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It is not that ours is four times larger in 6-8 million years. There have been major reorganizations and modifications, as shown in new studies of paleoneurology:-"Many neo-Darwinists seem to be under the completely false impression that the human brain is merely a scaled-up, more powerful version of the chimpanzee brain. Nothing could be further from the truth: the two brains are radically different. In addition to the massive growth in the human brain over the last three million years, there have also been massive reorganizational changes in the human brain, which are not easy to account for on a Darwinian paradigm. The major reorganizational changes, which are listed in the paper,"Evolution of the Brain in Humans ... Paleoneurology" by Ralph Holloway, Chet Sherwood, Patrick Hof and James Rilling (in The New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, Springer, 2009, pp. 1326-1334), include the following: -(1) Reduction of primary visual striate cortex, area 17, and relative increase in posterior parietal cortex, between 2.0 and 3.5 million years ago; -(2) Reorganization of the frontal lobe (Third inferior frontal convolution, Broca's area, widening prefrontal), between 1.8 and 2.0 million years ago; -(3) Cerebral asymmetries in the left occipital, right-frontal petalias, arising between 1.8 and 2.0 million years ago; and -(4) Refinements in cortical organization to a modern Homo pattern (1.5 million years ago to present)."-http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/could-the-internet-ever-be-conscious-definitely-not-before-2115-even-if-youre-a-materialist/-http://www.columbia.edu/~rlh2/2009.Holloway_Sherwood_Hof_Rilling.sm.pdf-We "R not chimps. Even if we look somewhat alike. I'm not even sure we should be classifed as primates, based on our form of consciousness..

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DAVID: It is not that ours is four times larger in 6-8 million years. There have been major reorganizations and modifications, as shown in new studies of paleoneurology:
"Many neo-Darwinists seem to be under the completely false impression that the human brain is merely a scaled-up, more powerful version of the chimpanzee brain. Nothing could be further from the truth: the two brains are radically different. In addition to the massive growth in the human brain over the last three million years, there have also been massive reorganizational changes in the human brain, which are not easy to account for on a Darwinian paradigm. The major reorganizational changes, which are listed in the paper,"Evolution of the Brain in Humans ... Paleoneurology" by Ralph Holloway, Chet Sherwood, Patrick Hof and James Rilling (in The New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, Springer, 2009, pp. 1326-1334), include the following: -(1) Reduction of primary visual striate cortex, area 17, and relative increase in posterior parietal cortex, between 2.0 and 3.5 million years ago; 
(2) Reorganization of the frontal lobe (Third inferior frontal convolution, Broca's area, widening prefrontal), between 1.8 and 2.0 million years ago; 
(3) Cerebral asymmetries in the left occipital, right-frontal petalias, arising between 1.8 and 2.0 million years ago; and 
(4) Refinements in cortical organization to a modern Homo pattern (1.5 million years ago to present)."-http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/could-the-internet-ever-be-conscious-...-http://www.columbia.edu/~rlh2/2009.Holloway_Sherwood_Hof_Rilling.sm.pdf-We "R not chimps. Even if we look somewhat alike. I'm not even sure we should be classifed as primates, based on our form of consciousness.-These are all reorganizations (i.e. not innovations) of one sort or another. Your basic argument has always been that the human brain is different in kind, not degree, from that of other animals, and underlying that argument is your belief in evolutionary teleology ... namely that God planned evolution to culminate in us humans. However, if you believe as I do that all forms of life descended from earlier forms, you will agree that humans and chimps branched out from earlier forms going right back to the time when single-celled organisms combined into multicellular. One can argue that amoebas, spiders, eagles and elephants also differ in kind from one another and from us, and since they all still exist, presumably evolution was also planned to culminate in them too. I'm not disputing the uniqueness of our consciousness. I'm simply uncomfortable with the idea that every branch of evolution, both extant and extinct, was geared to us. Do you think God deliberately tinkered with the brain mechanisms of our distant ancestors, and also with the genetic makeup of spiders, eagles and elephants, or do you think they all developed naturally from the adaptive and innovative mechanisms that drive evolution?-********-The first of these websites raises a separate problem that I would like to deal with on a separate thread (Panpsychism), but the argument is directly connected to the above.

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dhw: Do you think God deliberately tinkered with the brain mechanisms of our distant ancestors, and also with the genetic makeup of spiders, eagles and elephants, or do you think they all developed naturally from the adaptive and innovative mechanisms that drive evolution?-
I believe that DNAS has a complexification drive coded into it. God works by evolution. Start simple and build to the complex. The bacteria have been around successfully for 3.6 billion years. Why did multicellularity appear, except to allow for sexuality and greater diversity of complexity.-We all know what happened. I still want to know why.

