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

by dhw, Saturday, May 01, 2021, 11:43 (1092 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: …you have completely ignored the relevance of the image to our discussion: staff and cells only become excessive when a more efficient method (new machines for staff, enhanced complexification for cells) takes over from the original method...You still insist that the jettisoned staff/cells were excessive/redundant from the beginning, whereas I propose that in both cases they were essential from the beginning.

DAVID: Yes, we differ. I view the neurons as a planned excess, from God.

And yet you go on to tell us the vital function they performed:
DAVID: I've previously explained God's planned excess cells allowed us free-willed humans to tailor our new big brain as we wished in the process of complexification as abstractions and other knowledge developed.

How can they have been “excess” if they helped to give us the autonomous ability to work out our own ideas? That is not even “light” usage! But even this concession is only half the story. You have agreed that past brains functioned in the same way as modern brains, and so they already had the “free-willed” ability to complexify as their abstractions and other knowledge developed. On nothing like the scale of modern humans, but that is the natural course of development, as species of homo, just like each generation of sapiens, built on the discoveries of their ancestors. What you call our “excess” cells would of course have increased the potential for complexification, and they would have continued to exercise whatever new function made them necessary in the first place. (See “Miscellany” for more details.)They were just as much a part of the increased “tailoring” as the already existing cells, and only became redundant when enhanced complexification took over from expansion.

dhw: […] you have agreed that the hippocampus of modern sapiens expands autonomously, by which I mean your God does not perform operations or give new instructions to the modern hippocampus...Please explain why you find this illogical.

DAVID: The modern hippocampus follows God's onboard implanted instructions to handle the need to memorize, for example, new abstract ideas as they appear.

Since you agree that the modern brain works autonomously (“free-willed”), what you call “God’s onboard implanted instructions” can only comprise the mechanism which enables the hippocampus to memorize autonomously and the cerebral cortex to come up with its new ideas. What else could this mechanism be, other than the intelligence of the cells? Or do you really believe your God has given instructions for every idea sapiens has ever come up with, and has installed a programme instructing the hippocampus which ones to memorize?

DAVID: Autonomous brain complexification is because the brain follows God's implanted genetic instructions exactly.

Same again: What do the “implanted genetic instructions” consist of, if they are not the mechanism which enables the “free-willed” brain to think its own thoughts, make its own decisions, and work out its new ideas?