Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 14, 2017, 12:51 (2658 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw (under "zombified animals"): ...do you believe that your God personally preprogrammed or dabbled the parasite, or that he gave the parasite the intelligence to work out the zombification process (or possibly to exploit a chance discovery and pass it on to others)? If it is none of these, what is your alternative?
DAVID: […] I firmly believe the bug cannot do it on its own. God is in charge. Logically God arranged it.

But you don’t know why your God would need to programme or dabble this arrangement, which has no conceivable link with your “balance of nature” to provide food till humans can evolve (see below). However, there are tiny glimmers of hope elsewhere:

David’s comment (under “Ants plant tough seeds”): I think it is very probably that the ants figured this out for themselves. I imagine they brought some big seeds home, couldn't crack them, but didn't drag them out of the nest and were pleasantly surprised when the softer seedling popped up. The simply accepted it as a useful pattern of behaviour.

The zombie article doesn’t tell us how the parasite controls the bug’s behaviour. But maybe he was pleasantly surprised when he found that his efforts to get back into a starling made the bug behave as it does. And he then spread the good news to all his buddies, who simply accepted it as a useful pattern of behaviour.

DAVID: [...] I've agreed that organisms can make some changes through epigenetic mechanisms…
dhw: In order to avoid all future misunderstandings, do you accept that the changes made by these “epigenetic mechanisms” are neither programmed nor dabbled by your God but are made autonomously, even if your God set up the mechanism in the first place, and even if he can change the changes?
DAVID: I agree to this interpretation.

Thank you. This is progress indeed. We at last have an autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism, but – my concession to you – we do not know the extent of its inventiveness.

dhw: The balance is always shifting, and evolution does not advance to the most complex survivors, but to the survivors that are able to find enough food to stay alive. These survivors include the least complex organisms, such as bacteria. I would define evolution as the process by which all organisms except the first have developed from earlier organisms.
DAVID: Yes. Present organisms developed from past ones. Didn't evolution advance to multicellularity and extreme complexity, or not? Evolve implies change, and the change we see is more and more advanced complexity. Bacteria can adapt to anything, which continuously raises the issue, why did evolution bother to advance beyond them? My answer still is there is a built in drive to complexity. No other explanation is possible.

A built-in drive to complexity does not mean, as you claimed, that 99% of species are extinct because “evolution advances to the most complex survivors”. There are survivors at all levels of complexity. Or do you really believe that every living organism now on this planet is more complex than the dinosaurs?

DAVID: The weaverbird is part of a niche ecosystem, in balance in nature, nothing more.
dhw: All organisms are part of their “niche ecosystem”, and it is the nest not the bird that constitutes the natural wonder, and I don’t know what you mean by “in balance in nature”. However, your response makes it clear that you cannot find any connection between the nest and the provision of “food for all” so that humans could evolve.
DAVID: You are confusing the home the weaverbird lives in with the birds' place in natural balance. The nest has nothing to do with the arrival of humans. The bird lives in an eco-niche and happens to have an unexplained nest pattern. […]

You have missed the point. You insist that your God designed the nest. Your defence of your preprogramming/dabbling scenario is that he was balancing nature to provide “food for all” until humans came along. The nest is my prime example precisely because there is no way you can link it to the provision of food for all until humans could evolve. So what reason do you think your God had for designing it? The next exchange clearly illustrates this dislocation in your approach.

dhw: In other words, since you can think of “nothing more”, you cannot find any reason at all why your God should programme or personally instruct the weaverbird to tie its complicated knots. So why not allow for the possibility that he didn’t do it, but that he gave the weaverbird, the wasp, the barnacle, and our now famous plagiorhyncus cylindraceus the wherewithal to do it themselves?
DAVID: Because the complexity implies the need for planning beyond the apparent capabilities of the animals involved.

You can find no reason why your God would design all these lifestyles and wonders, but you refuse to consider the possibility that he did not do so, because despite all the examples that illustrate the intelligence of our fellow creatures, you cannot accept that you may have underestimated their capabilities.