Introducing the brain: why so big? Part two (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, August 02, 2024, 12:04 (111 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] You keep reminding us that all theories are just unproven guesses, so why don’t you focus on feasibility?

DAVID: Just right!! Feasibility is right on point. Chance is not feasible. Only design can explain all the complexities in biochemical design.

Thanks to my open-minded agnosticism, I agree that a designer is feasible. I also agree that a designer who designs intelligent cells for a free-for-all, or who experiments etc. is feasible. I also agree that if conscious minds require a designer, it seems scarcely feasible that there could be an immaterial, omnipotent, omniscient conscious mind that had no source of any kind but has simply been hanging around for ever and ever.

DAVID: Your approach is totally to tout natural mechanisms and IGNORE God or grudgingly mention Him. Of course, the giant sapiens brain finally, after 300,000 years of minor use came into full use in the past 10,000 years.

dhw: Please stop distorting my approach. I am an agnostic. I have always included God in all my alternative theories concerning (a) evolution and (b) God’s purpose and nature (how can one discuss God’s nature by ignoring him?)

Not answered.

dhw: The evolution of our brain has been a clear development from earlier brains (you agree), with additions of new cells as required. The complexification of cells takes place without your God’s intervention (you agree), but your God may have given cells this autonomous ABILITY to complexify. (You agree.) So stop pretending that my views are atheistic. As for “full use”, you are still talking nonsense, unless you actually believe that from 2024 onwards, we humans will stop thinking new thoughts, inventing new things, making new discoveries etc. The same process of complexification will continue, just as it has done since we first acquired the additional cells 300,000 years ago. […] What are you arguing about?

DAVID: Degree of use!!!

Of course they are used more now. But you’ve been trying to prove that your God prepared the original sapiens brain for all the new tasks that it would perform, and at one stage you even told us the additional cells had been superfluous (which you later changed to minor use). No, you have agreed that your God – if he exists – gave us the ABILITY to complexify, i.e. to create our own new designs etc.

DAVID: Neurons are very specialized cells, not equivalent to other cells.

dhw: So how come that legs can turn into flippers or light-sensitive cells into eyes or gills into ears?

DAVID: Not necessary. God does it as always.

You have agreed that brain cells complexify without God “doing it”, and I asked why he could not have given the ability to other cells. You have no answer.

DAVID: God's design, remember as you fight Him. Not agnostic to defend chance evolution. You are a little schizo, aren't you?

dhw: I am not fighting God’s design if I suggest that your God designed cellular intelligence which in turn did its own designing, and this theory is not a defence of chance. […] “Schizo” would be saying that God […] does the designing but does not do the designing, has human attributes but does not have human attributes. There is nothing “schizo” in the theory that if God exists, he may have invented cellular intelligence to design speciation and brain development.

DAVID: Your same role. Diminish God into a secondhand designer, actually a more complex way of achieving a purpose.

dhw: [...] If God’s purpose was a free-for-all, then providing the mechanism would be the ONLY way of achieving his purpose, as you acknowledge with your belief in human free will.

DAVID: Stop conflating two issues. Complexification helps us develop new concepts. Secondhand design does not accomplish God's purposes. Where does free-will fit in???

What do you mean by “God’s purposes”? You limit him to ONE: designing us and our food, which he does imperfectly, messily and inefficiently. Cells doing their own designing fits in perfectly with the coming and going of species in a great free-for-all. Free will fits in because you keep telling us your God wants total control. If he doesn’t want total control over us humans, what makes you so certain that he wants to pull the strings of a puppet show to be performed by every other species?

“De novo”

DAVID: A 'real' Cambrian gap makes the animals de novo no matter the cause.

dhw: The gap is real because we cannot fill it. It may remain real if there are no fossils, or if it can be proved that intelligent cells are capable of innovative jumps, or if it can be proved that there is a God who created species de novo. Otherwise, it simply remains an unsolved mystery.[…]

DAVID: You are stuck with a real gap. Only a designer can explain it.

dhw: That is your rigid but unproven belief, which requires what you yourself acknowledge to be a leap of faith.

DAVID: More than 150+ years of known gap, not going away with every fossil found! You are drunk on hope!

It’s not a matter of hope! NONE of the theories have been proven. Since you start with what you wish to believe, you refuse to recognize that your theory is just as unproven as the two others I have mentioned.