Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 22, 2016, 13:21 (2893 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So please explain why God had to design its complex nest (as opposed to a simple nest) to enable life to go on so that humans could develop? “Freewheeling” is, of course, precisely what I am suggesting - the process whereby organisms autonomously organize their own restructuring (as well as lifestyles and wonders), in contrast to the tight control you have previously ascribed to your God. Please tell us what mechanism you think enabled some species to freewheel off course in spite of God’s tight control, and what changes you think God made to enable them to produce humans.

DAVID: My freewheeling mechanism is a theoretical form of an inventive mechanism which we have discussed as a possibility to explain the bush of life.

Freewheeling (a new term in our discussions) can only mean that organisms are able to organize their own evolution (and lifestyles and wonders) independently of any preprogramming, and this can only happen if they have the “intelligence” to work out their own ways of coping with or exploiting the environment. This autonomous inventive mechanism (my term for it) does indeed explain the bush of life, still allowing for the possibility of a God who dabbles when he wants to.

DAVID: The bush supplies the necessary food source for life to continue until humans appeared. Remember evolution took about 3.6 billion years to reach the human form. Evolution never went off course. Humans are here.

It was you who used the term “off course”: “…if it goes off course it is directed back to the purpose of producing humans.” The bush supplies the necessary food source for life to continue. This is true, and would still be true if there were no humans.

David’s comment (re dead baby turtles): A very clear example of how ecosystems work and provide food for all layers of life. Without these ecosystems food energy supplies would disappear and life would cease.
dhw: Yes indeed. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the production of humans, and if humans were to disappear from the planet, there would still be “balance of nature” so long as there is life.
DAVID: Already explained. Evolution takes a long time to reach humans. Balance of nature is needed all the time for food energy, humans or no humans, but humans arrived and needed the energy for evolution to get here. Your point is totally off the point.

Humans arrived, and so did the whale and the weaverbird's nest and the monarch butterfly. You think your God dabbled to get to all of them, but once again your “balance of nature” means nothing more than the fact that life continues, with or without humans. The fact that we appeared after a long time instead of a short time (though all is relative!)does not mean that all forms of life, lifestyles and natural wonders were specially designed (and then 99% destroyed) for the sake of continuing life in order to produce humans.