New Miscellany 2: birds, brains, chimps (General)

by dhw, Saturday, May 24, 2025, 08:34 (6 hours, 27 minutes ago) @ dhw

Bird migration

DAVID: Think!!! The preparations are automatic in advance of the intended flights.

dhw: Think!!! Once actions are successful and become established, they become instinctive or are passed on, while physical changes become hereditary. Do you think your God has to come down every year and make your dog’s summer coat thicker in preparation for the winter?

DAVID: Useless point! Answer how physiological preparation for flight occurs in advance of it?

You have just said it does, and there are lots of examples of physical changes that our fellow creatures make in preparation for winter. Calling them automatic is hardly an explanation of how they originated. Are you telling us that it must have been your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old instruction book again, or one of his dabbles, without which we humans could not survive? The same question applies to your last post on human adaptations:

QUOTE: […] genetic studies suggest that H. sapiens experienced many major episodes of natural selection."

DAVID: solidifies the point, we are very very adaptable.

And so are other life forms, including birds. Their advance adaptations clearly occur because their bodies are sensitive to something in the atmosphere which warns them that the time is approaching for them to leave. Most species of bear also prepare their bodies before the onset of winter. And your dog starts growing his winter coat in autumn. Once a successful response to these changes has been found, it is passed on. It’s the same with the next article.

Tibetan altitude adaptations

DAVID: This article has a headline that touts evolution happening: "Humans Are Evolving Right in Front of Our Eyes on The Tibetan Plateau". Wrong! They are adapting to severe conditions. Homans have an enormous adaptive ability.

It’s not just humans that adapt! The cells of all life forms must not only respond intelligently to new conditions, but once their responses are established, the changes will become hereditary and the processes will seem automatic. And those individuals whose cells are best adapted are most likely to survive and pass on their superior changes, which then become the normality.

Brain folding

DAVID: Packing a brain into a small skull producing groves is empty thinking.

dhw: I disagree. The more experiences we have, the more connections we require. Hence the more folds, as above.

DAVID: No you don't. I am disowning force folding.

What is “force folding”? We know that the brain makes new connections when it undergoes new experiences. We also know that the skull is a limited enclosure. Please explain why it is illogical for the new connections to be accommodated in this restricted area by means of “grooves”.

DAVID: Start with the premise based on design theory, everything is there for a reason.

dhw: But your design theory is limited to your God designing everything in advance, whereas I am suggesting (following Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence) that the brain has evolved IN RESPONSE to requirements and not in anticipation of them, as agreed in the past after much debate about crystal balls!

DAVID: I'll stick with God designing in advance.

dhw: You once more refuse to accept that the brain changes in response to new requirements. Your God apparently preprogrammed each new connection 3.8 billion years ago, or he looks into his crystal ball, and (psychokinetically?) creates the appropriate connections (folds) in all the brains before they're needed. We've discussed (and rejected) this theory umpteen times, so let's not start again.

DAVID: Why won't you let me stick with a designing God? You see design, grudgingly admit a designer might exist, and when I describe His designing, you hurry back to your Darwinist ideas.

When will you ever stop pretending that Shapiro’s theory of intelligent cells, just like Darwin’s theory of common descent, excludes the theory of divine design? IT DOESN'T!!! I “scurry back” to these theories when your description of your God’s design makes him seem messy and inefficient (your theory of evolution), following a procedure which defies common sense as well as everyday knowledge (brain connections being made in anticipation of the experiences that will cause them).

Chimps ‘r’ not us

QUOTE: “This means that the actual difference between human and chimp DNA is 14 times greater than the often-quoted 1 percent statistic.”

DAVID: this study does away with the one-two percent difference widely quoted. Casey Luskin had to dig it out of the original paper. Current prejudice wishes to hide our exceptionism.

dhw: Nobody has ever said that chimps are human. Does anyone really think our brain power is 99% the same as that of chimps? (It is the brain power that makes us so exceptional.) Assuming everyone accepts the new figure, what are we left with? They and we now share 86% DNA. Does it mean we don’t have a common ancestor?

DAVID: It makes us less chimp than people wish to convey. It is not just brain power. Our muscular bodies function very differently.

What does our less “chimpness” teach us? And what human muscular activities do you think make us superior to our fellow animals?