Explaining natural wonders (Animals)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 25, 2017, 10:08 (2550 days ago) @ David Turell

I am once again combining threads, as they cover the same subject:

Dhw: The weaverbird’s knot came undone, so God gave it a twiddle? What other “guidelines” do you have in mind for the autonomous mechanism?
DAVID: Definite instructions of how to proceed with speciation, not twiddling over a messy knot.
Dhw: You now say your God would not have “guided” the bird to tie the knots, so what “guidelines” do you envisage, or do you now agree that the bird may have designed its own nest?
DAVID: I don't know exactly how God instructed the weaverbird, but He had to based on the complexity of the knots. Envisioning guidelines, beyond the generalization, is impossible. What would you suggest?

One moment the guidelines have nothing to do with twiddling over a messy knot but are confined to speciation, and the next moment the guidelines have to be based on the knots. Symptomatic perhaps of those you continue to tie yourself in. I suggest that there are no guidelines, and the weaverbird designed its own nest just like every other bird, using its (perhaps God-given) intelligence.

DAVID (under “sea urchin defense”) Defense at a distance is a great concept. This is a simple early form of an animal with a very complex defense. Hard to imagine it evolved by chance.

Brilliant stuff! Thank you. Yes, it is indeed hard to imagine that it evolved by chance, and hard to imagine your God programming it 3.8 billion years ago or personally popping in to design it so that life would keep going until humans arrived. So what is the alternative? Ah, maybe your God gave this animal the intelligence to design its own defence system. Just a thought.

David (on whales): If chance mutations can't work, the implications for design become overwhelming. Your alternative?
dhw: […] Why do you ask for my alternative, when I keep telling you that it is an autonomous inventive intelligence, possibly God-given? Not proven of course, any more than your God’s dabbling or his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for pre-whales turning into whales all for the sake of humans has been proven.
DAVID: Sorry. You are the one to raise an issue over the math of population genetics. My dabbling or pre-programming hypotheses are just as will o' the wisp as your auto inventions. My positive view is God guided evolution. I just cannot give a positive description of His methodology, so I guess. As you are guessing.

One of the problems in our discussions is the authoritative manner in which you state your own beliefs and dismiss other hypotheses. You dogmatically assert that God’s one and only purpose was to produce humans and everything else was related to that; you expressly reject bacterial intelligence and the very possibility that your God might also have endowed other organisms with the autonomous intelligence (i.e. without God's guidelines, programmes or dabbles) to design their own nests, lifestyles etc. What you have written above provides a welcome change of tone. Yes, we can only hypothesize on ALL of these questions, all our answers are riddled with uncertainties, and so belief should not turn into dogma.