Return to David's theory of evolution PART ONE (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, December 16, 2021, 11:14 (1071 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Lucy out of the trees had a tiny brain. 315,000 year-old early sapiens had an unused giant forebrain, a great example of arriving before the future use appeared. That is fact, not wishful theory of a 'response to new conditions'. Base theory on known fact, please.

dhw: Nobody knows the “fact” of why brains expanded! We have discussed this over and over again, and now you are pretending that your theory (your God performed sporadic operations on hominin and homo brains to expand them for future requirements) is a known fact! Here is the counter theory that we have discussed umpteen times over: each expansion had a specific cause (new ideas - e.g. for artefacts - or discoveries, new environment, new way of living) and the existing brain did not have the capacity to deal with it. We know for a fact that brains change when they perform new tasks (illiterate women and taxi drivers were our modern examples). We don’t know the individual causes of each past expansion, but once expanded, the brain then used its existing capacity (no doubt complexifying to a degree) until new demands again required additional cells. 315,000 years ago (or whenever it was), an unknown cause resulted in expansion to current size, and since further expansion would have required major changes to the rest of the anatomy, expansion gave way (except in one or two individual sections of the brain) to complexification. And complexification proved so efficient that the brain has actually shrunk, since some cells became redundant. The only instances we know of changes to the brain are those which take place in RESPONSE to new demands. It is therefore perfectly logical to theorize that the same process may have taken place in the past. The theory is based on known facts!

DAVID: Based only very weakly on the fact that existing large brains can slightly enlarged heavily used areas. We can only use our brain for facts. Tiny past brains had some plasticity limited by their size and lesser complexity. Doesn't tell us why they enlarged.

Again, we’ve been over this. it is not based only on slight enlargements but on the fact that the brain is known to change its structure when implementing new tasks. Previously the changes would have been minor complexifications until more cells were needed. With sapiens, I propose that further expansion would have been dangerous, and so complexification became the main process for implementing new tasks. But nobody actually knows why they enlarged, which is why we have different theories. What "known facts" support your theory of divinely preprogrammed or dabbled enlargements?

dhw: I accept that evolution of all species proceeds in stages, and if God exists, I accept that this was his choice of creation. I do not accept that he chose to individually design every single life form, natural wonder etc., and since most of them had no connection with humans and their food, I do not accept that his sole purpose in designing them was to achieve what you believe to have been his one and only goal of designing homo sapiens and his food.

DAVID: I know. None of your thoughts tell us how humans with consciousness appeared, well beyond natural necessity for simple survival. Only Adler's answer fits.

Nobody knows how consciousness itself appeared. Nobody even knows how life appeared. Adler, you have told us, uses humans to “prove” that God exists. You can expand that argument to all life forms, as you do in your books, because even micro-organisms are a complex design. However, my disagreement with you in all these discussions is NOT over God’s existence but over your illogical anthropocentric interpretation of life’s history, your God’s purpose, and his method of achieving that purpose.

DAVID: All of ID feels God designed evolution and humans through 3.8 billion years of evolution, after He designed life itself.
#dhw: Yes I know. How many of them believe that BBBhe individually designed every life form, econiche, lifestyle, natural wonder etc., including all those that had no connection with humans, as “part of the goal of evolving [designing] humans and their food”?

DAVID: I think they all do.

dhw: […] name, say, three scientists who believe that your God individually designed every life form etc. as bolded above.

DAVID: Behe, Meyer, Demski.
I always thought that Behe specifically avoided mentioning God, let alone God’s purpose.

I looked up Dembski, and this was the first thing I came upon:
INTELLIGENT DESIGN - Bill Dembski
https://billdembski.com/documents/2003.08.Encyc_of_Relig.htm

QUOTE: “Because a sign is not the thing signified, intelligent design does not presume to identify the purposes of a designer. Intelligent design focuses not on the designer’s purposes (the thing signified) but on the artifacts resulting from a designer’s purposes (the sign). What a designer intends or purposes is, to be sure, an interesting question, and one may be able to infer something about a designer’s purposes from the designed objects that a designer produces. Nevertheless, the purposes of a designer lie outside the scope of intelligent design.”

I don’t know how Behe and Dembski can support your theory that your God’s one and only purpose (goal) was to design H. sapiens plus food if Behe doesn’t talk of God, and Dembski doesn’t talk of purpose. I didn’t bother to find out about Meyer.