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... This brings us back to my earlier question, Why does the human brain have such a vast intellect? What purpose does it serve in evolutionary terms.
Starting with Australopithecus afarensis, our ancestors decided to leave their predecessors full time occupation in the trees and try out their luck on the land, as a scavenger. The one major problem they had was that they had no special adaptations for it versus hyenas, vultures or large predator cats.
Now under normal circumstances, carnivorous savannah based creatures adapt to the predator-prey dynamics by gaining speed (usually via quadrapedalism), strength, claws and sharp canine teeth, like cats, hyenas and alligators. The poor australopithecines were just way too far off that to gradually attempt such adaptations (it would have taken too long, the intermediates would not have been rewarded with any substantial successes, and all the other carnivores had 10s of millions of years of evolutionary head starts.) Another thing holding us back, is that we had a defective Vitamin C enzyme. Meaning we could never leave the forest entirely -- we had to keep going back to get fruit otherwise we would die of scurvy. If you look at the phyiscal characteristics of modern humans, chimpanzees or any of our ancestors between the two, none have anything close to what is necessary in terms of pure *physical* characteristics to survive on the savannah. Yet the fossil record show that our ancestors clearly did so.
Whatever their solution was, it was almost certainly the advanced capabilites of their chimpanzee-like brain that allowed them to survive (i.e., brain-power selection had already been occurring *before* our split with the chimpanzee -- probably just to successfully compete with gibbons or some other aboreal animals.) It was the only possible ace we had. Figuring out that you can eat bone marrow, for example, or that animals would die of natural causes (removing the need to hunt and kill them) might have been something our slightly clever ancestors used to survive.
Just as different people have different cognitive abilities, so too would the australopithecines. The less capable probably died off before having offspring, making sure that there was at least a slow selection criteria towards improved intelligence.
But the real turning point came towards the end of the Australopithecine era. Some individuals adapted, probably just by normal demographic distribution, truly superior mental abilities. They were the first to break stones in order to give them edges -- thus being the first animal to make bladed stone tools. When they found a scavenged kill, they ripped its flesh off and ate it so fast, that the other scavengers or predators simply didn't have time to steal the kill away from them. Dead alligator carcasses, that no organism (except for bacteria) could figure out how to eat (because their hides were simply too tough) became accessible to these guys with the sharp stones. This made a really significant difference in their survival and drove a limited population of the most highly intelligent representatives to adapt a permanently improved base-line of intellectual ability that allowed all of them to be clever enough to make bladed stone tools. These are represented in the fossil record as Homo habilis.
What you find in the fossil record is that every significant advancement (such as the ability to migrate out of Africa, the ability to control fire, the ability to make larger tools, the development of spears, etc) corresponds to an improved mental ability and seemingly (though IMHO, the correlation is not direct, and for good reason) the *SIZE* of the brains of our ancestors increased.
Going to Homo ergaster one theory is that we became bona fide hunters by walking or running animals to death (much like the Bushmen of the Kalahari, or "SAN" people do even to this day.) We had to develop the brain power to be smart enough to know that our upright walking abilities gave us the ability to outlast most animals on the savanah in any kind of marathon.
The brain base-line increased yet again, but this allowed the smartest ones to figure out fire, which kept them warm at night, and gave them a very strange new weapon for warding off predators. It also allowed them to cook their meat which made it easier to digest which meant they could be actively hunting for a larger percentage of the time. So once against the brain base-line improved.
This feedback loop repeated itself with superior hunting weapons including large hand axes then wooden spears and at some point clothes until finally bow and arrow, harpoons, needles and communication mechanisms (proto-language, then language) pushed us towards modern H. sapien capabilities. Each time the capability first presented itself to only the most capable of our ancestors which became a selective pressure for improved mental capabilities which improved the base-line of intelligence for the surviving ofspring.
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As a believer in creation, i believe that it was designed to last and learn forever as God intended...how does ToE explain it?
Well I've given a basic explanation above. Let us now compare this to creationism, which doesn't offer explanations. Creationism only offers conclusions and lets you fill in with whatever explanation you like.
As I understand it the forbidden fruit of knowledge was something that at least one version of god specifically told us humans to avoid. It made god angry enough to punish us with the curse of sin or something like that. Sorry if I don't have it quite right, its not easy to obtain a coherent story of creationism.
Talking about brain capabilities from the creationist perspective you just suggested immediately leads me to many questions.
Why do we get alzheimer's disease, or parkinson's disease?
Why are the elementary rules of logic and reason not built into our brains -- why does a large percentage of the population need to spend a long time learning what in digital circuits are a complete and innate triviality (things like deMorgan's laws, the law of the excluded middle, reducto ad absurdum, correlation versus causation, falsifiability, etc)?
Why do we painstakingly have to learn arithmetic, probably wasting millions of neurons and many man-years for the purpose when very powerful and accurate calculators can be built in a few thousand logic gates?
Why are our brains so easily fooled by optical and auditory illusions?
Why do some mental talents have such a strong hereditary bias (like art skills, math skills, etc)? Its as if the "creator" knew who to bless (at birth) even before these individuals made decisions (with their "free will") about whether or not to lead sinful versus pious lives.
Why does the "creator" curse some people at birth with mental retardation? Before they even get a chance to sin or not, they are denied the ability to "learn forever as God intended" as you put it.
Why does the human brain have faulty memory? Serious modern scientific testing has revealed that reliability of personal testimony is nearly worthless, relative to say, useful standards of truth as desired by the US legal system. Again, the kind of logic gates required to implement static memory in actual digital circuits is quite reasonable and totally reliable by comparison.
With an evolutionary explanation, all of those questions have trivial answers: none have a sufficient selective advantage which corresponds to a simple evolutionary step ladder for achieving. For example, there are examples of savants who do have some superior intellectual skills, but they are usually coupled with severe intellectual disabilities of other kinds. So its hard for the evolutionary ramp to get started there. Our brains are already way past the point of being an advantage for us over any other species of animal, so further selective intelligence can only happen through sexual selection -- and that clearly is not happening anywhere. (Intelligent people, especially intelligent women, tend to have fewer children.)
When you see our developed brains as a sequence of advancements for the purpose of solving a number of problems one by one, then the kind of hodge-podge result that we have makes perfect sense. And that's what evolution tells us happened.
If you say that our intellect is created, then you are left with the question as to why was created in this particular way? Why design in so many defects? Why skip over the obvious opportunities for specifically, but moderately easily designed (for an all-powerful creator that is) improvements over what we have?
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