A world without evolution.

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

EDIT: WARNING: The subject line is not accurate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also, please skip to post #19 where I finally got my act together:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3268165&postcount=19

So, play with me here... I'm trying to puzzle out the ramifications of a world that is pretty much like ours, but everything was created "as is" by gods rather than evolved that way. The gods create animals and plants to match different ecosystems, and plan them out on purpose, and change them as needed when environments change. But obviously there would have to be SOME differences in the way things work, right?

1. I figure, the color palette would be more varied. Since things don't have to "adapt" to one set of environmental surroundings, why couldn't the gods say "Okay, this is going to be the purple part of the world, and past this mountain range, everything will be caramel colored!" Clorophyll doesn't have to call the shots in every part of the world, since not all plants have common ancestors.

2. DNA won't mutate. I still like the idea of kids inheriting stuff from their parents by default, so DNA or something like it must exist, but gene mutations the way they work IRL aren't necessary because it's not needed in order to allow populations to adapt to environmental change etc. The gods do all that stuff, so in the absence of divine tampering, DNA (or whatever) stays exactly the same. If a change is needed, the gods just plug it into the coming generation and it happens all at once. So if your grassland suddenly becomes a desert, and you don't tick off the gods, your kids are born not needing so much water, and your people get to survive.

3. More outlandish creatures are possible. Things don't all have to have the same number of limbs and so forth, because they didn't all evolve from the same basic skeleton. Things have as many darned legs as please the gods.

Anything else I should consider for this scenario?

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 9, 2009

Actually, that all sounds pretty cool.

Yeah, everything runs by the gods. There is no science, only religion. Things are passed on from parent to child because the gods made it that way, not because of DNA or genetics or whatever.

And yes, some things exist merely at the gods' whim, not because they'd be biologically feasible.

Liosse de Velishaf · Feb 9, 2009

One thing to consider is variation. Are all animals of one species exactly identical? Also, how does reproduction work? Our system evolved as a way to pass on the "best" genetic variation. So on this world, there would be little reason to have pairings, or to have death, or to have birth. There's no reason to have individuals, or competition. Why would there even be gender? Gender is not a universal concept. it's there because it evolved in our system as the easiest way to promote the passing on of genetic material.

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

To Ferret: There would actually still be science in this world, because the gods created it by a certain set of rules that are still predictable and manipulatable(?? that is so not a word) by humans. Physics, chemistry, even biology to an extent, would still absolutely exist. The gods don't interfere unless they absolutely have to, and in fact do not interfere at all in later years, once their powers are given to certain humans as "magic."

Regarding the need for reproduction etc... that's a very good question. I think there is still something very DNA-like, and there is still a need for variety, particularly among humans, who require different talents/abilities/etc. to live harmoniously in groups. For herd animals, maybe not. Maybe they are all exactly alike. But I think there are other advantages to variety in a species besides "Some of us are more likely to survive an environmental catastrophe." Obviously that's the main one, but I think there would be other advantages.

People would still be able to selectively breed for different traits in domestic animals, for example. If you breed all the biggest cows together, you still get bigger cows. The variation still exists in the genome, it's just created in the genome to start with. Maybe just for aesthetics or for fun (the main creator-goddess is very artistic in nature). And then humans can come along and manipulate the gene pools to make them more uniform if they want all big cattle, or all small dogs, or what have you.

Regarding need for death: Absolutely necessary to limit lifespans, particularly humans, in order to keep them from becoming godlike. Oh, and animals still need to die to feed other animals, etc.

Higgins · Feb 9, 2009

Liosse de Velishaf said:
One thing to consider is variation. Are all animals of one species exactly identical? Also, how does reproduction work? Our system evolved as a way to pass on the "best" genetic variation. So on this world, there would be little reason to have pairings, or to have death, or to have birth. There's no reason to have individuals, or competition. Why would there even be gender? Gender is not a universal concept. it's there because it evolved in our system as the easiest way to promote the passing on of genetic material.

