Life's biologic complexity: Automatic molecular actions (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 03, 2016, 00:28 (2913 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Two possibilities: 1) what perishes and what survives is a matter of luck, in which case God cannot be said to have had what you earlier called “tight control” of evolution. 2) If God had “tight control” of evolution, he must have planned the extinctions, so why do you keep reminding me that the “proper theory” is bad luck? Once again, the bad luck theory fits in perfectly with the free-for-all theory.

I am not using the word 'luck' as you are. Raup's bad luck concept viewed extinctions as the cause of the massive loss of species, not their fault as they were doing fine until the asteroid hit. This approach does not look at species competition as the cause for the disappearance of species, but sudden changes in environment they cannot prepare for in time to survive. You sort of state this below:

dhw: Each species lives or dies by its own autonomous ability to cope with the environment. If your God preprogrammed or personally dabbled speciation and organized the environmental changes, he would have known which organisms would survive and which would not, so he preprogrammed or dabbled the inadequacies. If he did not know, then you are back to the luck theory, which does not support the concept of a “careful plan”.

That paragraph makes no sense to me in the way I view 'luck'. God is in total control. It is the organism who is 'unlucky', not prepared for what God throws at him. God knows exactly what is happening at all times. There were six major extinctions, several with up to 90% loss of species. Each time afterward evolution resumed with new forms, think dinosaurs to us.

DAVID: Remember all early species have been replaced by now more advanced species until we arrived. Not a free-for-all but a careful plan. Just as reasonable.

dhw: All early species have not been replaced by more advanced species. Bacteria are still with us. And what makes you think that the duckbilled platypus is more advanced than the tyrannosaurus? What is your criterion for the term “advanced”? Yes, uniquely self-conscious humans are here.

You are right about bacteria. Simple organisms are more adaptable than more complex organisms to environmental change. Bacteria have the capacity to adapt to any environment; extremophiles show that. But the platypus is more complex than the dinos and was on the way to us, and the dinos weren't.

dhw: And maybe they are the result of a divine dabble. However, I’m surprised you still cannot see that if the extinction of 99% of all species may have been bad luck (the “proper theory”), evolution could not have been carefully planned.

Perhaps you understand my interpretation of Raup now. God guided evolution and extinctions were one of His methods of control. I'm using Raup for my conclusions. I don't know his religious felings if any.