Contingent evolution: what pushes it? (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, November 01, 2014, 20:21 (3464 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: We seem to have read different articles. They are not talking about the origin of life, but about the rise of animal life. There is an interesting article attached to this one (click on animal life), which suggests that multicellular life existed 60 million years before the Cambrian Explosion. I'm a bit surprised at the sneering tone of your posts (both here and on David's Cambrian thread). No matter what explanation you may have for the evolution of animals, there has to be a reason why it took place at that particular point in Earth's history. Animals need a certain amount of oxygen, so it's not unreasonable to suppose that until oxygen was present in the right quantities, animal life could not be sustained. 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.
> 
> ---Because evolution claims that given enough time and just perfect conditions random chance could create the vast variety of life that exists today, then turn around and say that there wasn't enough time and the conditions were not perfect but that it still happened 'just so' by random chance.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.