Natures wonders: ants and other insects farm (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, May 15, 2020, 11:31 (1443 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I am not challenging your belief in God. I'm pointing out what seems to me an extremely far-fetched theory concerning the way he operates – which is based entirely on your assumption that ants and a few million other organisms have no autonomous intelligence of their own, and their seemingly intelligent behaviour had to be preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or personally directed by your God.

DAVID: I know how you feel and think. The book 'Nature's I.Q.', from which weaverbird nests appeared here is an example of how the faithful think about God and ow He must step in and help.

dhw: Yes, either by preprogramming 3.8 billion years ago, or by personally dabbling. Since you have him “stepping in”, clearly you regard the nest as a dabble. What might that entail? Courses for weaverbirds? Instructions passed telepathically in Weaverbirdese? A direct demonstration, as God psychokinetically manoeuvres the twigs and knots into position? How else can he “step in”?

DAVID: Your guess is as good as mine.

Thank you. My guess is that if God exists, he is far more likely to have given weaverbirds, ants, beavers and spiders the autonomous intelligence to work out how to construct their own nests, cities, dams and webs.

DAVID: (under “Subsea microorganisms”): Life is designed to survive anywhere on Earth, but the key is in the design.

dhw: So do you reckon all these life forms were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, or did your God personally dabble them as part of his preparations to directly design H. sapiens? Or could it be that he designed life to survive anywhere on earth by giving organisms their own form of intelligence with which to adapt themselves autonomously to ever changing conditions?

DAVID: No, He saw to it that life is designed to survive from His instructions in the genome multiple layers of control.

Why “no”? Do you honestly believe that every single organism had its own individual survival instructions implanted in the first cells, 3.8 billion years ago? Or that God personally gives individual instructions to every single life form in every different environment at every moment of life’s history? Maybe he saw to it that life either would or would not survive by endowing cells with an autonomous means of controlling their genome in such a way that it could (or could not) adapt or change according to different conditions.