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

by dhw, Sunday, December 18, 2016, 13:39 (2897 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So once again: why do you think God took so much trouble over trying to perfect the whale when all he wanted was humans? And please don’t say “balance of nature”, which you have agreed means nothing more than life goes on, without or without humans.

DAVID: Don't slough off balance of nature. It is essential as a requirement for an energy requirement for life to continue.

Yes, it means nothing more than life goes on, with or without humans. That does not explain why a God whose purpose was to produce humans took so much trouble trying to perfect the whale or – if I may return to my favourite example of your great evolutionary non sequitur – teaching the weaverbird how to build its nest.

dhw: So maybe his aim was not simply to produce humans. Maybe his aim was to allow his initial mechanism to produce a vast variety of life forms, and pre-whales worked out their own step-by-step improvements. Humans may have been an afterthought. Or maybe he just kept experimenting in the hope of coming up with a fully conscious mind like his own (just as our robot-makers are trying to do).

DAVID: He certainly did come up with conscious beings, His obvious purpose.

dhw: I am not doubting the fact that humans are here. So are the duckbilled platypus and the weaverbird’s nest. The afterthought/experiment hypotheses allow for your God’s deliberate production of humans, while also explaining the vast variety of life forms extinct and extant which were and are irrelevant to the creation of humans and which cause you such puzzlement. What are your objections to these two theistic hypotheses?

DAVID: I still prefer a freewheeling drive to complexity theory and the absolute need for a balance of nature to supply energy.

I like “freewheeling” – in contrast to your previous claims that God is in total control. And yes, life needs energy if it is to go on. Neither of these observations precludes the notion that God might have created humans as an afterthought, or might have experimented in his quest to produce a creature with consciousness like his own. Both hypotheses explain the higgledy-piggledy history of life on Earth.