You would have to absolutely fix (ie render static) all genetic material. The best method (aside from doing it all in a simulation as Iain Banks does in his dystopic The Algebraist) would be to clone the animals or just have machines be the animals. Of Course even machines can have progressive adaptations so you'd have to fix (ie render static) all your machinery to do absolutely the same thing every time.

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

As I sit here thinking about it, how else WOULD a complex multicelled organism reproduce, other than sexually? They can't just divide like amoeba. Parthenogenesis? But how would that be paced, exactly, other than "whenever the gods think there need to be more antelopes?"

I'm trying to set things up so that the gods don't have to micromanage, but that the world pretty much runs like clockwork until humans start mucking with it.

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
I'm trying to set things up so that the gods don't have to micromanage, but that the world pretty much runs like clockwork until humans start mucking with it.

Well, then you're sort of talking about our world as it is.

I thought in your original premise the gods WERE micromanaging. Everything worked by the gods, the sun rise, moon rise, everything like man used to believe.

FennelGiraffe · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
People would still be able to selectively breed for different traits in domestic animals, for example. If you breed all the biggest cows together, you still get bigger cows. The variation still exists in the genome, it's just created in the genome to start with. Maybe just for aesthetics or for fun (the main creator-goddess is very artistic in nature). And then humans can come along and manipulate the gene pools to make them more uniform if they want all big cattle, or all small dogs, or what have you.

Selective breeding is evolution. It's evolution with human control taking over the role of environment.

sirensix said:
Regarding the need for reproduction etc... that's a very good question. I think there is still something very DNA-like, and there is still a need for variety, particularly among humans, who require different talents/abilities/etc. to live harmoniously in groups. For herd animals, maybe not. Maybe they are all exactly alike. But I think there are other advantages to variety in a species besides "Some of us are more likely to survive an environmental catastrophe." Obviously that's the main one, but I think there would be other advantages.

Obviously, it's your story and you can make whatever assumptions you want. But I agree with Liosse de Velishaf. The only reason for your scenario to have DNA and breeding and gender is if your gods just arbitrarily decided to create it.

Higgins · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
As I sit here thinking about it, how else WOULD a complex multicelled organism reproduce, other than sexually? They can't just divide like amoeba. Parthenogenesis? But how would that be paced, exactly, other than "whenever the gods think there need to be more antelopes?"

I'm trying to set things up so that the gods don't have to micromanage, but that the world pretty much runs like clockwork until humans start mucking with it.

It's not just sex. You would have to have a world without genes. No viruses for example. Absolutely no bacteria (their DNA runs around NAKED!!!!)...you would have to have clones in an absolutely sterile environment and reproduce via machines that would have to be continually re-validated for exactitude.

You would also still have to avoid cancer and radiation...but I just thought of a show stopper:
gene expression. All your organisms would have to have only one type of tissue...and no mitochondria.

You could have lots of sponges? But nothing more organized than that since you can't control every single
tissue displacement. And no bacteria or viruses or fungi (no cell walls... they are evolving all the time).

I guess you could have lots of photosynthetic scum, but probably no jellyfish since they would need more than one kind of tissue.
Sponges, eating scum would be about as advanced as you could get.

You won't make it to flatworms:

A. Protoplasmic grade of organization.

All life functions are confined within the boundaries of a single cell. Within the cell, the protoplasm is differentiated into organelles capable of carrying out specialized functions. (e.g., the protists)

B. Cellular grade of organization.

Cellular organization is an aggregation of cells that are functionally differentiated. A division of labor is evident, so that some cells are concerned with, for example, reproduction, others with nutrition. Such cells do not become organized into true tissues but may form definite patterns or layers. Sponges are at this level of organization.

C. Tissue grade of organization.

Cells all of one type begin to function in a unified way to accomplish a task. Cnidarians are usually considered to be at this level of organization.

