Human evolution; savannah theory fading (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 20, 2022, 19:11 (824 days ago) @ dhw

Brain expansion

DAVID: I still reject your cell driven enlargement of the brain.

dhw: 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?

We've been over this before. On arrival 315,000 years ago, sapiens had a new brain that had full capacities for future use as history shows. Total facts opposite to your cell producing theory above as if produced with no eye to the future. Still dodging to protect a rigid requiremnt for super intelligent designing cells.

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.

dhw: 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.

Your theory is let them die until they figure it out.

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!!!

dhw: 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!

Yes, that brain was designed for all that future use. You have just destroyed your contention things don't appear deigned future use. Each new species appears just that way.