New Miscellany2: intelligence, savannah, Cambrian, origins (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 29, 2025, 18:08 (5 days ago) @ dhw

The savannah theory

DAVID: The new findings don't change my view of God as designer.

dhw: The savannah theory is that for whatever reason, a group of pre-sapiens descended from the trees in order to explore the savannah. Why do you think the new findings “dilute” this theory but do not “dilute” your theory that your God performed operations on legs and pelvises and told the group(s) of pre-sapiens that they should now descend from the trees?

With hominins living everywhere does not support the savannah theory of homo evolution.

The Cambrian

DAVID: It is always my point God designed the animals to handle the new conditions.

dhw: Your opinions vary day by day. You regarded this article as providing a logical explanation for the Cambrian.

DAVID: Yes, a natural explanation.

dhw: With which you agreed. (“For once a logical set of reasons for developing early life forms”). So why did you say “I never agreed with them!!!”?

These are the reasons for God's designs!

The brain’s cleaning fluid

dhw: Are you saying that the human brain did not evolve from earlier mammalian brains?

DAVID: It did, through God's design modifications.

dhw: But I thought he knew from the start exactly what he wanted. You make him sound just like a human scientist or inventor, experimenting, adjusting, jettisoning (let’s not forget the 99.9%), operating….And yet for some reason, you hate the very idea of humans reflecting their creator through their own processes of creation.

Evolution is a process to a goal God had from the beginning.

The human brain

DAVID: Our 315,000-year-old brain tells us it was designed in advance of need.

dhw: The wiring of the brain takes place in response to needs. When needs arose in our history, the brain responded and still responds by making new connections (complexification). The new connections would not have been present 315,000 years ago.

The original brain had the capacity to be today's brain with no size change.

dhw: Thank you for confirming the obvious fact that brains, including our own, change in response to new needs and not in anticipation of them.

Not confirmed. God made our big brain anticipating future needs.

Extreme extremophiles: from dormancy to living

DAVID:: these diatoms are very simple forms that can assume dormancy. It just shows how tough living cells can be. The hibernating bear is a different form of this.

dhw: Yes, they are tough, and each example illustrates the versatility of cell/cell communities as they find different ways to cope with different environments. Some of us would suggest that these ingenious forms of adaptability are evidence of autonomous intelligence (perhaps God-given) rather than evidence of direct design by a God whose sole purpose was to design humans plus food.

That is to your view.