Brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, June 08, 2020, 11:21 (1419 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The problem for you autonomous method is the required planning needed to provide special areas for special tasks, such as Hippocampus for memory and then specialized tracks to the temporal area with specialized regions for defining visual objects. I don't think these areas an tracts were placed by chance. Autonomous would have had to know exactly what it was doing in advance.

dhw: What you have described applies to all brains, not just human, and you have cleverly switched the subject from the mechanism for the expansion of the human brain to the origin of the brain itself. So God must have dabbled with every brain that ever existed, in order to ensure that one part was devoted to memory and other parts to defining visual objects. The question is important, though, so I’ll follow your attempt to divert attention away from our subject. I suggest – theistic version – that the whole process began with your God’s creation of intelligent single cells (e.g. bacteria). Memory is just one example:
Bacteria have memory, like brain neurons - The Limited Times
newsrnd.com/tech/2020-05-07-bacteria-have-memory--like-brain-neurons--.Sk7K9V-…

QUOTE: “[…] The mechanism, which has striking parallels with the more sophisticated brain neurons, could open up the development of living computers made of cells.

dhw: My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.

DAVID: Membrane potential is a very potent characteristic of membranes and they changed it and it persisted to create the memory. The article is lots of hype, nothing more. […] You have brought up the simplest of complexification and tried to equate that to working brain neurons and their complex networks and assigned regions of work.

You have merely explained how the researchers proved that bacteria have memory. The important thing is that they do have memory. And I am not EQUATING bacterial simplicity with human complexity, but am suggesting how the evolutionary process may have advanced from simple to complex. It was you who initiated this digression, but I’m pleased to see that you do not have any objections to my proposal.

dhw: Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.

Not answered.

DAVID: Adaptation to high altitude involves increasing primarily the population of red blood cells by adding methylation to the genome as an epigenetic modification, an attribute we all have. God has provided this so He didn't dabble high altitude adaptations.

dhw: God has provided what? You have chosen this example, which according to you proves that the adaptations which were passed on from pre-sapiens to sapiens were not dabbled but were the product of an autonomous mechanism. If God created a mechanism for the autonomous production of different attributes, and you yourself have insisted that these attributes account for there being different species, then perhaps we have a blueprint for all speciation: cell communities respond to, adapt to, cope with, and perhaps even exploit different conditions and thus develop different attributes.

DAVID: Did you read what I wrote? All humans living at altitude can increase their red cell population. I assume the Denisovans genetically had a stronger mechanism, epigenetic change nothing more. Neanderthals with different immune experiences provide some protections for us though interbreeding. No special cell committees involved.

You wrote that as the many hominin/homo varieties interbred, "they provided/developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species." So I don't know why you then chose high altitude adaptation as your example. But the principle of the autonomous mechanism is clear. Now you've switched to Neanderthal immune "experiences". Dabbled or autonomous? What "attributes" were you referring to? And what is your objection to the bolded extrapolation from your comments - other than the fact that like your own theory, it is unproven?