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

by David Turell , Sunday, May 09, 2021, 15:37 (1292 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: What you object to is my concept of God knowing in advance those extra cells would become excess cells […] as we got to really use our brains and complexification tailored our brain to our preferred usages. A prime example of God's pre-planning.

dhw: Once more: we do not know if the extra cells later became excessive,....More muddle.

DAVID: Your muddle. There was shrinkage after complexification tailored our brain to our use creating excess cells/neurons.

dhw: Correct. Once more: some cells (we don’t know which ones) BECAME redundant AFTER complexification had tailored our brain to cope with new requirements. The new cells did not arrive as “excess, redundant”.

The major expansion from erectus to sapiens was frontal lobes. The other areas of the brain, as in all other animals with brains, have to do with running the bodies motion. picking up incoming sensations, stimulating reproduction. The reduction from new uses was also frontal lobe dealing with abstractive thought. The hippocampus grew.

dhw: So there is a mechanism which enables cells to be aware of requirements and to make their own decisions. Do you agree or disagree that these autonomous abilities denote intelligence? [..] (See below)

DAVID: […]Future loss of neurons means the big brain started bigger and then shrunk with new uses and complexification discarded excess neurons. Didn't the brain shrink?

dhw: Of course if the brain shrunk it was bigger before it shrunk! And I have been telling you for months that it shrunk because the efficiency of enhanced complexification made certain cells redundant – in direct contrast to your constantly repeated claim that the new cells were redundant from the start and those same cells were discarded later.

We don't know which were mew cells and don't know if they were the ones discarded. Excess cells were available for use from the beginning of the sapiens brain. That is my key point. Since complexification got rid of 150 cc of cells, old or new is of no matter.

DAVID: The intelligence in your question is from the intelligent instructions the brain cells followed given by God.

dhw: Same woolly “intelligent instructions” as in the following (from “Miscellany”):

Plants sense what’s happening
dhw: If plants are sentient. can work out solutions and communicate with other plants, I’d say that = a form of intelligence.

DAVID: Or simply following God's intelligent instructions.

dhw: Please be more precise. Do your God’s “intelligent instructions” present plants with the exact solution to every problem they will ever encounter, or with the means of finding their own solutions and taking their own decisions?

God speciates and allows them to create minor necessary adaptions through Lamarck-like methylation of DNA, microevolution.