By FRANS de WAAL on animal cognition (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 17, 2016, 15:17 (3141 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You ridiculed the idea that it took bacteria 3 billion years to implement the drive to complexity, and waiting for the right conditions was no excuse, and then you went on to tell us that God waited 3 billion years to implement the drive to complexity because he waited until conditions were right!-Of course He had to wait for the right conditions to evolve. He appears to use evolutionary processes, and bacteria have never had to evolve. They survive just fine, while preparing the Earth for us more advanced creatures.
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> DAVID (under “Tree of Life”) A rocky Earth had to be prepared to be fertile Earth to give us plants as a major source of energy. This 3+ billion years of preparation for the multicellular seems like a good plan for me. God, after all, has all the time He wants.
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> dhw: Agreed, but that does not tell us whether God controlled all the environmental factors or left them to chance, and it does not mean he could not have given cells/cell communities the intelligence to do their own inventing. Like God himself, they could hardly have produced their innovations until conditions were right.-Yes, onboard instructions are certainly possible with guidelines.-> dhw: I just don't see how the weaverbird's nest and the monarch's migration and the duck-billed platypus and every extinct species, lifestyle and natural wonder, and every shift in the balance of nature since the year dot were all geared to the production and feeding of humans.-Everyone has to eat in a hierarchy for the energy to survive. Remember the lion is the 'king of the jungle'.