By FRANS de WAAL on animal cognition (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 19, 2016, 13:26 (2922 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.-dhw: 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: Whoa! Don't you realize all the work that bacteria do is still necessary?
-I have reproduced the whole of our exchange, to show that this response is a complete non sequitur! Whether God “guided” evolution or gave organisms the intelligence to direct it themselves, evolution could not take place until conditions were right. It is therefore absurd to suggest that the drive to complexity or improvement should have manifested itself earlier if organisms were in charge of their own evolution.-dhw: 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.
DAVID: As He fine-tuned the universe, I would think all the attributes of "Rare Earth & Privileged Planet" apply as signs of his guidance.-So God organized every environmental change throughout the history of evolution?-DAVID: Everyone has to eat in a hierarchy for the energy to survive. Remember the lion is the 'king of the jungle'.
dhw: 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).
DAVID: I think you have got it just right. You can take tongue out of cheek.-I can only say again that I fully understand why you feel like “Thru the Looking Glass”.