Natures wonders: ants farm fungus for food (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, April 21, 2017, 14:06 (2771 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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.

No, not “believed”. You had made the following sarcastic comment:
DAVID: Of course in your mind Texas butterflies enjoying our milkweed, didn't like our winters with little milkweed. But they must have known about Mexican milkweed in warmer climates so they simply took off south to look for it. Pipedream.

Of course it’s a pipedream. That’s why I pointed out that organisms would set off in search of a solution – as opposed to knowing the solution in advance.

dhw: 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.
DAVID: 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.

I am not skipping. I said that nobody knows. Then in the same sarcastic vein as your pipedream comment, I put forward one of only two answers that you have ever offered: God gave them personal lessons (“God told them”). The other is that he preprogrammed the monarch-metamorphosis-migration instruction manual 3.8 billion years ago, although his only desire was to produce humans. No, “I don’t follow your logic at all.”

I have shifted the discussion on bacteria to your new post under “biological complexity”, except for this exchange:
Dhw: Your all-powerful God would be perfectly capable of designing a mechanism enabling organisms to saltate.
DAVID: Again Tony's point with god watching.

I thought it was you who told us that your hidden God was watching. At last you seem to be agreeing that if God exists, he may have designed the autonomous intelligence that designs saltations and then sat back to watch the great variety produced by his invention. But you will no doubt dismiss the idea again tomorrow.

DAVID: If God evolves His desired goals, that takes time and requires the bush of natures balanced life.
dhw: […] That doesn’t mean your God designed the bush for the sake of humans.
DAVID: 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?

I would suggest that your now unlimited God was perfectly capable of providing food for humans without personally designing the weaverbird’s nest, the monarch’s migration, the spider’s eye, the parasitic wasp, the cuttlefish’s camouflage etc., plus all the other wonders and life forms that have come and gone. And so maybe he did not design them at all, or maybe if he did design them, he did not design them in order to provide food for humans.