D. Organ grade of organization.

The aggregation of different kinds of tissues into organs is a further advancement in the evolution of animals. Organs appear first in the Platyhelminthese (flatworms).

from http://www.gwu.edu/~darwin/BiSc151/NoCoelom/earlyanimal.html

Kazel · Feb 9, 2009

Higgins said:
It's not just sex. You would have to have a world without genes. No viruses for example. Absolutely no bacteria (their DNA runs around NAKED!!!!)...you would have to have clones in an absolutely sterile environment and reproduce via machines that would have to be continually re-validated for exactitude.

This gave me an idea. What if the organisms in your world did reproduce by cloning? Or at least the godly equivalent. Salmon travel thousands of miles to reproduce, so its not so far fetched that animals are programmed to migrate too the breeding machines, where the go, run around, and then clones pop out.
The humans could have a similar system, but maybe they have the ability to weave their genes together. Or maybe thats change is what starts the muck up.
But reproducing by cloning would definitely put a kibosh on evolution. It does mean that selective breeding is more or less out, unless you only clone the parts of the herd that have the specific trait you are looking for, but thats not going to produce any progressive changes. Thats somewhere else the humans could start mucking things up with magic.

Fenika · Feb 9, 2009

It's perfectly reasonable to have a single human (or dog or shark or w/e) create their own offspring. Without evolution, there is no need to take 1/2 of someone else's DNA to make sure you get a good mix for future generations.

I suggest you read The Selfish Gene to see how evolution runs the show before you decide on how you want your gods to run the show. Because I could go on for 10 paragraphs but you might not follow me and I'd maybe get something wrong...

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

I guess what I'm going for here is not necessarily a world without evolution, then, but rather, a world whose biodiversity was not all evolved from a single common ancestor via natural selection of various random mutations.

So I guess what I'm looking at, more accurately, is a world without spontaneous DNA mutation, and a world where not everything shares a common ancestor.

Once again I really wish these boards gave us the ability to change subject lines, because I always seem to name mine badly...

Anyway, what I'm going for is that the original creation of the world was directed by gods, and that they endowed creation with all its various natural laws. They designed physics, chemistry, biodiversity and ecosystems intelligently based on both logic and aesthetics. But they did not want a static "photograph" of a world. So there's no reason there couldn't be genes, and natural selection to an extent. Although if one of their creatures was about to become extinct and it was one they favored, they might just step in and change the creature's DNA slightly so it had a better survival advantage.

Think of it like playing the Sims. The Sims has certain rules that are programmed into the game, and to some extent it can just run by itself based on those rules. But you can step in anytime and change the way things are going - you can even "cheat" - though the ideal and most fun way to play is that you set up your house and your people in such a way that they do what they should without your constant interference.

In this scenario, the gods that created this world aren't perfect, and so they make occasional errors in judgment which they have to step in and correct. But they also learn over time, and as time goes on, they interfere less and less and just let the world develop according to its natural laws.

Bottom line, the main thing I'm going for is that not everything evolved from one-celled organisms, and that the gods sort of started in the middle, designing complex ecosystems from scratch and then turning them loose to do as they will (and occasionally prodding them this way or that).

So, with THAT in mind, what things (other than my original three) should I take into consideration that may be different from this imaginary world to the real one? I'm particularly interested in the idea of which animals would be better served by diversity and which would be better served by staying almost entirely the same? Some animals might have DNA and some might not, see - since we're not all evolving from one cell, not every animal even has to have the same basic blueprint.

Am I getting across what I mean at all?

semilargeintestine · Feb 9, 2009

It's a cool idea, but there are so many problems with it scientifically that you'd have to work out. People already have addressed a lot of them. If you can work it out, it would be an interesting read.

On a side note: Is it wrong that this was the first thing I thought of?

