Explaining natural wonders: bacterial intelligence (Animals)

by dhw, Saturday, June 03, 2017, 10:48 (2729 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: let us not get distracted from our latest developments: God may not have geared the whole of evolution to the production of humans, and evolution advanced because organisms have an in-built (perhaps God-given) drive for improvement or complexity, which…according to me…enables them to take advantage of the opportunities offered by environmental change, whereas according to you God likes to transform them before the environment changes.

DAVID: [/i]Yes, God transforms them, and environment may or may not play a role.

dhw: Don’t forget that according to you God transforms them before the environment changes - or is it before he himself changes the environment? I never quite know how much control you assign to your God.

DAVID: I think God speciates. He controls the universe, but I don't know about local weather. He certainly controlled the evolution of a living Earth.

For me “local weather” means sunshine and showers. I am talking about the kind of environmental change that demands or allows major changes to organisms. The examples we have been discussing recently are forests turning into plains, and the move from land to water. (Chixculub is another prime example.) According to you, he created hominins and whales in advance of such environmental changes. So do you think he organized them, or left them to chance? If he left them to chance, how could he have engineered those species in advance?