By FRANS de WAAL: refuted (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 20:20 (2716 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I should have said pre-ordained, just as your statement does.

dhw: Does this mean your God organized every advance in our culture(s)? Every religion, every art, every language, every bomb – all preordained? Where does pre-ordaining end and free will begin?

You are playing word games. My 'preordained' simply means that with our giant brain the advances had to occur through humans developng use of that brain.

dhw: I assume you believe that humans are an “improvement” over bacteria. The only reason you have given for the millions of other unrelated complexities is “balance of life”, which you agree simply means life continues. The futility of that argument is exemplified by our next exchange.

Twisting meaning again. Balance supplies energy for life to continue evolving, nothing more.

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DAVID: And I have no idea how the weaverbird nest was invented, but since I accept God, I have an answer.

dhw: Not “how”. You have told us that God must have designed it, because it’s too complex for the stupid old weaverbird. The question is why, since you believe all such complexities were necessary to balance life so that humans could appear. No nest, no humans? It is perfectly possible to “accept God” and also accept that the weaverbird may have done its own designing.

Because balance requires a multiplicity of factors including apex predators:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/when-lions-abound-hyenas-pick-a-new-menu/?...

"For as long as there have been lions and spotted hyenas, the carnivores have competed with each other. The gore-flecked conflicts over carcasses on the African grassland are just the latest skirmishes in a carnivoran competition that has been going on since the Pleistocene.

***

"Clans of hyenas are capable of taking down prey as large as juvenile elephants as well as reducing carcasses to piles of splinters with their exceptionally powerful jaws. This combination of skills has allowed them to thrive in lands stalked by their Ice Age competitors. As Stéphanie Périquet and colleagues have found during a long-term study of hyenas in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, when too many lions are around the hyenas simply change what’s on the menu.

***

"The scavenging shift may be attributable to the way hyenas hunt. Hyenas are pretty noisy when taking down prey, Périquet and colleagues note, and this makes it all the easier for lions to find them and snatch their kills away. By traveling in smaller groups and hunting less, the Hwange National Park hyenas were able to go dark and avoid risking fights with enraged lions.

"And the change worked. The hyena population, Périquet and coauthors note, remained stable even as lions moved in. Hyenas didn’t go from apex predators to dangling at the bottom of the food chain. Their magnificent jaws offered them another option, giving them plenty of reason to laugh at those pushy lions."

Comment: As we've agreed, balance goes on and everyone gets the energy they need to survive and possibly evolve.

Xxxx
[ yes indeed, I am suggesting that just as other organisms are known to respond to needs by changing their own anatomy, our ancestors did the same.

We do not know that organisms do any more than minor adaptions on their own. You have overstated evolution theory.