DILEMMAS: A Response to DHW (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 17, 2014, 20:34 (3657 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID (re the balance of nature): I am not maintaining that balance is constant. It does go out of whack, but it always returns to balance because it is a necessary arrangement for life. -You are describing the sequence I described in my reply to you: “There have always been periods of what you might call imbalance followed by what you might call balance followed by “imbalance” followed by “balance”.... The concept tells us nothing except that life and/or Planet Earth will continue until life and/or Planet Earth ends.”-DAVID: I find your comment completely off the mark. I'm simply pointing out that life requires balance and the bush supplies a large part of it.-And I am simply pointing out that the balance is constantly changing, and will continue to do so until the end (perhaps long after we humans have disappeared). Surprisingly you think all these changes of balance were planned to prepare the way for humans, though events like Chixculub were not. “Oops!” said God, “gee, oh well, them dinos would've vamoosed anyways.”
 
dhw: You said earlier that you were “bothered” by both the preprogramming theory and the dabbling theory, but any alternative clearly bothers you even more because it would cast doubts on your anthropocentrism.
DAVID: No it wouldn't. I'm leaving dabbling behind. I think a pre-planned IM with guidelines is the best approach.-But your IM cannot invent anything! According to you, it is capable only of minor adaptations, which do not even include the monarch butterfly's life cycle. And so if God's purpose from the outset was to produce humans, every organ, most of “Nature's Wonders”, every species (broad sense), extinct and extant, was/is NECESSARY for the existence of humans. The whole bush - trilobites, dinosaurs, mosquitoes, the dodo, the spider's silk, your darling monarch butterfly - all specially preprogrammed because we couldn't be here without them, or we couldn't be here if they hadn't been here and then stopped being here.
 
dhw: Your dilemma, however, lies in the detail. Mine is on a far broader scale
DAVID: You tend to reject anything that smells of a directed process.-On the contrary, my IM hypothesis suggests that organisms direct themselves. You tend to reject anything (apart from human free will) that smells of autonomy. However, I keep having to remind you that ALL these hypotheses are full of ifs and buts. That's why you need faith to cling to one of them.
 
dhw: The discussions between us have always been very helpful and (for me) very instructive, but they will always culminate in dilemmas that can only be resolved by faith, no matter how hard you try to kid yourself that you have all the answers!
DAVID: Of course one has to accept the final decision on faith. I can do that and I'm not kidding myself. I am satisfied, and you have helped me a great deal as I defend myself.-The day when you are satisfied will be the day you stop thinking, and may that be many years from now.