Natures wonders: ants and other insects farm (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 16, 2020, 15:54 (1650 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: No, He saw to it that life is designed to survive from His instructions in the genome multiple layers of control.

dhw: Why “no”? Do you honestly believe that every single organism had its own individual survival instructions implanted in the first cells, 3.8 billion years ago? Or that God personally gives individual instructions to every single life form in every different environment at every moment of life’s history? Maybe he saw to it that life either would or would not survive by endowing cells with an autonomous means of controlling their genome in such a way that it could (or could not) adapt or change according to different conditions.

DAVID: Remember, God is still here. I don't believe in deism, So I view Him as constantly on the watch to make sure everything goes as He planned. Total planning from 3.8 bya is unlikely, as too many factors are involved. I don't think volcanoes erupt on schedule, or tornado paths are plotted exactly, or that continents drift apart according to exact plots, as examples.

dhw: I don’t have a problem at all with the idea that God may still be watching the spectacle he devised. I’m glad you are slowly giving up on the 3.8-billion-year-old programme for the whole of life, though I don’t know why you’ve suddenly switched from organic evolution to the environment. “Everything goes as He planned” leaves open the question of what he planned. According to you, his whole plan was to directly design H. sapiens but first to directly design every other extinct non-human life form, lifestyle, natural wonder etc. so the life forms could eat one another until he directly designed the only thing he wanted to design. I prefer last week’s theory: “Once set in motion some events simply evolve, others are designed.” And “Any evolved process God set in motion is under His control, since he can let it continue or stop it as He wishes.” But for some reason, you want to limit this to geology.

I also mentioned weather. I just had to give examples.

Under "Venus flytrap":

DAVID: Carnivorous plants have developed many devious ways to snare prey.

Delighted by your phrasing.

QUOTE: They found that the key to the evolution of meat eating in this part of the plant kingdom was the duplication of the entire genome in a common ancestor that lived about 60 million years ago, the team reports today in Current Biology. That duplication freed up copies of genes once used in roots, leaves, and sensory systems to detect and digest prey.

DAVID: This is a good example of how God can step in and produce new adaptations. The convergence illustrates how evolution can then proceed on its own, once God sets the course and understands where it is going.

dhw: I really don’t know why your God would have wanted to step in and mess around with the Venus flytrap’s genome when all he wanted to do was design H. sapiens. I would have thought it was a good example of how organisms devise their own ways of survival (i.e. "develop many different ways..."). Theistic version: The whole process illustrates how evolution proceeded on its own once God gave all organisms the mechanism to make their own changes to their genome (though dabbling would still have remained an option – e.g. through mass exterminations). “Once God…understands where evolution is going” is a really weird variation on a God who knows and plans everything in advance and has only one aim (sapiens) in mind. Does God say: “Now that I've stepped in and made Venus carnivorous, I can let her do her own thing, because this make me understand that evolution is going towards the design of H. sapiens.”

You get so involved with God's thoughts. The fly trap is just part of the necessary econiches of life.