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On this thread, I am grappling with David's belief that God planned evolution to culminate in human consciousness.-dhw: Do you think God deliberately tinkered with the brain mechanisms of our distant ancestors, and also with the genetic makeup of spiders, eagles and elephants, or do you think they all developed naturally from the adaptive and innovative mechanisms that drive evolution?-DAVID: I believe that DNAS has a complexification drive coded into it. God works by evolution. Start simple and build to the complex. The bacteria have been around successfully for 3.6 billion years. Why did multicellularity appear, except to allow for sexuality and greater diversity of complexity.
We all know what happened. I still want to know why.-Since I have difficulty in accepting both the concept of a UI and your notion of preplanning, I'm considering alternative explanations. We all agree that complexification happened, and that there must be a mechanism that enabled it to do so. Your question "why" automatically implies purpose, and I'm challenging the purpose you propose (i.e. the creation of human consciousness), since I cannot believe that the billions of extinct species and the billions of unrelated species were all essential for the production of humans. We are left then with an inventive mechanism that has produced myriad species without any particular end product in mind. To illustrate the problem:
 
DAVID:(under Ch 16, A mad world): The spider gets its instinct from coding in its DNA. But where did the information for that coding come from. Not thin air. there must be intelligence with information to impart. That is the reasoning bridge you should cross.-I agree that there must be intelligence imparting information. The problem lies in where the intelligence and information came from, and so my first question still applies: Do you believe that 1) God tinkered with an existing spider's abdomen, 2) that he created web-spinning spiders separately, 3) that he planned web-spinning when he invented the first mechanisms for reproduction, heredity, adaptation and innovation, or 4) that web-spinning happened through the inventive intelligence of those mechanisms being brought into play when the environment allowed for such inventions? Needless to say, the question has a crucial bearing on your evolutionary teleology!

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dhw:I agree that there must be intelligence imparting information. The problem lies in where the intelligence and information came from,-I feel the intelligence information issue is something we must accept as a given; note you admit there must be such info from intelligence. -
> dhw:Do you believe that 1) God tinkered with an existing spider's abdomen, 2) that he created web-spinning spiders separately, 3) that he planned web-spinning when he invented the first mechanisms for reproduction, heredity, adaptation and innovation, or 4) that web-spinning happened through the inventive intelligence of those mechanisms being brought into play when the environment allowed for such inventions? Needless to say, the question has a crucial bearing on your evolutionary teleology.-Only No. 4. DNA is coded so complexly and carefully that all sort of convergences are allowed to be tried. As I've said it appears that complexification is built-in to the genome.

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dhw:On this thread, I am grappling with David's belief that God planned evolution to culminate in human consciousness.-
I just spotted another science report to support my theory that humans are the logical end point for God's plan to have conscious humans on earth:-http://phys.org/news/2012-12-flores-hobbit-revealed.html-The Hobbits are one of four lines of humans that co-existed in the recent past. Our line, the Neanderthals, the Denosovans and the Hobbits. Why produce a branching tree unless the result is an important part of the plan? Convergence is throughout evolution. The famous example is vision, six different types of eye organs in various unrelated branches of evolution. All an attempt to produce complexity until the goal is achieved. Perhaps evolution stops at this point except in the development of more brilliant brains. Perhaps by using more of the brain, alteration by plasticity, etc. It is reputed that only 15% of the brain is used currently. How that is known, I have no idea.

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dhw: Do you believe that 1) God tinkered with an existing spider's abdomen, 2) that he created web-spinning spiders separately, 3) that he planned web-spinning when he invented the first mechanisms for reproduction, heredity, adaptation and innovation, or 4) that web-spinning happened through the inventive intelligence of those mechanisms being brought into play when the environment allowed for such inventions? Needless to say, the question has a crucial bearing on your evolutionary teleology.-DAVID: Only No. 4. DNA is coded so complexly and carefully that all sorts of convergences are allowed to be tried. As I've said it appears that complexification is built-in to the genome.-Good, we agree. My point is that if web-spinning was not the result of God's interference, and was not pre-planned, the initial mechanisms were indeed left to try "all sorts of convergences", so why do you believe that humans alone were pre-planned? This anthropocentric view of God's "purpose" seems to me to run counter to all that we observe in the history of the living world, with its enormous range of special organs and species extant and extinct. Even if I believed in a creator God, I would still say that these suggest let's-see-what-happens rather than this-is-what-I've planned. -In the overall context of our discussions, I'm looking for compromise positions between theism and atheism, and it seems to me that the higgledy-piggledy, unplanned course of evolution is one area where there is no reason for disagreement. The inventive intelligence of the mechanisms for reproduction, heredity, adaptation and innovation are another matter entirely, but while I do not believe that such complexity could assemble itself by chance, that brings us back to a first cause, on which there will never be agreement. Higgledy-piggledy evolution applies whether there is or isn't a God. It does not invalidate the design argument (as Darwin acknowledged), but it removes the conventional theist's anthropocentrism and reduces the atheist's dependence on random mutations. A worthwhile step towards reconciling the warring parties?-DAVID: I just spotted another science report to support my theory that humans are the logical end point for God's plan to have conscious humans on earth:-http://phys.org/news/2012-12-flores-hobbit-revealed.html-The Hobbits are one of four lines of humans that co-existed in the recent past. Our line, the Neanderthals, the Denosovans and the Hobbits. Why produce a branching tree unless the result is an important part of the plan? -Why indeed? Especially when you make all those other lines extinct? Why produce dodos and dinosaurs? If I plan to make a fruit cake (often an apt description of homo sapiens), do I have to make and chuck out a sponge cake, a carrot cake and a battenburg as well?
 
DAVID: Convergence is throughout evolution. The famous example is vision, six different types of eye organs in various unrelated branches of evolution. All an attempt to produce complexity until the goal is achieved. -What goal? Please tell me why you think God "allowed to be tried" the complexities of six different types of eye, spiders' webs, dogs' noses, camels' humps, elephants' trunks etc.?

