Natures wonders: ants and other insects farm (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, May 18, 2020, 13:04 (1648 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

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

dhw: Excellent. So you now agree that the bold may also apply to the evolution of species. Thank you.

DAVID: I simply view God as always watching and correcting courses if necessary.

That’s fine with me. You now accept that he could have set evolution in motion and left organisms simply to evolve, in contrast to their being specially designed. This can only mean that he invented a mechanism that enabled them to “simply evolve” without any input from himself. Since organisms are composed of cells, I don’t see how this could be done by anything other than some kind of autonomous cellular intelligence. “Correcting courses if necessary” could also be changing courses if he felt like it.

DAVID: The fly trap is just part of the necessary econiches of life.

dhw: It is part of its particular econiche. All econiches are/were necessary for the life forms that depend/depended on them. I don’t know why you consider them all to have been necessary for the design of H. sapiens and his food.

DAVID: Where would his food come from if they didn't exist in large enough supply?

I am not referring just to “his” food. There were 3.X billion years of non-human life forms and their econiches, and you have no idea why they were necessary for the design of H. sapiens and his food supply.