By FRANS de WAAL on animal cognition (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, April 15, 2016, 14:20 (2931 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:After all, what is multicellularity if it is not a cooperative community of individual cells? 
DAVID: Certainly true. And we know that certain amoeba can form stalks with cells having different jobs to do, the beginning of multicellularity.-Yep. Just goes to show how damn clever them little critters can be.-dhw: Nobody knows why multicellularity appeared. Why did your God wait 3 billion years to do his complexifications? Do please answer.
DAVID: Waiting for enough oxygen is one answer. High levels took a long time to appear, and God seems to like evolutionary processes. -And yet on Wednesday you wrote: “The Cambrian is an extreme jump in complexity, more than the wait for enough oxygen can be used as an excuse that 'the conditions were not right'.” So it's OK for God to hang around till conditions are right, but it's no excuse for Baccy & Co not acting sooner. It also suggests that God had no control over the environment (“waiting…took a long time to appear”)…Ah well, what a stroke of luck for him and us that it all changed, eh? Otherwise, we'd never have got here.-dhw: If increased oxygen wasn't the trigger, tell us what was. If you can't, and if you can't tell us why your God waited 3 billion years, then please stop telling Darwin and little old me that we have a problem. Our problem is also your problem.
DAVID: My approach to the problem is different than yours. Oxygen supplies a basis for continuing complexity, but it doesn't guarantee complexity will appear on its own. That requires intricate planning, and therefore agency by a planning mind. Only minds can plan.-You had asked why cells waited 3 billion years before complexifying, as if somehow that invalidated the whole hypothesis of evolution as the product of a natural drive for improvement. I have tried to explain the Cambrian as the product of this drive, which received its impetus from a change in conditions (namely, increased oxygen). You rejected this explanation (see above), but now you accept it. Thank you. What you do not accept is that organisms may have autonomous, inventive minds (perhaps designed by your God). So you now have your God just hanging around for 3 billion years till conditions happened to be just right for him to invent all kinds of weird and wonderful species (cell communities couldn't do it themselves), although all he really wanted to do was invent humans. Why all the weird wonders? Because he “seems to like evolutionary processes”. Having fun? Got distracted? Didn't know where it was heading? I know, I know, we shouldn't ask such questions.