Natures wonders: ants farm fungus for food (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 17, 2017, 13:11 (2775 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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…”
DAVID: You understand the 'brain' in that sentence is God's.

Oh good heavens, no, that is not what I understood at all! I didn’t think you were telling me your immaterial God had a brain! And of course he can do whatever he likes. I thought you were referring to brains in general, because you believe that only brainy organisms are intelligent whereas brainless organisms have been preprogrammed.

dhw: Bearing in mind the absolutely amazing variety of problems faced by brainless bacteria – almost infinitely greater than the range of those faced by butterflies…
DAVID: How do you know that bacterial lives are more complex than butterflies? Extremophiles are fully adapted to their environments and handle them in a simple matter as a result.

That is my point! I did not say their lives were more complex. I am talking about the range of problems they can solve – extremophiles being the most “extreme” example. Brainless bacteria can solve virtually every environmental problem thrown at them. Brainy monarch butterflies would not be able to live in those extreme environments.

dhw: …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: It's not finding the milkweed that is amazing, it's the travelling thousands of miles between patches by an amazing migratory mechanism that is at issue, while the bacteria exists in a cubic millimeter. Further, you made no comment about metamorphosis, because God is the only answer for that complex biological event.

ALL migratory mechanisms and ALL biological metamorphoses are amazingly complex, including and perhaps above all the metamorphosis of sperm and egg into a conscious living person. I am not disputing the wonderfulness of Nature’s wonders. I am disputing the suggestion that every single one of them had to be personally designed by your God in order to keep life going until he produced humans.

Dhw (re the jumping spider): 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.
DAVID: Your theist hat is wildly askew. You skipped my comment about bit by bit. Either a jumping spider can plot its leap trajectory from the beginning of its life or it doesn't eat. This is design at its finest.

Two possible answers: firstly, I don’t think it’s impossible for the spider to have caught its prey by other means before it perfected its jumping techniques. Secondly, as organisms can sometimes change their own structure very rapidly in order to adapt, I don’t think it’s impossible for them to do the same in order to innovate, using their possibly God-given intelligence. And finally, I don't believe your God specifically designed the jumping spider in order to keep life going until he produced humans.

DAVID: I agree we have free will given by God […] Predestination is a real stretch, which implies knowing which specific human will rape or murder. Individual free will denies that capability.

And therefore illustrates the principle that your God is willing to create a system whereby his creations are free to do their own thing. If he does it for humans, he might also have done it for the whole evolutionary process (with the option of dabbling). See the “asteroid” thread on the subject of possible motivation.