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

That's what I'm doing here. I'm trying to figure out where the problems are, exactly. Thus far the objections people have raised have been based on my not clearly getting across what I'm trying to say.

Sarpedon · Feb 9, 2009

Well, since the fundamental driving force behind evolution are a few simple facts, all you'd have to do is make those facts different in your world.

1. Traits are inherited
2. Inheritable Mutations occasionally arise
3. Reproduction exceeds carrying capacity of ecosystem
4. Organisms with certain traits are more likely to reproduce successfully

If you are eliminating '2' you can still have a certain amount of evolution with just the recombination of existing traits. Unless you elimate 3 and 4, that is. Eliminating 3 and 4 would knock out evolution more than eliminating 2. If your gods decree that there shalt always be a population of 9,000 Foozlebirds in the land of Thwirtlebee, and that 2 eggs shalt be laid by each female bird, and that no bird wilt be slain before it hath had its offspring, and that there shalt be enough Ingleflies to feed all Foozlebirds, then, verily, no evolution should occur.

Higgins · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
I guess what I'm going for here is not necessarily a world without evolution, then, but rather, a world whose biodiversity was not all evolved from a single common ancestor via natural selection of various random mutations.

You could do it by revamping how genes are expressed. I guess it turns out that anything non-evolving has to be more complex to stay stable. There are several ways I can think of:
1)genes are literally edited rather than turned on and off in different tissues or creatures grow as organs and then combine as organisms
2) all organelles are directly controlled by the main DNA
3) There is no sex
4) no bacteria
5) no viruses
6) no cancer

Mutations are not a problem if all the above is true.

Higgins · Feb 9, 2009

Sarpedon said:
Well, since the fundamental driving force behind evolution are a few simple facts, all you'd have to do is make those facts different in your world.

1. Traits are inherited
2. Inheritable Mutations occasionally arise
3. Reproduction exceeds carrying capacity of ecosystem
4. Organisms with certain traits are more likely to reproduce successfully

If you are eliminating '2' you can still have a certain amount of evolution with just the recombination of existing traits. Unless you elimate 3 and 4, that is. Eliminating 3 and 4 would knock out evolution more than eliminating 2. If your gods decree that there shalt always be a population of 9,000 Foozlebirds in the land of Thwirtlebee, and that 2 eggs shalt be laid by each female bird, and that no bird wilt be slain before it hath had its offspring, and that there shalt be enough Ingleflies to feed all Foozlebirds, then, verily, no evolution should occur.

You have to stop all transfer, alteration or selective activation of all genetic material. This leaves you with a very very strange world.

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
Bottom line, the main thing I'm going for is that not everything evolved from one-celled organisms, and that the gods sort of started in the middle, designing complex ecosystems from scratch and then turning them loose to do as they will (and occasionally prodding them this way or that).

Tell me how it differentiates from our reality? I'm sort of stuck on what is the point of the gods if they aren't involved except for the occasional correction? Because this sounds a lot like how people believe us to be now, God created everything and has left us to our own devices.

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

Okay, let me try this again. Just forget everything I said before, as it will probably only confuse the issue. I have a tendency to just let fingers hit the keyboard before my brain is fully in gear. Here is me trying to actually think before I post.

The Scenario:

1. Gods exist and are, when they work together, pretty much omnipotent. They can create things out of thin air, design incredibly complex natural laws in mere moments, and destroy things in the blink of an eye. This is fantasy, this is the "what if" of the story. That there are gods who can do these things.

2. The gods create "the world" as a joint project. The closest analogy in human terms would be a game. It has rules, and an objective. Sure, they could break the rules, but then the game is pointless and no longer valid. The entire point of the game (like any game) is to achieve the objective by following the rules. This is largely irrelevant to this specific thread, except I want readers to understand why the gods can't just "do whatever they want arbitrarily." I can make the laws of this world whatever I want, but once they are laid down they can't be violated.

