DAVID: Biological complexity: mammalian pregnancy is a war (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, December 02, 2019, 13:41 (1818 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: One can certainly see the advanced preparation in the great apes for the oncoming humans. The energy needs for the giant brain started in the small brained apes, by God's preplanning.

dhw: One can certainly see how one evolutionary step may lead to another. What I don’t understand, taking this in the context of your theory, is why a God whose one and only purpose is to design H. sapiens, and who “knows exactly what he is doing”, should take 3.X billion years designing billions of other life forms etc., and then, even when he does start designing the only thing he wants to design, goes about it in such a roundabout, itty-bitty fashion.

DAVID: Surprise. It's caused evolution by common descent. If one assumes God is in charge of every thing, it was His choice to do it this way.

One should assume nothing. If your God’s one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens, and he was in charge of everything, it makes no sense that he should have designed billions of non-human life forms beforehand, or that he should have fiddled around itty-bitty with ape anatomies and all the different hominids first. The history and this particular purpose fit together far more comfortably if your God was experimenting (one of several logical alternatives to your theory).

DAVID: I've presented only a tiny portion of the battles that rage and the designed complexity that was involved in the back and forth between fetus and mother. And please remember the other birth problem that had to be solved: a growing baby head in humans requiring a bigger opening in the mothers pelvis and the two involved individuals are genetically different adversaries. Choosing a chance mechanism to develop all of this is not reasonable.

dhw: I agree. The whole process requires intricate design, and requires synchronized adjustments between cells and cell communities. Whether 3.8 thousand million years ago your God provided the very first cells with programmes for all these itty-bitty adjustments, or he came down to earth and personally conducted itty-bitty dabbling on all the great apes, or he provided cells/cell communities with the intelligence to do their own adjusting (theistic version of Shapiro’s theory) is open to discussion.

DAVID: Intricate design requires a designer. Evidence is seen in creation of this universe, creation of a perfect planet for life (Earth), fine tuning for life, creation of life, and then evolving a creature with consciousness. If all of this happened by chance, we are lucky to an infinite degree. Luck or purposeful?

You have skipped from evolution of life to evolution of the universe, thereby glossing over your particular theory concerning divine dabbling and first cells being provided with billions of programmes for the whole of life’s history, as opposed to (perhaps divinely designed) cellular intelligence. The latter theory is every bit as “purposeful” as the former.