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David:The Hobbits are one of four lines of humans that co-existed in the recent past. Our line, the Neanderthals, the Denosovans and the Hobbits. Why produce a branching tree unless the result is an important part of the plan? 
> 
> dhw: Why indeed? Especially when you make all those other lines extinct? Why produce dodos and dinosaurs? If I plan to make a fruit cake (often an apt description of homo sapiens), do I have to make and chuck out a sponge cake, a carrot cake and a battenburg as well?-The problem you are having is the problem atheists have. They want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts. Evolution is a bush, not a tree, even if Darwin's notebook shows his tree. Humans are a pinnacle of development, with a brain that had no reason to develop, no challenges that made it develop. After all our cousins, the apes still exist 6-8 million years after our heads exploded, and they are still tiny-brained, with no more sense than your pet dog. -I don't know why God used the pattern of evolution we see. He knows but He is not explaining. We see the 'how' but not the 'why', so in a way we are back to the divisions between science and religion. It is permissible to guess at the why. And that permission comes from recognizing there must be a first cause, information is present which had to come from somewhere, and that cause did it the way He wanted; His logic not ours! The problem is atheists and agnostics try to out-think God. (Please see my recent entry today about zebra fish altered embryoes, where the scientists tampered and brought out pre-existing information hiding in the genome!)

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David: "The problem you are having is the problem atheists have. They want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts."-Not to nitpick, because my thinking isn't clear enough at this point for that; but I could venture that even theists insist we are created in God's image. So, if our logic and reason are God-given (Thomas Paine's foundational cornerstone of deism), then why wouldn't we expect him to have a series of logical thoughts essentially congruent with our own, even if on a far grander scale?-"There must be a first cause, information is present which had to come from somewhere, and that cause did it the way He wanted; His logic not ours! The problem is atheists and agnostics try to out-think God."-"Atheists and agnostics [trying] to out-think God" appears to me to grant a priori truth status to the notion that God exists; whereas of all groups, one might expect these two to be near the very bottom of the list of those who would do that. Is there any presupposition of the truth of the premise here? -(I promise these two questions are not intended as some kind of snarky, pedantic retort. I could just be misreading the underlying intent, plus my command of logic is far from towering. Please fill me in, where do I err?)

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hy: "Atheists and agnostics [trying] to out-think God" appears to me to grant a priori truth status to the notion that God exists; whereas of all groups, one might expect these two to be near the very bottom of the list of those who would do that. Is there any presupposition of the truth of the premise here? 
> 
> (I promise these two questions are not intended as some kind of snarky, pedantic retort. I could just be misreading the underlying intent, plus my command of logic is far from towering. Please fill me in, where do I err?)-I'm referring to the oft repeated complaint that God does not design things well. For example the human eye has a backward retina, creatijng all sorts of problems. Not so. I realy don't see my blind spot, and the arrangement makes for the best and highest use of energy by our retina, now a scientifically proven point. The recurrent laryngal nerve swoops about eight feet further in the giraffe, and several inches in us, being pulled down by the aorta in embryological development. Dawkins makes great fun of this and doesn't seem to know his ass from his elbow about all the new findings that refute him (despite his PhD in Zoology). Evolution is clever. The design comoplaints don't pan out, but the atheistic humans use human concept of design to complain that no god did it.

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David: The Hobbits are one of four lines of humans that co-existed in the recent past. Our line, the Neanderthals, the Denosovans and the Hobbits. Why produce a branching tree unless the result is an important part of the plan?
 
dhw: Why indeed? Especially when you make all those other lines extinct? Why produce dodos and dinosaurs? If I plan to make a fruit cake (often an apt description of homo sapiens), do I have to make and chuck out a sponge cake, a carrot cake and a battenburg as well?-DAVID: The problem you are having is the problem atheists have. They want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts. -Hyjyljyj: if our logic and reason are God-given (Thomas Paine's foundational cornerstone of deism), then why wouldn't we expect him to have a series of logical thoughts essentially congruent with our own, even if on a far grander scale?-An excellent response, if I may say so. We are swift to leap on the illogicality of certain atheist arguments, so why denigrate human logic when applied to your interpretation of the theory of evolution? However, we are making progress, since you now agree that your own anthropocentric argument is illogical.
 
DAVID: I don't know why God used the pattern of evolution we see. He knows but He is not explaining. -You have offered us an illogical explanation, so why aren't you prepared to consider an explanation that does fit in logically with what you call the bush structure ... namely, that evolution sprouted in all directions because there was no plan?
 
DAVID: The problem is atheists and agnostics try to out-think God. (Please see my recent entry today about zebra fish altered embryoes, where the scientists tampered and brought out pre-existing information hiding in the genome!)-Hyjyljyj: "Atheists and agnostics [trying] to out-think God" appears to me to grant a priori truth status to the notion that God exists; whereas of all groups, one might expect these two to be near the very bottom of the list of those who would do that. Is there any presupposition of the truth of the premise here? -DAVID: I'm referring to the oft repeated complaint that God does not design things well. For example the human eye has a backward retina, creating all sorts of problems [...]
 
This discussion is not about bad design, or about design in general or about information in the genome (see my reply to your zebra-fish entry), and the problem is not atheists/agnostics trying to outthink God. Hyjyljyj's logic is impeccable. I myself am merely trying to understand God (if he exists), whereas you believe you can read his mind, because you insist that his goal was to create homo sapiens. THAT is the problem!

