Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, March 07, 2022, 15:02 (778 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your analogy was meant to use the creative process as support for your theory of God’s control, but in fact it supports the idea of your God creating a free-for-all. Maybe you should look for an analogy that fits in with your own humanized concept of a god.

DAVID: False response. I can't provide a humanized God. My previous descriptions are vastly different, which you cannot deny. The only defense you have is distort my God!

Your analogy supported the concept of a free-for-all as opposed to a puppet show. Your own humanized God is a control freak who designs everything from weaverbird nest-building and the opossum “death” strategy to whale flippers and each enlargement of the human brain. You are sure he enjoys creating and is interested in what he sees, is too kind to create causes of suffering, tries to alleviate them but despite his omnipotence sometimes fails and leaves it to humans to find remedies he couldn’t design, and when asked what purpose your all-purposeful God might have had for designing us, you suggest he wants us to admire his work, and maybe have a relationship with him. But you “can’t provide a humanized God”.

New Study Changes Our Understanding of Human ... - Haaretz.com

QUOTE: "She also notes that the Broca area is involved in tool-making, and that all this begs the question: What kind of selection pressure may have been responsible for the reorganization of the human frontal lobes? Good question." (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: The article clearly shows giant sapiens brain advances long before any current needs and uses. Note the early appearance of "Broca's language area long before real language developed. All organized in advance for future use.

dhw: The quotes above [I have not reproduced them here] support my own theory: new CURRENT requirements would have led to the changes (including Broca). The author speculates that these may have been related to the need for “new capabilities and technologies” and for enhanced communication. This flatly contradicts your theory that the changes to the frontal lobe were unique to sapiens, and it directly supports the proposal that the changes RESULTED from current requirements. [dhw's bold]

DAVID: The bold [See DAVID's bold] is Darwinist theory. Proves only your Darwinist bias. Remember I reinterpret from the Darwinist to my God theory as designer.

“Selection” reminds you of Darwin, so you ignore the whole bolded argument, which clearly favours my theory against yours and contradicts your belief that the complexities of the frontal lobe originated with sapiens. (I don’t understand why “selection” appears here, since the article simply speculates on what new requirements might have caused the changes.) The bias is entirely yours.

Dampwood termites

DAVID: Note design in preparation:

dhw: The author makes no attempt to explain how such an ability originated.

DAVID: Why should he? He is a Darwinist who assumes natural selection easily saw the future and prepared for it.

dhw: There is no mention of natural selection, which in any case can only select what exists and is useful in the present. bbYour point and his is that some innovations are preparations for the future. (You wrote: “Design in anticipation of use. No surprise to me.”) What surprises me is that you don’t support the author. My point is that innovations begin as responses to current needs – not in anticipation of needs that do not yet exist. If they are successful, then of course they will be used in the future.

DAVID: The bold is exactly my point. Selection is mentioned! A Darwinist makes my point and you get so upset you must fight with him, even to ignore the word 'selection '.

You are confused. This is a different article, putting the case for predictive brain changes. There is no mention of selection, and more to the point, there is no mention of how this adaptation might have originated. I have offered a possible explanation (shortened here for reasons of space):

dhw: Over time, just as over generations legs turn into flippers from repeated usage in the water, the eyesight of the kings and queens improves over generations. The termite brain is plastic – it responds to new needs, just like ours. Please tell me why you find this explanation less believable than the divine one outlined above.

DAVID: The point is clear. You must disregard Darwinist interpretation if it doesn't fit you enormous bias.

dhw: I have no idea what you mean. Darwin attributes innovations to random mutations, whereas I suggest they come about through intelligent responses to current needs. […]

DAVID: Same old, same old. God designs and any resultant intelligent activity by any living organism comes from God's intelligent instructions in God's designed genomes.

Yes, it is same old, same old. Your God either preprogrammed the big eyes of potential kings and queens 3.8 billion years ago, or he popped in about 100 million years ago, to plant big-eye instructions in a few of the termites he’d just designed (in preparation for humans and their food). I propose that God – if he exists – might have given cells the ability to design their own responses to new requirements, but although there’s a 50/50 chance that intelligent behaviour denotes intelligence, you reject that possibility.