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

by dhw, Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 12:31 (1345 days ago) @ David Turell

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. […] The bolded is dead wrong…

dhw: I was agreeing with your statement: “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 say AUTONOMOUS because if complexification can handle new uses, it doesn't need God to keep popping in with instructions for each new use.) How can it be dead right on Sunday and dead wrong on Monday?

DAVID: To clear it up: Your statement of added neurons was incorrect as it applied to the study on illiterate Italian women, who had thickening in the Cortex and visual areas, regions that don't add neurons.

I never stated any such thing! Expansion did not apply to the Indian women!!!! Their brains complexified!

DAVID: In London cabbies where only memory is required, the hippocampus thickened and is presumed to have added neurons. Therefore, in most activities requiring complex brain activities in several areas more axon connections do the complexification, not new neurons.

And so we have two examples in which the brain changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements: the first results in complexification, and the second in expansion, and you use these two examples to try and disprove my proposal that the same mechanisms could have been at work in the past, when the smaller brain would have complexified until its capacity was exceeded by new requirements, and then it expanded. Although you have tried to misrepresent what I wrote, thank you for this clear evidence of its feasibility.

DAVID: My point is the tiny advances among early hominins did not require massive brain use.

dhw: Your point has always been that your God expanded all earlier brains in anticipation of new uses. Are you now saying the new uses were too tiny to require your God’s successive brain operations? Then why did he bother to expand early brains?

DAVID: Stasis is your problem I raised long ago. My view is God anticipates future use.

Instead of answering my now bolded question, you have once more switched to stasis, which I have covered over and over again! Stasis followed each expansion because there were no new requirements that needed extra capacity. When sapiens was faced with new requirements after the initial expansion, the brain (apart from the hippocampus) complexified, presumably because further expansion would have created problems for the anatomy. Now please answer my bolded question

dhw: […] complexification was so efficient that some of the cells required 315,000 years ago were no longer needed (= shrinkage). Now please tell us why you think your God overexpanded our brain 300,000 years before any change was needed, apart from his metaphorically gazing into his crystal ball.

DAVID: You can't explain a natural cause of such a big brain appearing with so little to do. You've never presented cogent answer, just describe what we know happened as above. God anticipates usage as He designs advances in evolution.

Nobody knows why any of the pre-sapiens brains expanded, but I keep offering you possible causes and you keep ignoring them: new tools, new weapons, new ideas, new environments, new discoveries and in all cases, INCLUDING THE EXPANSION FROM PRE-SAPIENS TO SAPIENS, the initial requirements could only be met by an increase in the number of cells. See above for what happened next.

SURVIVAL

dhw: We can agree that if God exists, he is the driving force behind evolution (whether he designed every species or gave organisms free rein), and the purpose of all the adaptations and innovations was to improve the organism’s chance of survival. The latter is Darwin’s theory, and if you’d rather not describe the purpose of something as a “driving force”, then that’s fine with me.

DAVID: The concept 'life' is represented by living organisms, so that is my shorthand usage. You can keep Darwin theory for yourself. All I accept is common descent from original Archaea.

If only that was all you “accepted”, most of these discussions would have ended long ago. But you go on “accepting” that your God directly designed every species, that he did so for the sole purpose of designing sapiens although 99% of extinct life forms had no connection with sapiens, and that although your God designed evolutionary innovations in order to enable organisms to survive, you do not accept the theory that the purpose of evolutionary innovations was to improve chances of survival.