Natures wonders: making spider silk (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, August 25, 2014, 21:32 (3741 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: The basis of this discussion, though, is that David and I believe evolution happened - i.e. that all living forms descended from earlier living forms. The enormous complexity of all organs and Nature's Wonders is not, in our view, explicable by Darwin's random mutations. If your God did not preprogramme every single one from the word go and did not create them separately, the mechanism for invention has to be present in the cells. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago under “Cell Memories"(before David's conversion from preprogramming and dabbling: “the theist can then argue that only God could have designed such an inventively, cooperatively intelligent mechanism, and the atheist can argue that it came about by chance.” Perhaps, David, you would explain the difference, in terms of how evolution works, between my proposed inventively, cooperatively intelligent mechanism situated in the cells/cell communities (that may have been created by your God) and the mechanism you are proposing.
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> Your argument, Tony, that single-celled organisms must then be more intelligent than humans misses the point that we ourselves, with all our intelligence, are a mass of cell communities, each one of which (if you believe evolution happened) is the result of billions of years of development, with each cell community the result of earlier developments in cell communities. Of course an individual cell is not as “intelligent” as a community of cells, and the more combinations you have, the greater the variety of intelligences. -I have not missed your point at all. I am well aware that we are a a mass of individual cells, as I am aware that each organ is actually a community of different types of cells each performing a specific function. In some ways, our bodies are models of the earth(being comprised of all of the elements in appropriate proportions) as well as humanity (where each different type of cell represents a different race or culture of humanity). ->DHW: Perhaps ours is the culmination of this process. The whole point of my hypothesis is that the intelligent, inventive, cooperative mechanism within cells/cell communities can account not only for the complexity but also for the variety, the Cambrian, and the higglepiggledy comings and goings in the history of evolution. Theistic evolution, as I see it, therefore means God created a mechanism which enables cells/cell communities to do their own inventing, adjusting to or exploiting changes in the environment, without God interfering or preplanning. (Much more entertaining for him I'd have thought). Perhaps you would let us know your alternative explanation.-And my point is that, if the "culmination of this process", our intelligence, is not capable of reproducing, copying, or even understanding the full extent of even the simplest element of the system, a single cell, then there is no way that the simplest element can be capable of creating the most complex elements from scratch.-I'm easy with my explanation. God did it. I just want to understand why and how so that I can better appreciate the qualities of my creator. Did God create them as adaptive creatures, I certainly think so, but I think that he did so with constraints to prevent them from straying too far beyond their pre-defined range. Hence the reason we don't have a plethora of new creatures popping up every time we turn around. A dog is still a dog is still a dog, no matter what kind of dog it is. Wolves did not become whales and whales did not become wolves, and we did not come from furry poop-flingers. -Further, being a Christian, I don't think he did it for pure entertainment. Colossians 1:16 (NLT) "for through him(Christ) God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see--such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world(Laws of Physics, perhaps). Everything was created through him(Christ) and for him(Christ)." It wasn't as entertainment, it was a beautiful gift of love to his Son.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.