Natures wonders: ants farm fungus for food (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, April 16, 2017, 14:42 (2776 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...since ants have brains, you have answered your own question: your God gave ants brains to solve environmental problems – he did not have to help – and the same should apply to all organisms with brains. No “help” needed. Congratulations to the monarch, the cuttlefish, and maybe even those fish that first tested out life on dry land.
DAVID: Yes, I think ants can solve simple problems of daily living. But you've gone a giant step too far in your congratulations: the monarch migrates thousands of miles to the same places each year that have milkweed, through eight or so repeated metamorphoses of phenotypes. Not done by brain power, but by God-give genetic instructions. No one has explained insect metamorphosis.

So 3.8 billion years ago your God preprogrammed the monarch’s repeated metamorphosis and navigation in order to keep life going until he achieved his one and only purpose of producing humans. And yet “a brain can program and produce a DNA that can answer any problem a bacteria might face…” Bearing in mind the absolutely amazing variety of problems faced by brainless bacteria – almost infinitely greater than the range of those faced by butterflies – I’m a little surprised at your authoritative announcement that a butterfly brain can’t solve the problem of finding milkweed without God’s specific instructions or personal guidance.

DAVID’s comment (under “Natures wonders”) : ...the issue is not that the brain works efficiently, it is how did this spider reach its current form, bit by bit or all at once? All at once by design seems most logical.

Same problem. With my theist hat on, I can’t help wondering why a brain given by your God (whose sole purpose was to produce humans) which can solve any of the problems bacteria solve, should be unable to design its own variation on existing methods and mechanisms for capturing its prey.

dhw: If you insist that intelligent behaviour could be a cover for automatism, the principle must be valid for all forms of intelligence - which is why some people deny that we have free will. Through this example you have inadvertently confirmed that God is willing and able to sacrifice control.
DAVID: You have extended a so-called principal to an illogical conclusion. Intelligent action is seen at all levels of activity, simple and high complex, which alters the interpretation of what is intelligent action and what isn't.

No it doesn’t. If a bacterium solves a problem, that is intelligent action. But you insist that each intelligent action is preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

DAVID: Bacterial lifestyle is simplicity itself. Your lifestyle is highly complex, yet you might have no free will? Your broad principal doesn't work.

Free will was an example of how your God might willingly give up control over his creations. With your insistence that your God preprogrammes even brainy organisms to look intelligent though they’re not, and that God knows the outcome of all his processes in advance, you leave wide open the possibility of predestination – the belief that “God has decided everything that will happen and that people cannot change this” (Longman). That is why I gave the example of free will, which I know you believe in, to illustrate that maybe he sacrificed control and therefore does NOT know everything in advance.