Biological complexity:how toxoplasmosis parastizes (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 29, 2016, 11:26 (2917 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Another alternative: God programmed kitties to present the proper immunity info to the toxies and invited them in for beneficial reasons not apparent to us now. The why cats only (?) is itself a mystery. Pregnancy and immune deficiency are the only bad side effects for humans. So far this defies theological theories.

dhw: A lovely response! I reckon it applies to all the natural wonders, including my favourite nest. I like your “so far” too, which fits in nicely with the Dawkins-Turell sequence above. Of course, I can offer you a theological theory, but I know you don’t want to hear it.

DAVID: I like to hear your theological theories benighted as they often are.

As for the weaverbird, so too for the toxy. The theory: your God gave life to the first cells, and with life he gave them an intelligence that enabled them to work out their own ways of coping with (= adaptation) AND exploiting (= innovation) the changing environmental conditions that all the different regions of the Earth have undergone. This explains why, over thousands of millions of years, so many species and so many natural wonders have come and, in most cases, gone. Occasionally, he may have intervened to change the course of the great ongoing spectacle.

Benighted? Yes, of course. None of us know how life originated and diversified. And if there is a God, none of us know what he is like or how he works. We CAN only theorize.