By FRANS de WAAL on animal cognition (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 18, 2016, 14:05 (3140 days ago) @ David Turell

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!
DAVID: 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.-Of course single-celled organisms had to wait for the right conditions before organizing themselves into more advanced creatures. And cell communities appear to use evolutionary processes. And even your God didn't transform ALL existing single-celled organisms into more advanced creatures. What applies to your hypothesis applies equally to mine.-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.
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.
DAVID: Yes, onboard instructions are certainly possible with guidelines.-Not much difference between instructions and guidelines. A huge difference between them and an autonomous inventive mechanism, which of course cannot operate until conditions are right. And we still don't know if your hypothesis entails God controlling all the environmental changes or leaving them to chance.
 
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.
DAVID: Everyone has to eat in a hierarchy for the energy to survive. Remember the lion is the 'king of the jungle'.-Ah, so God specially created all the different species (broad sense), lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct in order to feed whatever was king of the jungle at the time. Actually, bacteria eat everything, including us, so I guess that makes them permanent kings of the jungle. However, I think we can say with some certainty that if there wasn't enough energy for life to survive, life would not survive. And if it hadn't survived all the comings and goings of the last 3.8 billion years, we and the weaverbird and the duck-billed platypus and even bacteria would not be here. What survives survives, and what does not survive does not survive. Which apparently proves that God specially designed the weaverbird's nest for the sake of us humans. No wonder you “feel like Thru the Looking Glass” (Wednesday 13 April).