Natures wonders: ants farm fungus for food (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 20, 2017, 19:09 (2772 days ago) @ dhw

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?

dhw: I was responding to your suggestion that they already knew about Mexican milkweed.

I have no idea how you believed I thought the Texas monarchs knew about Mexico. The butterflies at one end of the migration, before it began, did not know about the other end of the migratory path, unless God told them. That is a key point.

dhw: 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.

You are skipping over the necessary preparation for the long across ocean flights. It cannot have happened by chance or by metamorphic thought patterns. I don't follow your logic at all.

DAVID: With bacteria, they pass it on by splitting in two, no societal culture involved.

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

They do communicate chemical signals and biochemical processes they contain are passed along automatically in the splitting process.

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.

dhw: 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.

Again Tony's point with god watching.

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

dhw: 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.

The bush provides the energy for life to take time to evolve to produce humans. If God directly produced humans without the bush, what would humans eat?