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

by dhw, Saturday, March 13, 2021, 12:56 (1138 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your only weak response is God let the neurons do it. It doesn't answer the question of why such a large jump in size while lifestyle requirements changes were minimal as you admit.

dhw: According to you, your God lets the neurons complexify, so why not also let them multiply? Why is that weak? ... You keep ignoring my example: a hunter with a new weapon will still be a hunter.

DAVID: Inventing a spear is a tiny use of the sapiens brain as evidenced by today. The neurons have a God-given program to follow to complexify networks.

Your point was that there was no change in lifestyle, and I have explained why, so you now you switch the subject. Sapiens did not invent the spear, which in its day would have been a major development. Improvements in artefacts are solid evidence of progress, and they accompany expansion of brains. Why are you downgrading them? Your proposal is that your God stepped in to enlarge the early brain so that the new generation of homos could invent the spear (or whatever the invention was). I say it was the implementation of the new idea that caused the brain to expand. I don’t understand your final sentence. If new requirements such as reading complexify the brain, what programme are the neurons following? My theistic proposal is that your God invented the mechanism which enables cells to complexify in response to new demands. In previous posts I seem to remember you agreeing that complexification was an autonomous process. Are you now saying your God preprogrammed the neurons specifically to respond to the task of reading?

DAVID (re God’s reason for a 300,000-year gap): You have asked me the question I've posed to you. My answer is in logical anticipation of future use.

dhw: Why have you inserted the word “logical”? What is logical about your God creating a large brain that is not going to be used for 300,000 years? My logical answer: the brain enlarged IN RESPONSE to a new requirement, and then remained the same until there was another new requirement which also needed greater capacity.

DAVID: All you point out is tiny requirements the obviously don't require the neew size. And you are wrong, the brain neve enlarged again after 300,000 years.

My apologies – I inadvertently switched from the sapiens brain to ALL previous brains. Please substitute “another new requirement which now needed complexification, as the brain had reached its maximum size.” In previous homos, new requirements such as new tools, weapons, ideas, environments, discoveries, required greater capacity. You have never called them tiny before. Your argument was always that your God preprogrammed or dabbled the enlargements IN ADVANCE of homos producing whatever was new.

David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: Your same chopping up of evolution into segments. All branches evolved from bacteria. That is the original connection.

dhw: There is no chopping. All branches evolved from bacteria, but branches branched out into more and more branches, and humans are not directly descended from 99% of those branches. That is what makes nonsense of your claim that ALL life forms were “part of the goal of evolving [=designing] humans”. Or will you now tell us how, for instance, the lizard/dinosaur branch formed part of the goal of designing humans?

DAVID: The huge bush supplies food for all, even the lizard branch.

We do not eat dinosaurs! Why do you keep ignoring your own clear statements? “The current bush of food is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms” “Extinct life has no role in current time.”

SURVIVAL

DAVID: I start up only because you constantly reference your illogical objections.

dhw: My objections are to the logic of your theories: 1) that your God had only one goal (humans) but designed millions of extinct life forms as part of his goal, although 99% of them had no connection with humans. This is illogical. 2) Organs which are designed to improve an organism’s chances of survival are evidence that the quest for survival plays no part in evolution. This is illogical.

DAVID: My obvious previous point: God designs to guarantee survival. God drives evolution, not nature. [You repeat this in your explanation of the possum’s strategy of playing dead and the weaverbird tying knots.]

Why have you brought Nature into the discussion? You have told us that your God “provides for future survival as He designs new forms.” Taking flippers as our example, this can only mean that he designed flippers in order to guarantee the survival of the organism that got the flippers. So how can you possibly argue that survival plays no part in evolution? Your God’s reason for designing the flippers was to enable the whale to survive!