DILEMMAS (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 01, 2014, 11:53 (3463 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: We have agreed - my theistic version - that God endowed organisms with an inventive mechanism capable of variations he has not preprogrammed (he does not dictate WHAT they are going to invent.) So once more the same question: do you believe God preprogrammed the first cells with the four-generation life cycle and migration pattern of the monarch butterfly? Do you think he dabbled with existing types of butterfly to create this special pattern? Or do you think the butterflies (through their IM) worked it out for themselves? -DAVID: The multi-stage monarch molting/migrating is a pattern from God. Too complex for an IM. God may not dictate, but offers guidelines in the IM.-You have gone back to these wretched guidelines, which we had agreed constituted the restrictions on what an organism can do, and the conditions imposed by the environment. Either God created a programme for three generations of the butterflies to live, reproduce and die, and the fourth to migrate, or he dabbled, or they worked it out for themselves. Under “Nature's balance” you thought the IM of ants could handle the construction of their immensely complex cities “by learned experience”. One has to bear in mind that there is very sophisticated technology involved here, and experience is no use unless there is an intelligent mind to apply what has been learned. Why do you think the monarch butterfly's IM is incapable of learning from experience and applying what it has learned? And why do you think God - whose evolutionary purpose you believe to have been the creation of humans - would have chosen to create a special programme for monarch butterflies, or would have dabbled to make the monarch behave in this special way?