3. When the world is created, it's created as a fully functioning, complex planet with fully developed ecosystems. Food chains, etc. The world is created this way for aesthetic reasons. You could call it "arbitrary," but that would be like calling any art or aesthetics "arbitrary." So beauty, elegance, logic, cleverness, and functionality are all part of the goal of the gods' creation (though different gods do personally prioritize different things - there was much bickering during the creation process about whether simplicity was better than cleverness, beauty better than functionality, etc, and many compromises were made).

4. Humans - pretty much as we know them in RL - are the central point of this experiment, and are created quite deliberately and designed the way they are because it's the compromise the gods all made on design (humans are made by committee!). The gods either don't have the patience, or else it never occurs to them to start from a single cell and have things evolve from there. They skip to the part in the process where humans (the object of their little experiment) exist, and so they just start with humans and all the various ecological chains and weather patterns and natural resources that have to exist to support such a creature and maintain its existence.

5. Death and birth are absolute necessities. Part of the rules of the game. Nothing is allowed to endure forever except for the gods. The cycle of creation, preservation, and destruction is central to this world. So all living things have to have some way to propagate and replace themselves.

SO! What am I looking for here?

Well, obviously if I wanted I could just say "they created a world that is exactly like ours in every way" and that would make sense for the premise I'm using. BUT what I am actually looking for are the OPPORTUNITIES I might have to make something different. To remove something, for example, that only exists in the real world because of the "evolved from one cell" process. Weird vestigial stuff that wouldn't exist if things could have been created from whole cloth by a knowing mind.

And more opportunities! What else might be different? Wider color variety and wider variety in skeletal structure were just two things I thought of.

Also, I want to iron out the problems. Aesthetics tell me that there should be variety. In humans, practicality tells me the same thing. Humans have to have different abilities and personalities in order to create a fully functioning and specialized society without everyone being perfect and able to do everything. Variety in humans allows different people to come up with different ideas, to argue with each other, to have different paradigms, to evolve society and keep it growing toward the gods' ultimate goal.

Summary: I guess the discussion I'm trying to open up here is: what COULD be different in a world such as this, if you take the above principles as given? I know I CAN just make everything exactly the same, but I want to take the opportunity to explore OPPORTUNITIES for weirdness, because recreational weirdness is what fantasy is all about, right?

And now I also have the more specific question of - what is improbable about gods creating the DNA system more or less as-is without forcing things to evolve from square one?

Higgins · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
Okay, let me try this again. Just forget everything I said before, as it will probably only confuse the issue. I have a tendency to just let fingers hit the keyboard before my brain is fully in gear. Here is me trying to actually think before I post.

The Scenario:

1. Gods exist and are, when they work together, pretty much omnipotent. They can create things out of thin air, design incredibly complex natural laws in mere moments, and destroy things in the blink of an eye. This is fantasy, this is the "what if" of the story. That there are gods who can do these things.

2. The gods create "the world" as a joint project. The closest analogy in human terms would be a game. It has rules, and an objective. Sure, they could break the rules, but then the game is pointless and no longer valid. The entire point of the game (like any game) is to achieve the objective by following the rules. This is largely irrelevant to this specific thread, except I want readers to understand why the gods can't just "do whatever they want arbitrarily." I can make the laws of this world whatever I want, but once they are laid down they can't be violated.

3. When the world is created, it's created as a fully functioning, complex planet with fully developed ecosystems. Food chains, etc. The world is created this way for aesthetic reasons. You could call it "arbitrary," but that would be like calling any art or aesthetics "arbitrary." So beauty, elegance, logic, cleverness, and functionality are all part of the goal of the gods' creation (though different gods do personally prioritize different things - there was much bickering during the creation process about whether simplicity was better than cleverness, beauty better than functionality, etc, and many compromises were made).