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> dhw:This discussion is not about bad design, or about design in general or about information in the genome (see my reply to your zebra-fish entry), and the problem is not atheists/agnostics trying to outthink God. Hyjyljyj's logic is impeccable. I myself am merely trying to understand God (if he exists), whereas you believe you can read his mind, because you insist that his goal was to create homo sapiens. THAT is the problem!-Please see my previous response, just composed. To repeat: the construction of life from the very beginning had to be very complex. Life can only be complex or it won't live. But, part of that complexity was a genome that permitted advancing complexity, a complexity that occurred as nature allowed. We are the most complex thing around. We arrived. It was allowed to happen. It didn't have to happen, but it did. The pre-planning is the input at the beginning. Not along the way. Look at this discussion from today. Old yeast DNA:-"New functional DNA does not appear out of thin air, but is built up gradually from a copy of an existing segment of functional DNA. By reconstructing a piece of prehistoric DNA that was copied several times during evolution, we were able to investigate in detail which changes occur in each of the copies and gradually lead to new functions. As such, our results provide a unique and detailed view into the molecular details of Darwinian evolution" says Kevin Verstrepen.
 
The scientists propose that the events observed here in the yeast cell's quest for sugar may reflect a general strategy widely used for innovation in evolution."-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121211193303.htm--We have consciousness. I don't believe it was invented by evolution. It was always present in the UI. And reappeared in us, made in the image of God in our minds. If a UI started all this it is logical to assume that it wanted a result with consciousness like its own.-As you know I always try to work from what we see. What you see are my logical assumptions snd extrapolations.

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DAVID: [...] the construction of life from the very beginning had to be very complex. Life can only be complex or it won't live. But, part of that complexity was a genome that permitted advancing complexity, a complexity that occurred as nature allowed. We are the most complex thing around. We arrived. It was allowed to happen. It didn't have to happen, but it did. The pre-planning is the input at the beginning. Not along the way.-I've written very similar things myself over and over again and am in complete agreement with you and hyjyljyj (under Ch 16, A Mad World): this is atheism's Achilles' heel. And if only you would stick to this argument, instead of insisting that the whole of evolution was pre-planned for the production of homo sapiens, this discussion would be unnecessary. If now you accept that it didn't have to happen, i.e. that the arrival of homo sapiens was NOT pre-planned as the goal of evolution, we could shake hands and end the discussion. But we can't, because your anthropocentrism is still present in the following arguments :-D AVID: We have consciousness. 
Agreed.-DAVID: I don't believe it was invented by evolution. 
And of course your belief may or may not be right. I have no idea how consciousness was "invented", but it seems to me that there has been a clear increase in degree from, say, bacteria to animals to humans. OUR degree of consciousness/self-consciousness may therefore have evolved through the billions of species, generations, adaptations and innovations that have arisen out of the potential inventiveness of the original mechanism. This seems just as likely or unlikely as the following theory :-D AVID: It was always present in the UI.
This presupposes the existence of a UI... -DAVID: And reappeared in us, made in the image of God in our minds.
...and it also presupposes that we were made in the image of a self-aware God, as opposed to evolving through a less conscious intelligence (as per my slant on panpsychism), or an unconscious energy (as per atheism) ... all of which I find equally difficult to believe.-DAVID: If a UI started all this it is logical to assume that it wanted a result with consciousness like its own.
(Ah: anthropocentrism again!) Or of course it could have entertained itself by playing games with different forms of life just to see how things would turn out (one form of "deistic" God ... see hyjyljyj under Ch. 16).-DAVID (under Ch. 16): Such planning in ancient life requires a self-aware intelligence because it shows teleologic planning.-It only requires self-awareness if there IS teleological planning! Yet again you are reading purpose into the original mechanisms, and that purpose yet again seems to be the production of homo sapiens. You go on: "I doubt any tweaking was ever needed. Of course, I am assuming a perfect planner makes a perfect plan with a perfect result." And "As you know I always try to work from what we see. What you see are my logical assumptions and extrapolations."-But you have agreed that there is nothing logical (by human standards) about a plan to create homo sapiens via an evolutionary bush that involves billions of other species extant and extinct, not to mention other forms of humans that...oops...also got knocked out. (What, I wonder, are your criteria for perfection?!) Your response to this problem was that God has his own logic, and we shouldn't "want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts." If one explanation is not logical by the only form of logic you and I can understand, why not look for another explanation that might be more logical? That the original mechanism "allowed for" complexity and the arrival of good old homo sapiens is obvious, since that is what happened, but "allowed for" does not in any way mean that there was a specific pre-planned purpose.

