More about how evolution works: multicellularity (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 02, 2016, 18:10 (2941 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: So I ask why else he might be hidden. Perhaps he’s lost interest? Or perhaps he’s watching and occasionally secretly dabbling because he enjoys the ever-changing spectacle, which includes humans. Why is this hypothesis less believable and more of a supposition than yours, and what aspects do not fit in with the history of life as we know it?

The issue you have raised is whether there is a personal God or not. Many folks in this country approach their belief from this standpoint. Adler thought the chance was 50/50 in the issue of hearing and acting on prayers. But Adler actually believed in God and was not concerned about how personal He appeared to be. The Muslim religion says you find Him through the magnitude of His works. The Christians point to Jesus as God's direct intervention. Your agnostic suppositions are not found in any mainstream religious thought. But you are allowed to make up any stream of consciousness suppositions you want to satisfy your role on the fence. Why would God bother to invent a universe and life unless He was very interested in how it all goes?

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dhw: So although your God was in tight control of, say, Chixculub, and ensured that only pre-pre-pre-pre-humans were adequate to survive, did he lose his tight control of the organisms you described as “inadequate for the stress”? Or did he deliberately (tight control) make them “inadequate for the stress”? Or were Chicxculub and its consequences out of his control after all?

Once again, organisms were adequate until challenges changed, and God might well have controlled all of it. There is no way of telling any further.

DAVID: ...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:Of course both occurred. And you have given your God tight control of both. So once again: how come he designed some organisms that were “adequate” and others that were “inadequate" for the stress of the bad? Or are you now going to scoot back to Raup’s “bad luck” and say goodbye to God’s “tight control”? Your next comment shows that you well aware of your problem:

I have n o problem. You keep twisting the scenario. Animals are adequate until they are inadequate. They are never designed as inadequate . That occurs when their stresses change.

DAVID: All I have raised is the possibility that God did have careful control of the environment. I have no proof, but suspect He had controls in place.

dhw: You didn’t raise it. I pointed out the contradictions in your evolutionary scenario and tried to pin you down so that we could iron them out. You came down on the side of God “under tight control”. Now you say it was possible. Just a suspicion. Therefore it was also possible that he was not in tight control. And so once again you are stuck with all the contradictions I have listed in my “fair enough” comment.

I see no contradictions. I take what I see and reach my conclusions. You have the right to disagree

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dhw: For some reason you are fixated on need, although you acknowledge that there was no need for evolution to progress beyond bacteria. I thought I’d already made it clear that I have added the drive (desire, if you like) for improvement to the need for survival, and that explains why multicellularity led to organisms (cells) combining in different ways to create new forms of life. This drive and its mechanisms may have been planted by your God at the start of life, instead of him planting billions of different programmes (some adequate and some inadequate) to be switched on whenever the environment accidentally changed or he deliberately changed it – whichever view you favour on any particular day!

Need is not desire. Survival of bacteria, as you admit, is guaranteed. Why multicellularity is a question you can't answer, unless you admit to purpose, which you refuse to do. The human purpose answers the question.