Human evolution; savannah theory fading (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, August 20, 2022, 10:58 (615 days ago) @ David Turell

Brain expansion

DAVID: Why is one of God's actions feasible (complexification) and brain enlargement not? Sticking to confused attempts at theism!!!

dhw: That is the question I keep asking you! My theistic proposal is that he gave cells the autonomous abilities to complexify and to multiply. You agree to the first, and reject the second! Why?

DAVID: Same old answer: cell committees are not capable of design for future uses and needs.
And later, under “Hemispherectomy”):
DAVID: I still reject your cell driven enlargement of the brain.

Cell communities do not design for future uses and needs that are not yet known. They design responses to current needs, and when the future throws up new needs, they design for them too. Whatever they design will of course be used in the future so long as it is still needed. Your answer is totally irrelevant to my question. Complexification is the process used by cells in their response to current needs, and you have agreed that this takes place autonomously. Multiplication provided the additional cells when the existing capacity for complexification was insufficient to deal with new requirements. So why do you think your God gave cells the autonomous ability to complexify, but could not possibly have given them the ability to add to their number when they needed to?

Prehistoric brains and pelvises

DAVID: My kind God provides for all required changes as He designs for future use.

dhw: But do you now accept the possibility that there would have been a lot of deaths in childbirth, as I proposed above?

DAVID: No. But more than ours now, yes.

dhw: So we return to my solution to the “pelvic problem”. It would have taken time for the relevant cell communities to adjust to the new sized baby skull, and no doubt this would have caused a lot of deaths in childbirth. Your objection is no longer that your God stepped in to ensure that there were no messy deaths, but God stepped in to ensure that there were fewer deaths than “a lot” of deaths.

DAVID: I'm looking at pre-historic birthing in light of the present difficulties. Obstetricians currently can solve more complications than cave folks back then. God did what he could to accommodate walking and big head birthing all at once.

Very kind of him to use his limited powers, though I’m a bit surprised that he also left it to the cave folks to solve the problems for him. This is getting ridiculous. I offered you a theory to solve what you called the “pelvic problem”, and mentioned that no doubt there would have been lots of deaths in childbirth before the right size became the norm. You were certain that your God would have stepped in to prevent all those “messy deaths”. And now you have him stepping in and failing to achieve his objective. Meanwhile, my theory stands unchallenged.

Genetic formation of our pelvis:
https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/19_august_2022/4035...

There is no point in my repeating the quotations, as there is nothing to dispute.

DAVID: all that genetic activity by cell committees? Impossible!!!

According to you! Why do you think your God was incapable of designing intelligent cells which would, in the course of 3.X billion years, devise increasingly complex ways of improving their chances of survival? After all, you insist that he designed our brains, and look what our brain cells have come up with in just a few thousand years!