Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 15, 2017, 11:59 (2656 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...maybe he was pleasantly surprised when he found that his efforts to get back into a starling made the bug behave as it does. And he then spread the good news to all his buddies, who simply accepted it as a useful pattern of behaviour.
DAVID: Zombification is an effect on the brain, taking control. This means modifying neuronal outputs; not simple as in your supposition.

The article doesn’t tell us why the bug did “crazy things”. But my point is the general one that I see no reason why your God should have to design these lifestyles when it’s quite feasible that the organisms work them out for themselves, or even – as you imagined in the case of the ants and the nuts – discover something useful by accident and have the intelligence to exploit it and pass it on.

dhw: A built-in drive to complexity does not mean, as you claimed, that 99% of species are extinct because “evolution advances to the most complex survivors”. There are survivors at all levels of complexity. Or do you really believe that every living organism now on this planet is more complex than the dinosaurs?
DAVID: The dinosaurs had very tiny brains. They were just very nasty lizards. the mammals are much more complex and much brighter.

The brain is not the only complex organ, we don’t know how intelligent dinosaurs were, and not all surviving organisms are mammals.

dhw: The nest is my prime example precisely because there is no way you can link it to the provision of food for all until humans could evolve. So what reason do you think your God had for designing it?
DAVID: You have skipped over my point. The weaverbird has a place in an eco-niche as a living organism. The nest is just his home and it beside the point for the balance of nature supplying food. The nest has no link to food. I don't know why the nest is built like it is except it may protect the chicks from predators and the bird's lifestyle safe. I think God designed it.

That IS my point! It is the obvious example of the dislocation in your scenario. Why did your God have to give special instructions to the weaverbird, whose nest has nothing to do with your favourite reading of God’s motives (balance of nature to provide food in preparation for humans)? This is the basis of my next comment:

dhw: You can find no reason why your God would design all these lifestyles and wonders, but you refuse to consider the possibility that he did not do so, because despite all the examples that illustrate the intelligence of our fellow creatures, you cannot accept that you may have underestimated their capabilities.
DAVID: And I think you have highly overestimated them.

Maybe. But I must confess I find the hypothesis far more credible than the first living cells having to pass on a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for weaverbird nest- building, pill-bug zombifying, spider-zombifying, butterfly migration etc. etc. – or the alternative of your God’s personal tuition – in order to “balance nature”.