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

by David Turell , Thursday, December 15, 2016, 20:45 (2900 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Why whales still puzzles me, but we have to accept they evolved somehow. I can still ask, why?

dhw: 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.

No, certainly ask. But I don't accept your theistic theories as sated previously.

dhw: 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.

The whale series has eight or nine forms, the first of which prepared them for the water. Later forms were fully aquatic. God's stepwise control.

David: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[/i].

dhw: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.

I don't see my puzzlement as a flaw. The whale series is a testament to God's inventiveness. I have to presume it is God's way of providing top predators for a balance of nature in the oceans.