Origin of Life: early land life (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 08, 2013, 15:26 (4126 days ago) @ dhw

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.
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> dhw:This works nicely if you shrink your vision to human dimensions.Maybe your God made it that way..... Maybe it just evolved that way of its own natural accord.-But it created life from inorganic matter. Smells of teleology-> 
> 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.) 
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> dhw: "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. -How does your view explain humans with consciousness? Of course you equate chance with God, by choosing neither.
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> 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.
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> dhw: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.-Read Shapiro closely. Natural selection's role is less major than Darwin wished. And 'wished' is the correct view of his theory. Natural selection only sorts out among organisms that have the ability to change their own destiny with epigenetics.-As for the maths of the universe, how do you explain a human consciousness that is able to describe the laws of the universe and nature through math? And propose potential discoveries through the imaginative abilities of math? Built in or imposed is just two views of the same phenomenon.