Biological complexity: how big is the bush of life? (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 13, 2020, 13:41 (1685 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "We suspected these deep sea areas would be diverse but we have been blown away by the significance of what we have seen," Wilson said. (David's bold)

DAVID: My first bold is a notice of my surprise at their surprise. of course their is endless diversity to find in our bush of life.

Why of course? According to you, your God’s one and only purpose was to produce humans. In that case, why did he need “endless” diversity? Elementary logic suggests that if he had only wanted humans, he would only have needed to provide enough diversity to feed humans. But “of course” endless variety would be the result of his creating a mechanism which gave free rein to organisms to work out their own ways of coping with or exploiting all the different forms of environment.

Quote: "Our planet is deeply interconnected—what happens in the deep sea impacts life on land—and vice versa. This research is vital to advance our understanding of that connection—and the importance of protecting these fragile ecosystems. The Ningaloo Canyons are just one of many vast underwater wonders we are about to discover that can help us better understand our planet." (David's bold)

DAVID: The second bold is right on point: the interconnectedness is vital as I constantly point out about the balance of econiches, and the necessary supply of food for all, no matter how diverse. All of this diversity comes from evolution from bacteria. Its presence in this size advertises its importance. Let us not hear about God enjoying spectacle or whatever humanistic weirdness can be imagined. If it is God's creation, it is highly purposeful for a real reason.

You already quoted this a couple of days ago, and ignored my response:
"I would not question the article’s statement that our planet is deeply interconnected. It always has been, long before humans arrived. And when connections break, we get new connections and new econiches. That does not mean your God specially designed 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human econiches for the sake of humans who were not even there!" Please stop stating the blindingly obvious fact that all organisms need food, as if somehow that provided a logical explanation for your theory. It doesn’t.

QUOTE: “The discovery of the massive gelatinous string siphonophore—a floating colony of tiny individual zooids that clone themselves thousands of times into specialized bodies that string together to work as a team—was just one of the unique finds among some of the deepest fish and marine invertebrates ever recorded for Western Australia.”

Now this really is worth a new comment. You could hardly have a better description of how multicellularity works. All multicellular bodies are collections of cells that clone themselves thousands of times into specialized bodies that string together to work as a team. I have called them cell communities. My pet analogy has always been ant colonies, but maybe the siphonofore is even better. Thank you for this intriguing article.