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From dhw-DAVID: [...] the construction of life from the very beginning had to be very complex. Life can only be complex or it won't live. But, part of that complexity was a genome that permitted advancing complexity, a complexity that occurred as nature allowed. We are the most complex thing around. We arrived. It was allowed to happen. It didn't have to happen, but it did. The pre-planning is the input at the beginning. Not along the way.-I've written very similar things myself over and over again and am in complete agreement with you and hyjyljyj (under Ch 16, A Mad World): this is atheism's Achilles' heel. And if only you would stick to this argument, instead of insisting that the whole of evolution was pre-planned for the production of homo sapiens, this discussion would be unnecessary. If now you accept that it didn't have to happen, i.e. that the arrival of homo sapiens was NOT pre-planned as the goal of evolution, we could shake hands and end the discussion. But we can't, because your anthropocentrism is still present in the following arguments :-D AVID: We have consciousness. 
Agreed.-DAVID: I don't believe it was invented by evolution. 
And of course your belief may or may not be right. I have no idea how consciousness was "invented", but it seems to me that there has been a clear increase in degree from, say, bacteria to animals to humans. OUR degree of consciousness/self-consciousness may therefore have evolved through the billions of species, generations, adaptations and innovations that have arisen out of the potential inventiveness of the original mechanism. This seems just as likely or unlikely as the following theory :-D AVID: It was always present in the UI.
This presupposes the existence of a UI...-DAVID: And reappeared in us, made in the image of God in our minds.
...and it also presupposes that we were made in the image of a self-aware God, as opposed to evolving through a less conscious intelligence (as per my slant on panpsychism), or an unconscious energy (as per atheism) ... all of which I find equally difficult to believe.-DAVID: If a UI started all this it is logical to assume that it wanted a result with consciousness like its own.
(Ah: anthropocentrism again!) Or of course it could have entertained itself by playing games with different forms of life just to see how things would turn out (one form of "deistic" God ... see hyjyljyj under Ch. 16).-DAVID (under Ch. 16): Such planning in ancient life requires a self-aware intelligence because it shows teleologic planning.-It only requires self-awareness if there IS teleological planning! Yet again you are reading purpose into the original mechanisms, and that purpose yet again seems to be the production of homo sapiens. You go on: "I doubt any tweaking was ever needed. Of course, I am assuming a perfect planner makes a perfect plan with a perfect result." And "As you know I always try to work from what we see. What you see are my logical assumptions and extrapolations."-But you have agreed that there is nothing logical (by human standards) about a plan to create homo sapiens via an evolutionary bush that involves billions of other species extant and extinct, not to mention other forms of humans that...oops...also got knocked out. (What, I wonder, are your criteria for perfection?!) Your response to this problem was that God has his own logic, and we shouldn't "want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts." If one explanation is not logical by the only form of logic you and I can understand, why not look for another explanation that might be more logical? That the original mechanism "allowed for" complexity and the arrival of good old homo sapiens is obvious, since that is what happened, but "allowed for" does not in any way mean that there was a specific pre-planned purpose.-Great stuff! -For my 2Â¢ worth, I, too, wonder about H. sapiens as the ultimate goal of the creator. The idea goes that "we" are created in God's image, so he's just like us, and vice versa. Theists and religionists of every stripe are united on this front. An inhuman God would be...well, just inhuman. And we can't worship that. The assumption seems to be that, while imperfect, we must be it, the absolute pinnacle of the evolution of life expression (not just so far, but the ultimate pinnacle, the endpoint), no improvement or further advancement (toward godliness?) necessary or even possible. Interestingly atheists cling to this idea of man's supremacy as tenaciously as theists, as proof that there is no need for a god; I find the idea fairly easy to challenge, with even a fleeting glance at a history book, newspaper, TV or Washington DC.

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> hy:Great stuff! -Glad you enjoy us! dhw and I have ping-ponged these ideas for four years now. And we both stubborn as mules. but at least I've gotten him to admit energy is eternal as the first cause. 
> 
> hy: For my 2Â¢ worth, I, too, wonder about H. sapiens as the ultimate goal of the creator. The idea goes that "we" are created in God's image, so he's just like us, and vice versa. Theists and religionists of every stripe are united on this front. An inhuman God would be...well, just inhuman. And we can't worship that. The assumption seems to be that, while imperfect, we must be it, the absolute pinnacle of the evolution of life expression (not just so far, but the ultimate pinnacle, the endpoint), no improvement or further advancement (toward godliness?) necessary or even possible. Interestingly atheists cling to this idea of man's supremacy as tenaciously as theists, as proof that there is no need for a god; I find the idea fairly easy to challenge, with even a fleeting glance at a history book, newspaper, TV or Washington DC. -Great conclusion. I think we are the current pinnacle, and more brain development is the only phenotypic area that may develop further, since the brain has such a great capacity for plasticity.

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dhw: But you have agreed that there is nothing logical (by human standards) about a plan to create homo sapiens via an evolutionary bush that involves billions of other species extant and extinct, not to mention other forms of humans that...oops...also got knocked out. (What, I wonder, are your criteria for perfection?!) Your response to this problem was that God has his own logic, and we shouldn't "want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts." If one explanation is not logical by the only form of logic you and I can understand, why not look for another explanation that might be more logical? That the original mechanism "allowed for" complexity and the arrival of good old homo sapiens is obvious, since that is what happened, but "allowed for" does not in any way mean that there was a specific pre-planned purpose.-Your point is well argued, but you are ignoring the development of our upright posture and our brain over the past 8-10 million years. It didn't have to happen. The great apes are still doing just fine for all those centuries, still unchanged with no advancements (exclusvie of our encroachment on their habitat, poaching for bush meat, etc) If we'd leave tham alone they can continue doing just fine. Why was our development pushed?? The only future development I see is in brain enhancement.

