes to the anatomy. If you are thinking of shrinkage, this occurred because the process of complexification became so efficient that certain cells were not required. Now please tell us what vast overcapacity you are referring to, and why you think your God created it.

DAVID: Complexification works because the huge brain had no need for further expansion. You explanation is a twisted escape from a logical view of the obviously anticipatory expansion.

Your explanation is a “twisted escape” from the known fact that the brain changes in response to new requirements and not in anticipation of them. I propose that the response in pre-sapiens was the addition of cells when they were needed. Sapiens’ response is complexification when it is needed, and I have offered a logical reason above why expansion was no longer possible, other than in isolated sections of the brain.

David's theory of evolution

DAVID: No dodge. God designed every advancing level of evolutions complexities, eventually humans.

dhw: Still dodging! For the thousandth time: Why would your God have directly designed the brontosaurus, and the millions of other life forms that had no connection with humans, if his only purpose was to design H. sapiens?

DAVID: Same weird twist. God chose to design/evolve all living forms with humans as His final goal.

Same deliberate dodge. How does your statement come to mean that every living form in life’s history was “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” when 99% of forms had no connection with humans? (See also “theodicy”).

survival

dhw: So the purpose of the mechanism your God designed was to enable all beings to survive, but the purpose for doing something is not a driving force? Once more, please tell us what OTHER purpose you think drove your God to design the whales’ flippers.

DAVID: So they could enter a watery environment, a new mode of living, survival not involved.

dhw: How does a physical change enabling a life form to live in a new environment not involve surviving in the new environment?

DAVID: Simple. God guarantees survival wherever life tries to exist. Survival does not drive evolution.

Life does not try to exist. Organisms try to exist. And if organisms adapt to new environments, it means they try to go on existing. To go on existing = survival, even if that entails “a new mode of living”.

Symbiosis by bacteria

DAVID: You forgot death is built in to make room, and the bush is big to be eaten for energy.

dhw: So your God gave life forms the ability to survive, but he also made sure they didn’t survive. […] As for the bush, ALL life forms require food, and so they devise new means of getting food or avoiding becoming food, i.e. to SURVIVE.

DAVID: Life simply goes from one generation to the next, survival of forms guaranteed by God's designs.

99% of forms have not survived. And common descent indicates that life doesn’t simply go from one generation to the next, but it also branches out into new forms. Why? Because organisms look for new ways of surviving. Once more, please tell us why pre-whales’ legs became flippers, if it was not to enable them to improve their chances of survival in a new environment.

Playing possum

QUOTE: “Playing dead seems to be a very good way to stay alive.'"

DAVID: How is this learned, since it implies conceptual thinking? How is the length of time that one plays possum determined? Perhaps God designed this mechanism. […]

dhw: […] The intelligence of possums IS my answer. And maybe your God designed the intelligence of possums and every other creature that uses strategies, lifestyles or physical adaptations in order to SURVIVE.

DAVID: You have possums conceptualizing necessary time intervals. How very sentient of them! I'll stick with God's help.

I don’t know about “conceptualizing necessary time intervals”. I don’t think it requires super intelligence for an animal to perceive when the coast is clear. And YES in block capitals, I do believe that our fellow creatures are sentient. What makes you think they are not?