Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, March 21, 2022, 11:30 (759 days ago) @ David Turell

Memory formation

dhw: You just gave us examples of organs that function without God, and then you asked exactly the question I keep asking: why can’t the brain also work without God?

DAVID: It does in the complexification process.

dhw: Thank you. So God “gives off His designing ability”. Now please tell me why he could not possibly have done the same when it came to brains needing additional cells (= expansion) for further complexification. […]

DAVID: […] Complexification works because neurons contain in their DNA God's instructions of how to respond to new uses.

So when you say the kidneys and complexification work without God, you actually mean they follow God’s instructions. For instance, when illiterate women learn to read, God has provided an instruction about which neurons are to form what new connection in response to the demands of reading. Theoretically, there will be a limitless number of new uses, and so your God has issued a theoretically limitless number of instructions. Won’t you just allow for the possibility that instead of such a list, he has endowed the cells with the intelligence to work out their own connections, i.e. to work autonomously?

DAVID: Neurons cannot make new neurons except in the hippocampus by God's design. You don't follow the facts we have.

If your God designed a means whereby neurons can make new neurons in the hippocampus, why do you think the same mechanism could not have existed in the days when neurons in other areas also needed to do the same because existing neurons could not complexify sufficiently to deal with new requirements?
You have posted two wonderful articles that show how the brain cells adapt to conditions of blindness and deafness. A few highly relevant quotes:

"By day two, the scans showed that the volunteers’ brains were already starting to change. By day five, touch was stimulating the brain’s visual cortex," Higgins described.

"The brain was learning to rely more on touch than sight."

"This is further evidence that the brain's overarching function is to interpret reality, and it will rapidly reorganize itself to accomplish this goal no matter where the external information comes from, whether sight, sound, or touch."

"Goldreich told Higgins that when the regions of the brain that process visual and auditory stimuli go unused, they can gradually be co-opted to process tactile stimuli, hence boosting a person's touch 'resolution'

DAVID: the brain can make amazing accommodations following God's DNA instructions.

Once more you have your God issuing instructions for every single new requirement in the history of the brain! And so once again, I suggest to you that a far more likely method would be for your God to have given brain cells the autonomous intelligence to make these amazing accommodations themselves. I’m sure Ockham would have approved!