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dhw: But you have agreed that there is nothing logical (by human standards) about a plan to create homo sapiens via an evolutionary bush that involves billions of other species extant and extinct, not to mention other forms of humans that...oops...also got knocked out. (What, I wonder, are your criteria for perfection?!) Your response to this problem was that God has his own logic, and we shouldn't "want God to have a human-ly series of logical thoughts." If one explanation is not logical by the only form of logic you and I can understand, why not look for another explanation that might be more logical? That the original mechanism "allowed for" complexity and the arrival of good old homo sapiens is obvious, since that is what happened, but "allowed for" does not in any way mean that there was a specific pre-planned purpose.-DAVID: Your point is well argued, but you are ignoring the development of our upright posture and our brain over the past 8-10 million years. It didn't have to happen. The great apes are still doing just fine for all those centuries, still unchanged with no advancements (exclusive of our encroachment on their habitat, poaching for bush meat, etc) If we'd leave them alone they can continue doing just fine. Why was our development pushed?? The only future development I see is in brain enhancement.-Thank you, your point is well argued too, except that it's the wrong point. If homo sapiens was the pre-planned goal of evolution, and chimps and humans branched off from a common ancestor, what was the point of the chimp branch of the bush? Of course our brain and posture didn't have to happen. Bacteria have been "doing just fine" for billions of years, so evolution didn't have to happen either. Dinosaurs, dodos, dogs and ducks didn't have to happen. Are we now to say that the anthropocentric purpose of evolution was achieved by creating and getting rid of dinosaurs and dodos, and creating and preserving dogs and ducks so that we could have humans? Yes, we are unique, but so is the platypus, the last surviving member of its family. If only we could speak Platypan, it might even tell us that its presence on Planet Earth and its absolute uniqueness prove that it was the goal of evolution. My point is that the higgledy-piggledy bush is the exact opposite of what we would expect from a designed process with a pre-planned purpose. You have already acknowledged its illogicality. Surrender!-DAVID (to hyjyljyj): dhw and I have ping-ponged these ideas for four years now. And we [are] both as stubborn as mules.-And of course the mule is the absolute pinnacle of evolution.

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> dhw: Thank you, your point is well argued too, except that it's the wrong point. If homo sapiens was the pre-planned goal of evolution, and chimps and humans branched off from a common ancestor, what was the point of the chimp branch of the bush? Of course our brain and posture didn't have to happen.-You still miss my point. If the UI set up evolution to complexify and reach us, as I propose, then complexity will come with a bush of life and we will apper as the pinnacle of the bush, with lots of branches. The tremendous evidence of convergence makes that point. -> dhw:Yes, we are unique, but so is the platypus, the last surviving member of its family. If only we could speak Platypan, it might even tell us that its presence on Planet Earth and its absolute uniqueness prove that it was the goal of evolution. My point is that the higgledy-piggledy bush is the exact opposite of what we would expect from a designed process with a pre-planned purpose. -Of course it is h-p, striving for complexity in many directions, not a straight course to us. If the UI in its wisdom wanted that approach, that is what we would see. But we don't see that. We must adhere to what we see, in judging the teleology. Bush it is. I've personally seen a platypus in Australia. We are much more complex. The poor fellow has to hatch eggs!-Was there some degree of guidance? Yes. Again my example of the apes staying apes and doing just fine and us charging off with big heads, fully upright. There was no Darwinian reason for that to happen, but it did. We are different in kind, not degree. Difference iby degree is not defensable. By my analysis we not be in the primate family, but a new human family. The Darwin classification is old and by the new findings, wrong. Why stick to ideas 150 yearw old?

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DAVID: If the UI set up evolution to complexify and reach us, as I propose, then complexity will come with a bush of life and we will appear as the pinnacle of the bush, with lots of branches. -Well, yes, if your UI wanted to create lots and lots of bushy branches (= complexity) and to finish up with us, we would indeed have lots and lots of bushy branches (= complexity) and would finish up with us. See below for more options.
 
Dhw: My point is that the higgledy-piggledy bush is the exact opposite of what we would expect from a designed process with a pre-planned purpose. -DAVID: Of course it is h-p, striving for complexity in many directions, not a straight course to us. If the UI in its wisdom wanted that approach, that is what we would see. But we don't see that. We must adhere to what we see, in judging the teleology. Bush it is.1) -So the argument is: 1) God's purpose was to create homo sapiens AND a higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings from tiddly-pops to homo sapiens. That is what we see, so that must be the approach God wanted. It's certainly what we see, but how does that tell us what God wanted? Try these for size: 2) God's purpose was to have fun with a totally unpredictable game of higgledy-piggledy; 3) God's purpose was to experiment with life to see what he could do with it, creating this, destroying that; 4) God had no particular purpose in creating life, and left it to sort itself out; 5) Life is one big, purposeless series of coincidences. All of these hypotheses could explain why what we see is a higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings from tiddly-pops to homo sapiens, and as you so wisely commented yourself: "I don't know why God used the pattern of evolution we see. He knows but he is not explaining." So what makes you so keen on 1)?-DAVID: Was there some degree of guidance? Yes. Again my example of the apes staying apes and doing just fine and us charging off with big heads, fully upright. There was no Darwinian reason for that to happen, but it did. -Darwin's reason was the same as for all innovations: random mutations. I don't buy that. "Guidance"? This can only mean detailed preprogramming within the first forms of life, or interference (= separate creation). I don't buy those either. But I'm an agnostic.
 
