New Oxygen research; abundance and Cambrian (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 28, 2016, 13:00 (2769 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Improvement is not required if the organisms at a less complex level are surviving just fine. Bacteria happily existing unchanged for 3.5 billion years are proof of this. Developement of complexity is not required if survival is working! 3.5 billion years of changing and challenging environments on Earth notwithstanding. You insistence about survival is a holdover from your previously pure-Darwin days of thinking. Survival of the fittest is still a tautology. - dhw: You have totally misrepresented my hypothesis, which is that there is a drive for survival AND inmprovement. Read the opening statement above: THERE IS A DRIVE TO IMPROVEMENT AS WELL AS TO SURVIVAL. You call it a drive to complexity, but unless you do not regard the appearance of limbs, the senses, brains etc. as improvements, this amounts to the same thing. - DAVID: What causes the drive to improvement? My point is the appearance of multicellularity (complexity) causes more problems which have to be solved, so why bother. If evolution is a chance process there logically should be no drive. Therefore the drive comes from God. - Why bother? In order to improve - hence limbs, senses, brains etc. The issue between us is not the cause of the drive - I keep agreeing that God is a possible cause - but its existence and purpose. You told me I was confining evolution to the drive for survival, which I was not. I have explained why there is very little difference between your drive for complexity and my drive for improvement, and now you switch back to the origin of the drive! - dhw; Now who is harping on about survival? Multicellularity was not REQUIRED and was not a condition of living. But it led to colossal improvements. When you say “perfect solution to the problem”, what is the problem? If the problem is survival, bacteria appear to have the perfect solution. - DAVID: Exactly my point. Why did evolution go beyond bacteria? - I have told you: the drive to improvement. What problem have humans solved so perfectly?