4. Humans - pretty much as we know them in RL - are the central point of this experiment, and are created quite deliberately and designed the way they are because it's the compromise the gods all made on design (humans are made by committee!). The gods either don't have the patience, or else it never occurs to them to start from a single cell and have things evolve from there. They skip to the part in the process where humans (the object of their little experiment) exist, and so they just start with humans and all the various ecological chains and weather patterns and natural resources that have to exist to support such a creature and maintain its existence.

5. Death and birth are absolute necessities. Part of the rules of the game. Nothing is allowed to endure forever except for the gods. The cycle of creation, preservation, and destruction is central to this world. So all living things have to have some way to propagate and replace themselves.

SO! What am I looking for here?

Well, obviously if I wanted I could just say "they created a world that is exactly like ours in every way" and that would make sense for the premise I'm using. BUT what I am actually looking for are the OPPORTUNITIES I might have to make something different. To remove something, for example, that only exists in the real world because of the "evolved from one cell" process. Weird vestigial stuff that wouldn't exist if things could have been created from whole cloth by a knowing mind.

And more opportunities! What else might be different? Wider color variety and wider variety in skeletal structure were just two things I thought of.

Also, I want to iron out the problems. Aesthetics tell me that there should be variety. In humans, practicality tells me the same thing. Humans have to have different abilities and personalities in order to create a fully functioning and specialized society without everyone being perfect and able to do everything. Variety in humans allows different people to come up with different ideas, to argue with each other, to have different paradigms, to evolve society and keep it growing toward the gods' ultimate goal.

Summary: I guess the discussion I'm trying to open up here is: what COULD be different in a world such as this, if you take the above principles as given? I know I CAN just make everything exactly the same, but I want to take the opportunity to explore OPPORTUNITIES for weirdness, because recreational weirdness is what fantasy is all about, right?

And now I also have the more specific question of - what is improbable about gods creating the DNA system more or less as-is without forcing things to evolve from square one?

If you make the DNA system as it is now, the rules are simple but the traces of earlier states are complex. The traces of earlier states make no sense in a world where those states were never actually functional.

It would be simpler to ignore DNA and make the whole thing a simulation that omits things that are not of interest such as bacterial RNA and so on. The simulation just would not simulate any genetic material at all.

Sarpedon · Feb 9, 2009

Well, what weirdness there would be would always be a result of some divine or semi-divine being's tinkering...unless your gods are falliable. You could then write an entertaining story about heroes who's job is to take care of the gods' screw-ups.

Another sort of weirdness you might play up is artificiality. Conceivably, animals in this system wouldn't strive for survival. Say, a human hunter goes after a herd of deer. The deer spot him. In the real, survival-of-the-fittest world, the deer all run off. In this artificial world, maybe one deer stays behind, while the others unhurriedly mosey off. The deer remaining has fulfilled its allotted span, and accepts his death. If there's no random death, there'd be no evolution (though, as Higgins pointed out, there could still be genetic drift)

Or, another bit of weirdness is that offspring might not resemble their parents; this would cure the whole genetic drift thing. People would become accustomed to giving birth to children who are completely different than they, whatever the gods will.

Kazel · Feb 9, 2009

So, what are the god's objectives in playing the game you outlined? That may give you some more ideas. If they went through all the effort to create the world according to rules, my guess is that they are at least watching. Is it set up so that its reality TV? Do you have one set of gods trying to make humans fail, and the other set trying to make them win? Or is the world set up as an area for the god to play mini-games in (a la Piers Anthony's demons)? That might give you an idea of what sort of creatures exist. There could be creatures that exist entirely for the purpose of feeding humans, with no other way of surviving. Cows have sort of evolved into that, but they still have vestiges of the instincts that let them survive in the wild. What if there were animals that didn't, they just short circuit at the peak of nutritional value, and fall over dead, and the farmers go out and gather the body up to butcher it. Or if you have gods that want to terrorize the humans, you can have animals that exist entirely to pester them.
It seems like the world you are creating is entirely an extension of the gods personalities, so I think the best way to figure out what such a world would look like is to decide what sort of personalities and goals your gods have.

