Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 09:12 (1003 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: He obviously sets up necessary mechanism to run on their own. Sexual reproduction works on its own, as does embryology. You rigid brain invented a tunnel-visioned God who does not exist. Purpose is not a tunnel.

dhw: Thank you for agreeing with me, even though you say I am wrong. Brain complexification is one of those mechanisms which you agree runs on its own and changes all the time by autonomously making new connections. So it is patently absurd to say that he always wants control, and therefore he could not also have given the cells the means of adding to their numbers! How on earth this deliberate sacrifice of control makes him tunnel-visioned is beyond my comprehension.

DAVID: Don't you remember? Tunnel-visioned was your description in discussions about planning on humans.

I remember only too well rejecting your view of a free-for-all as “tunnel-visioned”, when compared to your theory that all life forms, including those that had no connection with humans, were “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and their food!

DAVID: As for your distorted discussion of complexification assuming God gave up some sort of control, do you remember your autonomic system that efficiently runs most of your bodily functions? Do you want God to help you defecate each time you feel the need?

Answered umpteen times, and repeated today on the “cellular intelligence” thread. Most of our established organs have to work automatically. And have you forgotten that you have agreed that complexification takes place without your God intervening? Hence my constantly asking you why, if he designed a mechanism for autonomous complexification, you insist that he could not have done so for enlargement.

Varying unequal synapses

DAVID: as each level of neuron activity is uncovered, the activity within the brain demonstrates its complexity, and shows us why our brain acts as it does. I wish we could see how much complexity existed in preceding hominins and homos. My guess is size isn't the issue but neuronal network complexity created the brain we use, which makes it superior to all preceding brains. Larger size makes room for more complexity but unless the increased
complexity exists just larger size will not matter.

From my standpoint, this is an excellent summary of the whole process. The autonomous mechanism of complexification would have existed in the brains of all preceding hominins and homos, and whenever requirements necessitated additional cells, there was expansion. The size only matters because it is the increase in the number of cells that enhances the ability to complexify. (But in sapiens, the ability to complexify itself has been so enhanced that not only is expansion unnecessary, but some cells that had been useful in the past have become redundant – hence shrinkage). Since you agree that size only matters in relation to the autonomous ability to complexify, I cannot understand why, in the theistic version of this theory, you think the addition of cells requires your God’s intervention.