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

by dhw, Saturday, March 20, 2021, 08:58 (1132 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] The logical reason for a giant brain totally underused, is arrival in anticipation of future use.

dhw: This has nothing to do with the earlier expansions. Why did he expand earlier brains if the new requirements were too tiny to need expansion? Please note that our ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years with no apparent advances in their lifestyles that we know of, apart from improved artefacts. Long periods without change are what we mean by “stasis”. They arise because there is no NEED for change.

DAVID: You've stated my prime point in the bold. Big brain without need can only mean enlargement in anticipation of need as designed by God.

And you have entirely missed my point! You say that earlier requirements were too tiny to require additional brain cells. That can only mean that every earlier expansion had no purpose! Your God just popped in, added 200 cc worth of cells to successive species of homo for no reason at all, except to make sure that eventually it would add up to 1350 cc and H. sapiens could then embark on a new career after 300,000 years doing nothing with his 1350 cc. I’m sorry, but I find that somewhat unconvincing. I suggest that each addition to the brain was accompanied by some kind of change – whether with artefacts, new ideas, discoveries, lifestyles, adaptations to new environments – any one of which could have exceeded the existing capacity and required additional cells.

DAVID: there is no reason for an oversized brain to arrive to cover minor new adaptations, based on adaptations we see today. Your long review of stasis doesn't answer the question of stasis: 200 cc additions are full new speciation. We currently cannot explain speciation as a natural event. I say God speciates.

What was the point of new speciation if the new species did nothing with the new brain and never needed it in the first place? What has stasis, which occurs when there is no change, got to do with speciation? Nobody can explain speciation, but I doubt if you will find many folk even in ID circles who will swallow the idea that your God designed various new species of homo for no reason other than to gradually build up the quantity of brain cells to 1350 cc for some vague future use. Once more, my counter proposal: each successive brain expansion was caused by a new requirement for which the smaller brain did not have sufficient capacity. Once the requirement was met, there was stasis until the next major requirement resulted in another expansion. Same process with the first sapiens: unknown requirement needed additional cells….period of stasis…but then new requirements met by enhanced complexification.

DAVID: The problem is not seen in fossil studies of evolution in any other circumstance than brain enlargement in the human line. That is because our unexpected appearance is an extremely important philosophical issue as raised by Adler.

dhw: Yes, we are special. That does not make your theory of brain expansion any more logical than mine, and it does not answer the bolded question concerning why your God would have expanded earlier brains if the new uses were too "tiny" to need expansion.

DAVID: Remember, God designs to anticipate future use.

I suggest that your purposeful God (or the cell communities which he may have designed) is more likely to have had an immediate purpose for each successive expansion rather than to have added cells in instalments for no reason other than to meet unspecified requirements a couple of million years later.

SURVIVAL
dhw: Thank you for agreeing that a new tool aids survival. The purpose of “aiding survival” is the driving force behind its invention, but you don’t like me using the term, so I’ll stick to purpose. How on earth does this count as a “disturbance” to the theory that survival is the purpose for evolutionary change? Stasis is simply what occurs when there is no need for change.

DAVID: Which again raises the same obvious question. Why do oversized brains suddenly appear creating the philosophic problem of stasis? As above, you describe stasis as we see it, but that doesn't explain the burst in size when not needed.

In my theory each “burst in size” IS needed! And this has nothing to do with stasis, which simply means that after the initial fulfilment of need there were no further needs. And this in turn has nothing to do with your attempt to avoid the obvious fact that any evolutionary changes that are made for the purpose of improving chances of survival confirm that the motive for the evolutionary changes is to improve chances of survival! Some of us would say that the motive for doing something is a driving force.