Kazel · Feb 9, 2009

Sarpedon said:
People would become accustomed to giving birth to children who are completely different than they, whatever the gods will.

See Celtic mythology. "What? Our child bears a striking resemblance to the man down the street? The child must be a changeling! Damn Faries."

Lhun · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
But obviously there would have to be SOME differences in the way things work, right?

Well, there are some obvious consequences, but none for the way the world works. You see, the problem with a world that's been designed is that you have no way whatsoever to tell that from the state the world is in. The gods that designed it could have designed it in any totally arbitrary way they wanted. The world could be totally weird, or look exactly like ours, it makes no difference from the standpoint of the designer, he just chose to make it the way it is.

1. I figure, the color palette would be more varied. Since things don't have to "adapt" to one set of environmental surroundings, why couldn't the gods say "Okay, this is going to be the purple part of the world, and past this mountain range, everything will be caramel colored!" Clorophyll doesn't have to call the shots in every part of the world, since not all plants have common ancestors.

No necessarily. Maybe the gods just like everything being green. Though one important question here is how far you want to go with the creation idea. All plants are not only green because they share an ancestor, but also because green is simply the best color for photosynthesis on a planet like ours (because of the sun's spectrum). If the gods also change natural laws at will then everything can be as colourful as a ToysRUs.

2. DNA won't mutate. I still like the idea of kids inheriting stuff from their parents by default, so DNA or something like it must exist, but gene mutations the way they work IRL aren't necessary because it's not needed in order to allow populations to adapt to environmental change etc. The gods do all that stuff, so in the absence of divine tampering, DNA (or whatever) stays exactly the same.

Actually, DNA must not change. If you have imperfect replicators, you hae evolution, period. It's a statistical inevitability. So the prevent evolution you need to have perfect replicators that never pick up mutations in their DNA unless the gods want it that way.

Anything else I should consider for this scenario?

As i mentioned above, pretty much anything goes, a world like earth is no less likely than a world like Spongebobs. A world created by gods doesn't "have" to look a certain way any more than a comic created by a human has to.
The important consequences are more about the gods themselves. A world like this means that absolutely everything exists because the gods want it that way. What would you think of the god who created mosquitos? Or the black plague? Or gave humans the appendix, especially when the technological level of human civilization makes appendicitis deadly?
You cannot draw conclusion from the fact that gods created a world toward the way the world will look, but you can draw conclusions from the way the world looks towards the gods that created it that way.

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
Okay, let me try this again. Just forget everything I said before, as it will probably only confuse the issue. I have a tendency to just let fingers hit the keyboard before my brain is fully in gear. Here is me trying to actually think before I post.

The Scenario:

4. Humans - pretty much as we know them in RL - are the central point of this experiment, and are created quite deliberately and designed the way they are because it's the compromise the gods all made on design (humans are made by committee!). The gods either don't have the patience, or else it never occurs to them to start from a single cell and have things evolve from there. They skip to the part in the process where humans (the object of their little experiment) exist, and so they just start with humans and all the various ecological chains and weather patterns and natural resources that have to exist to support such a creature and maintain its existence.

So, essentially, everything is created from scratch and appears fully developed and operating in one split moment, VOILA! World! What about mankind? Do they have memories prior to their creation? History? They just sprang into existence with no collective memory of their past?

This actually facinates me, Man would have a history that goes back to year one, with no memory of anything prior to that. Some elders might actually only remember back to their 20th birthday and have no memory prior to that.

A world without evolution.

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

Liosse de Velishaf

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

Higgins

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

FennelGiraffe

It's green they say

Higgins

Kazel

Fenika

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

semilargeintestine

BassGirl 5000

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

Sarpedon

Higgins

Higgins

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

Higgins

Sarpedon

Kazel

Kazel

Lhun

New kid, be gentle!

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester