Human Brain Evolution

I am a regular on Christian Forums and I have debated the genetic differences between Humans and Chimpanzees endlessly. I am aquainted with many scientific publications on the subject and have a special interest in the development of the human brain from that of apes. My position is simply that the ape brain had neither the time for the means to develop into a modern human brain.If this sounds like a topic of interest for these boards I will happily prepare a list of links and detailed specifics. I am willing and able to stick to exclusively scientific literature but also know the related theology and Scriptures.Grace and peace,
Mark

Where they come from is largely a metaphysical question but how they evolve is straight forward enough. They evolve when the alleles, or alternative forms of the genes, increase in frequency, in populations over time. I don't know if that was a serious question but the answer was pretty easy. Edited by txchvs, : Typos and such.

First of all the Darwinian answer would be gradually over time. That is not too far from the truth.

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The origin of genes is a metaphysical question? Really?

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Where they come from, why are they here, where are they going. Sounds like ontological questions to me.

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How they evolve......I think the issue has to be more specific. For example, do they evolve on their own, or in conjunction with natural selection and the environment? Is there a preset pattern governing what they can evolve into? If not, are there limits to their evolution?

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They evolve through various genetic mechanisms like recombination and gene expressions. Recently there has been a lot of research into the role of RNA. Natural Selection is the effect on the population not a real cause of evolution. Finally, the limits are the characteristics and effects of the genes themselves.I would say that random variation gets most of the credit rather then random mutations if that's what you are getting at.

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Should we expect anything predictive at all about gene evolution based on Darwinian theory?

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Only that they are slight, successive and gradually accumulated over vast periods of time.Do the facts match those predictions?Edited by txchvs, : Missed the last line of the original post.