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

by dhw, Monday, March 15, 2021, 11:34 (1347 days ago) @ David Turell

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: I agree thatpast 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”?

DAVID: 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.

You have misread my post. PAST brains would have had the same mechanism for autonomous complexification, and so I am proposing that the same mechanism would have been used to expand PAST brains when their capacity for complexification could not meet PAST requirements. Hence the following:

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.

DAVID: 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.

It wasn’t our new huge brain that invented the spear! You are completely missing the point. Nobody knows what caused earlier expansions or the sapiens expansion. We have used the spear as a simple example. If heidelbergensis invented it, it was a huge step forward in technology, and perhaps that was the cause of his expanded brain. If not the spear, then go back to every artefact that has ever been found: artefacts are the only solid evidence of progress accompanying earlier expansions, but above I have given you a list of other possible causes. As for our huge new brain being barely used after the initial expansion, I have explained it umpteen times: once the new requirement had been met, there were no new requirements for 300,000 years, and when new ideas did occur, instead of the brain expanding, it complexified (perhaps because it had reached its maximum size). It is you who “dance” round the problem, because you cannot tell us why your God would have expanded the brain if it was not going to be required for another 300,000 years. Your only theory is that we had to learn to use it, although how you can learn to use something and yet produce nothing is beyond my understanding.

David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: The point you constantly denigrate is the continuity of evolution from bacteria to now in common descent.

dhw: 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.

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

I am not chopping up evolution. It branched out, and 99% of its branches had no connection with humans. THAT is why it is absurd to argue that ALL life forms were “part of the goal of evolving [designing] humans”.

SURVIVAL

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.

DAVID: 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.

No problem, then. In your theory, God is the driving force who designs all the innovations, and the purpose of the innovations is to improve organisms’ chances of survival in changing environments. And so when you wrote “survival never drives evolution”, you only meant that God designs all the innovations, the purpose of which is survival. Survival as the purpose of evolutionary innovation is therefore exactly the same as in Darwin’s theory.