First multicellularity: algae (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, May 14, 2016, 11:07 (2897 days ago) @ David Turell

As these posts are getting longer and longer and increasingly repetitive, I am telescoping them and will try to bring the issues into sharper focus.
For argument's sake, I have accepted that God may have started life and invented the mechanisms for evolution. There are, however, two points at issue between David and me: 1) David insists that organisms are incapable of organizing themselves. Prime example to illustrate all the problems: the weaverbird's nest. 2) David insists that God's purpose was to produce and feed humans. My objection: why would God take the trouble to “guide” the weaverbird if what he wanted was to produce/feed humans? David agrees that the nest is one of the countless examples of phenomena that are not “critical to the scheme”. However, all the weird wonders create a balance in Nature, whereby all organisms that survive have something to eat. (I am reproducing the arguments. Whether they cohere is another matter, and David will no doubt correct any errors.) David believes evolution develops through a “drive to complexity”.
 
I have proposed an alternative: God set up the mechanism for evolution whereby organisms are capable of organizing themselves (the intelligent cell), and all the weird wonders are the consequence of their individual efforts to survive and/or improve (“drive for improvement”). God may occasionally have dabbled. David objects because he believes all cellular behaviour is automatic, having been preprogrammed by God. That is the first point to be covered here: -DAVID: God's instructions set up the chemical cascades and feedback loops. Those reactions are all automatic, following no instructions in present time.-Billy Bacterium faces a brand new problem. According to you, God has set up instructions (to cover a few billion years - “no instructions in present time”), whereby Billy unthinkingly cascades and loops into the right solution. Shapiro and Co. think Billy works out the solution for himself because he is intelligent. And where do you think an atheist researcher - there are bound to be a few - would believe the instructions (if any) came from?-DAVID: Your proposal that organisms try somehow to improve implies purposeful behavior. -Of course. Does Billy Bacterium adapt for no reason? Do animals, birds, insects build their shelters, hunt their prey, flee their enemies without knowing what they're doing? This is the basis for speculating that their sense of purpose may go beyond that of survival. Some animals use tools to improve their chances of success. It's all purposeful behaviour.
 
DAVID: If living organisms are driven to various forms of complexity, it explains the bush of life, the weirdness of whales, and our eventual arrival. Anything that works and can survive, does.-Agreed. But this does not explain why God “guided” the weaverbird to build its nest (one example among millions) as part of his plan to produce humans. Your problem escalates from now onhw: I don't see why even in your scenario God would try to complexify organisms just for the sake of it.
DAVID: In order to drive evolution to the most complex of all, humans.
Add this to:
DAVID: Complexify and see what variations are better and survive. Makes God's work easier.-So either 1) God began the process of evolution without a clue where it was heading, or 2) He began the process of evolution wanting to produce humans, but did not have a clue how to do it. Every weird wonder (complexification) is an open-ended experiment to see which variations are better, and the more complexities he produces, the easier it becomes for him to work out how to produce humans? Where's all the planning you keep talking about? He's groping in the dark! On to the next anomaly:
	
DAVID: …I think the process of life is very inventive (we don't know how) but the weird species are everywhere. 
Dhw: What is this “process of life”? It sounds as if you are now suggesting that the process of life works independently of your God's plans and instructions.-DAVID: Correct. […]-Then he didn't “guide” the weaverbird to build its nest, and he is not in control (except for the occasional dabble), in which case he must have given organisms the means to complexify of their own accord. Enter the intelligent cell. Thank you.-Your Theory One: since organisms are incapable of organizing themselves, God personally “guided” all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders to create a balance of Nature in order to produce/feed humans. Your Theory Two: he doesn't guide them because they act independently of his plans and instructions, creating a vast higgledy-piggledy array of complexities which sometimes lead to improvements and sometimes don't, but he watches to see which ones “are better and survive”, because a higgledy-piggledy collection of complexities makes his work easier. And that is how he fulfilled his purpose to create humans.
 
Am I the only one who finds this confusing?