Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 20, 2020, 18:17 (1435 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, May 20, 2020, 18:28

DAVID: I'll accept that if you allow guidelines, which you won't. Your weak proposals of God are not the God I envision.

dhw: Your guidelines are a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme (now abandoned) and hands-on dabbling – the opposite of my theory. Why is it “weak” for God to invent a mechanism for natural expansion but not for natural complexification?

Apples and eggs. Complexification does not change a species as brain expansion does. God speciates each step. You can't seem to tell the difference. Complexification is a process given to each stage of brain in hominin/homo evolution, previously stated by me over and over. Pre-programming and dabbling are not abandoned, just guesses as to how God works, always under reconsideration. Haven't you noticed the multiple entries on pre-planning?

DAVID: You are ignoring the science. Those cooperating cells in different organs were forced to be that way by DNA instructions. Cells don't cooperate with DNA. They are specifically told what to do in forming their organs and you haven't gotten rid of the bony issues[…]. For a new species to appear, DNA must be changed beyond epigenetics, which cells might suggest. […]

dhw: Back to basics: Do you deny that the brain consists of cell communities which cooperate with one another, that the cell community of the skull must expand – like muscles expanding through exercise – to accommodate the enlarged brain, and the cell community of the birth canal must expand to accommodate the enlarged skull? And in your theory, do you think your God DOESN’T reorganize the cell communities in such a way that they work together?

How do the various bony cell committees know what to do on their own? Answer, they don't. Newly instructed DNA/stem cells tell them how and what to form. Your overwhelming desire for brilliant cells to get rid of God doesn't fit the science. But, thank you. Of course God instructs every part of a body in new species through changes in DNA.
Nothing natural.

dhw: And we are not discussing speciation on this thread.

DAVID: Of course we are discussing speciation. Every new individual with a bigger brain is a new species. […]

On the ant thread you said the giant kangaroo was not a new species, but now the giant brain is a new species. Why are we arguing about what constitutes a species? Please answer the above questions concerning brain expansion and cooperation.

Answered above . Of course you recognize species differences. Don't fudge.

DAVID: The genome has to change, and the theoretical Darwin proposed mechanisms are all chance! (Drift, mistake, gamma rays damage, etc.) I"ll stick with God. Do Darwinists accept intelligent DNA? No way. You are on your own as a third way.

dhw: Now all of a sudden the subject switches to Darwin and chance, which we have both long ago rejected. Once again, yes, the genome has to change. You think your God dabbles it. I propose that the cells are intelligent. So does Shapiro, and I am not on my own.

DAVID: Your imagined degree of cell intelligence is a gross extrapolation from what Shapiro proposed with no advances in that area since his book.

dhw: There is no gross extrapolation. You’ve forgotten the list of quotes from your own book, which calls Shapiro’s “an amazing documentation of all the work in the epigenetic field” (p. 146): CELLS are cognitive, sentient beings with “sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities”, and “Evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modification functions and cell fusions.” Please note the word “novelty”.

I fully respect Shapiro and his theory as a great contribution. In this website I quoted his careful presentation to the Royal society which is not as stretched as you constantly want it to be. Your desires are not the truth of where evolutionary theory sits as of now. Invent all you want. I will constantly reject it.

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QUOTE: "The gene system must have the physical freedom to specify itself, as well as any variation of itself."

dhw: I’d be grateful...if you would explain the implications of the above quote, which seems to me to confirm that the gene system has the potential to vary itself.

You have kindly defined “specialised”, and emphasized design and information. Thank you. But please tell me if I’m right to interpret this as a proposal that the gene system can autonomously change its own structure? (I know you will disagree – I‘m only asking for clarification of the statement itself.)

I've clarified the statement and you hopefully keep trying to subvert it to your unreal realm of thought. DNA does not change itself other than epigenetic marks for adaptations within species. I know what the author meant and described it by definitions. And please accept the concept of information behind or organizing all processes of life. I know you fight it because of the implications for a designing mind.