International Skeptics Forum - View Single Post - Random mutations cannot explain evolution of humans

Reality Check · 13th April 2008, 05:45 PM

Originally Posted by wogoga

A further example of the missing genetic information (quote from Wikipedia):

"The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 10^11 (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 10^15 synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood."

I hope you agree that if the vast majority of this huge number of synaptic connections were built up randomly, a normal human behaviour could not emerge. On the one hand we a relevant genetic information of 10^7 or 10^8 byte for the total ontogenetic development, and on the other hand only in the brain an architecture involving 10^15 synaptic connections. This results in less than 10^-7 or 10^-8 byte genetic information per synapse.

So whereas the genetic information of a human only constitutes a small fraction of the storage capacity of a DVD disc of 4.7 Gigabyte, in order to store all the synaptic connections of a three-year-old child, around a million DVD discs are needed.

Congratulations Wolfgang - you have just proved that learning is impossible since all of the synapse connections in the brain are hard-coded in DNA

!
As any biologist can tell you, neural development starts from a mostly random network of synaptic connections. Connections are then reinforced by learning.

13th April 2008, 05:45 PM	#42
Reality Check Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: New Zealand Posts: 26,437	Originally Posted by wogoga A further example of the missing genetic information (quote from Wikipedia): "The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 10^11 (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 10^15 synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood." I hope you agree that if the vast majority of this huge number of synaptic connections were built up randomly, a normal human behaviour could not emerge. On the one hand we a relevant genetic information of 10^7 or 10^8 byte for the total ontogenetic development, and on the other hand only in the brain an architecture involving 10^15 synaptic connections. This results in less than 10^-7 or 10^-8 byte genetic information per synapse. So whereas the genetic information of a human only constitutes a small fraction of the storage capacity of a DVD disc of 4.7 Gigabyte, in order to store all the synaptic connections of a three-year-old child, around a million DVD discs are needed. Congratulations Wolfgang - you have just proved that learning is impossible since all of the synapse connections in the brain are hard-coded in DNA ! As any biologist can tell you, neural development starts from a mostly random network of synaptic connections. Connections are then reinforced by learning.
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