Natures wonders: how plants became carnivores (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, February 10, 2017, 13:33 (2841 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My thought pattern re' God and evolution is still quite simple. I have presented hundreds if not thousands of examples of complexity in the workings of the genetic mechanisms, complexity in biological processes supporting life, and in many of the lifestyle arrangements like the insect trapping plants. All of it strongly supports saltation, that is, all the various necessary parts appeared at once. Thus chance plays no role, which only leaves design, and so I think God is the designer and runs evolution. You struggle for a third way, when none appears obvious.

dhw: A masterly evasion of my question. If your God endowed living organisms with an autonomous inventive intelligence (which you have agreed is possible), chance plays no part other than through the random changes of the environment (unless your God arranged all of these himself). This is only a “third way” in the sense that it provides an alternative to divine preprogramming and direct intervention. You have accepted the possibility of an autonomous IM, provided it was designed by your God and he approved of what it did, so do you think the carnivorous plants and the frog’s tongue were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, personally dabbled by your God (in both cases, to keep life going so that humans could evolve), or the product of the cell communities’ autonomous intelligence, and approved by your God?

DAVID: You are the supreme evader. Your 'cell autonomous intelligence', designed by God, is still design. We still have only chance or design as operative in advancing evolutionary complexity, even if you especially designate it as under organismal control to start with!

Of course it’s still design! That is the whole point: I have offered you an alternative design theory to your preprogramming and dabbling, and you have accepted it on condition that God designed the mechanism and approved of its products.

DAVID: I've always granted that pre-programming or dabbling were the viable options for God to control evolution. You have introduced nothing that resembles a third choice!

In this theistic scenario, the third choice is not between chance and design but between preprogramming/dabbling and the autonomous mechanism designed by your God and autonomously producing innovations, lifestyles and wonders of which he approves. So do please tell me whether you think the carnivorous plants and frogs’ tongues were preprogrammed, dabbled, or produced by the autonomous cellular intelligence which your God designed in the first place.
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