Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, December 23, 2016, 12:24 (2892 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID (under “big brain”): Whales came into existence under God's guidance. That is all I really believe. The rest is theory. I have repeated over and over God used an evolutionary process so pre-whales and pre-humans had to occur first.
dhw: But you cannot explain WHY your God specially designed pre-whales and pre-homos in order to produce sapiens. That is the part of your theory I am questioning. Previously you have admitted that you are puzzled by it. So why not consider the possibility that there is a less puzzling explanation: namely, that he did not specially design them, but that evolution “freewheeled” (your very own expression), apart from when he might occasionally have dabbled? Then the puzzle disappears.
DAVID: You don't like my answer of balance of nature in which the major thrust is the need for energy/food for the evolutionary organisms to cover 3.6 billion years of time for life to survive. But that is perfectly logical whether humans arrive or not, evolution goes on.

I do like this answer, although it has nothing to do with the puzzle I have outlined above. Indeed, it is an observation which I have repeatedly made myself and which is well worth repeating, as in the next exchange.

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.
dhw: 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: Ah, here you place the emphasis in the right place. Balance of nature is energy supply so evolution can continue for billions of years, humans or not.

Yes indeed. Life needs energy, and life has gone on for billions of years, irrespective of humans. So let’s forget about your God specially designing whales and nests and migratory lifestyles to keep life going for the sake of producing humans, and let’s forget about “off course” as if God started out with one intention in mind. Thank you for finally abandoning all attempts to link “balance of nature” with special design and the arrival of humans.

dhw: […] 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.
DAVID: We've got the food issue settled. Why it took so long and evolution had to occur is what history tells us. God did not use immediate creation, although religions think He could have. Perhaps this is the only way for human creation to happen.

Yes, we’ve settled the food issue, which has nothing to do with the production of humans. And yes, history tells us that evolution occurred (but not that it had to occur). And if God exists, then clearly he must have set the process of evolution in motion. And the higgledy-piggledy bush suggests that, apart from the occasional dabble, he may well have allowed it to “freewheel” – an expression introduced by my good friend David Turell, to replace my own rather more cumbersome expression of “use their (perhaps God-given) autonomous inventive mechanism”. Or (theistic alternatives) he may simply have kept experimenting, or humans were an afterthought. Whichever way, the process of evolution eventually eliminated 99% of species but produced humans, and whales, and the duckbilled platypus, and the monarch butterfly, and the weaverbird’s nest. I hope that’s a fair summary.