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

by David Turell , Sunday, March 14, 2021, 14:46 (1129 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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. [..]

dhw" That is NOT specifically in response to the task of reading! You are now repeating my theistic version of my theory: ... I agree that past brains would have had the same programme for AUTONOMOUS complexification. And so why could your God not have designed the same mechanism to enable cells to expand as well as complexify through the autonomous process of “handling new uses”?

You are backwards. In our brain almost all neurons are present from the beginning. Complexification involves increasing axon networking, not neurons. Only the hippocampus adds neurons.

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

dhw: No one would dispute that modern human brain power has advanced immeasurably from that of our ancestors! How does that prove that the invention of what was then a revolutionary advance in technology did not require an expansion of brain capacity? If today you saw a chimp manufacturing a spear, you’d be flabbergasted. In its time, the spear was an amazing achievement.

Of course a new weapon at a time of few useful weapons would 'look' big. To do it our new huge brain was barely used, the point you dance around: why so big if hardly used to full capacity.

David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: 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.

Of course I don’t denigrate common descent! What I denigrate is the argument that every single branch of life’s history was “part of the goal of evolving (= designing) humans”, although 99% of the life forms and their food supplies had NO CONNECTION with humans. You keep trying to edit your own theory to leave this out. Please stop it.

Stop chopping up evolution. Common descent means all are connected in its continuity.
God chose to evolve us from bacteria.

SURVIVAL

dhw: […] Your God’s reason for designing the flippers was to enable the whale to survive!

DAVID: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.

dhw: Even if your God did design the flipper, the purpose is the driving force behind any action, and if the purpose was survival, then it is illogical to say that survival of the whale was not the driving force behind your God’s evolutionary action. Why else would he have designed the flipper? Please answer.

My point is God guarantees survival by preparing all new organisms/species with a proper design of parts to fit whatever new environmental challenges the new organism will meet. Simply God is the driving force for evolution and survival is obviously a necessary part