Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 20, 2022, 16:11 (797 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Back we go: why could your God the creator not have created the mechanism for expansion as well as complexification?

DAVID: Same answer. A true designer who knows what he wishes to design, does not give the job off to secondhand methods. The outcome is not controlled.

dhw: We are talking here about the human brain. So when your God designed the autonomous mechanism for complexification, which he did not control because we are free to come up with the ideas that require complexification, he was not a true designer. Ts, ts.

DAVID: Total distortion. God undoubtedly designed previous brains and our current one with the complexification with the exact purpose to allow handling new uses of the brain.

dhw: That is precisely what I am saying – if he exists, God provided the complexification mechanism, and you have agreed that it works without his intervention. He does not control the process whereby cells complexify in response to new uses. But according to you, a true designer controls everything!

Your wrong extrapolation of the meaning of a designing God. He obviously sets up necessary mechanism to run on their own. Sexual reproduction works on its own , as does embryology. You rigid brain invented a tunnel-visioned God who does not exist. Purpose is not a tunnel.

DAVID: Why are you mixing our free will into this debate? We have free will and in new ideas and concepts our brain has the ability to handle them with complexification, a plasticity well recognized.

dhw: I am talking about free will because if God exists, he gave us the freedom to do our own thinking, designing etc., and he gave us the mechanism which enables us to give material reality to our thoughts, designs etc. It’s what you sneeringly call “second-hand design” because he does not control the thoughts or the complexifications. So if he is happy to let our cells do the complexifying, why do you think he would not have let them also add to their numbers when they needed to?

Secondhand design is not precisely directed design. In the bold you repeat you theory. Please note the fact our brain adds only a few neurons related to memory in the hippocampus. It doesn't anticipate enlargement,.