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

by David Turell , Monday, December 19, 2016, 18:35 (2896 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Yes, freewheeling, but if it goes off course it is directed back to the purpose of producing humans. God is watching and in final control at all times.

dhw: This is a strange development. I ought to welcome it, because it tells us that your God gave organisms the ability you have so long denied – namely to organize their own evolution. But if freewheeling had to serve his purpose of producing humans, you have a problem, unless you truly believe that God dabbled to ensure that the pre-whale, the migrating monarch and the nest-building weaverbird came back on course to produce humans – a connection which even you find puzzling. How about the dinosaurs? Did they freewheel unprogrammed and undabbled into their own existence, and then God chucked Chicxulub at them because they were off course?

Not strange. Gerald Schroeder actually proposed your scenario about the dinos and Chicxulub! Perhaps tongue in cheek. I still think a drive to complexity explains the bush of life best of all. And not life much is off course but is providing an energy given balance of nature which is an absolute underlying requirement for life to continue its evolutionary process. Explained by my interpretation, I find nothing puzzling, so much as viewing the whale series as a waste of energy in invention. They might be needed as top predators, but sharks are really top predators and they never needed all the physiological permutations as whales did. So I'm sticking with the drive for complexity as the best theoretical explanation.