Evolution: more genomic evidence of pre-planning (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, March 11, 2021, 15:22 (1143 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You have not described any major change in lifestyle between erectus and sapiens that would require sure a large brain expansion, compared to the way it is massively used today. God anticipated that use.

dhw: I have just said that there is no reason why the erectus and sapiens expansions should have changed the lifestyle: the hunter would still be a hunter. The massive use today of the existing brain has resulted in complexification, not expansion – presumably because the brain could not expand any more without major changes to the anatomy. And according to you, complexification is an autonomous process (no divine interference), so why shouldn’t he have made expansion an autonomous process too: cells add to their number or complexify as and when they need to – not before they need to?

Your only weak response is God let the neurons do it. It doesn't answer the question of why such a large jump in size while lifestyle requirements changes were minimal as you admit.

DAVID: Terrible comparison. a flipper has one use, a large brain very many.

dhw: You have completely missed the point. I am proposing that even if it were true that your God popped in to change legs to flippers, you would not have expected him to do so 300,000 years before the whale entered the water. So why would he pop in to expand the brain 300,000 years before the extra capacity was needed?

You have asked me the question I've posed to you. My answer is in logical anticipation of future use.

David’s theory of evolution

dhw: I am not disputing evolution! You keep telling us that every other life form was “part of the goal of evolving humans”, although 99% of them had no connection with humans!

Your same chopping up of evolution into segments. All branches evolved from bacteria. That is the original connection

SURVIVAL

dhw: If the purpose is future survival, it is clearly absurd to argue that the quest for survival plays no part in evolution. You simply have your God inventing means of survival in advance instead of organisms doing it themselves when needed. The purpose is still survival.

DAVID: God's purpose was to produce humans.

dhw: There you go again. God turned legs into flippers, and designed millions of life forms and their food supplies, lifestyles, strategies and natural wonders because he wanted to design humans, although 99% of them had no connection with humans. And adaptation to new conditions has nothing to do with the quest for survival. Please let’s put an end to this discussion. It is becoming more and more nonsensical.

I start up only because you constantly reference your illogical objections

Playing possum

dhw: How do you think strategies originate and then survive? They have to start somewhere, and then they have to be passed on by example, communication, education (perhaps you didn’t know that parent animals teach their young) etc. Or do you think your God preprogrammed the first cells 3.8 billion years ago to pass on a design for possums plus their play-dead strategy, or does he keep popping in to give possums refresher courses?

DAVID: God had to teach them somehow.

dhw: You have only offered us these two methods, and I wonder how many even of your ID-ers, let alone the folk who have studied animal behaviour, would support the idea that animals, birds, insects etc. are incapable of making their own discoveries or designing their own survival strategies.

Back to the weaverbird nests. Even boy scouts would have trouble with some of the complex knots.