Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 14, 2017, 21:47 (2870 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The zombie article doesn’t tell us how the parasite controls the bug’s behaviour. But maybe he was pleasantly surprised when he found that his efforts to get back into a starling made the bug behave as it does. And he then spread the good news to all his buddies, who simply accepted it as a useful pattern of behaviour.

Zombification is an effect on the brain, taking control. This means modifying neuronal outputs; not simple as in your supposition.

dhw: A built-in drive to complexity does not mean, as you claimed, that 99% of species are extinct because “evolution advances to the most complex survivors”. There are survivors at all levels of complexity. Or do you really believe that every living organism now on this planet is more complex than the dinosaurs?

The dinosaurs had very tiny brains. They were just very nasty lizards. the mammals are much more complex and much brighter.

DAVID: You are confusing the home the weaverbird lives in with the birds' place in natural balance. The nest has nothing to do with the arrival of humans. The bird lives in an eco-niche and happens to have an unexplained nest pattern. […]

dhw: You have missed the point. You insist that your God designed the nest. Your defence of your preprogramming/dabbling scenario is that he was balancing nature to provide “food for all” until humans came along. The nest is my prime example precisely because there is no way you can link it to the provision of food for all until humans could evolve. So what reason do you think your God had for designing it?

You have skipped over my point. The weaverbird has a place in an eco-niche as a living organism. The nest is just his home and it beside the point for the balance of nature supplying food. The nest has no link to food. I don't know why the nest is built like it is except it may protect the chicks from predators and the bird's lifestyle safe. I think God designed it.

dhw: In other words, since you can think of “nothing more”, you cannot find any reason at all why your God should programme or personally instruct the weaverbird to tie its complicated knots. So why not allow for the possibility that he didn’t do it, but that he gave the weaverbird, the wasp, the barnacle, and our now famous plagiorhyncus cylindraceus the wherewithal to do it themselves?

DAVID: Because the complexity implies the need for planning beyond the apparent capabilities of the animals involved.

dhw: You can find no reason why your God would design all these lifestyles and wonders, but you refuse to consider the possibility that he did not do so, because despite all the examples that illustrate the intelligence of our fellow creatures, you cannot accept that you may have underestimated their capabilities.

And I think y0u have highly overestimated them