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

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 15:54 (1345 days ago) @ dhw

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.

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

From March 14, dhw: " 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”?

My objection was only the hippocampus has this designed ability.

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.

dhw: 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.

Tiny expansions in our brains prove nothing about the past, other than those brains probably had the same small expansions.

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.... Now please answer my bolded question

I did. God is the cause for stasis. Your repeated discussion explains nothing, because I entered the concept of stasis long ago To emphasize the issue: why a huge brain so early before it was really used? You never have had a valid explanation.

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.

dhw: 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.

I fully agree the new adaptations improved survival. My point you have avoided in this discussion is survival does not drive evolution, God does. That is the reason all I accept from Darwin in common descent, designed by God.