Darwin & Wallace (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 09, 2015, 12:11 (3331 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The balance of nature was needed so that they could eat, but when the balance of nature changed, they couldn't eat and so they died, which shows that they were all necessary for the balance of nature which was necessary for the production and feeding of humans, who arrived millions of years later. I'm afraid I still find it very confusing.
DAVID: Evolution advanced to humans because everyone along the way could eat. Not confusing. food supply is food supply.-And evolution advanced to the dead trilobite and triceratops, and the living wasp and spider, and the weaverbird's nest, and the duck-billed platypus, and we have no idea what else it will advance to in the next few billion years. The balance of nature provides food for them until it changes, and then food supply is no longer food supply and they disappear. 3.8 thousand million years of nature changing its balance - you can't tell us if God controlled that - and of millions of weird and wonderful creatures and lifestyles “guided” by God, appearing and disappearing, just to produce humans (not possible without dead trilobites and triceratops) and provide food for us (we can't eat without the weaverbird's nest or wasp eggs on a spider's back). My belief is beggared! -DAVID: Make it a semi-autonomous IM and it makes sense to me.
dhw: We'd need to define semi-autonomous in relation to the nature and degree of your God's participation, which you like to gloss over as “guidance”. But no matter how you define it, I'm glad you now appear to agree that we cannot know why God created an IM in the first place, and so it is “silly” to say his purpose was to produce humans.-DAVID: Your two thoughts don't follow logically. A semi-automatic IM has created all sorts of wonders of nature while guiding evolution to humans.-Alternative hypothesis: An autonomous IM (possibly designed by your God) has created all sorts of wonders of nature while guiding evolution to create parasitic wasps, nest-building weaverbirds,the duck-billed platypus and humans plus xyz times millions, leaving behind trilobites and triceratops plus xyz times millions. (And if we can't read God's mind, it's still "silly" to claim you know his intention for designing the IM.)
 
DAVID: And pre-planning takes a role in this if you have noted my latest article about algae.-Alternative hypothesis: The autonomous IM (possibly designed by your God) within the algae found a way of adjusting itself to life on land and to forming a symbiotic relationship with the fungus. That is how intelligence works: it either finds ways to adapt or it dies. And that is how evolution works, as intelligent cells cooperate with one another to adapt or to create new forms.