More about how evolution works: multicellularity (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 01, 2016, 17:51 (2726 days ago) @ dhw

We are currently running interrelated discussions in different posts, so we may as well put them all together.

dhw: I think my theistic hypothesis deserves to be taken seriously for its reasoning, not rejected because I am neither a believer nor a disbeliever.
DAVID: I've never seen a discussion in books on religion that describe God's purpose as you do. Any references?

dhw: Caught me! Offhand, no, and I don’t have time to do the research, but I have no doubt that it’s because of my ignorance and not because no-one’s ever before had the idea that your God might have created the world out of curiosity, experimentation, or for his own entertainment. .....What aspects of my evolutionary hypothesis and of my teleological hypothesis do not fit in with the history of life as we know it?

Well, I've read some books on religion's view of God's role and the idea of 'his own entertainment' has never appeared. His state of purpose is an interpretation of his mind which cannot be derived from the history of evolution, except as a human supposition. The usual purpose is to create humans out of love and be a loving God.

DAVID: Good review of possibilities. I come down on the side of God under tight control.

dhw: Fair enough. So God was in tight control of all the environmental changes you previously described as accidental, and the extinction of organisms had nothing to do with Raup’s “bad luck” – as previously explained by you – but was tightly controlled by your God, and he ensured that certain organisms were inadequate to cope with the changes, in contrast to your earlier claim that he did not create inadequate organisms.

He did not create inadequate organisms. On the contrary, at the time they existed they were perfectly adequate, but not for changes that appeared later on. That is obvious, and you seem to be twisting that understanding of evolution from the standpoint of how God acted. Both types of changes occurred, i.e., oxygen good, Chicxulub, bad, and had different effects.

dhw:I’m glad all that has been straightened out. Perhaps, though, to prevent future confusion, you would just confirm that in all these cases, tight control is now your belief.

All I have raised is the possibility that God did have careful control of the environment. I have n o proof, but suspect He had controls in place.

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dhw: I regard innovations such as the senses, sexual reproduction, brains etc. as improvements. You may disagree. Of course such things involve greater complexity. However, I have no idea why your God or organisms themselves should create complexity for no reason other than complexity.

DAVID: Answer, the only road to humans is increasing complexity.

dhw: The only road to the duckbilled platypus is also increasing complexity. The only road to every single multicellular organism you can think of is increasing complexity, since life is believed to have begun with single cells. That doesn’t mean that they evolved because they or God wanted them to be more complex just for the sake of being more complex. Instead of them all saying, “I wanner be more complex so one day I might be a human”, I suggest they might have said, “I wanner try adding this bit to see if I can improve my way of life.”

We simply continue to have different interpretations. You have never justified the complexity appearing after bacteria. I again ask, why bother? You have not demonstrated a 'need' for it to happen, only 'desire' in your current statement.