Revisiting language and brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, February 09, 2020, 11:43 (1536 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: God gave the brain the ability to make changes called plasticity. As we learn small areas can enlarge to handle new knowledge. Touting 'cells' doesn't change the concept.

If your God gave brain cells the ability to enlarge small areas without his preprogramming and/or dabbling, is it not possible that the same ability was used earlier in evolution when large areas were expanded, with the resultant expansion of the whole brain? And if your God gave cells/cell communities the ability to make changes to the brain – call it plasticity – why is it not possible that he gave the same ability to other cell communities in all bodies?

dhw: Repeat: why is deliberate sacrifice of control (as with “human free will”) wishy-washy? Why is the creation of cellular intelligence magic and unreasonable, whereas divine dabbles and a 3.8-billion-year-old programme are not magic or unreasonable?

DAVID: It all revolved about God's tight control of evolution to achieve humans as the result with free will given. God obviously didn't care to precisely control us.

You simply refuse to answer the above questions, and to realize that free will is an EXAMPLE of your God deliberately sacrificing control.

dhw: Why do you see experimenting, watching, enjoying and learning as “bumbling”? And since you agree that your God probably has “similar thought patterns and emotions” to yours, why do you now “deny him the right” to have them?

DAVID: You are mixing and matching my statements to distort my view of God and his purposes as clearly stated, and you ignore.

This has nothing to do with your view of God and his purposes. I asked you why you considered my alternatives “bumbling” and why you denied him the right to experiment, watch, enjoy etc. even though he probably has thoughts and emotions in common with us. These alternatives are mine, not yours. They do not “distort your view of God and his purposes”!

DAVID: You constantly avoid "The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes". We have known observations on our uniqueness. […]

I have reminded you that Shapiro’s theory is an extrapolation from known processes, whereas yours cannot call on any known processes from which to extrapolate. The uniqueness of H.sapiens is not a process! And it is no argument to dismiss Shapiro’s theory because nobody has actually witnessed speciation. Your whole reply (I’ve left out the dinosaur bit) is a non sequitur.

dhw: The [pre-whale] legs don’t say anything. They attempt to do the work required, but this proves difficult. This is the point at which the cells (I don’t care which ones they are, because ALL of them are involved in the process of change) respond to the unnaturalness of the movements under the new conditions. Of course they think, or some of them do and then direct the others. That is the whole point of the theory. […] This is an extension of precisely the same process observed in the brains of illiterate women, taxidrivers, musicians, and in thousands and thousands of other known changes [I gave more examples]. The cells respond to the new requirements. They do not anticipate, and the organism does not give orders. It is the attempt to cope that gives rise to the activity of the cells.

DAVID: The bold above is silly. Only germ cells can do the changes. The legs have to tell the germ cells. Let's stick to real biology, please, not lala land.

I couldn’t care less which cells do the actual thinking and directing, so long as you acknowledge that thinking and directing take place within the cell community. Why don’t you focus on the rest of the paragraph which vividly illustrates exactly the same process you are trying to ignore: cells RESPOND to new requirements and do not change in advance of them.

From “magic embryology” (the rest of which is dealt with elsewhere)

dhw: Epigenetics does not explain how cells adapt! My proposal is that the cells themselves have the intelligent autonomous ability to adapt. Why did you raise the subject of epigenetics in the first place?

DAVID: To answer, epigenetics is the only proven mechanism we know. As you seem to point out, we don't know how the mechanism is managed with the organisms, but, as I view it, it must be germ cells changing the next generations through reproduction. At your theory level they receive pleading messages from somatic cells to please fix things.

Reproduction doesn’t make the changes – it ensures that the changes are passed on. I wish I knew more about stem cells, as they might be the thinkers that make the changes in the first place. What is clear is that there has to be intelligent communication between all the cells involved in any change. Are you not aware of messages from cell communities within your body when you do things they don’t like? They don’t have to speak Texan to make themselves understood. Fortunately, in many cases other cell communities hear the messages and leap into action. I’d have thought doctors would know about such things.