Balance of nature illustrated (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 05, 2015, 19:22 (3578 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My thought is very different than yours: nature has to have a balance so that a food supply is available for all living beings. 
dhw: Not quite. Nature keeps changing its balance, and some living beings survive while others don't.
DAVID: Your reply is not on point. I'm simply considering food supply in the balance. Of course it changes. It has forever, which is why the program of conservation of species is not called for. 99% of everything that ever existed is gone.-In that case, I'm not sure what your point is. Living organisms have to have food, but the balance is always changing, 99% of all species have disappeared, and somehow this proves that God has planned everything? -DAVID: Balance gives the time to allow humans to appear though the evolutionary process. It did not cause humans.
dhw: The diversity of life, from bacteria to trilobites to dinosaurs to weaverbirds' nests looks to me (yes, I know that's subjective) like a colossal free-for-all, and I doubt if even you would be able to find a link between all of them and the appearance of humans. If God exists, maybe a colossal free-for-all was what he wanted, but that doesn't fit in with the anthropocentric pattern you wish to believe in.
DAVID: I never view it as a free-for-all. Somehow what we see is planned by God. It is how He controls it that is my dilemma.-No dilemma as I see it, since you've made it clear that you think he either preprogrammed the very first living cells to pass on every conceivable innovation and lifestyle, or he dabbled. I'd have thought there would be much more of a dilemma in figuring out why he should specially preprogramme or dabble the weaverbird's nest, the monarch's lifestyle, the spider's silk, and the 99% of dead species, when apparently what he actually wanted to do was create humans.