Natures wonders: ants farm fungus for food (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 23, 2017, 02:13 (2770 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] 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.”
DAVID: The logic is the Texas monarchs had no idea where to find milkweed for the wintertime in Texas, but they did. Somehow they prepared metabolically for the long journey. God must have helped in my view. Logical. Setting out helter-skelter simply leads to death.

dhw: You have missed my point. Originally, they would have set out “helter-skelter”, and many would have died. But those that found the milkweed would have passed on the information, and so the route would have become established. Nobody knows how they survived the long journey, but I really don’t know why your God would have given them courses in physical training and navigation when all he wanted to do was produce humans.

You miss the whole point. Without the physical training they could never have gotten across the Gulf of Mexico to that special set of mountains with the milkweed. And then get back following Spring again across the Gulf to those special spots in Texas, of which my ranch is one. And then again, who gave them the guidance mechanism to follow the same paths back and forth. And again you are skipping all the metamorphoses which have to carry the memory of what the first discoverers imparted to the next generation, four changes of form removed.

DAVID: I'm sure He watches and adjusts as necessary. I've agreed that an IM might exist to create the changes under His guidelines. I think tony agrees.

dhw: “Guidelines” is one of your nice woolly expressions. If God created an autonomous inventive mechanism (intelligence), it would have worked autonomously. “Adjusts as necessary”? Do you mean the monarch turned left instead of right so God redirected it? The weaverbird’s knot came undone, so God gave it a twiddle? What other “guidelines” do you have in mind for the autonomous mechanism?

Definite instructions of how to proceed with speciation, not twiddling over a messy knot.

DAVID: You cannot get around the fact that all organisms needed food energy until humans arrived, and all including humans still do.

dhw: I do not see how the blindingly obvious fact that all organisms needed food, still need food, and will go on needing food proves that God designed the weaverbird’s nest and every other natural wonder throughout the history of life so far, only in order that humans could have food.

No, it is clear to see everyone who is alive has to eat, from bacteria to humans. Why do you insist it is just for humans? My point is it took time for humans to evolve and the bush of life provides a balance of nature with a source of food, so everyone has food.