Natures wonders: how plants became carnivores (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, February 13, 2017, 13:40 (2840 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Whatever the first cause is, humans are here. Principle: God guided evolution to produce humans. Under that umbrella, all of your above thoughts are possible. We've settled it.
dhw: Sorry, but far from settled. Our starting point on this thread was carnivorous plants and frogs’ tongues, and I really cannot understand why your God would specially design such things in order to keep life going so that humans could arrive. They seem to me to be ideal examples of how your God’s autonomous inventive mechanism would carry on producing wonder after wonder without his interference and without any link to the production of humans. This would give us a clear explanation for the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution, and you can still have your God stepping in to produce humans. So for the fourth time, would you not agree that these two examples are far more likely to be the product of the cell communities’ God-given autonomous intelligence (the possible existence of which you have agreed to) than the product of his 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme or his direct dabbling?

DAVID: I don't accept your cell communities theory in any way, but I have agreed that God could have given organisms an inventive mechanism, evidence for which has not been found so far.

A multicellular organism is a community of cell communities. If an organism has an autonomous inventive intelligence, then that is the same as saying the cell communities that constitute the cell community (organism) have an autonomous inventive mechanism. You have accepted that this is possible. Evidence for your 3.8-billion-year computer programme for all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders has not been found so far, and nobody has yet observed God dabbling. We therefore have three alternative, unproven design hypotheses for the carnivorous plants and the frog’s tongue. Your two hypotheses suggest that these were essential to keep life going so that humans could evolve. Mine suggests that they were not essential, and that they provide good examples of how your God’s hypothetical IM would be allowed to go its own way (God obviously doesn’t disapprove so he doesn’t need to interfere.) Of the three hypotheses, which do you think is most likely?

DAVID: Chance or design are the only ways evolution advances. You are still pushing your concept of 'designer-lite'. Remember that is God. Why not accept it?

For the purposes of our discussion, I have accepted that your God may have designed the autonomous mechanism you have agreed may exist. I have suggested that this autonomous, God-made IM provides a better explanation for the carnivorous plants and the frog’s tongue than your 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme or your direct divine intervention geared to the production of humans. And so which of the three unproven hypotheses do you now think fits in better with the history of evolution as we know it?