First multicellularity: algae (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 17, 2016, 12:03 (3110 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:Multiply these examples by the 99% of all species (extinct) which we couldn't have eaten anyway. Cohesive argument? 
DAVID: Cohesive when you finally accept that the balance of nature is of prime importance… -Prime importance to whom? You seem to regard whatever happened in the past as balanced. So 99% of species perished, but nature was balanced for the remaining 1%. Yippee. It's only out of balance when humans change it and it's bad for humans.-dhw: You stated that God gave the instructions for bacteria to solve their problems, but not currently (“no instructions in present time”) - and so unless he kept popping in new instructions every time there was a new problem right up until now (an equally far-fetched scenario), he must have put them in at the beginning.
-DAVID: Yes. I think an ocean is an ocean from the beginning of life, and basically all the issues for bacteria have been handled from the beginning. Look at the extremophiles on land (later) and living at ocean bottom vents (earlier). Bacteria have the ability (God-given) to survive from the beginning of life.-Yes, they do, and that is my point. The world has changed a bit since the beginning of life, and bacteria have mastered every single change. So either God kept popping in new instructions (“Here you are guys: my manual on how to beat antibiotics”) or he issued them all 3.8 billion years ago. The only other possibility is that they work out the solutions for themselves. Ah!-dhw: Stark choice for you, using your own terms: does God “guide” every complexification (innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder) or do organisms do it autonomously apart from when he occasionally dabbles?-DAVID: I've agreed that God might have implanted a phenotype complexifier mechanism which operated on its own but under his watchful eye. -Hallelujah! Agreement at last. But it's not an autonomous inventive mechanism - it's an autonomous phenotype complexifier mechanism. I'll go for that. No problem with God watching (theistic version) - I've had him doing that all along, though perhaps for different reasons - as well as the possibility of the odd dabble. We have explained the higgledy-piggledy bush, and if we can just get somebody to find the mechanism, the Nobel Prize is ours! Just one more tiny niggleAVID: Remember, I've never known how much is implanted from the beginning and how much is dabble. There is no way of knowing at this stage of our knowledge.-What is “implanted”? A phenotype complexifier mechanism that operates on its own, operates on its own. That means it does not have instructions or guidelines “implanted”. Only the mechanism is “implanted”. Agreed? How much it does on its own and how much is dabbled we cannot know, but I'd just like to extend your ingenious new concept one stage further. I reckon that if organisms possess an autonomous phenotype complexifier mechanism intelligent enough to design new body forms and structures, it might even be intelligent enough to design a complicated nest. What do you think?