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

by David Turell , Saturday, March 13, 2021, 15:32 (1349 days ago) @ dhw

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 ... 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?

Yes, God programmed our neurons to complexify in our big brain as necessary to handle new uses. And I think past brains had the same program. I used the spear as a simple example, not historically.

DAVID: All you point out is tiny requirements the obviously don't require the new size. And you are wrong, the brain never enlarged again after 300,000 years.

dhw: 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.

Obvious: inventing a spear is not a major mental achievement like General Relativity.

David’s theory of evolution

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

dhw: 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.”

I know that as well as you do. The point you constantly denigrate is the continuity of evolution from bacteria to now in common descent.

SURVIVAL

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.]

dhw: 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!

I'm saying Darwin's theory that the drive for survival drives evolution is false. God designs the proper advances to guarantee survival. Quite a difference from your attempts to explain changes like flippers.