Human evolution; savannah theory fading (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 10, 2022, 11:28 (834 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

DAVID: 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 will of course accept that when you said “Fine” in response to the quote I’ve bolded above, it was a slip of your pen. However, you have definitely accepted that your God (if he exists) would have designed the complexification process which autonomously (i.e. without his intervention) enables cells to design their own improvements. So please tell me why you think he could not have designed an autonomous mechanism enabling cells to add to their numbers when necessary.

DAVID: How did the enhancement happen? […]

dhw: If God exists, and if he designed an autonomous mechanism for cells to do their own complexification […] then it’s only logical that the cells themselves would have done the enhancing.

DAVID: 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?

DAVID: 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.

Agreed (if God exists). So now you accept that the enhancement would have been done by the cells themselves, unless for some reason you think enhancement does not mean improvement.

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?

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

Sorry, I was referring only to brains. We now have him designing a mechanism for complexification. The improvements are carried out autonomously by the cells themselves. So when you say “God designed all previous hominin/homo brains”, what else do you think he designed apart from the mechanisms for complexification (which is autonomous) and expansion (which you say he engineered individually, but which I propose would also have been autonomous). My point is that these mechanisms would have been there from the earliest hominin/homo brain onwards, in which case the improvements from the very first brain onwards would have been made autonomously by the cells themselves. Even if he individually inserted each set of additional cells, they would still have created improvements through the autonomous process of complexification. So what was left for him to “design”?