Why sex evolved; no one knows (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 28, 2016, 21:18 (3068 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: God provided a drive to complexity, which is what evolution shows.
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> dhw: But he could have provided a drive to complexity in the form of individual intelligences working out their own means of survival and/or improvement (which clearly entailed increased complexity), as opposed to your excruciatingly complicated 3.8-billion-year programme and/or dabbling.-Complexity requires mental planning. What did your version of God put into your supposed cell intelligence to provide the ability for speciation? I expect you cannot answer.
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> dhw: If you can't find one [a reason], perhaps you will consider the possibility that he did NOT specially design the nest, but gave the weaverbird and all its fellow miracle-workers the means of devising their own wonders. 
> DAVID: I still doubt that. Somehow He helped them design the nest.
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> dhw: You can't think of a reason why he would want to design it, and you don't know how he “helped”, but you doubt that he could have provided the weaverbird with the intelligence to do it. Why?-Easy. God is in control in my version of theistic evolution.
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> DAVID: Why don't you like His obvious method? Because you like your way of doing things which is logical. God's logic, from the evidence is to complexify and scattergun resultant creatures.
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> dhw: That fits in with my hypothesis and not yours! If your God preprogrammed or dabbled the weaverbird's nest or different forms of hominin, it was NOT scattergun. It's only scattergun if your God leaves organisms to do their own inventing.-The h-p bush looks scattergun. Why not think God did it on His own? He would have to pre-program intelligent organisms which is quite a complicated approach compared to direct action by Him. Dabble always is a possibility.
 
> dhw: You quite rightly (in my view) spend a great deal of time asking how the complexities and wonders of life could possibly have come about by chance. How would you react if our atheist friends told you that was your problem? If they and you can't make sense of your own hypotheses, that may be because those hypotheses are wrong!-All hypotheses are unproven guesses based on what is observed, nothing more, nothing written in stone. Again, what God does may not fit human logic. Until we discover how speciation works, and we may never if it is a result of God's direct action (Saltation), then our hypotheses are moot..