First multicellularity: algae (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, May 15, 2016, 20:56 (3112 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: It is the dislocation between the arguments (which you have left out) that I was drawing attention to. God guiding the weaverbird has nothing to do with the intention to produce/feed humans, and the fact that all surviving organisms must have something to eat is another non sequitur, since humans do not need to eat the weaverbird's nest.-Of course it relates. The lifestyle of the weavers has them raise chicks in the nest. If humans hunt the weavers for food, or eat the predators of weavers it is all part of the pattern of food for all.-> DAVID: The atheists are seeing epigenetic modifications and are struggling with accepting it.
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> dhw: Accepting what? Do even your fellow theist researchers accept your theory that God implanted the first cells with instructions to enable bacteria to cope with every single problem for the next 3.8 billion years and onwards?-It is my impression that theistic research accepts my automatic molecular response theory, and they think God guided evolution or created per Tony. I don't anyone (theistic) thinks bacteria contain the code for every problem from the beginning. That is your extrapolation of my comments. As for atheistic struggles with epigenetics review the following article:-http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1894 (no room for excerpts)
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> dhw: I have said explicitly that for the sake of argument I accept your premise that God gave it to them, because this discussion concerns how evolution works. Not did God do it or not, but did God guide organisms, or did he give them the means to guide themselves?-I think some of both. Again thinking of Epigenetics ( guppies and size changes).-> dhw: If the bird has the intelligence to design something so complex, where can you draw the line?... The nest is the start of the slippery slope towards God giving organisms the means (intelligence) to innovate autonomously, thus creating the higgledy-piggledy bush.-You are mixing up my approach. The nest is not the bush. The bush is strange body forms (whale, platypus) and the nest is a form of lifestyle. -> 
> DAVID: A drive to complexity is a force, not an intellectual choice. Evolution is driven.
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> dhw: If your drive to complexity is “free-ranging”, as you suggest in your protozoa post, you now appear to agree that organisms organize their own complexities (innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders) except when God dabbles. -Not what I am proposing. Free-ranging refers to phenotype only, which in some cases will lead to strange lifestyles as a secondary effect.
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> dhw: so let's pose the question directly: do you believe God “guided” every innovation (structural change), lifestyle (the monarch's migratory pattern) and natural wonder (the weaverbird's nest) - all are complex in their different ways - or do you believe he gave organisms the ability to organize their own “free-ranging” complexities independently of any plans and instructions, other than when he dabbled?-Based on a structuralism approach, God may have put in the evolutionary process a mechanism for increasingly complex structural changes, which would allow the development of a range of different lifestyles. I'm not a deist. God watches all of it. I'm inclined to think if the complexification mechanism is made thorough enough, it would result in His dabbling more at the lifestyle level, since the resulting organisms need guidance.