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

by dhw, Thursday, December 15, 2016, 16:53 (2900 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Why did pre-whales enter the water? Are you telling us that your God made them do so just because he wanted them to be more complex?
DAVID: The purpose is complexity.
dhw: And what is the purpose of complexity?
DAVID: The most complex of all, producing humans.

So God had to make the pre-whale more and more complex in order to produce humans. And even you can’t understand why:
DAVID: Why whales still puzzles me, but we have to accept they evolved somehow. I can still ask, why?

Yes, we do have to accept that they and mosquitoes and the duckbilled platypus evolved somehow, and the weaverbird somehow built its nest, and the monarch somehow got to its destination etc., and it is really puzzling that God had to do all this just to produce humans. And yes, you can still ask why. But what I mustn’t ask is whether perhaps God might have gone about things differently from the way you say he did.

Dhw: My reference to the possibility that pre-whales might have returned to land was not to changes but to the fact that they didn’t have to decide all of a sudden that they would become aquatic. Whereas if I’ve understood you correctly, you think God fiddled around with them on land and then suddenly pushed them into the water already fully equipped for aquatic life, because he wanted them to be more complex (and later to be more complex).
DAVID: That is exactly what I think. Your statement "the fact that they didn’t have to decide all of a sudden" is false. The gaps in phenotype tell us 'sudden'. No transitional itty-bitty forms.

Perhaps I didn't make my point clear: that the changes would only have taken place once pre-whales had opted for life in the water, whereas you insist that the changes took place before they entered the water.

dhw: The remainder of my post did not expand on the same approach. I was surprised that you “seem to think that the changes are all perfectly feasible if your God wanted pre-whales to be more complex for the sake of being more complex, whereas they are not feasible if your God gave pre-whales the means to make their own changes once they discovered how to improve their way of life.” This is a major issue between us in our (theistic) interpretation of life’s history.
DAVID: A major issue that will continue. Your theistic approach comes from a basis of non-belief, so you strain to find a reason for approaching a plan God might have. I recognize your honest attempt at being an agnostic, but I see your theological thinking as very biased when you try it on, but I don't see it as a fault, just uncertainty.

Yes, I strain to find a reason why evolution has taken this particular course, and that reason must allow for the existence of God. You have admitted that my own scenario accounts for all the facts we know about life’s history. Yours, on the other hand, leaves you “puzzled”, because you can’t fit the facts to your version of the history. I really don’t think you can blame my agnosticism for the flaws in your hypothesis.