New Miscellany Part 1: evolution, intelligence, the brain (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 11:39 (3 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You are the dodger. Our brain is the most superbly unique item in the universe. You don't believe in chance mutation, so please tell me how it arrived.

dhw: Through evolution from earlier mammalian brains, with which our brains have so much in common.bbb For further details, see “the human brain” below and the theory of cellular intelligence,bbb which you know perfectly well, just as you know perfectly well that the issue which you keep dodging is the anthropocentric one which leads you to conclude that your all-powerful God is a messy, inefficient designer. (…)

DAVID: So the human brain just appeared by chance is your answer.

I ask you to look yet again at the theory of cellular intelligence, and you conclude that I believe in chance! Nobody knows how ANY complex organ/organism developed out of the initial single cells, but the theory that cells – as exemplified by bacteria – have the perhaps God-given intelligence to design their own changes dispenses with chance, and would allow you to stop ridiculing your God for his inefficiency, since he would have wanted the vast variety. as opposed to his having wanted only 0.1% of what he produced. Stop dodging!

dhw: For the hundredth time:
dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?
DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: 99.9% of species with no descendants plus 0.1% of species with descendants = 100%. Please explain to me how the 99.9% with no descendants can produce descendants. Better still, stop disagreeing with yourself.

DAVID: Evolution took millions of years supported by the groups that went extinct. They should be recognized, not discarded.

Yes indeed, the process of evolution produced every species, extant and extinct, and it is totally absurd of you to insist that your inefficient version of God designed them all but had to “discard” or cull them because they did not fit the purpose you impose on him. At last you are beginning to realize that if he exists, he may have wanted what he created. There is hope yet!

A start of multicellularity

DAVID: a very logical beginning to true multicellularity.

dhw: You have agreed that bacteria have an autonomous intelligence of their own, and here you have living proof that single cells may form a community in which they retain their individual intelligences while remaining dependent on one another. But you still refuse to accept even the possibility that autonomously intelligent individuals can form autonomously intelligent communities.

DAVID: Bacteria do it!! But no further now. So I agree. You always stretch the point.

dhw: I cannot see how you can be so certain that intelligent cells lose their intelligence when they form communities. Please explain your logic.

DAVID: As organs each cell type has its prescribed duties with the ability to make minor variations.

As per Shapiro, the duties are “prescribed” by the decision-making members of the cell communities, in accordance with the requirements of the situation. For some reason, you insist that any changes can only be minor, and your God must step in whenever there is the need or opportunity for a major change. (Alternatively, 3.8 billion years ago he apparently preprogrammed the first cells with every major change for the rest of life’s history.) And for good measure, 99.9% of these major changes were irrelevant to his one and only purpose.

The human brain

DAVID: Your distorted view of our brain is amazing. We are using a brain that is 315,000 years old that comes from a time of much less complexity in living and thinking and only recently uses language to express ideas as you point out we do.

dhw: There is nothing in your comment with which anyone could possibly disagree. But as usual, you have left out your theory that 315,000 years ago your God looked into his crystal ball, saw that we would be doing what we are doing now, and gave our ancestors a set of cells that would hang around doing nothing for 315,000 years until you and I needed them. You cannot believe that 315,000 years ago sapiens acquired new cells in response to new requirements (like all hominids before us), and went on using the same cells to meet future new requirements by complexification as and when they occurred. And yet you have agreed that your God does not intervene in the process of complexification. In which case, he either programmed all our achievements 315,000 years ago, or he allowed us to use our autonomous intelligence as and when required. Please choose.

DAVID: In the now bolded is my choice. Our use of the miraculous brain created what we are today.

dhw: That’s a relief. You are no longer telling us that 315,000 years ago your God provided us with new cells which were not used until thousands of years later, for the future events he’d seen in his crystal ball. Instead, our autonomous intelligence uses the original cells as and when required. That (yet again) should be the end of this discussion.

DAVID: Yes, our brain allows to use our intelligence.

As opposed to your crystal ball theory as described above. Once again, we agree and can end this discussion.