DAVID: We are different in kind, not degree. Difference by degree is not defensable. By my analysis we [may] not be in the primate family, but a new human family. The Darwin classification is old and by the new findings, wrong. Why stick to ideas 150 years old?-If we are not in the primate family, and you believe that all forms of life descended from earlier forms, what form do you think we descended from? Or are you really arguing now for special creation?-The idea that humans were the purpose for which God created life is thousands of years old. Why stick to ideas thousands of years old? The reason of course is that the age of the idea is irrelevant. Darwin's 150-year-old idea that all life forms descended from earlier forms makes sense to me. Innovation through random mutations does not. A mechanism that creates a vast variety of living forms makes sense to me. The idea that this vast variety (most of which are extinct) was from the outset designed to produce one single species does not. You have said that even for you it's not logical, but "God did it the way He wanted." And since we have no way of knowing what God wanted, why impose one particular purpose on him?

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> dhw: 2) God's purpose was to have fun with a totally unpredictable game of higgledy-piggledy; 3) God's purpose was to experiment with life to see what he could do with it, creating this, destroying that; 4) God had no particular purpose in creating life, and left it to sort itself out; 5) Life is one big, purposeless series of coincidences. All of these hypotheses could explain why what we see is a higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings from tiddly-pops to homo sapiens,-My view of evolution is that it got complexer and complexer with great directionality. I don't see anything of 2-5 in it. The Cambrian Explosion beautifully set up all our animal phyla 540 million year ago with brains appearing, and here we are with a giant brain.-> 
> DAVID: Was there some degree of guidance? Yes. Again my example of the apes staying apes and doing just fine and us charging off with big heads, fully upright. There was no Darwinian reason for that to happen, but it did. 
> 
> dhw: Darwin's reason was the same as for all innovations: random mutations. I don't buy that. "Guidance"? This can only mean detailed preprogramming within the first forms of life, or interference (= separate creation). I don't buy those either. But I'm an agnostic.-The picket fence is apparent. I don't buy inerference.
> 
> DAVID: We are different in kind, not degree. Difference by degree is not defensable. By my analysis we [may] not be in the primate family, but a new human family. The Darwin classification is old and by the new findings, wrong. Why stick to ideas 150 years old?
> 
> dhw: If we are not in the primate family, and you believe that all forms of life descended from earlier forms, what form do you think we descended from? Or are you really arguing now for special creation? -We descended from early primates and became quite different. Our posture is totally different. We have much more useful hands with our opposible thumbs, and our brains are enormously different. 
> 
> dhw: Darwin's 150-year-old idea that all life forms descended from earlier forms makes sense to me. Innovation through random mutations does not. A mechanism that creates a vast variety of living forms makes sense to me. -I agree.-> dhw:The idea that this vast variety (most of which are extinct) was from the outset designed to produce one single species does not. -Remember that we eat each other. I think the variety of life idea encompasses the balance of nature. The species are set up to thrive off each other. When the balance is thrown out of kilter there are sad results. Think of the problems the Australians are having with the inappropriate species that were introduced. -The early humans in Africa lived on plants, and then in Southern Africa ussed the shoreline animals as they developed. These are very current theories that have been advanced. The variety and availabilty of edibles is very inportant. -And remember convergence. Evolution is set up as very inventive and very creative. Nature's wonders are another example. It is no surprise we have the bush, not a tree.-I think your viewpoint is too narrow.

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dhw: 2) God's purpose was to have fun with a totally unpredictable game of higgledy-piggledy; 3) God's purpose was to experiment with life to see what he could do with it, creating this, destroying that; 4) God had no particular purpose in creating life, and left it to sort itself out; 5) Life is one big, purposeless series of coincidences. All of these hypotheses could explain why what we see is a higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings from tiddly-pops to homo sapiens.-DAVID: My view of evolution is that it got complexer and complexer with great directionality. I don't see anything of 2-5 in it. -"Complexer and complexer", yes. "With great directionality" is faith, not science. That is why you can't see anything of 2-5 in it.-DAVID: We descended from early primates and became quite different. Our posture is totally different. We have much more useful hands with our opposible thumbs, and our brains are enormously different.-I agree that we are different. Since you think we are different in "kind and not degree", do you think 1) God interfered, 2) God preprogrammed the very first cells to pass on the information through umpteen billion generations of non-humans, or 3) some intelligent cells in some early primates had a stroke of inspiration?
 
dhw:The idea that this vast variety (most of which are extinct) was from the outset designed to produce one single species does not[make sense to me]. -DAVID: Remember that we eat each other. I think the variety of life idea encompasses the balance of nature. The species are set up to thrive off each other. When the balance is thrown out of kilter there are sad results. [...] The variety and availability of edibles is very important.-No controversy here. How does it prove that evolution was designed to produce homo sapiens?-DAVID: And remember convergence. Evolution is set up as very inventive and very creative. Nature's wonders are another example. It is no surprise we have the bush, not a tree.-No controversy here either. How does it prove that evolution was designed to produce homo sapiens?-DAVID: I think your viewpoint is too narrow.-Your view is that the bush was designed to produce homo sapiens. I have offered four alternative and equally likely/unlikely explanations for the bush. What is your definition of a "narrow" viewpoint?

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> DAVID: I think your viewpoint is too narrow.
> 
> dhw: Your view is that the bush was designed to produce homo sapiens. I have offered four alternative and equally likely/unlikely explanations for the bush. What is your definition of a "narrow" viewpoint?-Darwin used a tree in his notebook. If we still thought it was a tree with US at the top we might not be arguing. But it is obviously a bush, yet we are still at the top. Same result, different process/method. -All members of the bush do well in their styles of living. They are all separate pinnacles in their own way. And they do provide a balance of nature which the environmentalists keep reminding us is of extreme importance. We really do all need each other. Why then did the human brach break out and become so dominant? There was no NEED for that to happen, but it DID. Chance? We both doubt that. What is left but purpose. In his book Tallis admits this point and is frantically looking for a third way to preserve his atheism!!! Hysterical!

