Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, February 20, 2022, 08:16 (1005 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: And my response is intelligence needs minds which cells do not have. So how did they become intelligent in your theory?

dhw: Why have you suddenly introduced the word “mind”? Cells do not have brains. That does not mean they don’t have some form of intelligence. Nobody knows the origin of intelligence, but as an agnostic, I acknowledge the possibility that there is a God who designed it. Why do you refuse to accept this possibility?

DAVID: That is exactly what I do accept: God designed cells with intelligent instructions they carefully follow.

You know perfectly well that by cellular intelligence I mean the autonomous intelligence of cells and not the intelligence of God who issues instructions for them to follow.

dhw: Back we go: why could your God the creator not have created the mechanism for expansion as well as complexification?

DAVID: Same answer. A true designer who knows what he wishes to design, does not give the job off to secondhand methods. The outcome is not controlled.

dhw: We are talking here about the human brain. So when your God designed the autonomous mechanism for complexification, which he did not control because we are free to come up with the ideas that require complexification, he was not a true designer. Ts, ts.

DAVID: Total distortion. God undoubtedly designed previous brains and our current one with the complexification with the exact purpose to allow handling new uses of the brain.

That is precisely what I am saying – if he exists, God provided the complexification mechanism, and you have agreed that it works without his intervention. He does not control the process whereby cells complexify in response to new uses. But according to you, a true designer controls everything!

DAVID: Why are you mixing our free will into this debate? We have free will and in new ideas and concepts our brain has the ability to handle them with complexification, a plasticity well recognized.

I am talking about free will because if God exists, he gave us the freedom to do our own thinking, designing etc., and he gave us the mechanism which enables us to give material reality to our thoughts, designs etc. It’s what you sneeringly call “second-hand design” because he does not control the thoughts or the complexifications. So if he is happy to let our cells do the complexifying, why do you think he would not have let them also add to their numbers when they needed to?