Contingent evolution: what pushes it? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 01, 2014, 14:37 (3465 days ago) @ dhw

TONY: So, the atmosphere would actually have prevented the rise of life that was necessary in order to actively change the atmosphere to what it is today, and then it fantastimagically changed just-so by completely random chance just as life was ready and waiting to spring into existence. .... ... ... And people are critical of me for believing in God....
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> dhw: We seem to have read different articles. They are not talking about the origin of life, but about the rise of animal life..... You may impose your own view that your God decided to change the Earth's atmosphere so that he could make new organisms, or he saw that the new atmosphere could allow for new forms of life so he dabbled. That's up to you. But the article itself merely associates the rise of animal life with a possible change in the atmosphere. Perfectly logical.-It is a matter of your mindset. Your interpretation is logical for you. The main point is still, even if oxygen appeared in large amounts, life did not have a requirement to advance. Oxygen probably did allow that to happen, but something or someone had to drive the innovations, as in our IM discussions.