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DAVID: I think your viewpoint is too narrow.-dhw: Your view is that the bush was designed to produce homo sapiens. I have offered four alternative and equally likely/unlikely explanations for the bush. What is your definition of a "narrow" viewpoint?-DAVID: Darwin used a tree in his notebook. If we still thought it was a tree with US at the top we might not be arguing. But it is obviously a bush, yet we are still at the top. Same result, different process/method.-I'm really not bothered about the difference between a tree and a bush. Both sprout branches in all directions and so both are an image for the higgledy-piggledy progress of evolution. I don't know how this makes my four alternatives into a narrower viewpoint than your single hypothesis.
 
DAVID: All members of the bush do well in their styles of living. They are all separate pinnacles in their own way. And they do provide a balance of nature which the environmentalists keep reminding us is of extreme importance. We really do all need each other. Why then did the human branch break out and become so dominant? There was no NEED for that to happen, but it DID. Chance? We both doubt that. What is left but purpose. In his book Tallis admits this point and is frantically looking for a third way to preserve his atheism!!! Hysterical!-The fact that we all need one another is clear, and applied even before humans arrived. There was no NEED, as far as I can judge, for ANY particular species to come on the scene, since life obviously continued for billions of years without dinosaurs, dodos, ducks and dogs, and has continued without dinosaurs and dodos, and would no doubt continue without us too. Yes of course we DID come on the scene, but your question concerning chance or purpose applies to life as a whole, not just to humans. Yes, we are unique, but even if we ignore the chance hypothesis, our presence could derive from any one of the three alternative hypotheses I offered you (God having fun, God experimenting, God leaving the mechanism to sort itself out), each of which is just as likely/unlikely as your single hypothesis that this was God's plan from the beginning. The latter in fact leads to a major question, which I will ask you next time if you really do insist on this single, narrow viewpoint!

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dhw: Yes, we are unique, but even if we ignore the chance hypothesis, our presence could derive from any one of the three alternative hypotheses I offered you (God having fun, God experimenting, God leaving the mechanism to sort itself out), each of which is just as likely/unlikely as your single hypothesis that this was God's plan from the beginning. The latter in fact leads to a major question, which I will ask you next time if you really do insist on this single, narrow viewpoint!-The whole history we see smells of purpose and nothing else. An inorganic universe creating consciousness. No way. A universe that appears and the mathematician/cosmologists admit it was an origin. What is the first cause? Life appears, only God knows how; then multicellularity, when baceria have continued successfully since the beginning. The Cambrian Explosion with no evolutionary precursors. You know the drill.

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Our brain develops differently than the chimp's brain:-"The analysis is the first to show this "hour glass" sketch of human brain development, with a lull in genetic activity sandwiched between highly complex patterns of gene expression, said Nenad Sestan, professor of neurobiology at Yale's Kavli Institute for Neuroscience and senior author of the study. Intriguingly, say the researchers, some of the same patterns of genetic activity that define this human "hour glass" sketch were not observed in developing monkeys, indicating that they may play a role in shaping the features specific to human brain development"-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-12-human-brain-symphony-movements.html

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Another 'simpler' explanation of the complexity of the human brain:-"Dr. Sherwood, the George Washington University expert, praised the hypothesis for being "fairly frugal." The emergence of the human mind might not have been a result of a vast number of mutations that altered the fine structure of the brain. Instead, a simple increase in the growth of neurons could have untethered them from their evolutionary anchors, creating the opportunity for the human mind to emerge. "-http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/26/science/in-the-human-brain-size-really-isnt-everything.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131231-Who or what untethered them?-Abstract of original paper:-"The human cerebral cortex is vastly expanded relative to other primates and disproportionately occupied by distributed association regions. Here we offer a hypothesis about how association networks evolved their prominence and came to possess circuit properties vital to human cognition. The rapid expansion of the cortical mantle may have untethered large portions of the cortex from strong constraints of molecular gradients and early activity cascades that lead to sensory hierarchies. What fill the gaps between these hierarchies are densely interconnected networks that widely span the cortex and mature late into development. Limitations of the tethering hypothesis are discussed as well as its broad implications for understanding critical features of the human brain as a byproduct of size scaling."-http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661313002210

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The chimp brain in the neo-cortex has one-third as many lipid types as in human brains:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fats-in-the-brain-may-help-explain-how-human-intelligence-evolved/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20150708-"The team discovered that the levels of various lipids found in human brain samples, especially from the neocortex, stood out. Humans and chimps diverged from their common ancestor around the same time, according to much evolutionary evidence. Because the two species have had about the same amount of time to rack up changes to their lipid profiles, the investigators expected them to have roughly the same number of species-specific lipid concentrations, explains computational biologist and study leader Kasia Bozek of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Indeed, lipid changes in the cerebellum, a primitive part of the brain similar in all vertebrates, were comparable between humans and chimps. But the human neocortex has accumulated about three times more lipid changes than the chimpanzee cortex has since we split from our common ancestor.-"The results suggest that as human cognition evolved, the types and amounts of fat in key brain areas were rapidly shifting and mutatingand this growth was crucial to the development of our complex abilities."

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