Natures wonders: ants farm fungus for food (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 20, 2017, 12:59 (2772 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The butterflies fly thousands of miles over water to get to the milkweed. They just don't mosey over. It requires metabolic preparation. Do you have another suggestion to describe how this became established?

I was responding to your suggestion that they already knew about Mexican milkweed. I think it is perfectly logical to assume that when organisms can’t cope with an environmental change, they search for an environment they CAN live in. The origin of all these migrations would be the same, with some individuals finding what they are looking for, and the successful solution to the problem being passed on to subsequent generations. Nobody knows how the first migrants “prepared” their metabolism. Perhaps your God gave them personal instructions, although the only thing he wanted to do was design humans. But I don’t quite follow the logic of that suggestion.

dhw: For some of us, “cumulative culture” is by no means a startling new discovery. It’s only common sense that if intelligent beings make useful discoveries, they will pass them on. Even lowly bacteria solve problems and pass on the solutions.
DAVID: With bacteria, they pass it on by splitting in two, no societal culture involved.

Bacteria communicate, and often form groups. In any case, cell memory would explain how information can be passed from one generation to another.

dhw: Nobody knows how the complexities of evolution came about. I am simply suggesting that since we do know there is a mechanism for rapid change, that same mechanism (an inventive intelligence – perhaps God-given) may also account for those complexities.
DAVID: Not the complexities of that spider. that is advanced speciation, not epigenetics as in the guppies.

Once again: nobody knows the mechanism for speciation. I am suggesting that the mechanism for adaptation may also be the mechanism for innovation. It is a hypothesis based on something we actually do know.

DAVID: If we could find any evidence of self-design by organisms that would help our discussion. Tony thinks it is by following God's principles. The gaps in species forms as shown in the whale series implies only God's saltation works.

If we could find evidence of God’s 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder, or of his personal courses given to weaverbirds, monarch butterflies, cuttlefish, spiders etc., it would help our discussions. Following God’s principles could mean that God gave organisms the means to do their own designing within certain natural limits. Your all-powerful God would be perfectly capable of designing a mechanism enabling organisms to saltate.

DAVID: If God evolves His desired goals, that takes time and requires the bush of natures balanced life.

I see you have now pluralized goal. But yes indeed, evolution takes time. And if God’s goal was to produce a bush of life, with different organisms, lifestyles and natural wonders coming and going in an endlessly varied spectacle, with humans perhaps the pièce de resistance to provide the greatest variety of all (so far), it would take time. That doesn’t mean your God designed the bush for the sake of humans.