Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 21, 2020, 19:16 (1465 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your suggestion is not close to fact. I've read a theoretical article I have not presented that theorized the human brain could ideally reach 3,300 cc! Please try to convert to ounces: 2,000 extra cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can't handle that? Back packs are much heavier.

dhw: So what is your explanation for the non-expansion? And why do you keep telling us that an expansion of 200 cc is too huge to have happened naturally (theistically = your God creating the mechanism for expansion and not having to intervene)? All of a sudden, even 2000 cc is nothing!

You invented the size problem, and suddenly it becomes real. It simply never expanded because it was designed to complexify with use and shrink, following real factual history.

DAVID: You've simply restated your weird idea God should not have been patient. Repetition proves nothing.

dhw: So please stop repeating your “patience” mantra, which proves nothing, and explain to me why your God deliberately produced the gaps.

Not contrived gaps, deliberate evolutionary advances. And it is you who keeps complaining about a patient God, who should be impatient. How else to analyze your God mantra?

DAVID: God knew it would take time to develop the learning. Can you deny our brain lay primarily fallow until 50,000 years ago creating a delay of 265,000 years, based on current fossil findings? […]

dhw: Of course I’m not denying it. I asked you why you think your God expanded the sapiens brain 260,000 years before it was used. Your answer is to repeat the meaningless “learning” mantra, which you still haven't explained!

You don't deny the delays in use, so why demand it needs explanation? it is all of a pattern. Each new larger size had to be learned to be used. Do you think erectus or sapiens had bright new thoughts hey fist day they arrived as adult thinkers. My view of evolutionary changes take time.

dhw: So now please tell us why you think your God had all these different homos hanging around for thousands of years making no progress, and then had homo sapiens do the same.

DAVID: Your same 'patient God' problem. God in charge of evolution evolved everything over the time it took. Why do you struggle with that? We are discussing my theory.

dhw: Indeed we are, and clearly you have no idea why your God decided to specially design all these different homos to hang around for millions of years before he specially designed the only homo he wanted to design. Patience has nothing to do with it. Your stock answer is usually that we can’t know his reasons.

Your usual total confusion. My theory is under discussion. God chose to evolve instead of immediate direct creation. We must follow the history of evolution, but we cannot know why He made the choice to evolve. My stock answer is logical following initial assumptions.

dhw: […] You believe your God gave our brains the ability to perform new tasks by complexifying and mini-expanding without his intervention. So why should he not have done the same with earlier brains – enabling them to expand without his intervention?

DAVID: Obvious. Our current brain shrunk with extensive use, 150 cc, the size of most past enlargements exactly the opposite of your theory about earlier brains, where more extensive use forces large expansions. […]

dhw: Firstly, what is your explanation for shrinkage, since apparently you now refuse to accept the explanation you have accepted umpteen times before (the efficiency of complexification)?

Distortion as usual. Of course the 150 cc shrinkage was due to more use and complexification. Note the stock answer I gave above, as usual

dhw: Secondly, you still haven’t answered my question. You have acknowledged that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention. Why should he not have done the same with earlier brains?

Mini-expansion and complexification with shrinkage is not giant enlargement, your pipe dream of an unsupported theory. We all realize we can invent any action by God to satisfy a desire for a desired possibility. Any possibility by definition is possible. So what!