By FRANS de WAAL on animal cognition (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, April 16, 2016, 09:19 (3142 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Nobody knows why multicellularity appeared. Why did your God wait 3 billion years to do his complexifications? Do please answer.
DAVID: Waiting for enough oxygen is one answer. High levels took a long time to appear, and God seems to like evolutionary processes. 
dhw: And yet on Wednesday you wrote: “The Cambrian is an extreme jump in complexity, more than the wait for enough oxygen can be used as an excuse that 'the conditions were not right'.” So it's OK for God to hang around till conditions are right, but it's no excuse for Baccy & Co not acting sooner. It also suggests that God had no control over the environment (“waiting…took a long time to appear”)…-DAVID: Let me help you follow my reasoning: God uses evolution of everything, as the universe obviously evolved. Then life appeared and evolved. Then environmental conditions for life evolved and complexity appeared. BUT complexity was never required, per our view of bacteria. The required impetus for complexity comes with planning. Only a mind can plan. Simple.-I'm sure every atheist would agree that the universe evolved, and life appeared and evolved, and the environment kept changing, and life evolved and complexity appeared. But you have always told us that God deliberately created the universe, fine-tuned it so that he could create human beings, and then guided every step of evolution (you're not sure whether he ”guided” the environment - better not dwell on that), as well as every lifestyle and natural wonder, all for the sake of producing and /or feeding humans. As for complexification, the required impetus comes with the will for improvement plus the necessary conditions; it is the implementation of that “will” that requires what you call planning, and I have suggested that your God may have given cells the “mind” to accomplish it. And I'm sorry, but your reasoning still doesn't explain why it's OK for God to hang around for 3 billion years waiting for the right conditions, but it's not OK for my buddies the bacteria. 
 
dhw: What you do not accept is that organisms may have autonomous, inventive minds (perhaps designed by your God).
DAVID: Your invention to help you balance on the fence.-My hypothesis offers a cohesive explanation of the course of evolution, unlike your own invention of divinely preprogrammed or personally organized innovations and lifestyles and natural wonders inexplicably linked to the production and/or feeding of humans.
 
dhw: Because he “seems to like evolutionary processes”. Having fun? Got distracted? Didn't know where it was heading? I know, I know, we shouldn't ask such questions.
DAVID: Evolutionary processes, yes. Your questions, not mine.-He likes the evolutionary processes, so - yet again - how does that explain why he creates the duck-billed platypus, guides the monarch to its destination, and instructs the weaverbird on how to build its nest so that humans can arrive and be fed? It just doesn't make sense, does it?