Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:41 (2655 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: We agree that the complexity and coordination require intelligence. Why is it obvious that this must be in the form of a divine, undiscovered 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme or the direct intervention of your God?
DAVID: Because a rocky initial Earth has no provision to provide intelligence when life started.

That is why I keep repeating that your God may have provided organisms with the intelligence to complexify and coordinate. Why is it obvious that he did not do so, and that their complexification and coordination were only possible through divine preprogramming and/or dabbling? Or is it obvious? Our next exchange illustrates the constantly shifting patterns of your thinking:

dhw: You now appear to have accepted that the mechanism is free to make its own changes, i.e. that it is autonomous, intelligent and inventive (though your God can dabble if wants to). Thank you. In return, I concede that we do not know the extent of its inventive capabilities. That is why my explanation of evolution’s history is a hypothesis.
DAVID: Something or someone created the existing complexity. I still insist the planning has to be at the level of a brilliant mind.

So please explain how an organism can be “free” to make its own changes (which God either approves or rejects), without having its own autonomous inventive intelligence to make changes?

dhw: There is nothing tentative about the free-for-all spectacle: your God creates a show of changing environments and life forms, the unpredictability of which is integral to the entertainment (think sport, literature, cinema). Maybe humans, the most unpredictable of all species, were dabbled. The point is that this scenario does not require us to tie ourselves in knots trying to explain why your God specifically designed different pre-whales, the monarch’s lifestyle, the weaverbird’s nest, and the parasite that gets pooped by the starling so that it can zombify the pill bug so that the pill bug gets eaten by the starling so that life can go on so that humans can evolve.
DAVID: You may be tied in knots; I am not. God works by evolving things, the universe, plants and animals. Evolution under God creates complexity in an ever increasing manner, and is set up to provide a balance in nature, supplying food for all.

You forgot to mention that you think the whole process was geared to the production of humans. I agree that if God exists, he must have set up the process of evolution, and of course the advance from bacteria entails increasing complexity. However, evolution has not provided a balance in nature supplying food for all, because 99% of species have gone extinct. Or do you merely mean God designed all the species (broad sense), lifestyles and wonders so that there would be enough food for all those for whom there would be enough food (and therefore not enough for all those for whom there would not be enough)? The balance of nature has constantly shifted and continues to shift, largely because there is not enough food for all. But do please untie the knots for me through just one simple example, and explain once and for all what you see as the logical connection between your God’s personal design of the weaverbird’s nest and the provision of “food for all” so that humans could evolve.