Brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, May 30, 2020, 13:49 (1426 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You finally agreed that he could have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion, but he would “have careful guidelines”. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to define these guidelines for us.

DAVID: Just mutational guides to advance complexity until human are achieved

dhw: We are trying explain expansion. “Mutational” simply means changes to the structure! I have proposed (theistic version) that the changes to the structure would have occurred through the autonomous responses of the intelligent cell communities to new requirements (with God as the inventor of cellular intelligence). Your guidelines, as usual, turn out to be the exact opposite: God dabbled the changes via mutations.

DAVID: Of course. I use God to explain evolution under direct control. You really seek a natural cause for evolution. Cellular intelligence is deduced from programmed automatic activity by the cells, but that is how I believe God works. And later: You keep putting it [intelligence]into cells which are just a bag of coordinated molecular reactions under strict informational instructions from the genome. All information supplied by God, or if you wish, the designing mind behind all of this.

There is no reason to assume that your God could not have designed a mechanism (cellular intelligence) that would enable brains and other organs and organisms to restructure themselves “naturally” and autonomously in response to new requirements. You are against it because it runs contrary to your image of an all-controlling God, not because it is unreasonable in itself. I have no problem with the idea that intelligent instructions come from the genome and are carried out by the rest of the cell or the cell community in an ongoing process of cooperation. Your insistence that what looks like intelligence is in fact automatic is purely a matter of opinion even though you state it as if it were a fact.

dhw: Your theory that God did it with multiple dabbles is also unproven.

DAVID: Again you return to intelligent cells. Without an active God please explain how cells become intelligent naturally.

dhw: Again you refuse to recognize that your own theory is as unproven as mine, and so this is no reason to reject mine. On both threads you have now suddenly decided to ignore the subjects under discussion in order to focus on the possible origin of cellular intelligence.
This subject, introduced as a digression leading to discussion of a "first cause", is dealt with on the “Afterlife” thread.

dhw: You believe that your God invented a mechanism to allow autonomous complexification. Why, then do you believe he could not have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion? Your previous answer was: “God could but He would have careful guidelines…”. The guidelines turn out to be the exact opposite of autonomous, so please explain the above restriction to his capabilities.

DAVID: It is no restriction. God is very purposeful and wants His goals reached, so He either does it himself or instructs the genome just how to do it.

How about: God is very purposeful and wants his goals reached, so he creates a mechanism (cellular intelligence) to ensure that brains will complexify and expand in response to new requirements?