Human evolution; savannah theory fading (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 09, 2022, 16:57 (618 days ago) @ dhw

Brain expansion

DAVID: Yes, complexification is a God-given built-in system. Larger, better brains are by God's design, not cell committees. […] The cell committees know how to complexify, nothing more.

dhw: You accept the possibility that cell communities are able to produce “better” brains through their autonomous intelligence (to “design their own improvements”), but are you now doing a volte face on your agreement that if your God exists, he would have “designed the mechanisms enabling cells to multiply and to complexify”? Why do you think autonomous multiplying is beyond the capability of cell communities which can autonomously design their own improvements?

I have not agreed to anything more than complexification improves brain function as an improvement within the same original brain, and complexification is a process God designed into the brain cells

Human evolution; new study says our brain did not shrink

dhw: If God exists, and if he designed an autonomous mechanism for cells to do their own complexification – as you have agreed above – then it’s only logical that the cells themselves would have done the enhancing, just as they would previously have organized their own multiplication.

DAVID: Same old secondhand design. Cells are not intelligent enough to design future forms.

dhw: The theory is that cells design forms in response to present requirements, not in anticipation of conditions that do not yet exist. You wrote – quoted above – “I've not closed my mind to complexification in which cells design their own improvements.” Don’t you think enhancement means improvement?

To repeat: " I have not agreed to anything more than complexification improves brain function as an improvement within the same original brain, and complexification is a process God designed into the brain cells." I am sure our original sapiens brain has been shaped by complexification to be an improved current brain.

DAVID: How about God designed it big enough for all future needs? What our brain has done factually shows exactly that either from God or chance or cell committees.

dhw: Thank you for quietly dropping your attack on me for rejecting your theory of “overcapacity”. You are obviously right to say that our brain is big enough for our needs, since it hasn’t expanded. I don’t know why you think your God has to intervene in order to specially design our brain, since you accept that he had already set up the mechanisms for expansion and complexification for all the earlier brains. But I guess this lies at the heart of all your theories: even though you have now opened your mind to the possibility that “cells design their own improvements”, you still want your God to design every improvement himself!

DAVID: God designed all previous hominin/homo brains. I've never changed that opinion. I've agreed from above: "The cell committees know how to complexify, nothing more".

dhw: Please tell us what else he designed, once he had designed “the mechanisms enabling cells to multiply and to complexify” – which we have agreed were already present in previous hominin/homo brains?

Answered above. What does 'please tell us what else He deigned' ask? My answer is everything.