Origin of Life: early land life (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, August 08, 2013, 12:13 (3913 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: If I see engineering then there is an engineer. I don't have to see the engineer, or know every detail about them to know beyond doubt that they exist.-This works nicely if you shrink your vision to human dimensions. But we have nothing with which to compare the vast "machine" of the universe, approx. 95% of whose matter and energy is unknown, whose provenance is unknown, and whose mechanisms are without known precedent. How can we know what goes to make a universe, or how many universes there have been in the past? The only world I know seems to me to be nothing but a random mixture of wonders and disasters, exquisite beauty and devastating horrors, earthly heaven and earthly hell. Maybe your God made it that way. Maybe it just evolved that way of its own natural accord.
 
TONY: The dodo, and a great number of other species simply did not 'go extinct'. We killed them off. Don't attribute humanity's choices to wastefulness on God's part. -My point is that extinction suggests randomness, not purpose. But you're right, I should stick to dinosaurs since you can't attribute their demise to humans. -TONY: As for those creatures that DID go extinct naturally, I can think of two very good reasons why that is not 'wasteful'. First, if they have served the purpose they were created for, then it is not wasteful, they have merely fulfilled their purpose and been retired (I am not asserting that is what happened, just musing on the subject.) -"Retired" is a nice euphemism! But your musing presupposes purpose. I see no sign of purpose in the comings and goings and higgledy-piggledy branchings of species. That suggests to me either the absence of any God, or a God that has left the mechanism of evolution to run its own haphazard course. Unpredictable variety for its own sake or experimentation would provide a more convincing explanation for me - unpredictability being a vital element of most entertainments. (David's anthropocentric view of the universe raises the question of his hidden God's purpose in creating humans. Entertainment seems a good bet - but I'm just musing on the subject!)-TONY: Secondly, the creation of a group does not necessarily guarantee that every offshoot of that group would endure forever. Secondly, the major 'kinds' or families have, except in the case of a catastrophic event or human intervention, not gone extinct. Certain lineages may have died out, but the kinds do endure. 
In terms of stars going nova, even that serves a purpose. The ejected material goes into the formation and dispersion of new materials into the universe and the energy and gravity wells left behind help shape and maintain the balance of the universe. You seem to think that just because something, as a whole, doesn't last forever that its creation was wasteful.-Death and recycling are certainly integral to Nature, but please see my response to David at the end.-DHW: Are you saying that God invented vision, hearing, lungs, livers, nervous systems, digestive systems etc. etc. all at the same time, as it were 'in vacuo', and then incorporated them into the first mammals, fish, reptiles, birds, which were then left to evolve into their various species?-TONY: Yes, I think that the generic blueprint for the individual organs were made with the same type of model that the creatures themselves were, which is to say that the are allowed to very within tightly controlled specifications in a self-correcting system that allows for ongoing sustainability without direct intervention. Even beyond 'mamals' I personally think of 'kinds' in terms of the next subset down, i.e. canine, feline, ursine, bovine, equine, etc.-This is not clear to me. Do you think God made the first canines, felines, ursines etc. all at the same time, incorporating all the new organs at the same time, and then left them to develop their own variations?-DAVID: What dhw forgets is the 'balance of nature'. Organisms eat living things to live or consume plants to live. Everytime we introduce the wrong thing into the balance of nature it becomes unbalanced. Ask Australia about rabbits. There is a purpose in extinction as part of the pattern of life.-Life certainly couldn't go on without balance in Nature. That's where natural selection plays a major role. And living creatures need fuel. And death and recycling are integral. But instead of saying "There is a purpose" (= God), one can say "That's just how it is" (= Nature). It's a similar dichotomy to that in your maths article: two say maths is built into the universe, and two say it's a human imposition on the universe.