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

by David Turell , Friday, April 16, 2021, 22:15 (1315 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I fully understand your approach and fully reject it, no matter the size of the lettering. Your declaration that a total of 1350 cc were absolutely needed over 300,000 years ago is simply your belief, without any proof.

dhw: The same applies to your own theory. However, we should not ignore the fact that we do have evidence in the modern brain, which changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements, not in anticipation of them. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that the process was the same in the past. This would mean that when pre-sapiens brain expanded to sapiens size (1350cc), it was IN RESPONSE to new requirements – otherwise there would have been no expansion. And in that case, the new cells were necessary to fulfil the new need – they were NOT excessive.

I agree all previous brains had the same complexification capacity. I agree the new expansion covered the needs of that time. But saying not excessive in size or neuronal network complexity at that time is poor reasoning, when we find enormous new brain usages starting 250,000 years later in an unchanged brain waiting to be used

DAVID: My proof that it was oversized is shown by the shrinkage later on just as you describe by enhanced complexification using and also discarding the excess neurons under very complex uses of our big brain we discovered how to employ. Why were excess neurons there in the first place if they could be discarded later under much heavier use of the brain?

dhw: It is not proof! You devoted a whole thread to the concept of lost genes coinciding with innovation: the principle is the same.

You have just invented a curious non-comparison. Our fresh new brain had lots of new extra cells, never used until much later in specialized areas of the frontal and prefrontal lobes with intricate five special layers of neurons in a special tandem network. This allowed our new abstractions of thought that we are familiar with now.

dhw: Cells are needed, but when a new mechanism takes over, they become unnecessary. In this case, enhanced complexity made expansion unnecessary and made some of the existing cells unnecessary. The neurons were NOT “excess” until enhanced complexification made them redundant. I do not ask you to believe the theory, but I do ask you for a logical reason for rejecting it. You have not yet offered me a single one.

It is totally unreasonable. Many extra cells are many extra cells, no matter ow you try and twist it. The stasis until their use cannot be tossed away with by the contorted explanation you present. Thrown away extrav cells wsere extra cells from, the beginning

DAVID: You just don't like my point that God enlarged the brain in anticipation of future use.

dhw: True. It goes against what we know of the modern brain, and I find it far more logical to assume that any changes in the brain and in the anatomy would have an immediate cause, as opposed to being preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or being the result of your God performing a series of operations (dabbling) in anticipation of some future need. In this respect, our prime example was your insistence that he replaced the legs of pre-whales with flippers BEFORE they entered the water. And yet you accept that organisms RESPOND to new conditions by adapting themselves!

All we know, and you have used another distortion of our agreement on this, organisms have minor necessary epigenetic adaption but stay the same species. No one can identify how species appear. I say God does it by design.