Life's biologic complexity: Automatic molecular actions (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 20, 2016, 12:58 (2675 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Yes, freewheeling, but if it goes off course it is directed back to the purpose of producing humans. God is watching and in final control at all times.

dhw: This is a strange development. I ought to welcome it, because it tells us that your God gave organisms the ability you have so long denied – namely to organize their own evolution. But if freewheeling had to serve his purpose of producing humans, you have a problem, unless you truly believe that God dabbled to ensure that the pre-whale, the migrating monarch and the nest-building weaverbird came back on course to produce humans – a connection which even you find puzzling […]

DAVID: […] I still think a drive to complexity explains the bush of life best of all. And not life much is off course but is providing an energy given balance of nature which is an absolute underlying requirement for life to continue its evolutionary process. Explained by my interpretation, I find nothing puzzling, so much as viewing the whale series as a waste of energy in invention. They might be needed as top predators, but sharks are really top predators and they never needed all the physiological permutations as whales did. So I'm sticking with the drive for complexity as the best theoretical explanation.

You seem suddenly to have forgotten about your “freewheeling”. That can only mean that God enabled organisms to do their own thing, which you qualified by saying that if they went off course, he directed them back to the production of humans. To avoid all this faffing about with ‘balance of nature’, which simply means life goes on with or without humans, I’ll go back to my most straightforward example, with a straightforward question and a straightforward request: do you now believe that your God allowed the weaverbird to “freewheel” in constructing its nest? If not, please explain how his direction of the weaverbird was instrumental in the production of humans.