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

by dhw, Tuesday, March 30, 2021, 14:09 (1332 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If you think shrinkage proves your case, please explain why your God designed all the extra cells and gave sapiens 300,000 years to learn to use them before jettisoning them as redundant.

DAVID: Stasis proves the brain was too big for current requirements, as you point out it took 300,000 years to fully use it.

dhw: Stasis proves that there were no new requirements or developments, and it is you who insist that the brain was TOO big and it took 300,000 years to “fully use it”. Your next comment supports my theory:

DAVID: […] Overall size is not the issue but the ability to reorganize as needed as new uses of a big brain are employed.

DAVID: This comment doesn't support your backward interpretation at all.

DAVID: As presented yesterday: "the major point to me is how the brain easily shuttles the information around the different cooperative areas to achieve the necessary result.” Let us note this ability was present 315,000 year ago and unused until complex language appeared about 70,000 estimated years ago.

The ability of brain cells to cooperate and achieve the necessary result is and was present in every brain that ever existed!

DAVID: It is obvious we humans didn't know how to use our very supple brain until we finally tried it out to its full extent.

It is obvious that every brained organism that ever lived used and uses its cooperative brain cells to achieve whatever results are necessary. It is also obvious that the human brain expanded when new factors (e.g. new weapons, tools, ideas, discoveries, clothes, use of fire, changing conditions) required additional cells. It is far from obvious that brain cells were once there for no purpose at all, simply waiting to fulfil some vague future purpose.

DAVID: The stasis must be viewed as a required experimental learning period.

You have never explained how one can learn without producing anything new. The stasis must be viewed as a period when there were no new requirements. Or whatever requirements there were could be dealt with by the existing mechanism for complexification.

DAVID: The shrinkage from complexification obviously means it was oversized from the beginning. All in anticipation of future usage. dhw has never given a reasonable explanation of the oversized beginning to more than match the current needs use at the time of the initial appearance of this sapiens brain.

We spent a lot of time discussing the idea that speciation/adaptation entailed a loss of genes, and eventually you agreed that this happened when the genes were no longer required. You don’t seem to have grasped the concept of redundancy. Sapiens’ cells would have increased to 1350 cc as the RESULT of a new requirement, i.e. ALL the new cells were required to meet whatever was the new need. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for the expansion. From then on, all the cells would have been used. However, a point was reached when new needs would have required further expansion, but the brain could not expand any more without creating problems for the anatomy. And so from that point on, instead of new cells being added, the existing cells had to enhance their ability to complexify. This ability then proved so efficient that cells which had been ESSENTIAL in the past now became redundant. Exactly the same principle as when adaptation/innovation/speciation results in the loss of genes which had previously been essential. The rest of your post simply repeats your belief that 315,000 years ago, for no immediate reason, your God gave us more cells than we needed, we spent 300,000 years learning to use them by producing nothing - although you’ve now decided it was only 245,000 years because of language acquisition - and when we had finally learned to use them, we didn't need them! I see no logic in this theory, and am still waiting for you to provide a logical reason for dismissing my own.

Survival
DAVID: Darwin saw speciation as a survival mechanism and I see God as the designer of new species.

dhw: There is no contradiction between the two theories. Even if your God designed all the innovations which led to new species, the purpose of those innovations was to improve chances of survival.

DAVID: Of course without survival evolution and life stop.

And so there is no contradiction between the two theories, and I presume you will stop attacking Darwin for arguing that the purpose of evolutionary innovations is to improve chances of survival. Just asking for clarification.