Human evolution; savannah theory fading (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, July 17, 2022, 08:50 (642 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Erectus with an 850cc brain appeared in Africa first. It was that brain's thinking capacity which allowed/stimulated Erectus to migrate all over the Earth. Brain first, actions followed! Nothing could be clearer.

dhw: But how did erectus get his 850 cc brain in the first place? You have pointed out that during his migrations his brain enlarged “as new experiences occurred”. If homo habilis was erectus’s immediate ancestor, and his brain capacity expanded from 650 to 800 cc., you can see a progression “as new experiences occurred”, and the expansion to erectus’s initial 850cc would have followed the same procedure. And when he migrated, there were more new experiences resulting in more expansions. New experiences/requirements first, then expansion as a result.

DAVID: We are not discussing how Erectus got his first brain, but that his brain allowed him to navigate the entire Earth, with brain coming before the future events for which the brain prepared him.

We are discussing your theory that your God expanded brains in anticipation of future events, whereas my proposal is that brains expanded – as you have agreed in your interpretation of erectus’s expansion – “as new experiences occurred”, i.e. in response to new experiences and not in anticipation of them.

DAVID: What you do not understand is a proper designer designs for future use. All part of design theory.

dhw: I am not denying that once the designs had proved successful, they would then be used in the future. But for example, I do not believe pre-whale legs were turned into flippers before the animals began to explore life in the water. And I would propose that the invention of the spear would have required major new skills and hence major changes to the brain, rather than the brain changing in anticipation of the making and use of the spear.

DAVID: I know your complaint about God designing for future use.

So please tell me why you find my argument illogical.

DAVID […][…] your comment about brain size does not answer the issue that our brain shrunk with use, therefor it obviously was oversized at the start.

dhw: In my theory, it would not have been oversized at the start. That would indeed have made it a miscalculation if your God did it! The cells that resulted in expansion would have been needed to meet some new requirement. But later, as further expansion might have caused problems, complexification took over almost completely, and it was so efficient that some cells which had been needed earlier then became redundant.

DAVID: Further expansion didn't happen, but shrinkage did. The obvious explanation is the extra cells allowed humans to use the brain as they wished, not as God might have required.

This is the weirdest explanation yet: your God gave humans extra cells so that they could have free will, and then what happened? The cells disappeared? But we were left with free will? Please explain why you reject my explanation above.

DAVID: You have no understanding that God never deviates from His purposes. You just are confused as you try to outguess God's reasoning. See the other entry about staged evolution and how a designer works with it.

dhw: I remain flummoxed by your insistence that he had only one purpose (to design sapiens plus food), and proceeded to design countless forms and foods that had no connection with sapiens but these were not deviations. I don’t know how this is meant to prove that your God dabbled with brains and bodies before changes were required, but I do sometimes have difficulty following your train of thought!

DAVID: I know. You do not know How to think about God.

You are trying to teach me that the way to think about God is that none of his actions make any sense to us humans, whereas any alternative theories that do make sense to us (you agree that all my explanations are logical) are impossible because they endow God with human thought patterns, although you agree that God certainly/probably/ possibly has human thought patterns.