Natures wonders: bacteria can spear amoebas (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, August 26, 2017, 12:01 (2644 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We know of changes that did not enhance survival but complicated it, the whales.
dhw: You are assuming that there was no reason for pre-whales to enter the water. I have suggested that maybe they did so because there was more food for them in the water. Why do you think your God fiddled with them and then made them enter the water?
DAVID: God may have allowed them to enter the water by modifying their bodies.

You have not said why, but I like the tentativeness of your “may have”. I suggest they “may have” entered the water for a good reason, and their bodies underwent modifications as a result of them entering the water and finding that life there was an improvement compared to life on the land (e.g. perhaps there was plenty of food there, whereas food was short on the land).

DAVID: Polar bears live in the water and eat there, but they have not been modified. We see two different examples of following the food. I still don't understand whales.

I would suggest that lots of modifications, lifestyles and natural wonders are examples of “following the food”, and I’m glad you now see the reasonableness of whales doing the same. Polar bears don’t live in the water. They hunt in the water and then go back to the land/ice, and that works perfectly well for them, as they can obviously find enough food that way. But they have been modified to the extent that both their bodies and their way of life are adapted to the cold. Do you think your God meddled with their fur and feet and fat before “allowing” them to live in such an environment? None of this means that the whale’s modifications were NOT geared to improvements. Nor does it mean that your God made all the modifications BEFORE the organisms could follow the food.

DAVID: And as for consciousness, an inorganic universe cannot invent consciousness. That is a pipe dream.
dhw: It is one of “three equally problematical options”. A conscious being that is simply “there” and has always been there, knows everything, had no origin, can create a universe and living organisms...Some folk would say that is a pipe dream.
DAVID: I know but that is the only logical answer.

It is no more “logical” than the other two hypotheses.