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

by dhw, Wednesday, August 07, 2024, 08:53 (40 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Physical designs are mental. not phenotypical as in speciation.

dhw: We are not talking about speciation but about the evolution of the brain. [...] If God exists, he gave us the ability to design our machines, art, institutions etc. He did not preprogramme these into the new cells of 300,000 years ago.

I then asked why your God could not have given the same autonomy to other cells.

DAVID: God could have, but there is no evidence other types of cells than neurons can act like neurons.

Thank you for agreeing that he could have. There is no evidence that your God fiddled with every other type of cell. Your God’s role in evolution – if he exists – is as unknown as his purposes and his nature. All our theories, as you keep telling us, are guesswork.

Free will and a free-for-all
DAVID: God gave up total control by giving us free will.

dhw: And that is why it is perfectly possible that (if he exists) he gave up total control by setting in motion a free-for-all, whereby organisms did their own designing.

Not answered.

DAVID: No need. Previous discussions found no evidence for that theory.

Once more: there is no evidence for ANY of our theories, including yours. We can only discuss feasibility.

DAVID: When you finally recognize humans are/were God's primary purpose, it will be clear to you.

dhw: Why “primary” when you keep insisting we were his one and only purpose? This is what makes nonsense of the theory that he deliberately designed and had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us and our contemporary species.

DAVID: God used evolution to create us, no matter what the Raup statistics show.

If God exists, he used evolution to create every organism that ever lived, whether directly or indirectly.

“De novo” (The Cambrian)

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: I just added another new Cambrian, making the gap bigger! Whet proof do you need in your wishful blind hope. It is no longer a theory, but a huge gap.

dhw: Nobody has said that the Cambrian Gap is a theory!!!

DAVID: You did: "dhw: First of all, “de novo” creation in the Cambrian remains a theory." Tuesday, July 23, 2024, 18:15

Your Mr Hyde is making a fool of you. The theory is “de novo” creation!!! That is your guesswork solution to the mystery of the Cambrian Gap.

dhw: The Cambrian Gap is a real mystery, and there are theories which try to explain it! We have considered three: the fossil record is bound to be incomplete; cellular intelligence may be sufficiently advanced to make major jumps when conditions allow them; there is an unknown, sourceless mind which designed species “de novo”.

DAVID: Such new complex organisms with brains, eyes, guts, demand a designer to explain them.

You have chosen the third of the three theoretical explanations.